Three years ago today we went on our first date. We had been friends since September — since that fateful night when Mike Cirino put one and one together and told us hey, you guys should know each other — and though there were sparks, nothing quite caught fire ‘til I saw him clean-shaven and in a (snug) t-shirt for the first time behind the bar at Whisk & Ladle for Cirino’s birthday party (we really owe you a bottle of Armagnac, my friend). He looked (I’ll just say it) hot, and I did that girl thing where I casually touched his bicep in conversation and, um, I liked what I felt. (Girls can be leches, too, you know.) We got in a rather heated discussion about politics or something and the next morning, I wrote him a flirty email, asking him out on a date.
Or was it just a friendly dinner? M. wasn’t sure, but the following Thursday he took the train to Park Slope, bearing one of the sweetest little gifts I’ve ever gotten — two chocolate cats that looked just like our two Obama kittens — and, knowing I was sick with a cold (a cold that kept me from celebrating Jane’s birthday with her the day before), and knowing, too, that I was following a self-imposed experiment with eating meat just once a month and only if I knew it was locally and ethically sourced, he brought me to a restaurant that sadly doesn’t exist anymore, just a block and a half up Union, which had all the local/ethical credentials I needed to eat my single serving of the month.
I did something strange, something I’ve never done before or since (which is probably the tip-off that this was no ordinary date-or-maybe-just-dinner): I ordered fried chicken. I barely even eat fried chicken, let alone order it for an entree, but I guess I was doing that other thing girls do, eat like a boy to impress a boy, and maybe it worked. Of course, we were too busy talking nonstop for me to actually eat so I brought almost the whole meal home and I think I ate it with my fingers later that night, reliving the night in my mind — especially the small and chaste but absolutely wonderful kiss at my door — a greasy happy smile on my face.
We were both in DC for the inauguration the following weekend and we met up a couple times, most memorably after the ceremony itself, warming our sock-clad feet before the television after long hours in the cold, but the tipping point was a month later, the Valentine’s/President’s Day long weekend. I made him dinner on the 14th and he brought me to Blue Hill at Stone Barns on the 15th (which just so happened to be the restaurant of my dreams). Somewhere between those unforgettable nights my skin erupted in some of the most disgusting acne I’ve ever had. Huge, painful whiteheads that seemed more like a vengeful contagion than anything else. This was not what I imagined for our first sleepover — in truth, I was absolutely miserable and mortified, constantly turning my face away just when I was starting to feel that I never wanted to be out of this guy’s presence — but it was like he didn’t even see it. That spoke to me in a way that nothing else has. When you’re a pretty girl — when you enjoy being a pretty girl — you sometimes put a little too much stock in your looks. This was a guy who could see my beauty even when (trust me) it wasn’t there. I still marvel at it.
It has not been an easy road, not by a long shot. We have had troubles that for obvious reasons I have never and probably will never speak publicly about. Which is why three years is something I’m really proud of. It says commitment. It says faith. It says that though we’ve both been hurt to our core by medical tragedies we are not afraid to love again. It says we have had to learn a lot, make efforts that sometimes seemed impossible or just not worth it, and do the work to build a lasting relationship.
I love you, baby, with every bit of me, beautiful and otherwise, and I promise to keep doing better by you, work harder to listen to and support you, and to do what I need to do to become in full the woman you deserve. Here’s to the next sixty.
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The Great American Cooking Project
Notes from others: