Missed Connection

The most beautiful NYC missed connection I've ever read..

In the fall of 1973 I was studying as a freshman at NYU, and after failing to make my initial train home to Maine, I was rushing through Grand Central on the evening before Thanksgiving 1973 when I spotted you, emerging from one of the railways, with a look of utter confusion on your face. You had the blondest hair I had ever seen, and a plaid dress. I had never seen a plaid dress before.

I was, in those days, terribly shy, and if I am honest with myself, I've never shook that stubborn sense of timidity or loneliness in crowds. To this day, trying to explain the uncharacteristic courageousness that seized me in that moment, and inspired me to walk up to you and say "are you lost?" is almost completely beyond me.

You were studying at Olberlin, and on your way to spend Thanksgiving with your aunt in Jersey City. After explaining to you where you could get a bus, I asked, in spite of knowing it would mean sacrificing my last chance to spend the holiday with my family (and likely infuriate my over-protective mother), if you wanted to get a drink and you said yes.

We walked out into a rainy Manhattan street and ducked into the first (cheap) bar we saw, where I ordered us two bottles of beer. Now in my 50's, when with any luck a man might finally begin to acquire that elusive thing called wisdom, I know that there is nothing more exciting yet rare in life than making a true connection with someone. I have always been too sentimental for my own good, but in all honesty, I have never felt more at ease with anyone than I did laughing and talking to you that dimly lit midtown bar.

When I confessed that I purposefully missed my train to keep talking to you, you smiled slyly and said "well I guess it's only fair that I miss my bus." With no money for a cab, we walked to my Lower East Side dorm room, which was deserted aside from my German classmate Franklin, who kindly gave us a half-finished bottle of red wine.

We made love that night, and in the morning coached one another through shaky phone calls to our angry relatives back home. With the November cold turning the night's rain into a dreary wintery mix, we stayed in bed all day, sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes, discussing politics and philosophy. You told me you had never felt "so New York before."

That evening, you took a bus to Jersey City. A few weeks later I received a letter from California. You sent no return address, and I never saw you again.

I have been married twice since then - once divorced, and once widowed. I have had a successful career as an English professor, and am a proud father. My life has known its share of triumphs and heartaches, of love and loss. Against my better judgement, I haven't forgotten that day - and, at least once a year, while mowing the lawn, or reading a newspaper, the details come back to me.

Perhaps, if life's strange circumstances can permit it, we can have a second drink.

Band Mates

I was in the same section of band as my gal. Over the summer when she was a freshman, I had all the freshmen's phone numbers in case they needed clarification on something before band started. I randomly texted them all to say happy 4th of July and she was the only one who gave a fun response. Since then we became inseparable best friends for a few months before we decided to go to homecoming as Bf and Gf. Best decision of my life was to text her that day

I Love You.....Even Though You Aren't My Boyfriend

I met him in my freshman year of college in this little hangout I tend to haunt on campus. Just a round room, lots of couches, chairs, a tv, pool tables and pop machines. I had seen him around campus for weeks and thought he looked mysterious. One day I show up at my usual hangout and there he is, sitting by himself, curled up in a chair drawing. So I pace around and chat with my friends while I figure out what to say to him. I finally muster up my courage and approach him, asking "Whatcha drawin'?" He responds in a deadpan tone: "Graphite on wood pulp." I was embarrassed and pissed, so I stomp off saying "Fine! Be an asshole!" The next time we spoke, we argued again over video games. He kept being there and we kept talking and very slowly became friends until that next spring when my boyfriend of a year left for a week to Italy. It was during this trip that I called him for the first time and we spent 5 hours on the phone. Every day that week we spent 6+ hours on the phone and by the end of it, I was crazy about him, but was unwilling to really think about it (remember, I had another relationship). Fast forward to that fall when he tells me in a shy, sheepish kind of way that he loves me. I spent the next two months tormented over my feelings for him versus my feelings for my boyfriend. In November, he flipped his SUV three times and it shocked me into realizing how I felt about him. I drove to his house in a panic to find him unharmed. That New Years he got incredibly drunk and spent two hours vomiting while I held his hair back while he gasped that he loved me with every breath. Two days later, while he was sleeping on the couch at the house my boyfriend and I shared, I snuck into the living room to talk to him (boyfriend was asleep and I couldn't). He told me he loved me and I said it back. We ended up on the floor making out and I broke up with my boyfriend two days later.

Tomorrow will be our sixth year being together. We got married in Grenada last July and have an apartment of our own. We're thinking of trying for our first child next summer. :)