Sometimes when people ask how we met I avoid the question, I say about four years ago. Well… I hate to admit it, but we actually met on the internet. My best friend told me about a website that his friend posted a topless pic of their ex-girlfriend after they broke up, so he sent me a link to it. It was one of those silly rating sites to see if your picture is hot or not. So I started clicking through the site since it was pretty entertaining… I saw this girl who had the sexiest eyes so I had to send her an email. We emailed each other back and forth for a while, it was fun like internet pen pals or something 1000 miles apart. Never really thought anything of it and eventually we lost contact for about 4 months.
One day she sent me a message on yahoo messenger and we started chatting again. It was funny, she didn’t want to tell me what she did, so I told her that I had to assume she’s either a stripper or a government agent. Eventually I found out that she was a student studying design (that doesn’t mean she isn’t a spy, I still wonder sometimes). By the time that semester was over she wasn’t going to come online anymore, at least not for a while. I really enjoyed chatting with her so I decided to give her my number.
So I was hanging out with one of my best friends, Kung Fu Mike, doing the usual goofy musical type stuff that we used to do when we had “free time.” I remember those days, it was nice, we could grab a couple guitars and have fun. Nowadays I’m lucky when I feel motivated to pickup a guitar and play. Anywho, partway through our rockin’ out I received a phone call from someone with an area code I didn’t recognize, 773. I had no idea who it was when she started talking. She didn’t say “Hi this is Sophia” or anything like that to clue me in. Just “hey.” So we spoke for a minute and I finally figured out who it was and told her I was hanging out with a friend and I would call her back.
Yeah, I called her back. We talked for a bit and it was nice, but we still didn’t think anything of it. We were just friends, or so we thought. We started talking so much that one thing led to another and before we knew it, feelings had already developed. We spent so much time on the phone it was crazy. I won’t go into much detail on the phone use, it’s insane. But to put it simply, we had unlimited mobile to mobile on a cheap ass piece of shit cellular provider know as t-mobile. We both had been customers of the t-mobile-piece-of-shit for years, but apparently we were using too many minutes on our “unlimited” plans because they sent me a letter telling me I needed to choose another provider because I was using too many minutes. Stupid bastards. Riiiiiiiiiiight. That part had a lot to do with the story. Anyway…
We had been conversing on the phone for many months and we both decided it was time to meet face-to-face. I was going to spend the fourth of July with her. Goofy Mike gave me a ride to the airport to go see her, thanks Mike, you rock. The lame-ass flight attendants who decided not to show up for work because they wanted to go to a party instead sucked, because my flight got canceled. So I called Mike back, and he picked me back up. The next day, already the 3rd now, I got back to the airport and finally made it to Chicago. My bags didn’t. Not only was United no help at all with my lost bags, when I finally did get my bags back, my $500 digital camera was stolen. It took them two days to get my bag back to me. When it came to me filling out a form to get compensated, they basically told me I could go fuck myself.
The interesting thing is that I was stuck in the hotel room with the same clothes for 2 days. No deodorant either. Somehow, I didn’t gross her out. Luckily, my natural odor is pretty nice. Not quite “Sex Panther®”, but pretty nice just the same. We spent time getting to know each other more and talking, taking walks, going out and just having fun. It was nice. I think a good story to sum that up is when I walked out of the bathroom she was standing outside the door in the kitchen putting away what we had for lunch. I looked down into her eyes and very solemly said “I stand here broken hearted…” I looked at her expression get all sweet and emotional and felt bad that my poem wasn’t sweeter, but I continued anyway. “I went to the bathroom to shit, but only farted.” It’s still a classic.
One thing that really stuck out in my mind was the first moment I saw Sophia in the airport. We were looking for each other, she was sitting near the baggage claim and I was walking out of the useless lost baggage office. I walked right past her since I didn’t know she was sitting and she said on the phone “I see you, you just walked past me.” I turned around and she stood up, this tall delicious woman. I couldn’t believe she was there to meet me. We gave each other a hug and paid way too much to take a cab to the hotel. I remember that cab ride like it was yesterday. She was sooooooooooooooo nervous. She kept looking at me with those big beautiful brown eyes that I had until then only seen in photos. They were amazing. Every time she looked at me she would see me looking into her eyes and she would look away nervously and ask me why I was looking. I think it was obvious. Because I’m crazy…
…and because those beautiful eyes stole my heart and never let go.
