INAUSPICIOUS BEGINNING
Spectra and I met on my first day at Colle+McVoy, August 31, 2005. At the time C+M required employees to have their picture taken so they can be framed and hung outside their offices. So my encounter with Spectra was actually with her picture and at that point I knew three things about her: she was an Account Planner, a Macalester graduate, and her name was Spectra. Put those three together with her picture and I knew at a minimum I’d like meeting her. Our first encounters were small “hey, ho, nice to meet you” things although she did yell at me and throw me out of her office the second day I knew her. True story. We didn’t see it at the time (noone ever does) but a pattern was established. One best summed up by Pythia, “All of this has happened before, and all if it will happen again.”
FAST FORWARD
We officially became a co-person unit (girl/boyfriend) on April 2nd, 2006 and remained so until August 18, 2008. Our 3-year anniversary was on the horizon and at the time Spectra thought she’d shortly like to move someplace far away (most likely Washington DC or Portland, OR). As these twined events approached I panicked and broke up with her. Of course there’s a longer story but that is really the gist. That autumn and winter of discontent was not made glorious by any Sun and by the time Spring approached I realized what an idiotic spazoid I’d been and endeavored to win Spectra back. ¡SURPRISE! I did it and we officially resumed our girl/boyfriend status on March 4th, 2009. ¿Why am I bothering to go into this persnickety timeline if I’m just glossing it all over? Because it’s the answer to a question you’re going to have:
¿What is the significance of September 17th, 2009 (and why would you choose to propose to your girlfriend on a Thursday and a mere five days before her birthday to boot)?
When I broke up with Spectra we had no noteworthy problems in our relationship. At the time this bothered me. It felt unnatural. We never fought about a single thing. In my mind the closest we ever came to a real fight was over the role of democratically elected leaders in a time of species threatening war as depicted in the brilliant re-envisioned Battlestar Galactica. [Apropos to the point of being cliché, Spectra disagrees. She believes our only fight was an evening when I didn’t call her and then arrived home late because I was shooting pool and watching basketball with Davis and Brandon on a Friday night at the office after work. After a brief verbal skirmish I relented and agreed I was wrong not to call.]
¿Does that sound like an insane reason to break up with someone? Yep, it was and I knew that if we successfully got back together that at some point in the near future thereafter we’d be making a permanent commitment to each other. Whether that would be proper marriage or some sort of hybrid Unitarian-Wiccan Bonding by Flame Ceremony I couldn’t say but it would be something.
When you start dating the first day is everything. Then it’s a week, then a month, then 3 months, then 6, then a year, and then a couple years. After that if both people are reasonably well-developed humans with a realistic clue about the shape of their lives then the relationship takes on another dimension. It’s a long haul from that point and if you don’t know how you feel about the person walking by your side after a few years it’s safe to say you do know how you feel.
So shortly after our reunion had taken root, which took a month-ish, I was faced with the question of ¿when do I ask Spectra to formalize the expected duration of our relationship? Too quickly after the reunion would feel like a desperate ploy to solidify things. Too long and it runs the risk of getting awkward again, like maybe something is wrong and that’s why we haven’t formalized anything.
I contemplated this question and arrived at what I thought was a simple solution. Figure out how long we’d been formally broken up and then tack those days onto the date that would have been our 3-year anniversary. We were formally broken up for 198 days. Our 3-year anniversary would have been April 2nd had I not idiotically broken up with her. 198 days out from that and you arrive at: September 17th, 2009.
That’s our 3-Year Plus 198 Days Anniversary. It’s also 6.5 months after our reunion which seems a reasonable length of time for Spectra and I to think on our relationship and make reasonable choices about its future. Simple, ¿no? If you don’t think so, fret not, because you’re going to have company.
THE “ENGAGEMENT RING”
My motto is, “¿Why do something simply if you can complicate the bejeezus out of it in the hope of literally making a mountain of a molehill, ‘cause, hey, that would be cool?” Of course there was no way I was going to just pick some pleasant evening, casually ask Spectra to saunter down to a lake (we each live across the street from one) and then ask her to marry me out of the blue. No, no, no. That is not my way. Too easy. I had to make this, as W.T. Pooh would say, Meaningful.
The first issue in any plan that involves something like a marriage proposal is The Ring. No, not how many months salary will I invest in it because there’s no darn way I’m going to buy what we’ve commonly come to think of as an “engagement ring.” Not only is there the blood diamond issue—not to mention the patriarchal branding of women with a kind of inverted price tag/pissing match thing—but there is first and foremost the Spectra and Meaningful considerations.
Oh, how I wish I could include a passage here breaking down the relevant memes that make up our collective notion of the Engagement Ring and then how I reconstituted them to assemble my vision of that concept reformed for Spectra. That would make a hell of a story. Alas, I was moved by inspiration rather than intellectual rigor, which is romantic in its way but doesn’t make for a great story. I was dithering about online with one of my favorite subjects, Battlestar Galactica, when I found a vendor that makes official personalized BSG dog tags. In an instant I knew I had it. Tags for each of us with the serial number being the date we met (310805, European style because it looks better than 083105 and feels more future militaristic: day, month, year).
Lest you (reasonably) assume Battlestar Galactica is some fancy of mine that Spectra tolerates, ¡assume again! BSG has played a central role in the entertainment department of our relationship and in a way helped pave our path to reunion. The span of our breakup coincided almost exactly with the show’s winter hiatus. When BSG started up again in the early spring Spectra and I continued our tradition of watching the new episodes on Friday nights. That gave us a low pressure, traditional setting to spend time with each other. Indeed, I broached the issue of going on a proper date one Friday night while we were at Pizza Luce before watching BSG. So I assumed Spectra would be as giddy as I was when she saw the “engagement ring” tags. I remained reasonably certain about that up until approximately 4pm on September 17th.
THE PLAN BASE ELEMENTS
With the Engagement Ring sorted out the next issue was The Plan. In many ways I’m more “traditional” than Spectra especially when it comes to what we might broadly term Social/Epicurean issues. For instance one of things I assumed Spectra would love about the BSG tags is they’re clearly not an extravagant expense. Spectra loves thrift but engagement planning requires a heightened sense occasion especially when one of the primary elements—the ring—has been radically altered.
It seemed natural to me that the Yin of the BSG tags required a Yang of some proper old-timey fanciness and few places in the Twin Cities bellow “¡BYGONE OPULANCE!” quite like the St. Paul Hotel. Off the top of my head I can’t think of a more bygone opulent place but my knowledge of the Twin Cities is limited to the Minneapolis half where the Metrodome passes for “bygone.” Plus the St. Paul Hotel has the added benefit of being… in St. Paul.
Spectra loves St. Paul. She went to Macalester and we’ve talked about moving East of the river when we inevitably shack up again. In the run up to our officially getting back together (March 4th, if you’d forgotten) Spectra often talked of our need to create new routines and not simply fall back into our old ways. St. Paul has never been a routine destination of ours thus making it an ideal candidate for the grandest of all new couple routines: engagement.
With the BSG tags providing the Yin of reflective thrift and the St. Paul Hotel the Yang of costly—but not exorbitant—luxury I had the pillars of my Plan in place. The missing connection was obviously dinner and that brought about my one quibble with St. Paul.
What many Minneapolitans don’t like about St. Paul is it can feel like an antiquated wasteland. It looks distinctly East Coast (code for “old”) and a moribund air envelopes downtown in the evenings when the streets are invariably devoid of people. That glaringly accentuates the astonishing per-capita number of indigent and down-on-their-luck folk who populate the Western edge of downtown. I prefer calm to crazy and people have the right to chill in a park regardless of their pecuniary standing so that isn’t what bothers me. My quibble is the utter lack of vegetarian-friendly restaurants.
Before I continue, a restaurant isn’t vegetarian-friendly if it only has one or two vegetarian dishes and salads don’t count. A vegetarian-friendly restaurant must have honest-to-gods options for vegetarians. This isn’t normally an issue the overwhelmingly vast majority of the time. The tried and true portabella mushroom sandwich does just fine if you’re out with your friends but for an engagement dinner there should be able to start a discussion with “¿what are you having?”
After an exhaustive search including every food website known to English speaking human kind, consulting Twitter-dom, and contacting the food editor of Minneapolis/St. Paul Magazine I’ve determined there’s only one vegetarian friendly restaurant in downtown St. Paul. Conveniently it’s a restaurant that Spectra and I have been to several times and enjoy. Inconvenienty it’s a restaurant we’ve been to several times and enjoy and that makes it a touch anticlimactic. BUT Tanpopo serves Japanese fare—making it a highly unlikely vegetarian-friendly restaurant—and that makes it thematically appropriate because the first big trip Spectra and I took together was to Japan.
With the base elements in place—the Ring, the Restaurant, and the Room—all I needed was a plan. ¿How would I get Spectra to be ready for a random Thursday night on the town replete with drinking and late night reverie? Spectra likes a good night’s sleep so a late night for no good reason isn’t going to fly even if it is in St. Paul. Despite the fact Spectra has never suspected a surprise in her life, she’s too earnest for that, a straight declaration of a random late night in St. Paul on a Thursday would at least kindle a glimmer of suspicion.
THE PLAN
Downtown St. Paul isn’t what one would think of as a “happening” place. There’s certainly stuff going on (I’m told) but you wouldn’t just hop on over to downtown St. Paul with the idea of seeing what’s up unless you were positive something is up. Its primary draws are:
- The Minnesota Wild: But they were out of season and even if they hadn’t been neither of us cares one lick about hockey so no help here.
- The Science Museum: We certainly love the Science Museum, far more than the next couple, but it isn’t open at night so no help here.
- The Minnesota History Museum: That is to say a museum dedicated to the history of the state of Minnesota. That’s all well and good, and I’m glad it exists, but the only states that warrant stand-alone museums dedicated to their own histories are the 13 Colonies, Texas, and California (and maybe Hawaii because it is and forever will be peculiar that Hawaii is a state). Of course I’m exaggerating some but I think you get the point. No help here.
- The Children’s Museum: This is a museum dedicated to the history of children, I think. I can’t remember because the last time I was there was elementary school. Interesting, for sure, but no help here and maybe even sending the wrong message.
- The Capital of the State of Minnesota: I have no idea what we’d do but it’s there. Even if there were something to do there, and I doubt there is, it’s not something you do at night so as you can see I’m running out of options.
- The Ordway Center, home of the Minnesota Opera: I realize this is the most likely candidate for a fancy evening on the St. Paul town so I left it last for dramatic purposes but also because there was a problem. Not only was no opera scheduled for that evening they were between productions so there wasn’t even an opera to be off that night. BUT…
The following week the Opera was starting a production of Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers and that gave me the opportunity to spin:
The Golden Fib
Oh, you’re familiar with the Golden Fib even if you don’t realize it. Santa Claus, Christopher Columbus, Representative Democracy, your parents and Jesus are all famous examples. The Golden Fib is a lie told for the greater good of the person(s) you’re lying to. As the afore mentioned list makes clear this isn’t a risk free, sure-fire tactic. The deceived can become more enamored with the lie than the truth or feel like the deception outweighs the truth.
You may be thinking those risks aren’t even a remote possibility here. ¿Could the promise of a night at the opera possibly overshadow a marriage proposal? Mmmm… yes and no. The thing with Spectra is she is utterly devoid of cunning in exactly the way you’d expect someone named Spectra who was raised by hippie schoolteachers to be. And she loves a plan and, as such, deplores one gone awry. It was a risk.
My Golden Fib was this: Colle+McVoy (my current and Spectra’s former employer) is an Opera season ticket holder and I was given the company tickets to a season-ticket-holder-only Pearl Fishers preview show, which wasn’t opening until the following week and thus didn’t appear on the schedule. This way Spectra would have to be dressed up and ready to be out late on Thursday for an event that she couldn’t verify.
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t really think Spectra would be upset about missing the opera in exchange for a marriage proposal. In fact I believed Spectra’s nature would work in my favor but perhaps to a fault because a properly executed surprise is a delicate thing. A good surprise can’t be too surprising because there’s a fine line between astonishing and stupefying. The former is a delight while the later is disorienting. I was so sure Spectra wouldn’t detect the ruse that I suspected that she’d still think we were going to opera even after I proposed. Which sounds funny until you think about it from her perspective. ¿Why wouldn’t we go to the opera after getting engaged? It’s a perfectly reasonable way to celebrate. So getting Spectra to fall for the ruse wasn’t going to be a problem.
With the cover story in place I agonized over how the evening would play out. The St. Paul Hotel is a little over a mile away from Tanpopo Noodle Shop. While that isn’t an unreasonable distance it’s on the far side if Spectra wears uncomfortable shoes, a distinct possibility if she’s dressed up. I’d rather park the car once so we could celebrate unmitigated once I’ve proposed but considering the distance between the hotel and the restaurant that was problematic. I toyed with the idea of a horse drawn carriage from the restaurant back to the hotel but jettisoned it because not only was it logistically complicated but seeing those shackled horses carting people around the city always strikes me as sad.
So getting from one place to another was a problem but it was dwarfed by the issue of choosing the spot where I would actually propose. Initially I’d planned on doing it in the restaurant but Tanpopo didn’t feel like the right environment because it’s a tad too casual and small. It’d be like wearing a tux to a second run movie. The hotel room would be great but the moment we check in she’d wonder what the big deal was and either I’d have to lie or spin my wheels to a deranged degree. There are a couple of parks in downtown St. Paul but one is filled with hobos and the other is of no significance to us.
The important thing about all these details is I talked to absolutely everyone I know, save Spectra, about them on a nearly daily basis. This went on for months. So everyone I know and most of the people I work with knew about this plan for ages before Spectra did. So a small city of people was privy to every twist and turn of my thought process in arriving at this plan.
With the input of a small city this is the plan I landed on: Spectra would pick me up at home at 6pm and drive us to St. Paul where we’d park at the ramp next to the St. Paul Hotel under the Golden Fib of seeing a preview show of Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers. Once parked we’d take a leisurely stroll along the river to Tanpopo under the guise of nothing more than a stroll along the river. At a point along the river I’d ask her to marry me. We’d then eat at Tanpopo, celebrating, and then walk back to the hotel.
That was the plan. Not so complicated in the end now that I look at it in a paragraph. I set it all in stone a month in advance and proceeded to twiddle my thumbs in the meantime.
SEPTEMBER 16TH
Considering all 150-odd people I work with had known September 17th was the day I had to answer these two questions at least 150 times during the month of waiting:
QUESTION: ¿Are you nervous?
ANSWER: No. ¿Why would I be? I have a meticulous plan and Spectra loves above all else a good plan.
QUESTION: ¿Do you think she’ll say no?
ANSWER: No. Well… I suppose anything is possible, I guess. But we’d already talked about getting married and asked Gaya, Spectra’s sister who is getting married over Labor Day weekend in 2010, how far away from her wedding our wedding should be… should we decide to get married next year.
So I woke up on Wednesday, September 16th and went about my day as though it were like any other. Went about my day and then went to bed without a care in the world.
SEPTEMBER 17TH
I woke up around 6:30am. That’s an hour before my alarm was set to sound and this was not normal. I’m inclined to wake up an hour late (a fact to which my coworkers can attest) and the only times I wake up early is when I have to catch an early flight and I’m overcome by agitated dread over missing it. That is to say I was nervous. As nervous as I get but I wasn’t rattled. I presumed after I got to work and had a couple cups of tea I’d calm down and go about my business like any other day.
A couple pots of tea later and I still thought I was going to miss my flight. By noon I was panicked over not having a prepared speech. Of course I’d thought about what I was going to say but I was suddenly overwhelmed by the fear that I’d freeze up and sputter out. This was exceedingly unusual because I neither freeze up nor sputter out being far more inclined to get wound up and over do it. So I spent the so-called “lunch hour” preparing my speech, then typed up its 10 guiding points and printed them on a pocket-sized piece of paper. They were:
- Year ago in the same place.
- I panicked, first and foremost, and clung to what was easy: work, C+M Comrades, Futbol.
- You’re not easy in the sense that I’ll be disappointing you if I just keep doing what’s easy.
- Don’t trust someone who can explain their actions too well.
- Quantum mechanics: the present determines the past.
- Fighting & the Ultimate Test: Love something then give it away.
- With an arm’s length of perspective I could see clearly what I allowed my panic to obscure.
- As we mentioned before, while the idea of “the one” is misguided in the magical sense it isn’t in the mathematical sense.
- On our 3-year + 198 days to account for my winter of discontent the present has determined the past which is now (potentially) the path to the future.
- Spectra Robin Myers, The Only
I’m not going to walk through the broader context behind each point but I’m guessing the one that jumps out at you is point 5) the present dictates the past. [FOOTNOTE: Looking at that list a year later point 5 isn’t the only one that jumps out at me. I’m surprised by 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8. ¿Did I mention I wrote this list?] I’ll get into that one in greater detail later but know for the moment that I thought I’d be able to simply stipulate the point and move on. After a day of ineffectual work due to persistent distraction I got up to leave the office at 4 and was given a small standing ovation by everyone I passed on the way to the elevator. Spectra was supposed to pick me up at 6 so that gave me two full hours to shower, shave, and rehearse my speech.
It’s fascinating how the same patch of Earth changes over the course of a common day. I typically get to work around 9am and rarely leave before 6pm. That is to say I bike through downtown when it’s just waking up and then back when it’s home changing to return for a night out. On the occasions I make my way through the city during work hours, so to speak, I’m perpetually stunned by how bustling it is. Of course it pales in comparison to a mega-opolis like San Francisco or Tokyo but it’s busy little place during the day. The hustle and bustle surrounding my ride home heightened my nervous disorientation.
Compounding all of my issues was unseasonable warmth. It wasn’t hot, but it must have been in the low 70’s, which feels hot in late September. When I got home my overall sense of wellbeing had been downgraded from nervous-feeling to borderline-sick. “No worries, a shower and shave will remedy this,” I thought.
Freshly showered and cleanly shorn of facial hair I still felt like I was more likely to throw up than propose. “Nerves,” I thought, “I’ll drink a beer and that should calm me down” so I drank the Surly Furious I had in the fridge. “Wait, I haven’t eaten yet today and I don’t want to be tipsy for this either. I should eat something.” ¿And what food is the clear cut champion for helping sop up some alcohol and calm the stomach? If you said ¡TOMATOES! you’d be crazy wrong because that would be like tossing a stick of dynamite to someone looking for a candle.
Alas, the Fates have their own funny little ways of going about things and I just so happened to have had a large tomato that needed eating sooner than later so I opted to “calm” my stomach and nerves with a large ball of acid. A choice no doubt even the proverbial Alice herself would have deemed curious provided she were privy to the acid content levels of tomatoes and the effect of acid on stomachs. Especially stomachs that are empty save a large can of beer. I am on occasion capable of astonishing feats of shortsighted stupidity. I at this point I was banking on Spectra already knowing that and finding it tolerable if not charming.
I had two outfit choices but considering the heat I went with my seersucker suit, light blue shirt, blue and green striped bowtie, with brown shoes. It’s the same outfit I wore to Johanna and Jeremy’s wedding so it was also thematically appropriate.
By 6 o’clock I was flop sweating. Actually flop sweating. I’m not sure I’ve ever flop sweated before outside of playing futbol on a hot, humid day and I’m not sure that counts because flop sweating connotes sweating disproportionately to the circumstances at hand. It’s a miserable experience if for no other reason how disconcerting it is. If you’ve ever had the flu it’s like that minus the delusions. The flu is a full blown out of body experience. It’s miserable but amazing. Nervous flop sweating is a 50% out of body experience because it has a degree of the other worldliness aspect but it’s tethered to your body because you can’t stop wondering why the hell you’re sweating so much. I mean, you know why, but it doesn’t feel right.
Amidst torrents of sweat I dealt with one of the elements of my plan I’d decided to wing because I couldn’t imagine a good solution. Bringing an overnight bag was problematic because I shouldn’t have had one at all. Spectra believed we’d be going back to my place after the opera because she had a meeting in the morning closer to my abode than hers. Thus, no overnight bag for me. Further complicating the issue was that I needed a complete change of clothes because I was wearing a seersucker suit and that was only the half of it.
On top of everything I needed for an overnight stay I had to anticipate everything Spectra would need beyond a change of clothes because, of course, she had no idea we were staying at a hotel. Between you and me I hadn’t thought about that until I grabbed my toothbrush and noticed her bottle of contact lens solution. “Ah, yes, her contact lenses, she’ll need this” I thought and then shortly thereafter, “crap.” ¿What else would she need that I hadn’t anticipated? After a few even more sweat soaked minutes I settled on packing contact lens solution, a contact lens case, hairbrush and her toothbrush (I honestly hadn’t thought of even that at first… “I love you darling, now don’t kiss me until tomorrow night after you’ve had a chance to go home and brush your teeth”… Klassy).
At that point it was pushing 6pm and I hadn’t heard from Spectra so I called her to get an update. She was at a meeting downtown, running late and said she’d be at my place by 6:30. That was fine by me because I needed the extra time to rehearse my speech and calm down.
Rehearsal went well but the sweating and stomach turning continued unabated. In another small instance of curiouser logic I decided what might cure me of my ills would be to go outside. That is to say to abandon the controlled environment of my apartment complete with comfortable places to sit or lie down for the unseasonably warm outdoors that is also devoid of anything comfortable at all. By 6:10 I knew going outside was a mistake but for reasons I can’t comprehend I decided it was a better idea to stay outside and, without a place to sit in a seersucker suit, pace around the parking lot and sidewalk.
I continued to rehearse the speech until I had it down, no doubt, and paced until Spectra pulled into the parking lot a touch after 6:30. She was on the phone, which was convenient as it distracted her, and with my bag slung over my shoulder to shield its suspicious bulk I motioned for her to open the trunk. With my bag safely in the trunk I experienced my first moment of relief that day: I’d dodged the bag bullet. I got into the passenger seat and closed the door.
Spectra was still on the phone, I could tell she was talking about work and whatever it was they were discussing it was bad news. She continued her phone call a few more minutes during which she’d (rightfully) turned her car off but left the windows up. A car in the sun is little more than a greenhouse and I felt acutely every degree increase during those few minutes. On one hand this exacerbated my sweat soaked discomfort. On the other hand it provided a plausible excuse for my excessively moist condition. She finally closed her phone, apologized for running late and being on the phone, and started the car.
I turned the air conditioning on and directed two of the vents to blow on my head as quickly but calmly as possible. I tried not sink down into the seat but I couldn’t help it. On a normal day I doubt Spectra would have allowed this display to go uncommented upon but she was distracted by the work news at hand. She’d been working as Youth Venture Minnesota’s Quasi-Acting Director for about a year waiting for them to find a full-time replacement so she could get back to the job she was supposed to be doing, International Program Development. Youth Venture has a long, elaborate hiring process and the year she’d waited was a reflection of that process rather than any foot dragging. The news was the final Director candidate had backed out at the last second meaning they were back to zero in the search, which meant Spectra was looking at another year as Quasi-Acting Director. Without getting too much further into it know this was a big and complicated deal for Spectra’s work existence. This worked both for and against me. In my camp was the distraction factor, which I needed because I looked seasick and was wet enough around the collar to prove it. In the opposing camp was my need to brush this pressing issue off.
She told me about how it all fell out but I can’t say I remember much of it because I was nervous about the air conditioning not stemming the tide of sweat. For the first time I considered the prospect I had contracted Swine Flu at the Obama health care rally at the Target Center the prior weekend. If I was ever going to catch it that was my shot. ¿But how long was the incubation period? Surely the window had closed and ¿what were the odds that it would develop the day I was planning to propose anyway? I had to silently admit to myself the answer depended on the incubation period, which I didn’t know.
What I did know was there was no way I was going to be able to walk the necessary mile from the parking ramp to the restaurant without throwing up, passing out, or a memorable but lamentable combination of the two. So I had to change the plan on the fly.
“Darling,” I probably said, “since we’re running so far behind I think we should drive straight to the restaurant and then drive over to the opera. I’m sure we could make it but I don’t want to push it.”
Of course Spectra, being devoid of guile, said something like, “oh, right, yes. ¿Where am I going?”
I don’t know Saint Paul that well. That is to say I know it well enough to get places eventually but usually not directly. Tanpopo Noodle Shop is on the Eastern edge of town but the only way I know how to enter downtown is from the Western side so after no doubted driving around our fingers a few times to get to our thumbs we found the place and parked.
“Hey,” I said in as nonchalant a voice as possible whilst choking back vomit and being blinded by my own sweat, “we’ve still got a little extra time. We should still take a stroll down to the river before we eat. It’s just a few blocks away.”
“Okay,” was Spectra’s utterly unsuspecting response.
THE RIVER
Once upon a time roughly 4 years earlier I’d walked from a party in the building across the street from Tanpopo down to the river where I was asked by a Homeland Security Agent to vacate the premises. That’s what his jacket actually said, “Homeland Security Agent” and that’s what he actually told me to do, “vacate the premises.” I didn’t question either element. In my mind the river was a few blocks away and getting there was easy.
The first clue that this was going to be more laborious than I imagined was the party building wasn’t across the street from Tanpopo at all, it was a few blocks away. So we had to walk a few blocks to get to the starting point of a journey I’d imagined as a total of a few blocks. Undaunted we soldiered on.
After a few more blocks still there was still no sign of the river, I was struggling and had to switch to grim determination mode. Spectra calls it Robot Sawyer. She doesn’t like Robot Sawyer. The landscape wasn’t helping the situation any either.
Much of Saint Paul’s character comes from its largely undisturbed turn of the 20th century architecture and industry. Walking around can feel like a great East coast city, a la Philadelphia. But along the same lines there are parts of town that feel like the forgotten, disintegrating, industrial, wasteland they are. We were wandering through the later. Although I’m sure the rusting iron girders holding aloft the road over us were perfectly safe the combination of decay and a full coating of bird shit running down every beam we passed in the heat made the whole thing feel like it reeked of certain doom. At a minimum I think it made me sweat even more. Finally we emerged from a tunnel and found ourselves at the river.
I’d like to report that emerging to find the river was like stumbling upon the Garden of Eden after being lost in the desert but I can’t. It was more like finding a trusted gas station brand after passing a few you were hoping to avoid along a stretch of highway you’re distantly familiar with. I certainly wasn’t complaining but I wasn’t overcome by the glory either. The river along that stretch is entirely lined by concrete with barges tethered to its walls. If you didn’t know it was the Mississippi River you’d assume it was a canal gouged by human hands to allow access to a nearby, but unseen, body of much better looking water. I’d forgotten about this too. But it was the river nonetheless so at a minimum that meant it was connected to the more scenic stretches Spectra and I cherish.
Strolling along the concrete embankment with the river presumably off to our right it was time to launch into my 10-point proposal speech that I had down cold. This proved astonishingly difficult. I’ve given speeches and presentations to packed rooms before. I’ve had to improvise an entire evening’s worth of material as the emcee of a company party with a couple hundred people in attendance. In those cases I was nervous until the moment before I had to open my mouth and start talking because I knew once I started talking the words would come. This nervousness wasn’t comparable to anything else I’ve experienced. I was terrified.
This point confuses many people. ¿Why was I soooooo very nervous? It seemed radically out of proportion in light of the fact that I was as certain as can be that she would say “yes” because we’d already all but chosen our wedding day. To be honest I don’t know what it was but several guys who’ve proposed have confirmed the same excessively daunting sensation.
My guess is it’s quite simply the only FOREVER choice most people ever make. Of course half of all marriages end in divorce and all that but that’s like being comforted by the fact that your own death isn’t such a big deal considering someday the Universe itself will perish. They might both be true and even related but the one has nothing to do with the other. In reality the decision to get married is as forever as it gets. You can sell a house. You can get a different job or even a new career. You can move to another state or country. Maybe having kids is comparable, I wouldn’t know, but even then I doubt in most instances there’s as much forethought. Even if you plan on having kids making the choice is only the idea of having kids, you still have to do it.
Whether you believe Jesus or his Dad or uncle or teacher (who was the Buddha, by the way, apparently during Jesus’ time wandering in the desert he wound up in India where he was instructed by Buddhists… a true story… to some) consecrates your union in some eternal decree etched into the wall of life or wherever is irrelevant. If you’re going to ask someone to marry you at that moment as she’s looking you in the eyes it’s as though that religio-metaphysical clan is there looking over your shoulder. In that moment you feel the full gravity of making an unbreakable eternal promise. It’s daunting.
After allowing for some additional idle chatter I just sucked it up and said to Spectra, “¿Did you know I broke up with you a little over a year ago?”
I looked over at Spectra and she was making one of her classic faces: narrowed eyes and pursed lips. The miffed face. But after a moment she was caught in a thought. “No, it was well over a year ago because that was in August.”
This persnickety nitpicking retort challenging the definition of 14 months as a “little over a year ago” should have been a warning to me to rethink a couple points of my speech but it wasn’t. I foolishly and rightfully plowed ahead. Once I got talking the words came easily but the first challenge wasn’t a difficult concept but rather a sculpture.
As I already described that stretch of river is only what Cold War East Berliners would think of as “picturesque.” The path along the river is the top of a concrete bunker that serves as the shore but after 100 yards or so the bunker gives way to a grassy strip that marks the beginning of a kind of park. I suppose it’s literally a park but it’s not a particularly fetching one. Just some grass, a sparse population of young trees (I think), and the whole thing runs under a nearby bridge for a 4-lane highway over the river. There are some picnic tables and, importantly, a modern art sculpture of a sailfish. When we reached this area I was roughly halfway through the speech and approaching the trickiest conceptual element.
The pivotal element of the speech was explaining that in quantum mechanics the present predicts the past and not the other way around. Not only am I suspicious this is literally true even at the human level but it’s also a convenient (if not outright eloquent) way of looking at the past if you broke up with your significant other, got back together, and then want to marry her. In short, it means, “The reason I broke up with you was to get to the point where I ask you to marry me.” I know that sounds cockamamie but trust me, that’s the way it works on the sub-atomic level.
I had two things working against me in selling this pivotal element. 1) Spectra is not inclined to believe people just because they say so. You better be able to prove it, or at least site reputable sources. 2) Spectra’s attention was captured by the sculpture in the park-like area and she half-tuned out of what I trying to explain.
“¿What is it?” she asked lost in artistic contemplation of this cube sculpture with fishlike qualities.
I glanced at it and mid-speech curtly responded “a sailfish.”
Spectra walked over to it ignoring me all together while trying to decipher the art code of the cubed sailfish. “Oh, I see how it works…”
“Yes, yes, it’s fascinating, Bo would approve, anyway as I was saying…” and I launched back into the present predicting the past.
Once the spell of the art was broken Spectra returned to her skeptical self. “I don’t get it,” she bluntly assessed my efforts to explain.
“The central idea is the present determines the past and not the other way around,” I summed up.
“I don’t get it.”
“¿Do you want me to explain the basic experiment that proved this was true?”
“Yes.”
I knew I shouldn’t have asked because of course she was going to want me to explain. So I had to fumble through explaining the dual slit experiment that reveled the wave/particle nature of photons as well as revealing that depending on how you run the experiment you find that the present determines the past rather than the other way around. I won’t attempt to do so again here but just know that in the end there’s a part where I say “and that’s how they figured out the present determines the past” but the evidence—while it proves it to be true—doesn’t mean it makes any more sense.
“I still don’t get it,” she finally said after at least 5 true minutes of explanation. “I mean, I get what you’re saying, but I don’t know how that can be true. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Nobody knows how it can be true and it doesn’t really make sense to anyone but it’s true nonetheless.”
She finally relented. “Okay, fine, the present dictates the past. That’s crazy, but whatever. Go on.”
Headed back along the river in the direction we’d come from I pressed on gamely ignoring Spectra’s incredulity and I continued with my speech. After the Quantum Mechanical hump it was all downhill until I hit an expected hurdle.
I guided Spectra over to a bench some 30 feet from the “shore” and sat her down just before embarking on Point 9: The significance of that day’s date. As I covered earlier September 17th was our 3-year anniversary after accounting for our broken up period. ¿Is that so complicated a concept? I didn’t think so but nearly everyone else I’ve tried to explain it to begged to differ and one of those people was Spectra. She had no idea what in the hell I was talking about. I mean, like, none. As though I were talking gibberish.
This is more or less what I said, “Today, in case you hadn’t already figured it out, is our 3 year anniversary after adjusting for the time that we were broken up. We were formally broken up for 198 days. If we hadn’t broken up our anniversary would have been April 2nd so I added 198 days to that date and it’s today, September 17th. So today is our three year anniversary.”
Spectra: {brow furrowed with a slight frown, silent for a moment to underscore her displeasure} “I don’t get it.”
I proceeded to explain this concept everyway I could think of. I tried a straight math approach, (365 x 3) + 198 = 1,293 days, starting on April 2nd 2006 takes us to today. That didn’t work. Imagine we never broke up, it’s April 2nd, 2009 and you wake up to celebrate our anniversary to find me a coma which lasts 198 days and then I wake up and we celebrate our anniversary, that’s today. Nope. Okay, there’s a space ship that travels at the speed of light in which you take a fraction of a second ride on April 1st, 2009. That second ride was only a second for you but it was 198 days for me so we you come back, today, it’s our anniversary. Nada.
After a couple minutes of trial and error explanations Spectra somehow finally understood the significance of the date. She threw her head back in that traditional “¡ah HA!” way and said, “wait, I want you to remember this moment.”
[AN ASIDE FROM SPECTA: She contends the explanation of the math behind the engagement date is far easier to comprehend here than it was when I explained it. Of course I think what’s above is how I explained it. This was Spectra’s only notable edit in my retelling of this story.]
I froze. ¿She figured out that I was about to propose and was going to upstage me? Or worse. ¿She had been waiting for this moment since we got back together and was about to smack me upside the face with “I will absolutely NOT marry you and now you know how I felt when you dumped me”? I waited in terror for her to continue.
“This was how…” she continued and then paused to count something in her mind, “… my dad felt every night after school for 5 years when he helped me with my math homework.”
A curveball I certainly didn’t see coming and for a moment I was stunned by the fact that just before I’m going to ask her to marry me she’s compared me to her father. I love Wally so in a sense I was flattered but it certainly isn’t something you’d script.
Girl: “You remind me of my father.”
Boy: “That’s just great. ¿Will you marry me?”
Universe: {cringe}
As I fumbled in my breast pocket to get the little box containing the Battlestar Galactica dog tags Spectra suddenly looked shocked. Like she’d truly figured out what was about to happen. Speech Point 10. I’d planned to ask her to marry me twice, first in Unitarian and then in human.
“Spectra, when ¡SOLUSTRON!, the One True UberGod of Unitarianism, created the Universe on October 10th, 1001 (in Binary that’s 10101001 because the universe is actually a computer program) amongst the infinite events IT set into motion two otherwise undistinguished wave functions emanated out in the universe seeking the two heuristic algorithms that would collapse them onto a mutual Rainbow Path…”
At that point she caught a glimpse of the aluminum box as my hand moved from my pocket to my lap and she saw the Battlestar Galactica emblem on its lid. She squealed “Battlestar Galactica” and started bouncing on the bench like a kid who can’t wait for you to hand her the cookie she’s been promised. Her focus was locked—like a vegetarian hawk on a Tofurkey strapped to the top of remote control car being driven by a mouse with Tourette’s syndrome—on the box with an expression of anticipation I hadn’t seen on her face since we saw a vegetarian hawk dive to pluck a Tofurkey off a remote control car. I continued unabated.
“…that wound it’s way through from the oceanic ooze through millions of years of evolution on a planet that’s undergone 5 mass extinctions and whose continents have traveled the globe. Spectra, ¿will you be my co-person in collapsing ¡SOLUSTRON!’s wave function and continue on the Rainbow Path with me?”
She stared in silence at the BSG box. I opened it and pulled a little burlap bag out, that also had the emblem on it, reached in, and pulled out the necklace. She gazed in silence.
“In normal people, non-Unitarian, speak: Spectra Robin Myers, ¿will you marry me?”
Her stare, transfixed by the dog tags dangling before her, wavered and she honest-to-Gods said, “¿What?... oh, yesyesyes” in a brusque but not entirely un-tender way, like a mother distracted from her book by a child with an earnestly foolish question. At that moment all she truly cared about was Battlestar Galactica and what the deal with this necklace was. The marriage proposal was a distinct second.
As I put the necklace over her head I explained that each necklace had one dog tag with my name and one with hers with the same serial number 310805, the All-of-the-Globe-Except-the-USA-ian way of writing August, 31, 2005, the date we met. She nabbed them off her chest before they even had a chance to come to rest to marvel at them up close.
The Battlestar Galactica dog tags were a calculated gamble for sure. Upon hearing of them several people mutedly gagged to register their shock at my unforgivable choice of supplementing them for a proper diamond ring. “She just says she doesn’t want a ring,” was the consensus feeling amongst this (substantial) lot. “Lot’s of ladies, even ones raised by hippies, say they don’t want a ring because they know that’s what you want to hear but, trust me, they want one.”
I didn’t believe that because I believed I knew her and her upbringing too well for that. Spectra could still have uttered her own gag at the dog tags because she could have simply not liked them or thought them lame. She isn’t one to sugarcoat the truth as she sees it—which more often than not is accurate and TRUTH be told between the two of us I’m incalculably more inclined to flights of conjecture that obscure the truth and thus lead me astray—but I didn’t envision her being paralyzed with fascination by the dog tags either.
You may be tempted to think my proposal being upstaged by Battlestar Galactica dog tags was a blow but it wasn’t. On the contrary it was a bolt of vindication thrown with the force of none other than Zeus himself. I presume this is the effect a monster diamond ring has. The moment of proposal is supposed to be surreal: a glittering kernel of a beacon leading us down a path into an alternate reality. I could have cheated and got an actually glittering, surreal kernel but instead I put mind to computer and scoured the networked (English writing) globe in search of the correct metaphorical object to act as our lodestar.
What I came up with will likely strike most as a goofy flight of sci-fi nerdery no different than had I presented her with Marvolo Gaunt’s ring or a Wizzard hat but that’s only because you are ignorant of the BSG language. The show’s mantra is “All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again,” which applied here crudely means Spectra and I were fated for one another and have been since the beginning of the beginning and will remain so until the end of the end. Inarguably more meaningful than a diamond ring, which crudely interpreted means, “I love you so much I don’t care how many children were killed or adults had limbs hacked off for this shiny rock which has value only to the extent that there aren’t many of them… ¡let’s hope the Moon or Mars or passing comets aren’t made of them because that would quickly make them as valuable as marbles thus making me look as thoughtless as you are shallow!”
“Just in case you hadn’t put this together yet, we aren’t going to the opera tonight,” I informed her. “That was a ruse to get you dressed up and ready to be out late tonight so I could propose. After diner we’re heading to the St. Paul Hotel where we have a reservation.”
She sat literally agape for an instant before saying, “¿We aren’t going to the opera? But I was looking forward to that. You tricked me.” I’d called that one spot on.
At this point we sat on the park bench in subdued delirium. The sun was prepping to set so the streetlights were all flickering on even as it was still broad daylight. I still felt sick but with the question asked and answer in hand I expected it would pass at any moment, which was a form of relief in itself. After perhaps 5 minutes of sitting we started back towards the restaurant.
The walk back was considerably more pleasant both because the deed was done and the sun had retreated considerably so the physical conditions had improved. By the time we got back to Tanpopo Noodle Shop it was twilight.
We were seated immediately and I was still buoyed by the idea that I’d soon feel better even though I didn’t yet. I’d hoped we’d have a celebratory sake together but when the waitress came around for our drink order I knew I wasn’t up to it yet so I opted for water. It pained me to do so but I even untied my bowtie and unbuttoned my collar in hopes it would improve my disposition but after a short while I was once again forced to sink low in my chair. To the best of my recollection it wasn’t uncomfortably hot but I continued to sweat so profusely that I had to occasionally use my napkin to dab at my forehead.
We each ordered a bowl of noodles. Mid-meal Spectra all but dropped her spoon in her bowl in shock. “I have to get out of that meeting in the morning.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for a month. I pushed as far as I felt I could without you getting suspicious.”
“You don’t understand,” she replied, “if I don’t get out of that meeting my friends will never forgive me.” Sitting across from her newly minted fiancé on the verge of spending the night in a swanky hotel on her engagement night the reason Spectra needed to back out of a 7:30am meeting was to save face with her friends. “You’d understand,” she clarified, “they won’t.” This was true.
I ate my entire bowl of noodles in hopes that it, unlike a beer and a tomato, would finally put my nausea to rest. It did not. We finished without sharing sake or having a drink of any sort aside from water and tea. Hardly the giddy revelry I’d had in mind but a meal in a restaurant we both thoroughly enjoyed and then it was off to the St. Paul Hotel.
THE SAINT PAUL HOTEL’S ROMANCE PACKAGE
{WARNING: The following passage acknowledges the existence of sex. It literally only acknowledges its existence. That’s it. If you find this potentially upsetting you are strange but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In any event, you have been warned.}
I sank deep down into the passenger seat on the short drive to the hotel. For the life of me I could find no succor from whatever bizarre malady afflicted me but we made it to the hotel parking lot all the same. My pallid state persisted as we walked from the car to the hotel door where a miraculous thing happened: as though the front door of the St. Paul Hotel were the gates of Heaven the moment I passed through I was healed. The sweat stopped and the stomach was soothed. I was back to normal so naturally and quickly that I didn’t take note of it until much later.
For those not familiar, the Saint Paul Hotel is without peer in the Twin Cities for Classiest Hotel in Town. There are Fancier Hotels in town (e.g. Graves, Ivy, Chambers) but the Saint Paul Hotel is the only bona fide Fancy Hotel that can also claim to housing luminaries ranging from US Presidents to Soviet Premieres to 1920’s Gangsters and is found in Saint Paul. ¿Was I healed by Class? Perhaps but I wouldn’t be the first.
Before I get to the front desk to check in I need to backtrack. I made our St. Paul Hotel reservations online. There were a variety of packages available above and beyond a simple room and I opted for something called “The Romance Package” which is a room with a bottle of Champaign and something called tuxedo strawberries waiting when you arrive and then breakfast in the café in the morning. Perfect. The name “romance package” didn’t really strike me one way or the other because I’d tacitly assumed it was just what they called it online to give it a quick handle. It didn’t occur to me I’d ever hear that expression again once the reservations were made.
I had to call the hotel to arrange for the timing of the Champaign so it would be waiting for us in the room at the right time. When I called I presumed they’d ask for the reservation confirmation code and see I had a room requiring amenities. Nope, the lady I talked to asked for my name and then said, “I see you’ve ordered the Romance Package. ¿What time would you like the Champaign delivered, sir?” Mildly awkward, yes, but don’t worry it will get downright embarrassing in time.
I stepped up to reception and said something along the lines of, “Hello, my name is Sawyer Blur and I reservation.”
The young lady working at the counter said, “Good evening, Mr. Blur, welcome to the St. Paul Hotel. We’ve been expecting you and all of the preparations for your Romance Package are in order.”
That’s right. She flat called me out in public for ordering The Romance Package. The same thing as saying, “Good evening, Mr. Blur, welcome to the St. Paul Hotel. We’ve been expecting you. All of the preparations have been made for your conjugal visit with the woman you’re standing next to.” I flinched, I know I did, and as surreptitiously as possible looked around to see who else was in earshot. Mercifully it was an odd time on a Thursday night so the lobby was scarcely populated. She handed me the keycard and a small folder with whatever leaflets of information they wanted me to be aware of and Spectra and I made our way to the elevator.
Our room was on the 12th floor. Unlike most hotels the hallways in the St. Paul aren’t straight for long, they’re a series of kinks, so walking through is a little disorienting. When you turn a corner what you see is another stretch of hallway with another corner visible at what would normally be its terminus. After a couple of confused twists and turns we arrived at room 1215.
I unlocked the door and swung it open. The room was tastefully fancy in what I’d consider an English mannerly fashion, autumn tones with a dark woodwork, but the star of the scene was on the opposite side of the of the room. On a table was clearly a bottle of Champaign on ice with a plate of something next to it. It was that plate of something that transfixed us as we floated across the room mesmerized, shedding our bags to see this curious plate of oddities up close. For a moment I couldn’t sort out what they were. They looked like huge strawberries wearing tuxedos.
“What are these,” I said out loud to no one in particular but since Spectra was the only one in the room she was my de facto interlocutor in this mystery.
Keep in mind this whole hotel and the Romance Package business was a surprise for Spectra so she wasn’t primed for what we’d find there. I was and should have known better. “If I had to guess I’d say they’re strawberries dipped in white and dark chocolate to make it look they’re wearing tuxedos.”
Ah, so that’s what a tuxedo strawberry was. In telling this tale to many a person afterward it turns out a tuxedo strawberry is a commonly known culinary phenomenon. For the life of me I can’t fathom why. After much giggling over our nattily clad attendant fruit we slipped into the waiting terrycloth robes (more because they were there and completed the scene than anything else).
I sat on the overstuffed chair’s ottoman to carefully open the bottle of champagne. Mercifully I’m well aware of how one correctly opens such a bottle. You cover the cork with a cloth and then slowly twist the bottle while firmly grasping the cork. The pressure will slowly push the cork out and when done properly you’ll get the satisfying pop but won’t loose a drop of champagne. I’ve done this at least a dozen times but accidents happen—although I’d never had one—so I also made sure to keep the bottle aimed away from anything of value like Spectra’s face or my cell phone. I carefully removed the wire keeping the cork in place and then looked around for the cloth to drape over the cork but couldn’t find it, which was odd because I knew it came with one.
Turned out I was sitting on it and I needed to ever so slightly lean forward, which I did, and when I rocked back the cork shot out of the bottle just like in a movie. I was dazed for an instant. It’s as loud as it’s portrayed, like a firecracker. I stared at the bottle waiting for the champagne spray but it didn’t, just mist wafted out. Mercifully no harm was done and I poured us each a glass and we looked out the window over Rice Park and the Mississippi River beyond, giggling a lot.
COMPLIMENTARY ROMANCE PACKAGE BREAKFAST
The next morning we awoke at a leisurely but not weekend-ish hour and then made our way down to breakfast. This was notable for a couple of reasons.
First, the nerves that plagued me up until we arrived at the St. Paul Hotel came back in the night to haunt Spectra. She got up to use the restroom no fewer than five times over the course of breakfast.
Second was the method of payment for the complimentary breakfast that came with our room. I hadn’t given it a thought assuming that the St. Paul Hotel would have slick way of dealing with the minor trifle of an issue such as which patrons had to pay for their meals or not. And they did, the slickest of all ways: a piece of paper that I handed to our waitress. ¿And what did it say on the top of that piece of paper? Of course:
Romance Package
¿Can you imagine serving breakfast to a couple who pay with a piece of paper that’s emblazoned “Romance Package” across the top? You know you can. Sooooo awkward.
FRIDAY
After that it was a Friday and we both had to get to work. Spectra drove but that probably wasn’t a good idea because on the way back to Minneapolis it shortly became apparent she wasn’t herself. I kept glancing in her direction to find her staring back at me in a kind of daze. More than once I had to say, “Spectra, watch the road,” because she was lettering her car drift into the next lane. She managed to get me to work and then raced to her office in order to avoid throwing up in her car. Mercifully the vomit never materialized and fortunately she had lunch plans with Jen, her old Youth Venture boss, so she had someone to share and get giddy with.
At work I most likely told this very tale more times in one day than Spectra will in her entire life. The weird thing was there wasn’t much of a story to tell because the plan went off with nary a hitch but despite that people wanted to hear about it again anyway. Spectra is this way too. She’ll ask me to tell her stories she’s already heard several times. In fact when I saw her Friday night after work she asked me to tell her the story. This story. The one she’d lived the day before.
The fact I find this surprising is an embarrassing oversight. Considering how central Battlestar Galactica was to our engagement I should have started both my engagement speech and the retelling of this tale with, “All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.” That sentiment is as true in BSG as it is in Peter Pan as it is for people deciding to spend the rest of their lives together.
Unlike diamonds the value of stories increase as they become more common through repetition, expansion and evolution. [Ye, gods, I sound like a Unitarian.] Thus Spectra and I embark on a quest you’re well acquainted with. A Search to find New-New-Earth (BSG reference) or Neverland (you better not need a hint on that one) or the ideal location for a combination tree house/Hobbit Hole (Spectra/Sawyer hybrid reference).
“All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.” Yep, even two heuristic algorithms collapsing ¡SOLUSTRON!’s wave function to follow the Rainbow Path on a Search for a tree house/Hobbit Hole.
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