An old friend asked for the story of how Tamara and I met. I think she wanted a couple sentences and I crafted about ten paragraphs instead. It was hard to whittle it down since every detail seems so crucial to the core of my life’s story, which you will find below:


When I went to the University of Washington, I spent a lot of time with my best friend, Jeff Jacobs. While taking some comparative literature classes [oddly abbreviated on the course materials book as “C.Lit: Fairy Tales” (were we taught by asexual monks?)] Jeff met his future wife, Michelle. Jeff begged me to come to a party with him at her friend’s house because he was overwhelmed by the friends and had been cornered by this Mohawk wearing, punk, physics guy who talked his ear off before in that socially obtuse sort of way.

I went along and was ushered into an old but cute three flight walk-up in Everett. The party was just getting started and Jeff and I were among the first to arrive. In my mind (I know I have embellished with all of the warm feelings of the passing years) the apartment just glowed with this soft light like pictures taken with Vaseline on the lens of a vintage camera. There was a view of the Puget Sound, in that bohemian vein (lots of factories around, but still the pretty water). I was introduced to the hostess and some people I had already met at UW. I think I talked with the hostess and a couple of the girls on the sofa, distracted by the view and that hostess who was sitting on the windowsill beside my chair with her back to the open window, silhouetted by the setting sun.


We instantly clicked, that hostess and I. As I was a comparative religion major, I was excited to learn she was questioning spiritual stuff and organized religion, and she had begun reading the bible to get a clearer opinion about the stuff inside. (Just for the record, we are pretty spiritual people but not religiously affiliated with any organized religion). I remember that we discussed the convenant of the rainbow with Noah, and I had this pithy anecdote about that story having written some stuff about the folklore traditions of the Old Testament for some coursework. the fact that she was questioning all that stuff was electrifying, since I had become an English/Comp Rel. major with the same questioning nature – as well as wanting to spend my time in college reading fairy tales and ancient stories that played out like installments of Star Wars.

Anyway, I talked with her in a daze for what seemed like hours but was actually only ten or fifteen minutes and she seemed like everything to me! She was smart. She was curvy and pretty. She had a spark of LIFE that was similar to mine. She smiled big, and she looked right back into my eyes with her own powdery blue ones, sharing an enthusiasm for our conversation…. Her name was Tamara Hansen and I knew I was going to be asking her out before I left this party.

Then the spell broke when a fellow came out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a bath towel. His mohawk was freshly pasted up in the air and the hostess next to me stood up and beelined to the guy. She kissed his cheek and pinched his nipple and my heart fell into my stomach. URGH! She was with the guy Jeff said bored the crap out of him last time with his long winded and obtuse meanderings! The whole ordeal was made worse by all the wonderful details that followed through the evening: she was a gardener, a gourmand, an artist, listened to good music, made beautiful flower arrangements and used rice grains as a vase frog! Brilliant. Then came the coup de gras of ootching across the bed in her studio apartment sort of standing upright but on her knees in this silly walk maneuver wearing these cut-offs and a t-shirt in the single most sexy un-sexy thing I have ever witnessed, as she sought out a piece of pottery she had made. At 22, I was full of optimism and romance and had enough near misses to know that SHE was what I wanted, but she was taken. I left that party without asking her out. I was forlorn and sad, and for months I would wake with images of her just throbbing in my head as dreams fled me.

Every time Jeff had to go somewhere I would gamely volunteer to accompany him as long as I could divine if this girl was going to be there. I sensed Tamara felt a connection with me too because we did the whole moth to a flame thing whenever we found one another at a party, but it was always chaste, and even though her boyfriend often wore a dog collar, somehow I didn’t feel it was my place to get in between things. I brought flowers from my garden for the girls at the party, just so I could give flowers to her. I brought my guitar and played at a party even though I hate performing, so I could play in front of her. She wanted guitar lessons from me, but I thought I would just end up tortured or looking like an ass after making an inappropriate advance in my delirium and heat.

At a Low concert we stood side by side letting our elbows touch and boy, was I twitterpated for weeks. One time, she and her friend conspired to hook me up with a friend who they thought was Tamara-esque at a party, but I was not interested since that girl was NOT Tamara. I got the feeling from this that maybe Tamara liked me too, or at least knew I liked her. If she was absent from a party I left, since my reason to be there was lacking. Her friends were lovely, but I am ashamed to say that my primary drive in conversing with them was often to learn more about Tamara, and for them to learn more about me in hopes that a miracle would begin to grow.

Almost two years worth of these sorts of anecdotes occurred before I got a call from Europe. It was Tamara, and it was her birthday. She had been given the gift of a phone call by her travel-mate Amy. She chose to call me.

The Physics Punk boyfriend Tamara came to visit in Europe, as he embarked on a year abroad, had broken up with her in a room with a view of the Eiffel Tower upon her arrival in Paris! We chatted and glowed gently as the pieces of this puzzle seemed to fall in place over the phone. The details of her trip were a secret language, a code I knew how to read: her enthusiasm for Rambitica music, Goudi’s architecture, the Colosseum, it all translated to I LOVE YOU! I knew I was gonna get the girl and the sun couldn’t rise and fall fast enough to mark the days until she returned.


Weeks later, when she arrived home I picked her up from Jeff’s house in Seattle the next day. I drove her home late that night in a surreal state that felt too good to be true. We talked easily, comfortably, perfectly. I drank up the details of her parents hushed and night-lit home as I walked her in, said good night, and took my leave.  We pledged to get together so I could teach her guitar, and we did, but she never did learn to play! In a few weeks she would be snowed in at my house for days during the HUGE snowstorm of 1996 and we would interwine so deeply in love that we have never been separated more than a few days from one another since.


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