THE NIGHT WE MET “Well he walked up to me And asked me if I wanted to dance . . .” the summer I turned double digits, my friend and I watched reruns of Adventures in Babysitting on her TV, we’d hold up our hands as fake microphones and sing along to the opening scene of The Cyrstals iconic song, “Then He Kissed Me” it was the age of the Disney princess, and what would turn into a problematic Disney Princess Syndrome of our generation: every girl waiting on her Prince Charming to rescue her and while Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast did enchant me enough to ask for the press’ n’sound books for Christmas with a matching set of VHSes, it was the impression of actress Elizabeth Shue dancing around her room, depicting an older teen getting ready for a date that made me want to become one I dreamed of the 80s party dress, the popular boyfriend picking me up in his convertible for a fancy dinner, only to realize he was an asshole and it was the earnest, shy guy that saw you and treated you right “So Tom, you scared of me already?” it wasn’t a love ballad over a decade later from that summer I turned ten, when on our first date, technically a blind date— though I knew what Tom looked like cause I’d seen him playing in his band the year prior— we were carpooling with my best friend and her boyfriend, who was in the band with Tom, to our sorority’s semi-formal, and Tom opened the passenger side door, retracted the front seat forward I climbed in and waited for him to follow “Do you want to?” my friend asked him, gesturing to the backseat, and me “No—you go ahead,” he told her, ushering for her to sit next to me he clicked us in place and then took the front seat for himself it might have been my obnoxious cleavage that intimidated him, my roommate had told me to go with the Victoria’s Secret push-up bra that turned my solid Cs into things that looked fake, or the fact that it wasn’t my first anything our sorority had events throughout the year and I always needed a date the same friend, my matchmaker, had set me up with at least nine flops over the previous three years we were stopped at a red light, my friend and I making silent big eyes at each other over Tom refusing to sit next to me, but I was used to the awkward first date and how the truth always made it better, or worse, depending on the depth of the guy “So Tom, you scared of me already?” we all laughed, and ribbed him for ditching me in the backseat alone our humor matched, he tried to play it off, “It’s just cause I have long legs— I needed the extra room!” I’d nudged him out, he liked me for it he mainly played the saxophone in his band, but also sang they had a concert that night, and Tom and my friend’s boyfriend left the semi-formal early to set up, my friend and I joined for the end of the show, and somehow by the time Tom rapped his solo to Outkast’s “Hootie, Hoo” I had his tie wrapped around my neck it was either me or him, or I didn’t need rescuing, I wanted a partner who’d meet me in the— we met in the middle, and then he kissed me that night, we all crashed at my friend’s apartment and after breakfast at Waffle House, Tom and I stood in front of my red convertible I waited for the next move, for him to lead, but then I didn’t, because “Let me give you my number.” I’d desperately wished for a boyfriend since high school but I wasn’t ready, to play for keeps Everyone has their own reasons, but I had to wait until I became the person I wanted enough to be in a relationship with— it was me in the party dress and me with the convertible and me, I walked up to him, I asked him if he wanted to dance
DATING ME (AND MY MOTHER) March 2006 Athens, Georgia Seven years until my mother’s death Age: 23 It was a love triangle with me at the point. My mother stood to the bottom left, my past, and Tom to the bottom right, my future.
Within the first couple weeks of dating Tom, I’d asked my girlfriend who’d set us up, “Do you know how Tom feels about sex?”
Always pragmatic, she’d said, “Why don’t you ask him?”
Tom was sitting at my desk, the one my mother had cut down to fit in my college apartment’s nook. His back was to me while he clicked around on my computer. I was putting clean clothes away in my closet that had double glass sliding doors. And I kept looking at the back of his head through the mirror, the way the computer screen lit up his face, how he was the first guy I’d had in my room at that apartment.
I loved his presence, the way he was comfortable in my space. We were still new, but it already felt different, more real, than anything else I’d experienced with the few guys I’d dated.
The week after the semi-formal, he’d taken me out to eat at a noodle place downtown. When the bill came, he pulled out a twenty and said super proud, “I asked my mom for money to take you out!”
Um.
But that was Tom, charming in his sincerity, unapologetically himself.
He had picked me up in his not-so-nice Grand Am. His car kept getting broken into and they’d steal his CD player. After the third after-market player, he put back the original cassette player, but he couldn’t take off the dash to fit it right. It was half-way sticking out, angled toward him, but that didn’t stop him preening over his crappy car.
“Look how cool this is, Jasmine,” he told me. “My arms resting right here, and everything’s at my fingertips. I don’t even have to move—just flex my wrist and turn the dial.”
We had only messed around a little by then, and I was hesitant to bring up sex because I didn’t want to ruin what had only just begun. But I also knew, unlike a casual hook-up, I wanted to tell him where I’d come from so everything could be turned inside out and then we could decide from there.
“Hey,” I said to his back through the mirror.
“What’s up?”
“So, like.” I turned around and crossed my arms over my chest. I got that nudge in my throat that I’d have to swallow past every time before I said something vulnerable, that I couldn’t take back. “What are your feelings about sex?”
He swiveled around in my desk chair to face me. A lot of young twenty-somethings would have reacted in some way. Either with discomfort or a front or masked their embarrassment with a joke. But not him. I’d always asked lots of questions and, to him, this was just another one.
“I haven’t had it, if that’s what you’re asking.”
I settled. There was nothing to fear. His response felt like an invitation.
“Because you haven’t wanted to?”
“More because I haven’t had many opportunities, but also, ‘cause I wanted to wait until it meant something.”
Out of all the boys in the whole world, I’d met him. Someone who wasn’t exactly my foil, but a compliment to my own past. I won’t ever know what decisions I would’ve made regardless of my mother’s wishes, but I believe it was also part of my inner compass, that I would’ve waited until it mattered.
The conversation was the start of many. Slowly, I moved away from relying on my girlfriends to decipher what Tom could’ve meant when he yelled, “I love you,” for the first time out of his moving car as we split away up the ramp to the freeway, and turned inward to our relationship instead. Except to be fair, I don’t even think Tom knew what he meant right then.
Our time together, the ways we fumbled, the arguments we had, the way we played at sex for months before we finally had it, all of these things were ours to figure out and mess up and come back together on.
We ordered Chinese food after. Fried bean curd with broccoli and veggie lo mien. We sat downstairs in my college apartment, around the small dining table. I wasn’t traumatized or full of regret, but I was unsettled, because my relationship with Tom wasn’t the problem. It was my relationship with my mother that hadn’t grown up.
The first time my mom met Tom, she was standing at the top of the stairs of their apartment wearing her crazy-happy grin that consumed her whole face. She watched from above as we removed our shoes below and waited, continuing to smile and stare at us as we climbed upstairs. Her embarrassing me was nothing new, but her effusiveness didn’t matter, because I was already so comfortable with him.
She asked Tom if he was hungry, told him she’d made him her guacamole—avocado mashed with salsa—and to sit at the breakfast bar and eat.
Her love went straight to his heart, and after she died, Tom’s favorite line when we had a disagreement was, “Where’s Elana to defend me!”
But my attachment to Tom instead of her, moved in complete opposition of the control she still had over me.
“I have to tell them,” I told Tom.
I couldn’t eat from the dread of what was to come. Something that should have been personal was cloaked in shame, held a weight of responsibility that I’d carried my whole life. I’d made a decision different from than the one my mother wanted, and now I’d have to pay.
“Maybe wait till tomorrow,” he offered.
He understood, supported me, never tried to make me choose between him and her.
“Yeah, tomorrow,” I agreed, wishing there was a way to go back. Back five years, or maybe not more than a few months and say, Hey Mom, I’ve changed my mind. I need to give you that ring back.
My mother gave me hard rules surrounding sex, which wasn’t a horrible thing. But she missed the most important part: I was not her.
What I needed wasn’t what she needed. I’m not sure she considered the possibility that I might not have lots of boyfriends. That maybe, I’d meet one guy, and he’d be it. He’d come to the relationship with even less experience than me, and there’d be no pressure to perform for anyone other than ourselves. There’d be safety, trust, love, and that our commitment to one another didn’t require the seal of marriage to be real.
The next day, I called my parents on an empty university bus on the way back from one of my art classes. The engine drowned me out from being overheard by the driver. It was so loud, I almost missed my mother crying on the other end. How she hung up on me, and left my father behind to smooth over her reaction.
Tom and I were engaged a month later, married three months after that. My mother received everything she could have wanted for me, except for the part where she couldn’t use my story to heal herself.
The result left her still deeply hurting, and me, inhibited from becoming my own authority, I fractured in her confusion of where she ended and I began.
