How I wooed Deb

Forgive me if you know these stories.  Further forgive me if I wrote on the same subject while in India.  That feels like a lifetime ago.  Some of the stories below we would tell in tag team format, so the content has been honed in the retelling.  Honed true?  I hope so.

I interviewed at Bankers Trust on March 17, 1981.  At my first sight of Deb I pegged her as a 40 something gray haired very good looking woman (who in fact was 23).  When I first spoke to her it was about who would hang my coat in the closet.  She wanted to take it and I wanted to do it myself.  It didn't go well for me with this pushy NY woman, assertive but not unkind.  Our first conversation was an argument over who would take my coat.

In 1981 I'd just gotten off the hay wagon having lived in Minnesota all my life.  New York had the draw of living anonymously, something I'd not yet experienced.  In fact when walking around as a newly minted New Yorker, I was amazed that there were any number of human restaurants.   I didn't get it but looked for evidence of dog or cat restaurants and found none.  The punch line here is when I finally read the signs as written, the word was Hunan.  I had to look it up (pre-internet) to find that Hunan is a Chinese province so it was likely they were serving humans a type of regional Chinese food.  24 years old and wet behind the ears, dripping wet.  Smart as a whip, worldly as a box of hammers.

Contrast this with my Deb.  Since she was 14 she knew how to bribe ushers at Madison Garden to see the top names in Rock music.  The subway was at her disposal and she had a circle of friends as wide as can be.  She even used to sneak into bars.

I craved quiet places on the side, being an observer.  Deb craved the middle of the room and thrived in being part of the action.

The first time she visited my apartment in Midtown, it was an unexpected surprise.  She never thought my roommate (Paul) and his future wife (Eileen) and I lived in a pig sty.  We did.  Sorry Paul and Eileen for speaking the truth.  Eileen was studying for the bar.  Paul was working as (towards?) a CPA and his mantra was billable hours.  And he was studying for the CPA test.  I wasn't going to be their maid and they weren't going to be mine, so we simply let it go. We were doing he best we could.

Deb looked at the place, aghast, rolled up her sleeves and started doing the dishes that had built up in the sink.  I was mortified and started helping but eventually wisked her away to our planned event of the evening - Midnight Bowling in Da Bronx.

The backstory for bowling is: she started a departmental bowling team in the Bankers Trust league.  I believe I was her target, but we had a half dozen other BT people in our department bowling team.  Oblivious me finally agreed under her pressure to join.  Monday nights we all met in the village and competed.  Me, not so well.  Deb, she had the moves and consistently did well.

Now this part of the story may or not be true.  I'm not calling her a liar, but she claimed someone pinched her butt on 14th street on the way to the subway after bowling.  Would I please walk her to the station?  Sure I would.  If she could at this moment, she'd still stick to that story.

To get home she needed the F train, I had the choice of N or F.  I took whichever came first.  I was trying to get home in time for the latest episode of Mash, the long running TV show in it's last season.   From either subway exit, I had to hoof it to make that 9pm start.

Her calculus of the situation was different.  If I liked her, I'd wait with her for the F train and continue to sit and talk.

Back to Midnight Bowling - She asked me to midnight bowling with her girlfriend Viv and her boyfriend who lived in da Bronx, In the cab on the way back to Manhattan, she put her head on my shoulder and then the light went off in my head.  She likes me.  Retrospectively, I realized there were certain clues I should have just plane read.  Oh, my.  How dense can a guy be.

Density?  I'm a dyed in the wool NPR listener.  NPR is public news oriented radio and is like the BBC world service in a way.  They broadcast news at 5pm until 6:30 and then cover Wall street for a next half hour show.  Listening to the radio news, making dinner was my daily routine.   Hey, I had nobody to go home to, so this is a good rut to be in.

She asked me one afternoon at work if I wanted to join her and her work girlfriends for a trip to Chinatown for dinner.  I said, and I quote, "No, I want to go home and listen to the radio."  Not reading her incredulous look correctly, I sputtered, "I do this every day and have been doing it for years."   Like that explained everything.

She thought, "If he liked me he'd go, but listening to the radio?  What kind of BS excuse was that?  Surely he could have made a better excuse even if he didn't like me."  I know this now.  We actually told this story in tandem, presenting both sides of the story as we go.   I loved to tell stories with her.  We learned when I was giving it over to her or getting it back.  Oh, we could tell a nice tale.

Bowling night was a success.  We had fun and it was definitely a date.  Roll ahead a week.  How about I cook dinner?  Sure, she says thinking at your house, really?  Eeew.  She arrived to a fresh, clean apartment.  I believe we sat on pillows on the (very clean) floor and cooked fondue in oil.  A very nice way to pass the evening.  Our first 1 on 1 date.