The Right One

The building formerly known as
the "FLAT-ee-run"

     In 1998 I was 28 years old and living in a cool studio apartment in Queens, New York. I was working as a toy and packaging designer for a company out on Long Island, and it was a great time in my life overall save for the one blemish of an extremely bitter ending to a long-term relationship. As a result of that end, however (or as a prize for my anguish, I like to think), I began dating the coolest, most intelligent Dominican woman I have ever met. Although I did all my growing-up in Washington Heights (a largely Dominican neighborhood located in upper Manhattan, New York) it just so happened I had never dated a Dominican girl. I had no idea what I’d been missing...

     I met Sofia through internet dating, which back then was still relatively new and therefore more of an adventurous option than the more commonplace advertising we see for it in the media today. I went through three distinct stages of DDE, or Digital Dating Evolution; during the first stage I spent many a night in front of the glow of my monitor trying to write the cleverest paragraph ever written in the history of cleverest paragraphs. One that would magically make women swoon at their computers and send their names and e-mail addresses to me by the truckload. Alas, not only did I never write anything even close to compelling, at some point I decided to switch tactics and read/respond to what women were writing instead. That was the second stage. I was very discerning about whom I would answer, which meant I wasn’t making very many connections, and the ones I would make and later decide to meet would end in one form of psychotic or deranged disaster. Sometimes a psychotic and deranged disaster. Eventually all discern, care and judgment fell out of my second story studio window and I was answering just about any ad with enough consonants in it. That was the very cold hard bottom of stage three, but what may have very well opened up the right door. Having each been on multiple yet spectacularly bad on-line-generated blind dates, and after comparing notes later on, we came to the conclusion that after, after Sofia had pulled her ad from the net is when I happened to come across it. Whatever lapse of time it actually took for her ad to be removed is precisely when our digital paths crossed. It could have been a day, a few hours or mere minutes before her post (which contrary to what I had originally been looking for was actually quite short, to the point and rather bland) caught my attention and provoked my response. But I already believed that certain events in our lives are scheduled to occur, so I wasn’t totally surprised to find this out.

Was I more worried this time because she drove a car, could possibly overpower me and stuff me in her trunk to drive me somewhere isolated and have her way with me? (Dear God, yes please!)

     Our first date was never-ending, but in the best of ways. I remember being more nervous than usual and I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. We had been instant messaging (the grand-daddy of texting) and speaking by phone for about three months before curiosity had sufficiently accrued and we decide to meet. We picked the bakery on 181^st and Audubon ave. as a central point for both of us (I could walk there from my parents apartment in Manhattan and she could drive the short distance from her mom’s place in the Bronx whom she was visiting). On my way out to our date, and like never before, I felt the urge to tell someone where I was going. Was I more worried this time because she drove a car, could possibly overpower me and stuff me in her trunk to drive me somewhere isolated and have her way with me? (Dear God, yes please!) I was admittedly a bit more nervous this time than all the others and as I walked out I grabbed my brother Luis and with an equal mixture of glee and fear I told him about my secret rendezvous with either danger or the love of my life. Seeing my excitement he wished me luck, but maybe took a good look at what I wore to properly identify my body later if need be.

     I’d heard many times that the answer to the question “How do you know when you’ve met the right one?” is “You just know.” As I leaned against the store-front window on that beautiful warm, sunny afternoon in September, trying my absolute hardest to look like irresistible boyfriend material reading a book that to this day I’m not really sure why I brought along, I watched her pull up in her off-white Ford Tempo. Without moving a muscle, fully conscious that that first impression, that first look, the first exchange would set the tone for the rest of our time together however long that would be, I looked through the rolled down passenger window right into her eyes…and I just knew. I knew she was the one. She had to be; I glanced down and realized the book I was pretending to read was upside down.

      Sofia and I had agreed to go bowling up in Yonkers, an activity that we figured would allow us to get to know each other better than just lunch or a cup of coffee.  Afterwards we played video games at the arcade inside (the long gone) Nathan’s on Central Park Avenue. We had a lot of fun bowling and letting each other think that the other had won at video games. We were getting along really well and having a genuinely good time. Ironically (or not, oh hand of fate) both these places we visited that day ended up being in the neighborhood that as a married couple we called home for a while many years later. We had not made plans for anything beyond that, I think we consciously avoided getting any further ideas that first time because hey, she may have ended up really abducting me, or I may have had unusually small hands or disproportionately larger earlobes than she preferred. But we had such a good time together that we decided to relax our unspoken “daylight-and-well-lit-areas-with-plenty-of-witnesses-only” conditions and go to dinner in the Village. She parked her car near Yankee Stadium and off we went by subway, tearing through the Village, Chelsea, Mid-town and back, truly enjoying each other’s company, laughing honestly and finding a somewhat abnormal amount of things in common. At one point we stopped for a bite to eat at the McDonald’s on 23^rd street, near the Flatiron building. To this day we still chuckle at how up until that night she believed it was pronounced FLAT-ee-run. I laughed harder than I meant to. I was definitely falling for her right then and there, but also conscious it was too much, too soon and too good to be true. On the other hand, I’d been through the mother of emotional wringers in the previous relationship; why couldn’t this be God saying right to my ear “Hey…umm, sorry about that last one, I got distracted by…well you know...famine, war, plague and whatnot. Here you go dude, you earned it”. I decided that that particular voice in my head really was God, and never doubted its tone again.

     It was sometime after midnight while sitting in Union Square Park that we caught our breath and decided it was probably time to let this first date actually end and head home. She was going to Atlantic City for a family trip in the morning, and I had to finish preparing for my first business trip overseas. Unfortunately, from that spot in the city we would have to part ways in order to each get where we needed to go, so we said goodbye at the subway station entrance to the 6 train. I kid Sofia all the time that I would have kissed her goodnight anyway, she says that if left up to me we would've just awkwardly shaken hands, but the truth lies somewhere in the middle. As phenomenal as the entire and very long date had been, pressing for a kiss at the end of the evening is where in my mind I feared a line lay in hiding. That crossing it even then would bring the good vibe crashing down, ruin the moment, leave her with a bad impression of me, maybe she wouldn’t…

With all the confidence of a woman who recognizes what she wants when she wants it, Sofia erased my every doubt with a deep, warm kiss that actually lowered the volume of the New York City subway system and re-awakened all sorts of winged creatures that had long ago lost their ability to fly within my belly. It was almost overwhelming to feel that degree of comfort, compatibility and longing for someone I didn’t even really know earlier that same day. Crazy I tell you, yet there I stood, stunned, giddy, suddenly missing her terribly, hopeful that magic would never end.

TWENTY years, a great marriage, some ups, some downs, a few sideways, some losses, some tears of laughter, some not, a few cats, two amazing, intelligent and beautiful kids later, the magic is indeed still there. In several ways even better than before.

As I waved to her from behind the dull chrome of the turnstile that night, I knew in my heart (and belly) that she was not just “the” one; she was the right one, and well worth the wait.

Updated 9.5.2018