My favorite early memory of my friend Chris is from a Blues Traveler show in Burlington, Vermont - being the diehard fans we were, we had showed up ridiculously early for the show and were hanging out at the door for a good hour before it even opened. When it did open, security asked four of us (Chris and myself included) to prevent a mad dash to the floor by linking arms and walking up the staircase together.
Of course, as any (mostly) sane foursome would do when confronted with an arms-linked situation, we proceeded to do the Monkees-walk up the stairs, even going so far as to sing the theme song as we did so.
I'm not sure what it was - our shared musical tastes, our love for the Red Sox, or the simple fact that we shared a kooky sense of humor and could actually stand each other's presence for the duration of a show or ballgame - but we became good friends. A few years later, Chris decided he needed a change of scenery and relocated to the Washington, DC area. For the first six months or so, he was alone and miserable, and was questioning whether having moved was the right thing. Then he kicked himself in the ass, got it into gear, and started doing stuff to force himself to make friends...including a swing dancing class, which I'm pretty sure he'd admit he joined for the opposite-sex factor. After a few frightening (in-class) encounters with less desirable specimens of said opposite sex, he finally got up the stones to ask one of his classmates to go out with him, which they did (coincidentally, or perhaps not, one of their earliest dates was a Blues Traveler concert).
That was almost three years ago. Five days ago, he gave her a ring...which she accepted. And I couldn't be happier for them. So Chris, congratulations on finding the one. And Marissa, you know what you're getting into...eventually being married to a guy who doesn't mind looking like this at the ballpark.
Paul is another friend I met through the Blues Traveler list, probably around the time Chris and I met, or thereabouts. Paul and I went to a few shows together, including one largely uncomfortable run where I went out to Northampton with Chris, then hauled Paul and Chris up to Dartmouth, and ended up with a spectacularly terrible show at Brandeis, all in the space of a week. We don't keep in as regular touch as Chris and I do, as he moved to New York (and law school) just after graduating from Harvard. As you might imagine, the city is enough to keep anyone busy, and when you throw law school in the mix, well, you pretty much need to live with someone to keep in constant contact with them
About two and a half years ago, though, BT played a four-show run at Irving Plaza in New York, and I went down there for three of them. Before I left, I dropped Paul a line and said it'd be nice to get together at some point when I was down there, but we never made concrete plans. Then the last night of the run, I felt a tap on the shoulder - it was Paul. On Paul's arm (well, not literally - he's not the type to carry dwarfettes around) was a lovely lady by the name of Stacey. They'd just met sometime over the past few months, and they still had the "new relationship smell" (sort of like the new car smell) about them. They were quite the happy couple, and although they didn't share exactly the same musical tastes (and Paul's are quite extensive), she was game for just about anything he threw her way.
Over the next few years, we'd keep in occasional touch, I'd ask about how things were with him and Stacey, and they were always great. A blog entry here about a vacation together, an email there, and then randomly a couple of weeks ago we ended up in one of our biannual email exchanges when I mentioned that Chris had told me he was going to be proposing to Marissa. "Well, I've been playing it pretty close to the vest," he said, "but I'll be going that direction myself sometime within the next few weeks."
And so it was that a day after Chris had announced his engagement, Paul announced his. Gentlemen, here's to many years of happiness. It's worth it.
Leave a comment