Stories of Encounter, Choice, and Identity
Molly Bloom
I met Joel at a bar in New York City, where I was celebrating the recent engagement of a friend from college. It was one of those intoxicating early-summer nights—the Mets had won, a cause for celebration among my party, and I was reconnecting with friends I hadn’t seen in years. I didn’t give Joel much thought at first. He was a friend of a friend of a friend, a musician who had just taken the LSAT, and who was visiting New York from San Francisco. We met up again the next night and talked about music and art and our families. The evening ended with a promise from me to be in touch, but saying so was more of a nicety than anything else. I was ready to accept our meeting solely as a refreshing reminder of the excitement of meeting someone interesting and with potential– but I never expected anything more.
My friend who accompanied me to New York (someone who is always willing to give relationships a chance) encouraged me to email Joel, so I performed the first step of any modern relationship and Googled him. I spent hours crafting that first email. He seemed like someone I wanted to impress with my wit and my verve, so I laced my email with intricate details of my own musical toolings, passages from a book I was reading, and anecdotal stories of working for the federal government. I was quite pleased with my masterpiece. He responded with his own mini-masterpiece, and our email relationship commenced. It was apparent from the very beginning that there was something worth pursuing between us. I poured over his emails, shocked to discover that someone felt the same way as me about so many things. These weekly letters became an almost spiritual sustenance; all of a sudden my life felt so much fuller. And then, Joel ended one of his emails with “how about a phone call sometime?” It was a natural progression, but the thought of talking on the phone was somewhat terrifying. What if he discovered I wasn’t near as witty speaking as I was writing? What if there were awkward silences or I said something wrong? I managed to overcome this hurdle, and we exchanged phone numbers – our first conversation lasted almost two hours.
I’m the first person to admit I prefer to keep others at a distance. I relish the time I spend alone, and I haven’t formed any lasting bonds since moving to DC 3 1/2 ago. I’ve gotten really good at being by myself. It has always seemed so much easier to not get involved; my detached lifestyle seems much simpler than those with relationship commitments. Therefore I was in crisis mode when Joel suggested a visit in early October. I was so terrified of coming face-to-face with him again, only to discover our written chemistry was non-existent in person. I was fearful of losing the correspondence that had kept me going for the past four months. And again I was faced with the challenge of exposing my true self; I would have no carefully crafted emails to hide behind when we were face-to-face.
By taking a risk and accepting his invitation to visit I think I shocked a lot of friends – those who know me well would say “this is so unlike Molly.” I’m very much a realist – I’ve never had grand illusions of a happily ever after because my pragmatic side always gets the best of me. The distance between San Francisco and DC concerned me, as well as the thought of complicating my otherwise essentialist lifestyle with an actual meaningful commitment. But all of a sudden I was the star of my own romantic comedy – would Joel really be the Tom Hanks to my Meg Ryan?
Our plan was for him to meet me at work on a Friday afternoon. I spent the better part of the morning curled in a ball at my desk, wrinkling my carefully pressed outfit and attempting to find the most mundane bureaucratic task to pass the time. My shaky hands carefully pressed and taped my boss’s travel receipts to a piece of paper; my stomach was in knots, and it didn’t help that I had blabbed to everyone that my “pen pal with potential,” as I called him, was visiting that day. It was an “all or nothing” situation. When the phone rang announcing his arrival, I smoothed myself, took a few deep breaths, and walked out the door. And there he was – just another person, an incredibly honest person at that, willing to admit his own case of the nerves. As the weekend progressed I discovered that I was a better me around him – that the energy in our correspondence easily translated into communicating face-to-face. The precision I had invested in my writing came easily to me now, and we talked and laughed for hours. It was effortless – everything I said and everything he did was perfect and compatible. I surprised myself by doing something un-Molly-like, by not dismissing this man and by actually getting involved, and because of that my life has completely changed. I often think of the many people we come into contact with each day, and the possibility that these people have to change our lives if we are only willing to extend that first encounter. Our first encounter turned into Joel’s first visit, then subsequent visits, and now we’ve begun to plan a geographical move that will bring us closer together. The chance we took with a second resulted in a great friendship and an even greater romance.
