2003-04-01 - 2:45 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: Theme from "Love Story". Because of the title of this series. :)

If anyone is just joining in, you'll want to read Part I (bottom of entry), Part II (bottom of entry), and Part III first.

Warning: EXTREME SAPPINESS AHEAD. EXTREME.

Part IV: Summer of '91 and the years that followed

After my first year at college, I went out to stay with Poindexter's family for a week by myself. I visited a friend at Stanford for a few days, then dropped in to see a friend from college, then went south to stay with Renee.

Those of you on my friends list may remember the photo of him lying on the couch with the Rolling Stone picture -- that was taken during this visit. Drooool.

Mostly, however, he avoided me, the young ripe temptress, since he had just begun dating a girl he worked with, Jennifer. Plus he was in the middle of finals. There wasn't as much of the staying up late and talking as I had hoped for.

I remember sitting on the couch across from him as he smoked a cigarette, and giving him a hard time about smoking. I think he just rolled his eyes at me.

I remember climbing up on the roof (it was a low roof and easy to do) and taking pictures of people from up there. He came up and sat with me up there for a while and we threw things at people. Pinecones, I guess. [Acorns, Poindexter says.]

During this visit, I also met his friend Justin. Justin had no girlfriend, so he stayed up all night talking to me. We hit it off fantastically well. In retrospect this doesn't surprise me at all, since anyone that P considers a best friend is likely to have the qualities that I most like in people.

There were two "prophetic" moments during this visit.

At one point, I was talking to Poindexter and his mom about Sam, whom I had been dating about six months at the time. We were not at all serious, and indeed by the end of the summer I was ready to break it off with him because while we were apart for the summer I was feeling that I was not very important to him (things changed later when we got back to school). At one point I said,

Evelynne: ... but he's not really the kind of guy I'd marry. I'm looking for someone more like Poindexter.
Future MIL: Well, P, why don't you marry Evelynne then?
P [grumpily]: Well, FINE, we'll go to Tahoe and get married then!

He told me years later that he was horribly embarrassed, hence the "grumpy" reaction, but I thought it meant he was horrified by the idea. I gave it one last try and suggested we get married in jeans, but I got a similar reaction to that, I think, so I just dropped it, mortified.

Little did I know, though. After I left, Poindexter and Justin had a conversation about me, wherein they said:

Justin: She's a great girl, she's cute, and you can hang with her and stuff.
Poindexter: She's the kinda girl you'd wanna marry.
Justin: Yeah!

Poindexter gave me his address on a piece of paper. I kept it in my wallet for four and a half years. Still have a piece of it, too (it's a bit tattered).

Over the next four and a half years, a lot of stuff happened. He got more serious about Jennifer. I got more serious about Sam. We didn't keep in touch. I tried to write him a few letters, but never sent them. He was always in the back of my mind, and I had a picture of him with his parents that I kept. But that was it.

During this period, various exciting things happened to various members of Poindexter's family. Every now and then my mom would get a phone call, and she'd say, "I have news from California!"

When I heard that, my heart would leap into my throat, my stomach would drop, and my vision would go blurry until I ascertained that the news was not that Poindexter was getting married.

Then I would breathe a huge sigh of relief, with a smile to match, and listen to the girly details of his sister getting married, or his uncle's wife's new baby.

Apparently there was some of this going on at the other end, as well. Somehow Poindexter got the idea that I had gotten married. He was disappointed, because he remembered our conversation from his uncle's wedding.

Once I was out of college, I began distancing myself from Sam quite a bit. Our relationship was never BAD, but we only saw each other once a week because I wanted very much to have an independent life. I told him that I wanted to be free to see other people -- meaning dating and up to some kissing, but no more than that -- and he reluctantly agreed. I stopped bringing him up to NJ with me for family events, and I even said to my mother once or twice, "Y'know, it feels horrible to say this, but sometimes I think maybe I should just break up with him. He's a great guy, and I love him for who he is, but I really don't see myself marrying him."

The reason was simply this: Something was missing. We had a good friendship and were really compatible in a lot of ways, but we did not have the deep mental connection that I'd shared with other people. It's hard to describe what this connection is, and impossible to do so without sounding corny, but I wanted a relationship where I could share ALL of my thoughts and feelings, and have them UNDERSTOOD. And vice versa. Sam was a very private person, unlike me, and not terribly introspective. And while I admired these qualities in him -- in some ways I found his lack of introspection very liberating, since I can't do a freaking thing WITHOUT being introspective -- I still wasn't completely happy without it.

There were lots of things he had that I did want, though: He was fun, responsible, conservative, and attentive to me. So I felt horrible for thinking about breaking up with him. How could I think that when there's nothing WRONG with him, exactly? Even my mother suggested that most men aren't very introspective and that maybe I was wishing for something impossible. But I couldn't believe that, because I'd had male friends with whom I had the mental connection but not a physical attraction. Was it too much to hope for both in one man? After all, there was Poindexter ... but he's so far away, and if it doesn't work out, it could be awkward because we're still gonna see each other occasionally...

Eventually I really began to believe that I was never going to find what I wanted. I really believed that Sam was as good as it could possibly get. But I also knew I wasn't going to marry Sam until I was 100% sure of him. And I didn't really think that would ever happen. In fact, the night before I left for California in December 1995, I remember hugging him after a particularly good evening together and thinking, "He's such a great guy and I do love him; am I ever going to want to get married?"

So, I had something of a goal in going out to California. It had been eight years of having this guy in the back of my mind, plus five years of panic thinking he'd go and get married before I could do anything about it. It was time to deal with it. I was going to California, I told my friend Tara, and I was going to kiss him, and I was going to get over him.

Heh.

Aside from a "self-portrait" we took, this is the only photo available of the two of us together from this visit. It's a dreadful picture (no, that's not your monitor, it's the photo), but you can see how long P's hair is and how ADORABLE WE LOOK TOGETHER, of course:

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