Everyone has a lot of “firsts” in their lives. The ones I’m thinking of here are the milestones on your journey to becoming an adult, the ones that made you suddenly feel like you grew a foot taller, like your mind expanded to places you didn’t even know existed, like you’ve just grown quite perceptibly older and wiser.

To that end, I present to you a few of my firsts. I’d love to hear yours.

First Car
A 1980 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. Yes, I drove a pimpmobile. It was two-tone! Metallic gray on the bottom, with light gray vinyl on top. It was my dad’s car. When we moved to Dallas in 1980, his new company helped him buy it as a perk.

Now keep in mind that when I say “first car” I do not mean “the car that I got for my very own when I acquired a driver’s license.” That did not happen. I was allowed to drive The Pimpmobile to high school on the few rare occasions that my dad did not take it to work. When I was a freshman in college in 1990, my parents came to visit me on Parents’ Weekend and instead of arriving in the Olds as I was expecting, they arrived in my dad’s brand new red sports car. The Olds was now being used by my younger brother, who was learning to drive.

I did not have a car at college until my senior year, when, much to the chagrin of both my younger brothers, who had just recently installed a state-of-the-art stereo and big new speakers, I was allowed to keep the Olds full-time. But it still wasn’t MY car; it was just on loan because I had an apartment off campus and needed to be able to make trips to the grocery store and such.

During move-in and move-out of my freshman, sophomore, and junior years in college, I was able to pack everything I owned into that car, including a mini-fridge. It was a little strange, having my life packed so neatly into a single automobile.

After I graduated, my parents sold me their 1990 Honda Accord, manual transmission (another car I loved). The last time I drove The Pimpmobile was in 1996 after somebody plowed into my Honda and sent it into the repair shop for three weeks. My dad and youngest brother were kind enough to let me borrow it so I could get to and from work.

And of course, the car had its quirks. The older it got, the quirkier the quirks became, and we used to joke that as much as we wished it would croak for good, it simply refused to. The air conditioning stopped working some time in 1989 and we never got it fixed. The ceiling lining was ripped and full of holes, and had started to sag in the middle so much that we had to hot-glue it back in place every few months. The rearview mirror would routinely fall off. The antenna was gone and the non-digital radio (yes, kids, this was back in the day when you had to turn a dial and watch the little orange bar slide left and right across the stations until you hit on one that wasn’t static) didn’t pick up stations very well at all. And the biggest quirk of all: the car nearly always died at intersections or whenever you slowed down or came to a stop. I got so good at popping the transmission into neutral, restarting the car, switching it back into drive and gently stepping on the gas, that I almost didn’t even have to think about it.

Mom was furious that dad thought this car was safe enough for her children to drive around town, but he wouldn’t sell it and get a used car for us.

And if he had, I wouldn’t have had stories nearly this good!

First Kiss
Totally not even worth mentioning. I was sixteen, and neither of us knew what we were doing. I didn’t even really like the guy, I just realized that it had to happen some time and the guy I actually wanted to kiss didn’t know I existed. So why not get it over with, with someone who was willing?

First Drink
Not counting the sips of wine that I was allowed to have with holiday dinners, the first time I drank was when I was 19. I wouldn’t necessarily say that I was prim about things like alcohol up to this point; I think it was more a combination of my own late-bloomer naivete, a strait-laced rule-following boyfriend, and not liking the behaviour of friends and acquaintances who regularly got drunk. But I was feeling rather rebellious about a lot of things at this point so I thought what the hell, I want to try it!

My friend Peter invited me to the dorm room of a mutual friend to watch movies, and we decided to illegally underagedly drink rum and cokes. He knew I hadn’t really had alcohol before, and when I asked him to make mine weak, he instead made it REALLY strong. And me not knowing what strong vs. weak tasted like, drank the whole thing way too fast. I don’t remember much except lying on the floor laughing.

Doc and I met at least twice over a span of several years, before we became friends or started dating. I think that if we had tried dating earlier than we did, it likely would not have worked out. Both of us — but especially me — had personal issues to work out, and I had some growing up to do and hard lessons yet to learn.

The first time was during my junior year in college. G. and I went to a concert in Dallas one weekend at a club, and I can’t remember who the headline act was but one of the opening bands was a local act called Au du Voir. After the show, we went to Denny’s, as was our tradition, along with Au du Voir, G.’s boyfriend TM, and a friend of TM’s who had long pretty brown hair and a goatee, little round glasses, a long coat, and was walking with a cane. I remember thinking he was attractive and very sweet but I was dating someone at the time so I didn’t give it a whole lot more thought.

The second time was when I was home for the weekend from school, and G. invited me over to her mom’s house one night to watch “Barton Fink” with her and TM and TM’s friend Doc. Once I met him I remembered him as the nice guy from that night at Denny’s. I was too dense, apparently, to realize that it was sort of a set-up. I don’t remember too much about the evening other than I was extremely tired and I fell asleep on the sofa during the movie.

In February of 1995, well after TM had achieved “asshole ex-boyfriend” status, G. and I moved into our first apartment as roommates. We had a housewarming party shortly thereafter, and G. asked me if she should invite Doc (sans TM, of course). I remembered him from our previous meetings and said sure, he seemed nice. He came to our party, dressed sharply, smelling fantastic, and he brought us a gift: three paper bags containing tiny dried rose buds, frankincense, and little orange suction dart guns. I thought he was cute, and very nice, but he was seeing someone at the time and I was still casually involved with PCN.

We had several more parties that year and invited him to all of them. During a party over Memorial Day weekend, he was perusing the shelf of CDs in the living room, and turned around and asked us, “Whose ‘Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’ is this?!” I had been talking to someone else but immediately my focus shifted to Doc. It’s as if all other sound and people in the room faded away and he was the only person standing there. I had never met anyone before who had even heard of that record, let alone liked it. I have always felt like somewhat of a loner with my love for 70s progressive art-rock (Genesis, Yes, U.K.), and now someone who shared my obscure interest was standing in my living room! I was suddenly interested in nothing else but talking to Doc.

We discussed music all night, even hijacking the TV in the middle of the party to watch a VHS tape of early Genesis history that I had, which he had never seen. We talked about a lot of things in addition to music, and I was finding him more and more intriguing. He was extremely intelligent, clever, funny, a great storyteller, and exactly my type, physically — long hair, eyes that crinkled up when he smiles, strong, gentle, pretty. We’d both had a little to drink, and as we were sitting on the floor in front of the TV, I found myself reaching over to brush a strand of hair out of his eyes. Automatically, without even thinking. Of course, the minute I did that I felt incredibly self-conscious: I had crossed an intimacy line and I hardly even knew him yet. I was hoping that he’d interpret it as just plain flirting, and not think that I was out of bounds.

He already had a girlfriend (yet he never brought his girlfriends to any of our parties…) and I tried not to let myself get my hopes up too high. I was still feeling some of the trauma from my breakup with Eeyore less than a year before, and I wasn’t too interested in rushing into another serious relationship, because at that point it didn’t feel like I could survive another crash-and-burn ending. I felt fragile, and not yet trusting enough.

From then on, we invited him to every single party we had, as well as some parties that were not parties at all. For instance, on the Fourth of July, G. and I packed a picnic dinner and drove to Fair Park. I think that it was G., her boyfriend, me, and Doc. We lounged in a grassy median in the parking lot, drank wine coolers, listened to a Boston concert wafting over the walls of Starplex, and watched the fireworks. I knew that I was more and more interested in Doc the more I saw of him, but he wasn’t seeming to get the message. Was I too subtle? Had I forgotten how to flirt? Was he just not interested in me?

On Halloween, K1 and I dressed up in leather and fishnets and went down to the Oak Lawn Street Party along with Doc and G. K1 was leading me around by a leash attached to a black leather collar. We were VERY popular; everyone wanted their pictures taken with us. Doc dressed in black pants and fancy tall boots, a ruffled white lace shirt, and a long black Victorian coat. His hair was down and his beard was pointed into a little V. He looked amazing. The street party was very crowded so several times I took his hand to lead him through the crowd. We sat in a couple of overstuffed bars and played thumb wars.

Later, when we were ready to leave, K1 couldn’t walk anymore because her thigh-high stiletto boots were a size too small and her feet just couldn’t take it anymore. She and G. sat on a curb while Doc and I walked back to retrieve his car, parked several blocks away. We climbed into his car and sat there talking for a few minutes, and I suddenly leaned over and kissed him. (The way he remembers it, he leaned over and kissed me. Maybe we both did at the same time!) He then said “Here’s the thing… I’ve just broken up with someone, and I need a couple of weeks to get things kind of finished up from that.” I told him that I could wait while he got things sorted out. I was just glad that he was finally not dating someone else, so I could have a chance!

A few weeks later, we had our first date. He took me to Kostas Cafe, a Greek restaurant. I can’t remember if it was before Thanksgiving or after, but he also came over to our apartment on Thanksgiving Day, when G. and I cooked for our families.

That was in November of 1995. We got engaged three years later (neither of us were dying to get married or anything; we both had trust issues to deal with and that timeframe seemed like a very natural progression for us) and married in November of 1999.

We have just celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary. Time sure does fly. I’m happier than I’ve ever been. I’m not saying it’s been an effortless ride for either of us — marriage/committed relationships do take work, after all, and every couple has their particular issues — but I feel like we both have so much love and passion for each other, and we communicate so well, that we can make it through most anything.

So during my senior year in college, I did end up dating Eeyore. It was a wild ride of a relationship, and I was so head over heels in love that I felt like I was high that entire year. It ended in a horrific crash and burn, the details of which I won’t go into right now.

I came out of the relationship with Eeyore fairly traumatized. Two years later when I discovered that he was working at the same place as I was, I finally extracted his version of the truth about our relationship from him. It helped a bit with closure, but it took me probably two years to fully recover.

After Eeyore left me, I casually dated PCN long-distance for a year or so. I wasn’t in love with him anymore, although in hindsight (always 20/20, isn’t it?) I think he may have felt more strongly about me. But he was very good at hiding his true feelings. We knew, though, that we could never make a relationship work; we may have been soulmates but we were definitely not day-to-day mates. I broke it off with him when I started dating Doc and realized that I wanted to be exclusive.

I do feel that I came out of these relationships much stronger, more sure of myself, less naïve, less blindly trusting, more self-confident, and actually liking myself. I think that in order to grow as a person, you have to experience hardships and learn how to get through them on your own. It sucks while you’re in the middle of it, but it helps you in the long run.

Midway through my sophomore year in college, PCN and I had become very close friends. He and my boyfriend J. and my roomate K1 and I and a couple of other people would hang out all the time, staying up late in his dorm room playing spades and listening to Elvis Costello and Midnight Oil, or playing Risk on his Mac Classic with the 9″ black and white screen, eating Sunday night dinner out (our one meal per week that wasn’t covered by the cafeteria), or just talking. During the January semester, when both of our significant others were away for the month, we spent every second together that we weren’t in class. We wrote poetry, we watched thunderstorms, we talked philosophy, he introduced me to my first alcoholic beverage ever (at the ripe old age of 19) and cigarettes. We fell in love with each other, although neither of us would admit it at the time. We were both committed to other people and I wasn’t the cheating kind. But things just felt “right” with him. I think that there are certain people in the world who are soul-mates, and he was one of them.

But the fact that I was already in a relationship stopped me from crossing that line with PCN, and I was too young and naïve to realize that I should have reconsidered my relationship with J. at this point. I tried to pretend to PCN and to myself that we were simply good friends, even trying to act “cool” and nonchalant around his friends, not sitting at his table in the cafeteria if he already seemed preoccupied in conversation.

J. had a close female friend who was emotionally troubled. J., being a good friend and a “fixer,” spent a great deal of his time and energy with her. I think that my feeling somewhat abandoned by J. is partly what drew me closer to PCN: he was sweet and smart and could be kind of an asshole sometimes, but he knew I saw right through his bullshit and it felt like he was letting me see parts of himself that nobody else got to. With PCN, I felt strong and special. I don’t think he was being manipulative; he really did love me and I felt that he understood me in a way that no one else did.

I occasionally wonder what it says about my character that I was “tempted by the fruit of another.” Am I making excuses for my actions by saying “yes, but I didn’t actually DO anything”? Is going up to the line much different from crossing the line? Part of me feels like a schmuck for not breaking up with J. when I first felt a pull towards another person, and part of me feels strong and proud for getting through it without shaming myself by doing something uncharacteristic and stupid.

I think that it’s human nature to be tempted, and it takes strength not to act on it, especially when you’re only nineteen and very inexperienced in relationships. So I don’t think that this experience says anything about my character except that I’m human and I reacted in an honorable way to a situation that is all too common.

I met Eeyore when we were both sixteen. He worked at a bookstore with one of my close friends, G., and they began to date near the beginning of our senior year in high school. They dated for most of our senior year. He went to the rival high school and would often drive 20 miles across town to sit at our table during lunch.

I should explain that, as a teenager, I was tall, shy, socially awkward, nerdy, overweight, and smart — all of which conspired against me to make me unpopular in the way that only high school social structures can. Luckily I had a very close group of smart and nerdy girlfriends, and up until this point we didn’t really have any boys in our group of friends. The other girls seemed much more relaxed around boys, but I was VERY nervous and awkward and though I tried to play it cool, I had absolutely no experience whatsoever in dating or even being friends with them.

So when Eeyore paid attention to me, I was on cloud nine. He talked to me, he laughed at my jokes, and he kissed me on the forehead at lunch as he was leaving to drive back to his high school. It didn’t help that he was drop dead gorgeous and had more charm than should be legal. But I also knew, of course, that doing anything other than silently desiring him would be a Very Bad Thing, so I was a Very Good Girl about it all.

In fact, the most questionable thing that ever happened between us was a couple of slow dances in the middle of the night, in the street, in the dead of winter, to The Cure’s “Disintegration” album through G.’s open car window, at HER urging because she wanted to go inside and he wanted to dance. I thought, well, if she asked me to dance with him so she could go inside, then that’s not really doing anything bad, is it? And dancing is all that happened.

Shortly before we graduated, G. discovered that Eeyore was cheating on her, and their relationship ended in a messy and painfully awkward breakup. I say “awkward” because the three of us went to prom together (I think that I was technically going “stag,” but perhaps it was actually that he was taking both of us; who knows) but by that time she had already officially dumped him. They went anyway because they’d already bought the tickets. So not only did I feel like a third wheel in this dysfunctional evening, I was both trying to console G. who was immensely sad and having a terrible time, and trying to pretend that I had no feelings for Eeyore. I certainly should have felt nothing but anger and contempt towards him because he had cheated on my friend, but the teen hormones were a-flowin’ and his charm, grin, and beautiful red hair and freckles were permanently lodged well underneath my skin.

Someone once told me that being smart has nothing to do with relationships.

Like it or not, we are largely shaped by other people. It’s kind of like modeling clay: the basic substance of what you are comes from you, but all your relationships and interactions push and pull at you, take bits away, add bits here and there, cut deep grooves, form nice curves with the thumb.

I’ve been thinking a bit lately on how I got to be who I am, and the roles that the people I dated played at each stage in my life. In the process of getting older (and hopefully a little wiser) and coming to terms with who I am, I have learned to appreciate each of my past experiences as valuable in some way, even those that were at the time unbearably difficult or complex. As they say, “hell builds character.” Hell is quite a learning process.

While the details may fade with time (which is probably a good thing in some ways), I don’t want to entirely forget how I got to be where I am. Both Doc and I think that if we hadn’t had the particular life experiences that we each had, both good and bad, we wouldn’t have been in the right place at the right time when we found each other. And up until I started this blog in 2002, I never successfully kept a diary, so my memories and experiences have up until now remained exclusively in my brain.

I’ve been debating for a few days whether or not to even post these stories. Will anyone besides me even care about this stuff? Probably not. Is it important enough for me to write about? I think it’s just like any other story in my life: it happened, so it’s fair game for an essay.

I’ve tried not to romanticize the past, since as everyone knows it’s easy to remember the good things and gloss over the bad, but instead to tell it the way it was, filtered through the crystallizing lens of time and hindsight.

Also: I have no regrets. This is important, and it’s the best possible outcome.

Stories to follow.