Mushy Monday - The Guy I Almost Never Met

Ok, yes, it's Tuesday. But I've been holed up on the couch for the past two days with the stomach flu. So you're getting it today. Deal with it.

Friday, July 12, 2002
I met Armando during what I can honestly say was the darkest time in my life. The week leading up to meeting him was bad and it only got worse after meeting him. But we'll get to that.

Three days before I met Armando my fiance and I broke up. Or rather, he broke up with me. We had been together for nearly five years. We started dating just before my senior year of high school and had been pretty much inseparable since. Without going into too much detail, our relationship was a tangled mess of co-dependency.

Technically, we had decided to “take a break”. But we were going to continue living together in the small 500 square foot apartment for the next month until he went back to school (yeah, cause that's gonna work out great). I had complete confidence that this “break” was exactly that – we would say we were broken up, but eventually he was going to come to his senses, realize how “perfect” we were for each other and we'd get back together.

That Friday morning, we had a fight. Money was extremely tight and he owed me $60 dollars. He had said he would sell his comic books in order to pay me back. He did sell them... and proceeded to spend the money on gas for his car and beer for the guys' weekend he had planned with his best friend. In a (then) rare moment of boldness, I called and left him a voicemail.. I don't remember exactly what I said, but it was something along the lines of “You're a selfish prick, yada, yada, yada” I tell you this story to give you an idea how my day started out and also because it will be important in a coming entry.

I went to work that afternoon and my good friend and co-worker Tara, talked to me again about a party she was having that night. She was a single mom, but her parents were taking her daughter for the weekend, so she was having a party, mainly as an excuse to flirt and possibly get to know this cute guy she had been talking up at the local coffee bar. She needed people to come to the party to make the invitation to the guy seem more legitimate. After much needling and cajoling, I told her I had a final that night, but I would show up afterwards for a celebratory margarita.

I finished the final, and then went to the bathroom on campus to change my clothes and put on a bit of makeup. I remember looking in the bathroom mirror and thinking to myself, “Why did I agree to this? All I want to do is go home, crawl into bed and go to sleep.” I finally convinced myself to go for an hour, just so I could say I did and because really, it wasn't like I had any other plans for the weekend.

When I got there, I was the first person to arrive except for Tara's landlord, William. Tara proceeded to pour me a “Holy-Cow-That's-Strong! Margarita” and I attempted to converse with William. Here's the thing about William – he's 50, incredibly smart, teaches photography at Austin Community College – and is, quite possibly the most boring man I have ever met in my life, bless his heart. And now, I was stuck in a conversation with him that I could not get out of.

At some point, Tara's brother Christian showed up. He brought one of his buddies from work with him. I would later learn that Tara bugged him to bring guys with him because most of the people she knew were girls. His buddy didn't really want to the party, but figured a party was better than spending Friday night on the couch alone.

Christian's buddy joined the conversation and he and William quickly began talking history. I don't remember all of it but it mostly involved local history and a class this guy had taken involving the history of the University of Texas. This was it – my escape hatch, my out! And I couldn't move. I couldn't move because every word that came out of this guy's mouth was fascinating. I literally hung on his every word, to the point that I found myself annoyed when William talked because he was long winded and Oh My God, all I want is for this guy to talk again. I couldn't take my eyes off of him when he spoke and I was mesmerized by his hands as he gestured passionately about some sit-in on the UT campus in the 1960s.

At some point in the conversation, I came back down to Earth a bit. I realized I was probably making an ass of myself, staring at this guy, and not contributing even a shred of intelligence to the conversation. After searching my brain frantically for some way to contribute and coming up empty, I excused myself and made a mental note to come back and introduce myself to the guy with the hands later that night.

And in another rare moment of boldness (my second for the day, I was batting a thousand!), I came back later and introduced myself. We talked. And talked. And talked some more. Everything from the upcoming gubernatorial election to the education system in America to me raving about this wonderful daycare that I worked at. He let me rave for about 5 minutes on the daycare before telling me “Uh, yeah. I know. I used to work there.”

If my life were a movie, this is where the scene would flashback to me standing outside the daycare's office more than two years before. The assistant director, Mary was having a casual conversation with the director. “Hey, I ran into Armando the other day, he's working at CompUSA now.”

Flashforward to present time and me saying “Oh, you're THAT Armando!” and “...and you work at CompUSA”

Flashback to two years ago and Mary speaking: “Yeah, and he and Steph finally got married!”

Flashforward to present time and my heart sinking: “And....yourmarriedtoagirlnamedStephanie.”

There are few times I've known Armando to be completely speechless. This was one of them. I watched a look of bewilderment turn to confusion as he contemplated whether I was psychic or a batshit crazy stalker lady. I realized he was leaning towards the batshit crazy stalker lady hypothesis as he explained to me that he USED to work at CompUSA and that he had recently gotten divorced, I quickly explained to him that those were the only two facts I knew about him due to a conversation overheard a couple years before. Oh and by the way, I have a crazy memory for random things.

We talked more about his divorce and my impending break up. In fact, it may have been then that he coined the term “Knucklehead”, which we still use to describe my ex to this day.

We talked until 1 am, when we finally looked around and realized that everyone, with the exception of Tara and the guy she was flirting with, had gone home. We agreed it was best we leave. He invited me out for coffee to continue the conversation, but I chickened out and said I was tired. Interesting or not, I wasn't going to go out alone with a guy I'd just met, especially since I was pretty darn sure Knucklehead and I were going to patch things up when he got back. He asked for my number and I hesitated, then figured, what the hell. I wrote it on a slip of notebook paper about 2 inches by 3 inches in blue magic marker. He still carries that slip of paper in his wallet to this day.

We left Tara's house and walked to our respective cars. I got in the car, closed the door and stared at the steering wheel, thinking to myself “What the f*ck was that?”. Little did I know that on the other side of the street, in his own car, Armando was doing the same thing.

And to think, I wasn't going to go out that night.