Ten years ago, I met this guy.
It wasn’t the day we started dating or anything momentous like that- just…around the time this person sort of ambled into my life, wielding a headshot and resumé and easily the most earnest smile I’d ever seen.
I couldn’t tell you what he was wearing- probably a t-shirt and jeans or corduroy pants with ducks on them- but the smile and the fact that it fully reached his eyes has been written on my brain in Sharpie. And those green eyes? They looked into my eyes when we spoke. And I watched him do the same with each and every person in that audition room, regardless of attractiveness or ability to get him cast in that specific show. It was nice, incredibly nice.
We exchanged small talk; it was his first professional audition in town, was it mine? No, I had already been in a show here, no big deal. Neither one of us was sure that this particular production was the right move, but hey. Experience, right?
Soon he went in for his audition. He totally bombed it. (He said.) In fact, in the middle of his monologue he requested a do-over.
For the record, this is not usually okayed.
However, if you’re a super cute Midwestern boy with jacked arms and a killer smile- for example- special allowances will always be made.
He performed it again and it seemed to go well, he told me, mere moments before my name was called. Right as I grabbed my own headshot and started into the mainstage, he took my hand and gave it a casual shake.
“P.J.”
“Hi, I’m Keely.”
Then I walked in and (if I may say so), did really, really well with my own audition piece.
We both were cast. Later, much later, we began dating and I fondly reminisced about the day we met.
He couldn’t, for the life of him, remember meeting me that day AT ALL.
It would’ve stung more if not for the incredible clarity of memory he’s shown every day since: like the second day of rehearsal when he asked me how my nanny job was going, and wasn’t Wednesday the day I took little Julia to Spanish lessons? (He also later described- in great detail- the red tank top I wore that day and how it influenced his decision to remain stretching on the ground for as long as I’d lean over like that to talk. Creeper.)
I remember the first time a group of us went to a country and western bar for karaoke night. (I’ll give you a minute to let that one sink in.) A few beers later, we were all up and dancing and I ended up in his arms. He didn’t dance, he told me. (As with many, many occasions to follow, he was superbly wrong.)
A few dates later, we decided to duet a Wilson Phillips song at another karaoke joint. (I still can’t explain the prevalence of karaoke evenings, I honestly can’t.) But between the poorly belted bars of Hold On, I knew that he was it. The One. THE guy.
Because honestly.
If I’m totally truthful, I knew that he’d be, if not the man I’d marry, then definitely a person in my life forever and ever from the first time we talked. That kind of connection with someone so kind- and yes, sure- so cute? Only a fool would walk away from that.
I was many things in my mid-twenties- whimsical, headstrong, terrible with direction, and occasionally guilty of wearing tank tops cut slightly too low- but I was never a fool.
And there’s too much more of the story to be contained in one blog post; like the time we discovered that our grandmothers were born mere days apart and grew up within minutes of each other in Boston, or how we found out that we had applied for (and super did not get the job for) the same serving position at a bar and grill which later closed- ha HA, or when it came up in conversation with friends that not only were we both supposed to have attended the same New Year’s Eve party years earlier, but that mere months prior to that we would have been sitting next to each other at a talkback session for a Kevin Spacey movie, had P.J. not ditched out. (Yep, I ended up sitting with people whom I later realized were his friends- and quietly wondered why such a packed event would have an empty seat right there next to me.)
I think we’ve made up for lost time- and I haven’t left him alone since.
The past ten years have brought the prettiest little apartment in Chicago, quickly followed by the fixer-uppiest home in the samesuch city, a springtime wedding full of more swirling petals than a Monet painting, four pregnancies, one mortgage (refinanced twice), a smallish car, a biggish car, two cats (standing on our faces in the middle of the night), eight gazillion jobs, far-flung trips, holidays with family, a circle of startlingly loyal friends, and enough plans to last us another ten years. Times ten. Times ten.
So- happy I’ve Known You For Ten Years, P.J. Schoeny. It’s not a Hallmark milestone by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s definitely worth celebrating. Because ten years ago this month?
That’s when things got really good.
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