Warnell & Sara

I met Sara when she was in Undergrad @ Imacculata college. She went to school with a friend who I have known since 7th grade, so over the years through our mutual friend I would see her from time to time. We were always friendly (she's a very pleasant person) but there was no romance. She always had a boyfriend, and commitment was the last thing on my mind @ that age. A few years after her graduation we're both out for our mutual friend's birthday. We were @ the Fox and The Hound in KOP enjoying cocktails to celebrate. After a few swigs of liquid courage, I made my way over to her and she seemed really excited. Bright and pleasant as she always is, I instantly felt calm around her; her warmth was palpable. We exchanged numbers that night and started to chat on the phone and over email. About 2 weeks later, she was having some friends over and asked if I would help her move furniture around her home. I agreed, and our first date involved her on her knees... mopping the kitchen floor and me with a vacuum cleaner. Shit doesn't GET more romantic! But, it was the most fun I ever had cleaning. It got late and I ended up spending the night and even managed to behave myself. We had the party the next day which went well for the most part -- not to be sexist, but whenever you assemble 8 or more girls there WILL be drama. The end of the evening came and I went to kiss her goodbye and she cried. So I stayed. That party was four years ago. I'm not leaving. Ever.

Late Update: Cassidi and Frank

On July 24th, Frank asked Cassidi to marry him. She said, "sure." (or, she wept joyful tears and declared loudly: yes!! same thing, right?)

Frank and Cassidi will be married in April 2011. (Cassidi is currently finishing her degree.) They are planning a lavish spring wedding!

Congratulations, Frank and Cassidi!

Lindsay and Blake

I met Blake in a falling down whorehouse that’s now a bar. It’s called Ernestine & Hazel’s. It’s on the corner of Main Street in Memphis. They serve soul burgers all day and night. It was a week before Thanksgiving. We talked for a while. The only thing I remember from our conversation was that he said: “I work in cotton.” And I said, “What like a cotton gin?” And he smiled at me. That was the first time I really noticed him even though we’d been talking for a while.
He left a little after midnight and my friend and I left shortly after. As we walked to her car, we saw him about a block ahead of us up the street. “BLAKE,” I shouted. He turned around. He waited for us to catch up.
He suddenly said, “Hey, would you guys want to come to my place for a drink? I just live right up here in the lofts.”
“How do we know you’re not some psycho that’s going to kill us,” I asked.
“I guess you don’t,” he said, “but I’ll tell you now my weak spot is my neck. If you jabbed me in the throat, I would go down in a second.”
We laughed and said alright and followed him to his loft. He concocted several drinks from pear schnapps and brandy and vodka. I settled for a Scotch, same as him. We had a cork fight. He collects corks from wine bottles in two big bowls that sit on the shelf in his kitchen. We found a cork just the other day under the couch from that cork fight. The three of us fell asleep on his bed, Blake in the middle. When I woke up in the morning, he had his arms wrapped tightly around me. Since that night, I have only slept in my bed in Memphis, alone, for one night, while he has been in town.
I can’t say it has been the most typical of loves. I can say I have never felt anything like it. I can’t say it’s been easy. But I can say it is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

Frank and Cassidi

On July 21, 2006, I was working as a bartender for my second 8 hour shift of the day. Because I had already put in a full day's work, I was more easily angered than usual. I was sitting at the end of the bar, eating my dinner, and mentally preparing myself for the usual harrassment that happened every night I worked when he walked in with his friends. As soon as I saw him, I was immediately attracted to him. I got the butterflies in my stomach and was all embarrassed like a little school girl. When I went over to their table to take their drink order, the hoots and hollers started. I told the boys that I wasn't taking any bull that evening, and if they wanted to have a pleasant evening they could stay, but if they were looking for any trouble they needed to leave. So, he told me they would behave, and our first meeting started to take place. Throughout the evening there was constant conversation between us. We played a game where questions are thrown back and forth at each other, and true answers must be given. Also, there weren't allowed to be any repeat questions from the next person. We both learned many things about each other very quickly. For instance, we both found out that we could have possibly met on two other occasions, where we were in the same place at the same time. The first would have been when he was in college taking summer classes and I was visiting his college (still in high school) for a summer camp. The other time was earlier that summer at a Dave Matthews concert. There was definitely sparks from the beginning. As the night wore on, his friends were finally calling it a night, and he told me that he wanted my phone number. I refused, telling him that I never give my phone number to guys I meet at work. He then had the audacity to ask me if he could stay and help me clean up and then I could take him back to his friends house. Of course I denied this! Why in the world would I be alone in the wee hours of the morning, in an empty bar, with a man I don't know! So he paid the tab with a credit card, and when I took the slip from him, there was a piece of paper with it that had his name and phone number on it. Of course I was very excited, and fought the urge to call him on my way home. The next morning, I texted him, asking him if he remembered giving the bartender his phone number. He said he was very aware of his actions the night before, and we texted all day (because I was, of course, at my other job). So on Sunday, I let him take me out on our first date. I brought a friend, and he brought a friend, and he and I completely ignored our friends. We went to the movies (I don't remember any of the movie, I was completely infatuated by him...with his arm around me.) and then to dinner (I was so nervous I could only choke down a bowl of soup). As he was dropping me off in front of my mother's house at the end of the night, the bold man that he is, he asked me if I wanted him to kiss me next to his car, or on my doorstep. Because he told me that either way, he was GOING to kiss me. I had no choice. So, as flustered as I was, I leaned in and kissed him. Next to his car. With our ignored-all-night friends feeling awkward standing behind us. I just remember thinking to myself, "He has the best lips..."

So fast forward three years later. Two years of a long distance relationship (3 hrs apart). Only seeing each other on weekends. Talking until the wee hours of the morning when we weren't together. Holding each other as tight as possible on those nights when we were together. Then this past year, he bought a house for us to live in. Together. We have a puppy. And he is my best friend, my lover, my companion. He is my everything.

Damien and Jian

I met Jian last summer; we exchanged numbers and emails, started to open up ourselves to one another and went on a few dates. We got close. I was having a rough time at the start of this year, she helped me through it.
I was always looking forward to getting married again. I thought: she enjoys my company and encourages my filmmaking dreams, she would make a perfect wife - so I popped the question at a friend's concert. She thought about it, said yes, and we both argeed that we didn't want a big event, we picked a date without telling too many people.
She's smart, beautiful on the inside and out.
She has her career and I have mine; I know that she is the one for me and I am happy.

Damien and Jian were married March 27th, 2009.

David & Johanna

I met E at a bookstore in Hanau, Germany in 1960. She told me where to buy civilian clothes, and we fell into rhyme quickly:

JOHANNA IN A SERIOUS VEIN
JOHANNA IN A SERIOUS VEIN

Johanna in a serious vein
Is always at the edge
Of going insane.

Remembering British “Christmas Trees”
In Hanau in 1944,
A loaf of bread at three,
Her first rag doll when she was seventeen,

Fighting to stay alive
Or on top of it
When the sky split,
Huddling in the shelters
Of her parents’
False
Messiah.

I know her.
We struggle now together
In our four room flat.
She wanders Wednesdays to the City,
Takes a nap
On 41 D.

We met in a German bookstore in 1961.
I asked for Goethe
In English translation.

Called her SPERLING for sparrow.
In her self-imposed cage
She seemed broken.

Homely by her designation,
Radiant as that summer afternoon
By mine,
We had coffee and fell into rhyme
The coming week.

Blessed are the meek.
For I inherited her.
Her lot was not so kind, nor vast as mine might
Be.
She inherited me.

1976

Hollie and Barry

So Barry and I worked together at Shoprite for years. We were in the same group of friends but didn't get too close bc when they 'went out' I wasn't of age to join. But there was this older woman (I call her Cupid now) who told Barry that I wanted to ask him out. I didn't. A few days later she told me that Barry wanted to ask me out. He didn't. It was very strange. We started hanging out more and more thinking the other wanted the other one. Lol. I went away to college and only saw him on weekends but u could tell we were getting close. Then, the terrible happened. My grandfather died. Since he commited suicide I wasn't really open to sharing that with poeople so I came home from school for about a week and just spent it at my Nan's and the rest of the family. No outsiders, you know. When Barry heard I was home he got directions to my Nan's and that was it. He didn't leave my side for the whole thing. He became a part of the family that week. We all opened up to him and he was so comforting and accepting of us all. My Mom and Nan fell for him b4 I did, I think. Haha. I look at it now and think that my Pop brought him to our family to be that glue that we lost when he left. We all know Pop would've loved him. So... From there I finished a semester at school away, but transfered closer to home bc my family needed that at the time. That's when we got really close. Not together as a couple yet but best friends; inseperable. He moved in with me and my 3 other roommates and a few months later on xmas eve he wrote me a letter saying that he was falling in love with me and gave me a promise ring to be his gf. Of course I accepted and my family was thrilled. The next year on st. Pattys day. (He must have a thing for holidays lol) I was on a Cedar Crest trip to the Met museum and he came along. Little did I know that he had our whole family (both sets of parents and step parents and both siblings) there when we arrived. Only they were hidden. He got down on one knee on the steps of the met (my favorite place ever) and asked me to marry him. When I said yes he told me to turn around and everyone was about 5 steps up watching the whole thing (and balling). I found out later that he had called my Dad to ask for my hand and my Dad took him to an Irish pub and made him shoot Irish whiskey till he was delirious. Since he held his own my Dad said yes. So long as he stood by me as I fiinished my education and waited to have the wedding til after I had my bachelors.That happened and Barry kept his promise. We are getting married this fall. I guess the rest is ancient history.

Kim and Bill

Late one night I heard someone banging around in the hallway outside my apartment door. It was so loud, I finally got up to investigate. When I opened my door, a man fell into my kitchen—passed-out drunk. I tried to shove him back into the hall, but he was too heavy. Instead, I left him on the floor, went to my bedroom, pushed the dresser in front of my door, and went back to sleep. Not long after, I married the lug.

Kate & Nik

As I learned when I reread my original edition on this site, I have been telling this story in many different ways over the years. Let me now, in hopes of escaping that cringing moment when you stumble upon proof that you were indeed once young and really, really stupid, tell it once again in a manner that doesn't shame my entire being.

Nik was an overly-gelled, overly-cocky server at your average corporate restaurant. I was...the same, really. With less gel. We both cursed a lot, I remember. The aforementioned original edition gives evidence to both that, and to my (hopefully long dead) need to show off how against the grain I really was (I wasn't, I was just 18 and stupid.)

But yes, I was 18, and he was 22. We worked together and had a quite a jolly time ignoring one another for a month or two, save for a few obnoxious exchanges by the beverage station. Our first "date" was at a bar within a bowling alley with several of our esteemed colleagues. Our courtship flourished quite nicely for a few months, assuming courtship in the 00's can be sometimes defined as drinking buddies who kiss occasionally. We dated and drank and broke up now again over one thing (a returned ex-girlfriend) or another (the movie Waiting. With Ryan Reynolds. I'm not even kidding.) Our relationship, often fraught with disrespect and emotional drama, should not have survived beyond a year or so.

But that's where the real story lies, the one I'm still proud to tell. The two kids who were so badly run off the beaten path started growing up some. I've noticed that often when two really messed up people find each other, and then start to become slightly less messed up people, they find they have little and less in common. They grow up, grow apart, part ways. Nik and I grew up, grew closer, grew together.

Those years ago we started with a lot of late nights, a lot of cheap beer, a lot of bad arguments and a handful of breakups. Seven years later and we're a force as couples who've been together for a lifetime are sometimes not - call it dog-years, but what our relationship has endured has broken us down and put us back together as one.

In 2004, Nik and I met a really crappy restaurant in the mall. In early 2007, we moved in together with my then 3 year old son. On November 18th, 2008, Nik proposed to me outside Lincoln Financial Field before my first Eagles game. On September 6th, 2008, we were married. On January 13th, 2009 we had our first baby together, a beautiful little boy. On February 12th, 2010, we buried our son together. On August 12th, 2011, we had our second son together. We have taken jobs and lost them, entered school, left it, entered again. We've been broke and we've been comfortable. We've seen the best moments of our lives thus far together, and surely, the worst. Our story of love is as bumpy as they come, and I'm sure there's more ahead of us. But it's a story in a volume that's bound to be epic, and we add more to it every day.


/endcheese

The Birth

In the coming days, weeks, and on and on, I will be compiling and posting the love stories of friends, family, and strangers alike.

Funny stories, drunk stories and certainly stories with grit.

No two people get to love along the same road; pull out a map, folks, and let's get to traversing...