How Lucky

Listening to: Indigo Swing, "The Way We Ought To Be."

For awhile there, in 1998-ish, right around when I got my first official girlfriend, I was really into swing dancing. A lot of people were I think, due to the release of Swingers and Swing Kids. The summer previous, George, Grace, and I had taken a ballroom dancing class at UCSD, which seems like such an odd thing for us to do. But I remember it being pretty fun. We might have also gone to a few swing dancing classes in San Diego somewhere.

I personally liked the swing scene for the shoes. I loved the two tone shoes. I actually never got my own pair but I just loved looking at them and Stacey, the girlfriend, had some. Paired with her signature argyle socks, I thought they looked cool as hell. One of the first times I visited her in Santa Cruz, we went out to a swing club. The venue was two stories, with a huge dance floor and everyone was dressed up and had serious style and moves. I sucked, as usual -- mastering the six count and triple step was beyond me -- and was mostly just entranced by the film to life aspect of it all.

The band for the night was Indigo Swing, who rocked the shit out of the house and I immediately fell in love with them. After buying their CD and listening to them non-stop, they happened to come to Ann Arbor randomly and some of us went out to watch them there too. For a few weeks afterwards, we did the whole swing thing in Michigan, going around to various spots on campus to learn, dance, and gawk.

I wonder if some people template on their first girlfriends. For example, I feel like after Stacey, I have tended to date variations on her theme. I always end up in relationships with the same type of girl. The super nice, slightly quirky, and often very privately guarded type of girl who is social and giving and always well liked by everyone they come into contact with. Something about that personality attracts me and vice versa, even if on paper it's nothing I would list as looking for in a girl. We always get along famously, right off the bat, and I think somewhere in there, they're surprised by how damn nice I can be and that's a straight shot to their heart. I'm the nice guy who dates the nice girl, end of story, happy ending. But it never quite works out that beautifully.

All through my retellings of my failures as a boyfriend (past, present, future), I always say that I was a really good boyfriend the first time around. Stacey and I were long distance for the entire nine months or so we were together and saw each other maybe once every six weeks. She never came out to Michigan, I always flew to Santa Cruz, which seems strange in retrospect. For the first semester of my junior year, I worked at a campus coffee shop in order to pay for the flights and the phone calls. And we were on the phone constantly. The East to West coast time change was perfect for me. I had time to hang out with my friends all night long and still return to catch her around midnight California time. I don't think it would have worked out quite as well if we were geographically reversed, I'm strictly a late night guy.

We were constantly sending packages back and forth. I made an extraordinary array of cards, puzzles, remember me forever items, and wrote letters that rambled on for pages. This was like first relationship magic and I was 110% committed and we never had any problems. We just missed the hell out of each other and there were a few times we'd have to part and I'd be all teary and crying and stuff. It was so Nicholas Sparks.

Everything spiraled downhill quickly though. By second semester, my school life got busier and I was unable to spend as much time on the phone and doing things. As I've now learned, when you set those attention benchmarks high, any significant dip and the other party will start worrying about if you care for them the same way. I don't recommend the smother and retreat method, that one's not in the handbook.

I suggested somewhere around month five that we might consider taking a break. "A break" were the words she least wanted to hear because her previous boyfriend had suggested the same thing and then had subsequently broken up entirely. In my eyes, a break was defined as "we're still together but we just need to not talk as much." To her, a break was the same thing as a break up. Bad choice of words on my part. That miscommunication led to tension, fighting, and eventually I lost my patience with the entire thing, dragging our relationship carcass for another few months before I abruptly ended things in June, right when we could have spent some quality time together.

Now that I think about it, that might be a relationship theme too, I tend to date girls right when they've just gotten out of a painful relationship. I'm either that rebound guy or I'm pouncing when they're defenseless. Your call.

Another thing I've noticed in my exes is that they tend to have similar ways of dealing with their frustrations or issues. They hold it in, bottle it up, and then it all comes blowing out when the lid pops off. Is there some sort of archetype here I should be aware of? I used to be convinced that I was just coincidentally choosing this type of girl (every time) but recently I've been exploring how my issues with emotional communication might lead them to not talk about things. In the post-relationship feedback talks we had, I learned about a ton of things that Stacey had held in during our relationship. I'd like to think that I'm all ears and open to anything but in reality I probably present a very passively closed position.

Anyway, the take home lesson is for me to avoid the nice girl, that's what I've decided in theory. There must be an underlying reason why I'm constantly attracted to this type but I've yet to figure it out completely. It probably has to do with my insecurities, their insecurities, and some fatal but delicious meshing of the two. A medal and declaration of ultimate friendship to the person who can figure it all out and explain it to me.

Stacey had this amazing, super dark, lustrous hair, which was always admired and marveled at. I think I've imprinted on that too since girls with thick shiny hair that curls in a particular way are just well, irresistible.

"I've never been to Paris, France
I never learned how to ballroom dance
But she still giving me the chance, how lucky can one guy be

I never made a load of dough
I never been to a Broadway show
But to her I'm original Romeo, how lucky can one guy be

Her other boyfriends and the hopeful men, call her on telephone
But at the end of the night, she's holding me tight, and I'm the one taking her home"
-How Lucky-