January 9, 2006

• Lucky Number 9
  © The Author, 2006

  The night was almost over and I didn’t want it to be without him knowing what it meant to me. Even after getting chopped to bits by a lawnmower, pulling myself together and slipping into a sexy red dress to sing a gushing torch song in, and murdering my family in a manic, Valium induced frenzy ala Quentin Tarantino a while after, he still couldn’t tell that I was crazy about him. Boys can be so clueless sometimes.

  Clarkston High School Drama Club (the organization I credit for keeping me interested in attending the hell known as high school and saving me from dropping out all together), had an annual fundraiser called Theater-A-Thon, which was a nine-hour variety show that took place starting right after school and running until midnight. The program was directed by the vice president of the club (which I was to become in my senior year) and it was comprised of student chosen, directed, and performed skits and musical acts that audiences could see for free, on a come and go basis (9 hours is a freaking long time to sit through the entirety). The MC raffled off neat items throughout the night and a surprising amount of people bought tickets, giving us money to build big, crazy sets for the spring musical. Theater-A-Thon was loud, funny, and riotous and it was by far my favorite thing about high school. Especially my sophomore year in 1998, when it allowed me to hang out with my biggest crush for countless hours of rehearsal and 9 hours of performance.

  The first time I saw Shaun was at my first drama club meeting, fall of my freshmen year. I walked into the theater and a tingly, spiders prancing about your ribcage kind of overwhelming feeling rushed over me. I knew he was there before I saw him, eventhough I had never laid eyes on him before. It was as if I was looking for him. When I glimpsed the back of his head, I felt relief.

  “Who is that guy?” I asked my friend Randi, pointing to the back of Shaun’s head.
  “That’s Painter,” she said, using the name of a deaf character he played in a skit she was in with him.

  I walked away from her and suddenly I was near him, smiling. He was alone, with a book on his lap.

  “Hi, I’m Truly.”
  “Hi.”
  “Can I sit by you?”
  “Sure.”

  Later he said he thought that I must have been a senior (he was a junior and I was really tall) and feeling bad for him because he was all by his lonesome. And that he thought I was hot. I felt like I was coming home, a transcendental experience of reincarnation. I had always known him, and I knew that he would always be there. It was weird and it creeped me out and I loved him then and now in this big, amazing way that reveals a higher order of things and feels delightfully good.

  We were friends my freshmen year. While I dated a few guys (one of which was later to become my gay best friend) I made it a point to get in with his group, firstly because they were all super nice, chill people and second because I liked being near Shaun. I liked how he was always first to arrive to a party. He brought chips and CDs and he always had a Snapple to drink. He was never loud or interruptive and he never did things for attention, and yet he got loads of it. The girls in our group loved flirting with him because he was too polite to flirt back. But we all played with his hair, and felt his muscles, and did all sorts of stupid girly things around him because it was so funny how non-threatening, bashful, and well mannered he was about it. You could tell he was really smart, although only because he was always offering to help whenever he heard you were struggling with a subject. He never bragged about being in AP English and AP Physics and a general, all-around smarty pants. I don’t even think most of us knew that about him. He was just a nice guy. Did I mention that I was crazy about him?

  My sophomore year (Shaun’s senior year), I was getting a bit frustrated that he didn’t seem to notice any of my attempts to woo him. Didn’t he feel the same way? Didn’t he know we knew each other in a past life? Come on!

  When it was time to begin preparing skits for Theater-A-Thon, among other things, I wrote and directed a piece called The Cleaver Family, which was a stage combat piece featuring a 1950′s family that becomes possessed in the night and tries to kill each other in all sorts of funny ways until morning, when all is rosy again. I cast Shaun as my husband. Practice was dreamy, but he still didn’t seem to get my drift. But he was secretly in love with me, too. He was taking a super hard class-load and already involved in more skits than he thought he could handle when he took me up on my offer to murder me in my skit.

  The night of Theater-A-Thon, I participated in two other skits that went beautifully. The Cleaver Family stunned the audience and then shook them with guilty laughter, as any proper dark comedy should. It was spectacular. Once midnight struck, and we were all wiping off our stage makeup and packing up our props, I didn’t feel right ending the night without letting Shaun know how much, precisely, his participation meant to me. Walking out to the parking lot with my best friend Lindsey and my parents, I made an excuse to turn back. I found Shaun in the hallway, walking out by himself.

  “Hey,” I said.
  “Hey.”
  “It was a really good night tonight.”
  “Yeah, it was.”
  “You know, I like you a lot. If you want to do anything about that, I’m not busy Saturday.”
  His face broke into the biggest smile ever. I felt my heart sing.

  Although we have a wedding anniversary (January 25, 2002) we celebrate January 9 as our “us” day. Eight years ago today, we became us and it seems like yesterday and forever ago all at the same time.

  Happy 9th, Shaun. I love you always.

  • 8:01 am
  • 8 Comments