How Mags and I met

After receiving a very insightful comment, it occurred to me that I probably should focus on some happy memories of Mags. One of my favorites is the story of how Mags and I met and started dating.

Mags and I first met ten years ago. We are both in recovery, and liked to attend the same meetings. I can clearly remember what my thoughts were the first time we had a long talk after a meeting when the entire group went out for coffee; “Nice girl, pretty too. Too bad she’s gay.”

In my defense, all the signs pointed that way. She was always hanging out with a lesbian couple. (Not suspected, they were quite open about it.) She never spoke about her boyfriend or husband; the wording she used was always “significant other.” And finally, she would usually dress plainly in “Stay away from me clothes.

In retrospect, all of these can be explained away. Kathy and Janet were her downstairs neighbors, so she usually gave them rides to whatever meeting she was going to. In deference to them, she would never refer to her relationship in anything but gender-neutral terms. (Although why she never used Captain Herbalife’s name is a mystery to me.) Also, the meeting we would go to was something of a Meet Market. Many of the regular attendees were single, and they were there to discuss the problems of being single in recovery. We definitely weren’t the only couple that the Friday night first year group brought together.

Anyway, Mags quickly become one of my closest friends and confidants. I’d go to her for advice on how to handle whatever relationship difficulty I had gotten myself into at the time. Finally, one Friday in late spring, 1999 I was sitting with her outside the local coffee house, moaning into my beer about the latest girl who had dumped me earlier that week. Mags let me go on for a bit, making the appropriately soothing noises at all the right places, and then she dropped the bombshell:

“Say, I’ve got a company dinner next week, and I don’t have anyone to take me. Do you want to go?”

Well, she was a good friend, and if her boss didn’t know she was gay, I could see how she might need a beard to provide cover. I accepted. It wasn’t until I was driving home that I paused to think things over. There was something that didn’t quite add up about the entire situation. (Okay, okay, so I’m not always terribly fast on the uptake.)

My suspicions that something odd was going on were confirmed when I got a call the next evening. It was Mags saying, “Listen, I’m supposed to be in charge of this thing, but I’ve never been to the restaurant before. You want to go out to dinner Monday and check it out.”

Okay, that set the weird-o-meter to eleven. There was something going on that I didn’t understand. (See the above comment about being slow on the uptake.)

Monday came, and I picked her up after work and took her out to dinner. We had a great time, and stayed talking until well after the bill had been paid. We talked some more as I drove her home, making sure that I took the longest route possible so I could have more time with her. Finally, though, we got to her apartment. At this point, I knew that either I had been terribly mistaken in my initial assessment, or I was completely miss-reading what was going on. (She laughed at my joke about the lawyer, the priest, the Boy Scout and the pilot for God’s sake!)

So I went to kiss her, still not entirely sure that she was interested in me.

I have never been happier to be wrong in my life.