Who wants the spotlight? Who has the nerve to grab our attention and say, I am going to change your day just by hearing about me?

Crystal Clear – Not

On the first Tuesday of December 2013, I will have known my husband for fifteen years. We don’t remember the date; we just know it was a Tuesday. I had been single for three years, just futzing around with a few not-serious dudes since the last thought-you-were-the-one had imploded and now decided it was time – clock was ticking blah-blah-blah. Two friends of mine had met someone from a personal ad they took in a newspaper – HAH! No, you didn’t suddenly time travel back to the land of the dinosaurs – fifteen years ago from NOW there was no Match.com or Grinder! So I took an ad in the L.A. Weekly, titled PART BAMBI — PART BUICK. I’d seen Jessica Lange on the Larry King show telling him, when she did The Postman Always Rings Twice, Jack Nicholson had called her that. Wise man. Loved it. After all, that is the perfect description of me — sometimes power house, sometimes hot mess. Then I went on to write very few words, since I was hostile about even doing it and did it on a dare from the one that was already hitched, by way of this archaic method of matchmaking. I like Sushi, yoga and Scorcese. You be reliable and happy – sing in the shower. That was about it. I figured that’s all they needed to know about me and I knew that’s all I was looking for in him. After a gazillion years of complex, depressed, artistic, creative, smart asses — insurance card holders with a decent job and a great smile, used often, was perfect. My girlfriends thought I was insane. “You have to write more – fun redhead, mouthy, hilarious, hot New York redhead!!” Not. Didn’t. Wouldn’t. Ever.

A week later two men called the given number and left messages. The first one talked my ass off for an hour. He was funny and narcissistic and terminally single – I could tell. I resisted making an in-person plan until I talked to the other one, he had a sweet voice. That’s all I remember. I left him my number. So the nexy night I’m on the phone talking to my girlfriend that owned a restaurant/bar on Fairfax Ave. and call-waiting beeps in and it’s him. Guy #2. I say hello. “Hi this is Virjmrlerr and I’m answering your ad in the… “I yell hold on and go back to my gurl, who tells me to make a date with him for tomorrow night at her place. I do, he says ok, I say my name and that I have red hair and I hang up. I swear. He calls right back and asks me my last name. I tell him and he says, “Italian intriguing.” Again, I’m not lying.

I go to the bar the next night and sit at a booth with my girlfriend for 45 minutes. I’m convinced I’m stood up because if he was the guy sitting at the bar, then he would see my red hair and talk to me. And that guy was talking to himself, literally and having shots.  It was him. Yup. My gf went behind the bar, saw his gorgeous smile, asked him if he was waiting for Nina and he was. She disappears and we sit in the booth for an hour. He seems drunk and cute as hell and hungry. He was – all three. So I went in the kitchen and made him a sausage sandwich. To this day, he says it was yummy. I wasn’t in love, he sounded way too Cali for me, but when I saw his cherry red 1972 Mercedes in the parking lot, I was in lust. We made out in the awesome red mobile for two hours… 15 years ago.

Since then I found out, he doesn’t do yoga or sushi, never saw a Scorsese movie but loves big cars, small furry animals and redheads. He’s a Gemini so he’s not always happy, is way more internal and private than I am and could spend a day without speaking, when I can barely shut-up even when asked to. But, he loves all the same food as I do, is as domestic and homey-cozy as a rug rat, takes care of me like a prince and is a hell of a lot like my brother and father. And we laugh everyday. Fifteen words in a newspaper!

Fifteen years is the crystal anniversary… marriage is complicated but the love is clear.