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Of all the Things I Could Try on for Size…

The day after Christmas, 2007, C, a guy I barely knew, asked me to marry him, and I said yes. As he slipped the ring on my finger and the restaurant burst into applause, we kissed, trying desperately to keep from laughing.

“We are such bitches,” I hissed as we left holding hands.

He just grinned.

Outside, I gave the ring back and said, “That was fun. We should do it again sometime.”

* * *

At the time of the “engagement,” I’d known C a few months. We’d met at a party the previous summer. As he tells it, the first time he saw me I was standing in the host’s kitchen reciting a poem for some Russian kid we never saw again. Hand a young, hungry poet a glass of wine and she’ll perform anything you like. There was some deep talking about writing and music on the back porch, as it often goes when the few intelligent and/or sober individuals find each other.

We crossed paths at a couple costume parties that fall (Halloween and a Cosby Sweater party), but after he moved to Brooklyn in November (as most of Boston eventually does), we maintained a pen-pal relationship, trading work and ideas, eventually sharing more personal details about the inspirations behind it all. Letter writing has always been my preferred way of getting to know someone. The ability to edit and the distance from the individual I am writing to keep me from giving in to hormones and impulse and doing something I’ll later wish I hadn’t. E-mails are safer for me to exchange than drinks.

Fast forward to December twenty-sixth. Our original plan had been dinner, but several weeks prior, he’d sent an e-mail saying, “I have an idea that maybe you’d be willing to try. We could dress up nice and go to a fancy restaurant, and just before dessert, I’ll get on my knees and propose to you. We’ll get the whole restaurant into the act, and then we’ll eat free desserts, and generally be adored. What do you say?”

Hm. I didn’t know how to take that. I wasn’t ready to own up to how much I looked forward to hearing from him every day (much less the possibility of a mutual attraction—I feared he was even more of a lone wolf than I), so I said, “Hey, performance art, I like it.”

So I found myself in a hookah bar on first avenue between eleventh and twelfth with my pen-pal going over the details of our—I mean, our characters’—imaginary relationship. “He” was a CPA, “I” sold ad space in new media. In that moment, I couldn’t help but wonder what I was doing there. This was the first time we’d ever gone out alone, and here we were, about to get engaged.

I proudly take credit for our “how we met” story. We mistook each other for the respective blind dates we were supposed to be meeting. A similar situation had happened to me in real life, and months later, I’d found myself wishing I’d gone with Mr. Not-My-Date. This was my chance.

Most of the other stuff, C came up with: We’d been together two years. We didn’t live together, but I would soon be leaving Cambridge to move into his one-bedroom in Brooklyn.

“Do we have a cat?” I asked.

“No, but we’re getting one.”

I asked if we could name it Nietzsche or something equally pretentious. He’d realized he wanted to marry me on an April trip to some bed-and-breakfast in the Berkshires. He’d awakened early one morning, wanting to watch the sunrise—I’d been game, thus cementing his vision of me as his adventurous fellow explorer. However, he’d waited to ask for my father’s permission over Christmas. We did not discuss why.

C was a Sagittarius like me (independent types not exactly known for their house-with-a-yard tendencies) and, at twenty-eight, on the other side of the twenty-something spectrum. He claimed not to believe in monogamy, yet had planned out this whole elaborate charade. And I was going along with it.

I’d recently been struggling with the realization that I’d reached the age my mother was when she and my father got engaged, during the winter vacation of her senior year at Fairfield. Here I was, a senior at Emerson, unable to stay more than a few months with someone. This haunted me. My sister was the normal child. I was the promiscuous mad scientist daughter with the sharp tongue, and my parents wholly accepted me as such. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that they wanted something different for me. I think they’d imagined me happier, healthier, in love with someone deserving.

My father, as the legend goes, proposed in the car—in a Burger King parking lot. I guess their relationship was the kind of comfortable that meant such a special moment was only enhanced by a Whopper and fries. For me, grade-D meat and processed cheese in the car would be a deal breaker. I’d definitely raise an eyebrow if a lover brought me to Taco Bell (at least in the wooing stage). Mass-produced guacamole? No thanks. I don’t consider myself high-maintenance, just a fan of (subtle yet essential) flavor—and good presentation.

But go figure, my elaborate marriage proposal was a joke. My mom had the love, I had the show. But I did manage to get engaged over winter break my senior year, even if it was, on the surface, just to get a reaction.

I’ll admit, though, I don’t get it. You take two loose ends, and you put them in a softly lit restaurant with wine and chocolate and a stupid little jewelry box. Hand the waitress a camera and ask her to capture it on film, these two Sagittarians in a big city trying to look like they know how to act in a situation they believe is exclusive only to “normal” people. You know, normal people…

He gets on one knee and reads a poem. She blushes and tries to forget that everyone is watching as she feigns shock. Should she stall or just say Yes already? She’s afraid her eyes are going to tear up for real—Why? She blanks out as he stands to kiss her (Why is she so touched he thought to buy a ring guard? How did he remember how small her hands are?), and then she says, “I thought we were going to wait until after we got the cat.”

The restaurant claps. The waitress cries.

* * *

Originally, I’d planned to write the fake proposal story as fiction. One scene I had planned was the moment the girl realized she was in love.

“Do you propose to all your female friends?” she would demand.

The guy would then reply, “Don’t be ridiculous. Only some of them.”

“But that was our thing!” she would cry, something like hunger in her eyes.

Or I imagined her asking him, “How come you never propose to me anymore?”

I don’t know why I assumed the female should be the one to get hurt in the arrangement. Perhaps that shows something about my sexual politics. Or maybe it’s a self-esteem thing. Did I expect to always be left? Violin hips and quick feet, that’s what I’d felt like all through college, a collection of girl-parts and a mind that wasn’t sure what to do with them. I was prone to fits of feeling dangerous—to myself, to others. Was that why I tended to choose freewheeling types with faster feet than mine?

A lot of people preach about self-love. While I think there is definitely something to the notion that you need to love yourself in order to love someone else, it’s the “know thyself” bit that many people seem to wrestle with. Who are we? What do we want? Are we sure? Do our desires and our needs correspond to our images of ourselves?

* * *

In what would have been the future, this act would have become a regular thing, a curious pastime unique to a platonic relationship. Every time Chris and I were in the same city, we’d choose a new restaurant, or eventually something entirely different: an ice-skating rink or a pet shop, a museum. We’d do it in Times Square, just to see if anyone would even stop to watch. Maybe to shake it up, I’d say, No, sometime, or maybe I’d propose to him to show we were a modern pretend-couple.

In the here and now, we don’t talk much about getting engaged anymore. To friends, we cite that first fake proposal as our “first date.” When he kissed me that night, I forgot we were supposed to be in character. I was light-headed for days after, wondering whether I was crazy for thinking there might be something there. I waited a few days for him to set the record straight. No, I wasn’t crazy, just a bit oblivious.

By now, miles have been traveled, hundreds of pages written, old haunts re-explored together. Sometimes as we’re planning our next visit, he’ll say, “I really need to propose to you again soon.” I’ll ask if we should stick with the old characters or make up new ones. And then we forget about it again.

I hate writing about relationships in the present tense. Things last as long as they last; they end when they end. One day I will read this and swallow the ache to fill in the parts of this story I did not know yet. Or maybe I’ll just write the whole story somewhere else and let this piece be what it is.

Little I’d wished for has taken place, not the “girl goes to college and meets nice boy who takes the pain away” scenario, or the “girl swears off boys altogether and pens bestseller” fantasy, not even the “girl-and-boy vagabonds make documentary about marriage proposal performance art” thing. I’d imagined I’d turn this into a fiction, a good story with a neat beginning-middle-end set up. My language would be confident as it clipped along, sure of what was in store.

But what do you know? The charade turned into reality. I found myself cast as one of the characters with no author to tell me what to do. A wrench had been thrown into the plot, and I had to accept that this story was only just beginning, that I couldn’t step back and pin it down or conveniently pack it into a structure yet. I didn’t want to. I was only starting to scratch the surface of C’s real-life character, and, yeah, some things I didn’t know about the corresponding version of myself intrigued me too. I was digging the revelation process.

So I had to wonder if I could get away with blaming the planets for this one. What was going on with Sagittarius, man? Just when I was getting used to this female bachelor thing, Venus had to reach for that ticket stub of a heart I’d been carrying around, and then Saturn and Jupiter got in on it, then Mercury…fuck Mercury.

Maybe it was fate or maybe just that I’d finally realized I was better off making my own damn plans rather than letting alcohol and bravado do the talking. Either way, it was time for a change. I was just surprised. Hell, I still am.

- Jessica Del Balzo is a recent graduate of Emerson College and for now she kisses ass in PR to make rent.