What decision changed the course of your life?
Submitted by Ally.
December 9, 1996: After much internal debate, getting off the line to exit the parking lot at Jersey City State College, parking my car, and unexpectedly jumping into a classmate’s car to clumsily explain to her that, despite having a very good reason to ignore the impulse, with the semester ending in a week or two, I couldn’t ignore the feeling that I’d regret not telling her that I was very attracted to her.
I was living with my girlfriend at the time, in the process of moving from Jersey City to Manhattan, but our relationship was in its death throes and I’d been finding it harder and harder to ignore this one girl in one of my classes, especially after she’d written me this great letter in response to my zine, zuzu’s petals. She was cool about the intrusion and we went to a diner a few blocks away and talked for about an hour or so over coffee and something just clicked into place. We went for coffee after class again the following week, this time talking for almost three hours, about any and everything, and it was as comfortable as I’d ever been talking to someone, especially sober. A couple of weeks later, on December 27th, we went on our first “date”, to dinner and the Nuyorican Poets Café, and the rest is history.
That girl, of course, was Salomé, and nineteen months later we got married, defying my long-held belief that I was destined to be a life-long bachelor, mostly due to a fear of ending up like my father, thrice married with an uncanny ability to disconnect from the past.
