The details, according to Gil...
I brought this on myself. I was researching wedding websites and beginning to realize the trends. The ‘story of the happy couple’ was one of the major elements in every site I visited. It was even a default tab in the website templates I dreaded having to use. I remember thinking, “Oh yeah. Of course. The story. We got one of those...” and quickly moving on to thinking about other things we might include on this site. All of which, I presumed would be much more difficult to piece together and figure out than the story of how Amy and I met. Especially because I thought the story of how Amy and I met was completely unoriginal, cliché, and uninteresting. We met at a party. Through a mutual friend. Done. Easy. Neeext! Now of course there was much more to it than that. But I didn't want to fall into the trap of ‘fluffing’ our story just to make ourselves seem that much more destined to be together. A way of justifying our relationship, while at the same time throwing it in everyone’s faces. Tying little curly-cue frills and adding tiny floating hearts to the words of our story, just to keep up with some cutesy wedding website template. Now this is not to say that I don’t think Amy and I are destined to be together. I do. With all my heart I do. Obviously. I mean, we ARE getting married. I’m just not big on advertising our love. At least not with words. I like to save the words for Amy. Good combinations of words are so incredibly hard to find when the person you love is staring you right in the face with those big, beautiful brown eyes and that heart-breaking smile. I’m sure no one can argue with that. So anyway, that being said, I'll try. I'll try to tell our story.
Like I said earlier, Amy and I met at a party. A Halloween party to be more precise. It was at the house she rented for a time in Springfield, along with Whitney “Hands” Hendricks and two other dudes. Now the way I came to attend this party was by way of my good friend Joni (JO-knee, not JAH-knee) Campos. Austin, Ryne, Ricky, Troy and I had all come up for the weekend from Boca Raton, where we were going to school. Joni told us a friend of his was having a Halloween party, so being the fun-loving youngsters that we were, we headed to Wal-Mart to pick up some costumes before heading over to meet up with Joni. Looking back, I guess the word “costume” is a bit of an overstatement. They might have been the most half-assed costumes in the history of Halloween. Except maybe Troy, who dressed up as Avril Lavigne. I remember being frightened at the striking resemblance. Or just frightened in general. I can’t really remember... But the rest of us only had face paint. Austin and I both attempted to paint our faces as skulls. I screwed mine up and just ended up giving myself a beard. Austin did a pretty good job, but got sick of it half way through, so he had half of his face painted as a skull. I forget what Ricky and Ryne did, but Joni I think went for the handlebar mustache. You’ll have to forgive my memory of the details. I remember things like a 70-year-old Alzheimer’s victim. But anyways, after we were satisfied with our terrible, terrible costumes, we piled into Joni’s car and headed over. Once we were there, and once people stopped giving us the “who the hell are these goons” looks, Joni began with the introductions. I met a lot of people that night, and barely talked to any of them. However, the most important person I met that night was one of the hostesses of the party. A pretty girl dressed up like one of the Rockers from Barbie and the Rockers. We locked eyes from across the room and gravitated toward each other... Syke. No. We didn’t. Joni introduced me to Amy and I said something like, “It’s nice to meet you” and we both went on to whatever it was we were doing at the time. No discredit to Amy’s eye-locking, gravitational powers. I was just a little overwhelmed with all these “new people”. So that was that. The first time Amy and I met. We said maybe 10 words to each other and then completely forgot the other existed. Romantic huh?
Fast forward to January 2006. Joni invited us to meet him in Orlando where a bunch of people would be celebrating his birthday by going to Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede. For those of you that don’t know, this is like Medieval Times. Except with rednecks. And with more awesome. So anyway, Austin, Troy, Ricky and I all made the drive up. We met the group at the hotel where we were all going to split two rooms. Among the group were Varick Rosete, Russel Quadros, Ken Panganiban, and of course, Amy. This is where Amy and I really began a singular story. If we were both telling the story, this is probably where we would start saying the same things. We would probably both say how the weekend wasn’t overly magical or filled with giggles and coy looks from across the room. No. We just talked. And got drunk together. There was a banana fight in there somewhere too. But that’s another story for another time. And through all of that and more, I started to get to know Amy. A beautiful girl with a great sense of humor, that cursed as much as I do, and that could actually put up with and laugh at the ridiculous things I would say.
And so the courtship began. And a long-distance courtship at that. Not many people would be brave enough, stupid enough, enamored enough, horny enough… whatever you want to call it... to begin a relationship with the immediate strain of distance. Amy and I were at least one of those things... maybe even a few. But we made it through. It sucked. A lot. But we made it through. Some people might even say that it made our relationship stronger. I don’t know if it did or not. But it did teach me very early the stark contrast of my life with Amy versus my life without her. Not in the overly-dramatic sense like, “I simply cannot live without my one true love!!”, spoken with a heavy English accent. I certainly could. I did before. But did I want to? No.
Fortunately, our long-distance ordeal didn’t go on as long as it could have. I soon graduated college and got a job back in town. And despite the chance of spending eternity in a fiery pit of despair and agony, we decided to move in together... pre-maritally (gasp). We even purchased a home together and we now have two dogs which we treat like our children. You know... in the sense that we pen them up in cages, feed them from bowls off the floor, and beat them when they piss or crap in the house. Our little angels...
So that’s it really. The story of our love. Not ‘The Notebook’ by any stretch, but it’s ours. And since that weekend in Orlando, I think I’ve fallen in love with Amy at least once every day. And ever since that weekend, I’ve been trying to find the words. The right combination of words that accurately describe the exploding, feather-light, ton of bricks, screaming at the top of my lungs symphony that is our love. But like I said, I’ll save those for her. Just know that she’s become my best friend and my greatest hero. And on Christmas Eve of 2007, I proposed to her. It wasn’t anything flashy or over-the-top. As I said before, I’m not big on advertising. I just let her open the video camera I had bought her for Christmas. And on this camera was a video I had made for her. A music video done in the vein of Death Cab for Cutie’s video for “I’ll Follow You Into the Dark”. With the song playing in the background, all the video showed was my sketchbook. And as I flipped the pages, it showed pictures I had drawn of two birds. Amy has always loved birds.. Not in real life of course. Due to their ability to peck your eyeballs out. But, you know... bird designs and art. Anyway, through extremely crude drawings, i told the story of two birds meeting and falling in love with each other. Chasing each other in the sun swept sky and sheltering each other through the bitter winter cold. Then at the very end, the male bird brings something shiny back to the nest where his love is waiting. As the song came to a close, and the last page turned, it simply read, “Will you marry me?”. She said ‘yes’...
