Movies are a heck of a thing. Some will make you laugh, others’ll make you cry. Others still, they’ll change you. They’ll completely deconstruct something you thought you knew as an absolute truth, only to put the pieces back together in a different way that completely blows your mind and makes you wonder how you ever saw it any other way. By changing the way you think, these films have the power to change what you believe, in return changing your very life. I have experienced this type of life-altering cinematic power several times throughout my life in a variety of films, but perhaps none are a better example than my first, Moulin Rouge! (2001), as nothing I’ve seen committed to celluloid, before or since, has affected me quite so profoundly. I saw this riotous musical, either by chance or by fate, at a most impressionable 12 years old, and I’ve never been the same since.

It was a night I was up far past my bedtime and decided to sneak into the living room with hopes of maybe catching something a little saucy on late-night television. After a bit of channel surfing, I landed on one of the HBO channels, where I caught a twilight screening of Baz Luhrmann’s campy foray into the melodic bohemia. A love story of the most tragic sort, the film tells the heartbreaking tale of Christian the poet and Satine the courtesan, two star-crossed lovers who end up sacrificing everything in the name of love. “All you need is love!” the fanciful musical’s tagline proclaims, and in all my underdeveloped pre-teen naïveté, I found this sentiment to be something truly profound. Without a second thought, I took this hyperbolic declaration at face value and ran. Latching onto its bohemian ideals, I used this film to help shape my developing views on things like love, relationships, courting, romance, sex, and girls in general. I committed to this philosophy entirely, for surely, there is nothing in this life a man truly needs but another person to serve as his lover, companion, and confidant, and if he has it, there is nothing this wretched world can throw at the two of them that they can’t endure together.

From the moment the credits rolled for this cautionary tale foreboding the dangers of falling in love with a prostitute, I wanted nothing more in life than to find my “special someone.” Find her, get into a serious relationship with her, fall in love with her, make her my wife, and live the rest of my life with her at my side. At a time when the girls my age were more concerned with the latest goings-ons of Spongebob Squarepants than they were with contemplating their holy matrimony, however, my search was doomed from the start. The fact that I was shyer than the dickens and feared nothing more than interacting with pretty girls only further complicated things. By the time I reached junior high, my hormones were out in full effect, and my fixation on finding a romantic partner was met with my newfound natural attraction and general curiosity for all things related to the fairer sex. This pair of keen appetites fused together within my young veins to form an unusually heightened fascination with the female species. From that point on, getting my first kiss, first cuddle, and first girlfriend were my primary aspirations in life, and what I cared about more than anything. Little did I know that these intense urges and aspirations would go unanswered and unalleviated for nearly two more decades, and by my 30th birthday my “heightened fascination” with females would have festered into an all-consuming, hellbent, and insatiable thirst for physical contact and companionship.

The Hunger

Constantly stoked and never relieved, my hunger for body-on-body, lip-on-lip physical contact was both off the charts and off the rails by the day I turned 30 years old. But even so, there were other things I’d also never done with a woman that I craved experiencing almost just as dearly. Sure, I wanted to encounter the life-affirming, sensual gratification of a woman’s warm, juicy lips pressed against mine as I received my first kiss, but I was just as desperate to simply sit down and have a real heart-to-heart with one. Wholly authentic and entirely present, I wanted real talk in real life. I wanted to become so engrossed in conversation that a two-hour exchange would seem to pass in minutes. I wanted to talk about the deep stuff, talk about the dumb stuff, talk about the serious stuff, and talk about the goofy stuff; I wanted to talk about any and everything, as long as it was in person and not through a god-forsaken computer or cell phone. My first 30 years of life, that was all I knew.

Having AOL and MSN Instant Messenger to hide behind in middle school, MySpace in early high school, and Facebook ever since, I spent my entire life depending on the internet to help make interacting with girls less terrifying. I used these social crutches as my primary means of communicating with girls for nearly two decades, never discussing anything at length with them unless it was from behind the safety of the screen. Of course, these online interactions were only ever meant to be a means to an end and the first step of many that would eventually lead to a real friendship and us hanging out in real life, and maybe even more after that. But, as much as I willed it, this gradual evolution from online chatting to spending time together in real life never happened, as my online conversations rarely developed past soulless, generic greetings like, “Hi, how are you?” and a never-ending line of stagnant pop quiz-style questions like “What’s your favorite movie?” and “Do you have any pets?” At some point early in college, I realized this strategy was getting me nowhere, and I knew I had to change something. Still lacking the cahonies to take action beyond the computer screen and do something that might bring about actual change, however, I instead came up with a new method for talking to girls where I was most comfortable, online, telling myself it was enough.

In a desperate frustration, I developed a theory. Rather than starting a chat with a girl from “Hello” and working my way up to ‘dearly beloved’ from there, I came up with a get-bae-quick scheme where I would skip a huge chunk of the naturally-progressing steps of the process and begin my chats instead at around the halfway mark. Sort of ‘in media res’ with a relationship, I would begin at the point where our bonds were really starting being forged, and where the real conversing started. So, in a brash attempt at cutting out some of the preliminary fluff and greatly expediting the relationship-making process, I made myself vulnerable before them by telling them something so intimately, scarily personal about myself that it would immediately catch her attention and effectively distinguish their conversation with me apart from every other guy still using the same tired old techniques I tried for so many years. Secrets, designed to raise questions and get a dialogue going, like how I was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder when I was 12 and almost completely lost my sanity at one point, or how sometimes I felt so alone I just wanted to die, or how I used to be a very devout Christian until the church did something terrible to my family, and now I didn’t really know what I believed.

I even went as far as to theorize that this tactic might even make the girl feel honored in a way, that I entrusted her with such deeply personal information despite the fact we had only just met. And, without even thinking of it consciously, it would make her feel more compelled to share a secret of her own with me in return. Then, we’d take turns pouring our hearts and souls out, telling each other all our deepest, darkest secrets until we knew everything about each other, and before I knew it, we’d become the tightest of BFF’s. Then, all I had to worry about was working my way up to boyfriend from there. I don’t think it’ll come as a surprise to anyone that this method never bore fruit, and as many times as I employed this absurd logic over the years, all my online confessionals ever managed to do was make the girls feel sorry for me. Pity is bad. You do not want anyone’s pity, let alone a girl you hope to date. I know this all too well now, but at the time I considered a girl’s pity to be one of the greatest prizes I could acquire, figuring that eventually their pity for me would beget their interest in me. For two decades I thought pity was my key to true love and happiness, but I learned in the most excruciatingly hard way that pity does not beget interest; it begets, and leads to, absolutely nothing. Even after learning this lesson, conversing with girls in real life remained an exceedingly rare feat for me, and by my late 20’s talking, really talking in-person with a girl was so special and cherished that it might as well have been getting to second base.

And, of course, I wanted to feel the soul-stirring warmth and titillation of a girl’s (clothed) body against mine as I got my first cuddle as well, but so too did I desperately crave the opportunity to share and experience my most special media with one. I’ve always had the distinct ability to really feel pieces of art that I watch and listen to on an almost spiritual level, and there’s never been a shortage of certain movies, games, television, music, or books that have genuinely moved me. Some, much like Moulin Rouge! (2001), have even played a part in helping shape me into the man I am today. I’ve seen movies that have made me laugh harder than I’ve ever laughed, cry harder than I’ve ever cried, and altogether feel more than I’ve ever felt in my oh-so-mundane real life. A good movie can be like a two-hour emotional roller coaster, and, for me, there aren’t many things better in this world than sitting and experiencing one with someone special beside you. I watch movies and television with and share new music with my mother often, and just the thought of sharing with a special girl… it made me weak at the knees. I imagined telling her what every part of each movie and song meant to me in great detail, and then having her introduce me to all her favorites, giving her the opportunity to experience the same with me… It all sounded so positively sublime that it almost didn’t seem real, like it was something so otherworldly profound I didn’t even know how to imagine what it might have been like. As a severely sexually repressed, hormone-riddled, lonely pseudo-incel, I desperately wanted every bit of physical gratification a sexless premarital relationship could provide, but more than anything, I wanted the life-affirming sense of belonging and acceptance that came with it. You did, indeed, read that correctly; no matter how seethingly, desperately horny I may get, I don’t want to have sex until I’m married.

Concienctious Coitus Objector

While the typical 21st century debauchee will treat bedfellows like Pokemon and act like they gotta fornicate ’em all, bumping uglies with anyone they fancy just to feed their libido, I knew from a young age that I wanted something better. Although my decision to save myself for my wife may have originated in the church, my reasoning for upholding that belief all this time is something I’ve worked out on my own, and has next to nothing to do with God. Growing up, I always thought my pro-celibacy made me more attractive to girls, like it’d make them feel less threatened and, in return, more apt to want to be with me. Then, I grew up and realized girls like to engage in intercourse just as much as guys do, and telling them I would never put out as their boyfriend was the equivalent of telling them I cut my wiener off with a hacksaw and could never bring them satisfaction. Despite my firm stance on my own chastity, however, I knew not to be so foolish as to hope I might one day find a beautiful young woman who was both interested in me and an unsullied virgin as well. While I may have one day been so naive as to hope for such an absurd fallacy, I had long since lived and grown wise to the ways of the world. And let me be clear that when I say “beautiful young woman,” that is exactly what I wanted. There’s just no way around it: I am a shallow, superficial wretch who is too indecent to determine a woman’s compatibility with dating myself based on her personality and character alone. I would gladly take those things into consideration, sure, if she had a thin frame and stunning physical beauty to match. I was raised so much better than that; I am better than that, but alas, it remains my fatal flaw, my most toxic trait, and what I am most ashamed of.

Love, at Long Last

I believe with all my heart that the best thing you can do in this life is give yourself to someone completely and have them do the same with you. I’ve spent the vast majority of my life embarked on a perilous and expansive journey searching for the love of my life and the woman I want to devote myself to entirely. I went through hell and back three times over just to make it to my 30th birthday, but by the beard on my chin and the soap residue on my hands, I managed to just barely scratch and claw my way there. 

Just making it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I’m overjoyed to say that it wasn’t long after I did that I found the salvation I’d been searching for all those years at long last in a petite redhead named Piper Jones. After nearly two decades of turmoil and desolation on the barren road to true love, in the end it turns out all I had to do to seize everything I ever wanted was simply make the first move. As a coward in the truest sense of the word, naturally that “first move” amounted to nothing more than sending a message on Facebook, and even that I couldn’t manage without numbing my senses with enough of the devil’s hooch to pacify a juvenile Pygmy Hippopotamus.

I don’t regret how any of it played out, however, because I needed to crawl before I could walk, and before long Piper would teach me to soar. And regardless of how pitiful a gesture my DM may have been, it doesn’t change the fact that it turned out to be the best thing I ever did. Once things were finally set into motion between us, it didn’t take long for us both to see we were meant for each other. We knew after only our first three dates together, in fact. Three dates to fall in love, three dates to know what we had was true, verifiable love, and three dates to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we were with who we wanted to spend the rest of our lives with. I had to go through hell and reach rock bottom to get there, but my first three dates with Piper were nothing short of magical, and what happened during that time changed the course of my life forever.

Even after all these years, I replay everything that happened in my head over and over again, savoring the memories and trying my hardest never to lose my appreciation for what happened there. One of the first things I wanted to do with this new blog was record these memories so that they may become immortalized by the words I write on this blog, and so that I may share my own personal love story with the world. This is the story of my 30th birthday, and the time in my life when everything finally started to turn around for me. So, from co-working acquaintances to impassioned lovers, please sit back and let me tell you all about my storybook romance for the ages, the fable of my first three dates with my better half, and the tale of how I fell in love with Piper Paisley Jones.

The following is a work of memoir. It reflects my present recollection of past experiences, events, and conversations. Certain names and locations have been changed, and some events and dialogue have been compressed.

Can I Get a Connection?

Our story begins nearly a year before my 30th, inside a local department store located in a small and antiquated midwestern borough that’s biggest claims to fame are having a Super Wal-Mart and being the location where a few scenes of one of Keanu Reeves’ older and more obscure films were filmed. I’d been cashiering there for almost five years, and while retail was a far cry from the equally creative and lucrative career I always dreamt of, after a long and drawn-out, failed college career, it was the job I had to settle for. Although initially ashamed of my lowly entry level, blue collar position, and the complete lack of skills, knowledge, and creativity it required from me, over the years I came to find that it was exactly the job I needed.

With no girlfriends and virtually no friends to speak of (save my mother) for the bulk of my life, I knew all too well what it meant to be alone in this world. To be kept awake every night, wondering how many more days of solitary you’ll have to endure before you’d get to experience genuine human connection. To want to be held so badly, you feel a physical pain deep inside the pit of your stomach as you lie in bed at night with your eyes closed, trying to imagine what it’s like. To live every second of your life with a perpetual, incessant yearning for companionship that is never, and has never been quenched, not even for an instant. To, after so many years, start to lose hope that you’ll ever even get to know what it’s like to have someone to be there for you and the opportunity to be there for them.

This was never more true than when I first dropped out of college and was left to live in an apartment alone with an endless supply of idle time and nothing to do to pass it by but lie on the floor and stare at the ceiling. Not long after I found myself isolated in this small, contained environment day-in and day-out, video games, movies, and all other forms of entertainment I used to love nothing more than to fill my spare time with started to lose their allure completely, and I was left without the desire to do anything but sleep my life away. I thought of naps like pressing fast-forward for my life, and when I woke back up, I’d be that many more hours closer to the good stuff that was still eventually, surely to come. I wanted to hold that bloody button down for years if I had to, until there was something in my life worth waking up for.

It was at this time I realized just how much I took simply being around people for granted when I was still attending college. I missed the simple, impersonal things like walking the halls, eating in the crowded cafeteria, attending classes, and simply living my life in proximity to countless of my fellow peers doing the same. Even if I never got to have a deeper connection or relationship with any of them, I was at least able to find the bare minimum of social interaction that I needed to get by, just being a part of the crowd. Fortunately this dire, hopeless, and sorry solitary state I found myself in was short-lived, and it wasn’t long after that I landed my job at the department store. Once I started, I was able to find a similar satisfaction in the crowded hustle and bustle of the store. As arduous as it was having to drop out of two colleges, amass an insurmountable amount of debt in student loans, and then still end up working in retail, after some time working there I started to feel like I didn’t want it any other way. The department store afforded me something more than a college degree, a 401k, or health insurance ever could: structured, consistent social contact. Feigned social contact, but social contact nonetheless.

“Hi!” “How are you?” “That’s good! I’m good, thanks!” “Do you want to keep the hangers?” “Did you find everything okay today?” “That’s good.” “Thank you; have a good rest of your day!”

Everything I had to say was part of a predetermined, universal script, and almost every customer followed this formula to a “T.” As artificial and soulless as these empty cookie-cutter interactions may have been, I found great pleasure in the routine small talk and abbreviated social interaction they afforded me, with customers and co-workers alike. I wasn’t just surrounded by all types of people living their lives like I was at college, I was getting paid to interact and make small talk with them as well.

By going through these interactions repeatedly, dozens of times a day, I was once again able to find the minimum amount of human connection I needed to get by, and even a bit more. After discovering my job could serve as this sort of social life by-proxy, my job came to mean substantially more to me than just my 9-to-5. After flying high on nothing but the fumes of these meaningless, phony interactions for half a decade, however, the level of fulfillment I derived from my time there was starting to dwindle. By the time I turned 29, I desperately needed something more, something deeper, something palpable.

I was a Boy; She was a Girl. Can I Make it Any More Obvious?

I had hardly just turned 29, but was already dreading the immanent arrival of my 30th. I couldn’t tell you why, but for some reason I saw that name day as not just the biggest and most important birthday of my life, but a benchmark by which I absolutely must have done and achieved a certain amount of things. I had no career, I had no kids, I had no savings, I had heaps of debt, I was not in shape, and I didn’t own a house— but I was willing to refrain from giving myself grief about lacking any of those things because there were other milestones I hadn’t reached that I saw as infinitely more important. Just like after watching that musical 18 years prior, I was still actively, desperately on the prowl for my first kiss, first cuddle, and first girlfriend. By my 29th, obtaining these things wasn’t just my primary goal in life, it was the very reason I kept breathing, or even bothered getting out of bed every morning. 

It was the beginning of winter, and the time of the year when things died down a bit in the store, just before the huge rush for the holidays. It was early still, the sun was high, and the snow in the parking lot had yet to be plowed as I stood idle at my register, waiting for customers that never came. It was a day of little consequence, just one in a myriad of countless other equally uneventful days that made up most of my adult life at that time, each largely indistinguishable from the last. That is, until I happened to look out onto the sales floor, and everything changed forever. With the holidays fast approaching, the schedule that typically consisted of nothing but regular year-round workers was filled with new seasonal hires.

After taking a casual cursory glance around the store, I could make out the vague likeness of an employee I didn’t recognize in the distance, folding clothes in the misses department near the back of the store. The distinct salmon-colored lanyard around her neck, easily visible at a distance gave her away as a fellow employee, but I struggled to make out much else about her.

I could tell that it was without a doubt a female, and as one I’d never seen before, she started to draw my curiosity. Looking closer, she appeared small, thin, and had red hair. To say my interest was piqued would be an understatement, as this was exactly my ‘type.’ As a ‘Mr.’ actively seeking his ‘Mrs.’, I couldn’t help but take notice when new adult hires were exceptionally attractive, and even from across the store I knew she was something special. I tried to curb my excitement, however, as I reminded myself that after working there for five years only a few of the women hired had ever been an exact match for my shallow and wildly unrealistic standards. Frankly, I’d have been less surprised if this mystery employee somehow turned out to actually be an obese and elderly man with a Flock of Seagulls haircut than I would if she turned out to be what she appeared to be from across the store. Before long, the vague and distant blob moved much closer to the registers positioned near the front of the store, and continued to fold garb in a nearby aisle.

There she was, up close and in full Technicolor. I leaned forward against the register as if to brace myself for the potentially face-melting beauty I was about to behold, and in the static lull of the empty store, I took a good, long look. Flawless and immaculately crafted, she had a slender frame and petite physicality that, together, formed the most profoundly exquisite specimen of the female figure I’ve ever beheld. She was thin but not lanky, muscular but not swole, and a bit on the shorter side, but still tall enough that she could play the role of the big spoon well in a rousing hypothetical snuggle session. I figured anything shorter than myself (5’9′) was optimal, as I had come to understand that the girl being taller than the guy in a relationship is a major turn-off and potential deal-breaker for pretty much all women. Atop this ravishing display of the quintessentially flawless female, her crown blazed wildly, burnished brazenly with a thick and luscious fire-singed mane of tangerine locks. Layered, fiery, intertwined, and elegantly flowing downward, she wore it just past her shoulders in a radiating exhibition of scorching intrigue. The hairdo was complemented perfectly by her brilliantly fair complexion—a tender and unblemished epidermis more pale than even my own. Like the distinctive quirkiness in a Wes Anderson joint, this was surely Piper’s signature detail and the defining feature of her aesthetic.

As a rapidly aging 29-year-old, I was keenly aware of how important it was to also keep the age factor in mind when considering any potential mate, and thankfully Piper appeared to fit the bill in that regard as well. Appearing no younger than in her early 20’s, not only was she safe to pursue legally, even if just in my dreams, but she fell into what I considered the ideal age range for my prospective girlfriend as well. Statistically, I figured that, in general, younger was better for the sole reason that they were more likely to have a lower bodycount than more seasoned girls. Again, I’d been around the block enough times by then to know that I could never hope to find another appropriately-aged fellow virgin in this day and age, so the best I could do was hope and pray that when I did find the right girl, she didn’t have an absurd amount of sexual experience behind her. It stood to reason, then, that finding a younger girl also meant finding the closest thing I could get to another virgin. This, combined with the fact that I also didn’t want to be with anyone too young, as the last thing I needed was to be considered a ‘pedo’ or ‘groomer’ by anyone that saw us together, is how I determined the sweet spot for the age I was looking for was, at that time, 20-25.

She was beautiful, sexy, cute, and age-appropriate all rolled into one, and to this day I struggle to fathom how someone like her would ever choose someone like me. In time I’d come to know this saucy siren as the kindest, most genuine, and most selfless person I’ve ever met, and as much as I’d like to sit here and tell you that’s what fueled my fervor for her in the first place, I’d be lying if I said it was anything other than her bodacious bod, fabulous face, and heavenly hair that first drew me to her. I was nearly on the verge of drooling when she headed to a different aisle again, this time behind a shelf that obstructed my view of her completely.

Abruptly awoken from my lustful musing, I promptly snapped out of it and right back to reality. I took a second to unscramble my thoughts and anxiously checked my surroundings to confirm there was no one around to witness my shameless rubbernecking. I was still behind my register, but it felt like I had just arrived back from a surveying expedition on a distant planet that’s just made a startling new discovery. There were still no customers, and the cashiers at the nearby registers stood similarly idle at their positions, some chatting, and some perhaps off having daydreams of their own.

Just as I had gathered my thoughts and come back down to earth, I turned to see the sexy seductress walking up to the return bins behind the register area to grab some customer returns to put back on the floor. I held my breath and stood dead still as if attempting to elude detection by a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and hoped to God she didn’t come any closer. I had an entire elaborate system for how to deal with unavoidable encounters with girls of her caliber, and I was not prepared in the slightest for such an endeavor.

Thankfully, she grabbed a pile of clothes and turned in the opposite direction, but before she did, she spent an extended period crouched down at the bins, gathering returns. I stood there, frozen in place, and although I had gained an extensive understanding of her anatomy earlier, as I looked over this time I managed to get a much more proximate and comprehensive view of her vivacious visage.

Her face was just as inexplicably exquisite as her chassis, like something straight off a model from one of those pompous high fashion rags, but yet also rife with another humble and enigmatic something that no placeholder poser could ever replicate. I noticed the faintest freckles dancing delicately across her nose and cheeks as she continued to get more immaculate by the second, and it became almost too much to behold. If a manager were to come by I’d be in dire straights, but I didn’t care. My manager’s watchful eye, the other co-workers in the store, the possibility of a customer coming to my register, what time my break was, what snack I was going to have on my break, what video game I was going to play when I got home—none of that mattered anymore. Nothing mattered but her. Still lost in the striking facets of her semblance, I was suddenly stopped in my awe-struck tracks as I noticed her nose.

Distinguished as it was adorable, her nose was just as perfect as the rest of her, but what befuddled me to no end was what she had dangling from underneath it. A thin, colorful metal ring protruded from below her nostrils in a septum piercing that I should have, by all accounts, seen as garish, but for reasons I don’t fully understand, did not. The bauble was a black iridescent alloy, a small halo covered with a lustrous metallic surface vibrantly abound with the same colorful effect you can see in the sheen of a puddle of engine oil. With a rainbow of colors wrapped around the contours of the ring that seem to change subtly as the light hits it at different angles, the adornment was something I should have seen as off-putting and tawdry, but was instead something I was profoundly captivated by. I shuttered at the thought of someone jamming a metal rod through the middle of their perfectly good nose, and how I should have been repulsed by just the idea of it… But there was just something about the way she wore it that I couldn’t put my finger on, something about it that struck my fancy in a way I didn’t even know was possible.

Truly, it was a barbaric and grotesque mutilation, and unlike anything I’d ever found appealing on a woman before… But on her, somehow it was different. It just seemed to belong on her face, the same way her ears and eyes did. Within a very short period of time after seeing her bedazzled schnoz for the first time that day, I went from shocked to disgusted, disgusted to appalled, appalled to confused, confused to curious, and finally from curious to electrically enthralled. 

Seeing Piper for the first time that day felt unreal, like someone that knew me better than anyone got onto a computer, opened up The Sims, went into the character creator, spent hours upon hours meticulously crafting the woman of my dreams and the epitome of all that I desire in a mate, even something I didn’t even know I desired, and then that digital avatar inexplicably turned into a living, breathing woman, walked right out of the game and into the real world, and then came and got a job at the same ho-dunk small town department store I worked at. She was all I could think about, but at the time I still didn’t even know what to call her, and her name would remain a mystery for a few more weeks.

Seeing the new girl at work that day, she seemed less human and more like a sort of deity you’d find carved out of marble after discovering the lost city of Atlantis, and between this darling rebel’s stupefying figure, hypnotizing hair, gobsmacking face, bewitching nose, and ripe young age, I found myself more fiercely physically attracted to Piper than any other girl I’d ever fancied in the past. Her allure may have been stronger for me than any other girl’s, but the fact remained that I had never hardly spoken to a girl like her, let alone courted one. This girl was God’s magnum opus, and although I wasn’t foolish enough to think she could one day be mine, it was still nice to know girls like that existed outside of Instagram.

Miraculously, Piper never noticed my unabashed gaze that day. After that initial sighting, I started to see her around the store regularly, but it would still be some time before I’d actually come face-to-face with the sultry belle. You might think this intense attraction I had for Piper would have drawn me to her and propelled my desire to interact with and pursue her, but the effect it actually had was just the opposite.

Our Scars Remind Us That The Past is Real

In a perfect world, there’s nothing I would have liked more than to walk up to this bombshell babydoll, woo her into my esteem with my smooth talking and suave moves, and then travel off into the sunset with her at my side. But this world is far from perfect, and I told myself I’d experienced enough harrowing encounters with her breed over the years to know such a notion was nothing more than erroneous reverie. The annals of my courting history consisted of nothing but failure after agonizing failure, and the heartache and humiliation I experienced over the course of those years was neither quite healed nor soon forgotten.

Being both neurodivergent and painfully shy to boot meant I’d always been both exceedingly terrified of interacting socially with my peers and equally as clueless as to how to go about doing so. It’s near impossible for me to pick up on cues, interpret inflections, or recognize changes in tone, making nearly every social interaction I tried to be a part of coarse and hopelessly awkward. Whether it was getting tongue-tied, fumbling an attempt to properly say what I meant, or just flat-out saying something weird and off-putting, more often than not I found a way to mess up every interaction, especially with girls.

Each failed attempt and blubbering blunder at social interaction I had during these formative years helped contribute to my apprehension at engaging cordially with others as an adult, but what really pushed my social sensibilities over the edge was the word “creepy.” For the bulk of my life, this dreadful word was the boogeyman under my bed, the skeleton in my closet, and the bane of my existence. A handle prescribed to me largely by my pretty female peers early and often throughout my adolescence, having the vile moniker used to my detriment the majority of my life meant that by the time I was an adult, the only thing stronger than my aversion to the word was the fear of hearing someone associate me with the wretched two-syllable sobriquet ever again.

By age 29, rejection and name-calling from women was all I knew, and when I started seeing Piper around the store, I told myself she was the same as every looker in the past who’d done me wrong. She was a beautiful woman, and like one of Pavlov’s dogs salivating on queue, just seeing her was enough to kick my self-destructive thoughts into high gear. Despite telling myself constantly that I’d never get to be with a girl like her, however, I found it exceedingly difficult to keep myself from imagining what it might be like.

Staying Grounded

The origins of my contempt for the word “creepy” date back decades, to my days in middle and high school, where the amount of times kids hurled the appalling moniker in my direction was rivaled only by the number of times I washed my hands in a day. Regardless of how I talked to or looked at certain girls, everything I did seemed to be something they considered grounds for calling me the wretched ‘c’ word. With no apparent rhyme or reason to their slander, it wasn’t long before I became terrified of talking to pretty girls altogether, and the eggshells I had to walk on to do it.

As much as I tried to avoid interacting with these girls, however, there were still plenty of occasions during class time where it was simply unavoidable. Rather than get discouraged by these mandatory meetings with the opposition, I used them as an opportunity to test ways I could minimize the amount of times I was called ‘creepy’ as much as possible. Over time, and through a great deal of trial-and-error, I developed various mental strategies to help keep the number of times I was called ‘creepy’ to a minimum.

One such strategy I found effective was to build up the pretty girls as high as possible in my mind, while simultaneously putting myself down as much as possible. For example, anytime a pretty girl was in sight, I told myself, regularly and relentlessly, that guys like me didn’t get girls like her, period. I told myself I was a fat, ugly, worthless creep who didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as her—and that she was a flawless, heavenly creature who didn’t deserve the displeasure of having to stoop down and speak to someone like me. Additionally, I had phrases like “She freaking hates me,” “She never wants to see me again for the rest of her life,” “I should just go kill myself,” “I’m such a creep,” “She thinks I’m stalking her,” and “I’m a piece of garbage.” – that I would repeat in my head ad-nauseam and flooded my conscious with similar thoughts of hyperbolic self-loathing anytime I saw a pretty girl.

Whether or not I actually subscribed to these perverse ideologies was of no consequence, as I found merely reciting them mentally effective enough to both keep my mind on the straight and narrow and dispel any delusions I might have of trying to act like some sort of Don Juan and attempting to make one of these girls my lover. I figured out a long time ago that if you see yourself as an equal to the person you’re interested in romantically, it’s a lot easier to slip up, say something stupid, and ruin the chance of ever becoming friends with that person, let alone marrying and diddling them. I kept myself in check by keeping my expectations low, hopes non-existent, thinking of myself as stool, and thinking of the girls as gods.

Another method I readily employed to keep myself from thinking with my little head, prevent my mind from straying, and help combat potential creepy behavior was to take a step back from any given situation with a girl and ask myself, “What if?”, and then proceed to come up with as many worst-possible outcomes I could think up for that situation, no matter how unfeasible they may seem, and tell myself they’re actually very plausible. For example, say I felt especially dandy on one of the days I worked with Piper and got the urge to go up and attempt to speak with her. Before trying anything, I would first ask myself, “What if I actually did try to go up and talk to Piper? What if I tried to start a conversation with her?”

Then, my mind will go down the rabbit hole of possibilities as I answer this musing: “Well, my worst fear may become realized, and she may start to think I’m creepy—but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. She might go around to all our co-workers, telling them how creepy I am, and then the opinions of dozens of people I’ve known for years would start to go down the pooper. All of these people I was on good terms with will start thinking they’ve been wrong about me for all these years and that I am indeed the creepiest of creeps. Now they would all start treating me like garbage, and my workplace would become a living hell. They wouldn’t want to make small talk with me anymore; I couldn’t make small talk with them, and suddenly I’ll have lost the only sorry bit of an excuse for a social life I had left. Gang mentality will take effect, and rumors of my creepy ways will get exaggerated and blown out of proportion and eventually make their way up to the store managers, and before I know it, I’ll be called into my boss’ office for allegations of sexual harassment.

That’s when I’ll have a decision to make: do I wait for them to fire me, or do I quit before they have the chance to so it won’t look as bad on my permanent record? Either way, I’d lose my job, I couldn’t pay rent anymore, and I’d have to move back into my parent’s house with my cat. I couldn’t afford video games or movies anymore, and with nothing to do and no one to see, my loneliness would skyrocket to heights I can’t even imagine. I’d become suicidal again, and suddenly it’d be just like it was two decades ago, getting into major altercations with my dad every night, and in turn make my mother’s life miserable. I’d constantly force my mom to choose mine or my dad’s side, and that will gradually drive a wedge between them that ultimately ends in their divorce.

My cat wouldn’t like living with my mom’s dogs, and her dogs wouldn’t like living with my cat. Eventually there’d be a showdown between the two, and my cat would scratch the bloody heck out of my mom’s dog. The dog would need stitches, and then my cat would have to get put to sleep for being dangerously aggressive…” I’m telling you, it’s a freaking slippery slope once someone thinks you’re “creepy.” As outlandish or silly as these potential scenarios may seem, I’ve found going over them in my head effective all the same at extinguishing every last bit of hope I may still have mustered for being with the girl, therefore preventing me from pulling any wildcard moves with her.

With these two methods in place, I was as docile as a wiener dog who was given far too much CBD and was in no condition to start being creepy around women. Before I even met Piper, I had her pegged as the typical pretty girl type, conceited and cruel. Under this assumption, I decided to avoid Piper at work like the plague after I saw her for the first time that day. We had one of the smallest stores in the district, however, and I knew it was only a matter of time before I’d have to pay the pied piper and face Piper again. With the weeks leading up to this inevitable meeting, I tried to evaluate the situation from every possible angle and prepare for anything. I thought of the best way to handle any given outcome and the best way to keep my awkwardness to a minimum. There was nothing that could have prepared me for what actually transpired on that fateful day, however.

She’s Like Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, or Aphrodite

A couple weeks after my first Piper sighting, the day finally came that I had no choice but to man-up and meet this jezebel once and for all. I was at my register again, this time checking out a customer, when Piper came up once again to grab some returns to put back on the sales floor. After I finished I handed the receipt to the customer, and then glanced over to see her standing near the bins. Just on the other side of the register area, there she stood, facing my direction, with a pile of returns in hand as she talked about something with the manager. I couldn’t make out what they were discussing, but she appeared bubbly as can be, giggling often. She was totally distracted, and unable to look away I suddenly realized that I still didn’t know what to call this amber-haired minx.

Not wanting to allow another second to go by without knowing what to call this goddess among women, I decided to use her chat with the manager as the distraction I needed for the chance to catch a glimpse of her name tag. This was easier said than done, however, due to some precarious positioning by our company wear. For a chain store, our dress code was incredibly lax and allowed us to wear almost anything, as long as it looked nice. The only real sort of “uniform” we all had to wear was a salmon-colored lanyard around our necks, each sporting a white plastic name tag hanging from the end of it—which is where my predicament lied. On most of the female employees, Piper included, the end of the lanyard lay across their chest, meaning that their name tag dangled right at the bottom of their busts, meaning that if I wanted to finally know what to call her, I was going to have to sneak a peek at her dirty pillows for at least a second. I stopped thinking about it, and as she kept talking, with everything to lose, I went for it and quickly looked at her name tag that just happened to be resting against her chest.

“Piper.” Her name was “Piper.” “Of course it was,” I thought to myself; she looked just like a “Piper.” How could it have been anything but “Piper?” I couldn’t help but unfurl a smile at this revelation, but I became so smitten with her name that I never immediately thought to re-avert my gaze upward. “Piper.” I wanted to shout it from the rooftops and write it on the skyline. It really was the perfect name, and it only drove Cupid’s arrow deeper into my heart. Still looking at her name tag as I basked in the glory of her marvelous moniker, and with a big, dumb smile on my face, I finally realized where my eyes were, and looked back up. By the time I finally realigned my stare upward, she had finished her conversation and was just standing there, a pile of clothes at her side, staring directly at me with a completely blank expression. She started walking in my direction, and at that moment my entire life flashed before my eyes as I awaited my theoretical execution.