He wrote my name in Elvish

You’re my north star when
I’m lost and feeling blue

“What if we got a frosty, adult beverage instead?” He asked when I suggested a coffee date and I cheered inside—I have always hated coffee but it seemed like the safest go-to for first dates, especially first dates with someone you met on a dating website.

It wouldn’t be my first date with someone I met on OKCupid. In the month that I had been single I’d managed to go on ten or eleven first dates. Several coffee dates, one dinner date that was interminable where I learned he had five kids and was clearly still hung up on his ex, and one ill-advised tryst in a run-down duplex (ill-advised or not we saw each other for two or three weeks before I dumped him over text and he told me to fuck off and have a nice life, which (so far anyway) I have).

I agreed to meet him at little hole-in-the-wall bar in the next city and it wasn’t until I got there that I realized two things: I didn’t know his name and I had no real idea what he looked like. His one picture was grainy and taken from a distance. Realizing that I would have to take a chance and guess at who he was made me nervous for the first time. I almost didn’t go in. I walked up to the front door (it was red but has since been painted white) and my hand faltered on the ornate brass handle wishing I’d had the forethought to ask his name or what he’d be wearing. There were people coming up the walk behind me and if they hadn’t been there I think I would have turned around, jumped in my bucket of bolts Buick with its maroon velour upholstery, and gone home.

When I opened the door the smell of yeast and hops was overwhelming but welcome and I immediately saw I needn’t have worried. I recognized him from behind and I strode forward, imitating a more confident woman, and tapped him on the shoulder though I had no idea what I would say. As he turned around and slid off the bar stool in one fluid motion he spoke first.

“I guess we forgot to get each other’s names,” he laughed, and it was a comfortable sound even then. “I’m Cactuar, lets get a quieter table over there.”

We talked about New York, where he’d been stationed for the last week setting up a computer something or other for NYPD and we talked about Tulsa, a place I’d left less than a year before and still missed sorely. He wrote my name in Elvish and Aurebesh and told me a long story about an English couple he’d met on the subway. His voice was loud and his put-on accent less than convincing. At some point he asked if I was hungry and suggested we go for sushi because he knew this little place that had the best sushi. I’d already been and already loved it and almost said “Ugh, marry me” in jest when he said “You haven’t lived until you’ve eaten it.” Now I wish I would have.

After dinner when he signed his name on the check and I asked him how to pronounce his last name he laughed and said he didn’t know. What should have been a weird red flag was just an amusing story–his family hails from Germany and has splintered all over the US and each little familial unit says the name a little different. We were still discussing it as we walked out the door. We said the usual  things you say when you end the date, “had a nice time”, “thanks for dinner”, you get the drift and I thought the date had concluded and so I walked swiftly out to my car in the darkened lot. He shouted across the distance that he’d like to go out again and that he would text me. And he did.

Five years later, to the day, we were married. And even now he says that I ran away at the end of the date. All of our friends believe him.