Pax Nortona – A Blog by Joel Sax
From the Land of the Lost Blunderbuss
Home - Writing - Book of Days - Joel tells a– well, — some
Joel tells a– well, — some
Posted on July 22, 2003 in Book of Days Partnership Silicon Valley
Note: This is part of a series based on exercises from A Writer’s Book of Days. It’s something of a rebellion against the Friday Five and similar tupperware content memes.
Today’s topic: The first time I saw Lynn.
The anecdote condenses nicely. “Where did you meet your wife?” people ask. “At a party that I wasn’t planning on going to,” I say. That tells everything and I don’t usually go on, even if they question me. To talk about it gives away the mystery, the beauty. Tonight I shall break my rule, but I still will not give all away.
Kanef had moved into a cooperative household, the pieces of the gigantic ranch house on Embarcadero owned by several singles. It predated the tract houses and mansions around it. When I got there, I took a tour led by the man who’d later become our lawyer, John Hackman. I kept to the back, laughing on cue, saying nothing as they pointed out the carpenter gothic eccentricities of the place.
I met Lynn in the living room, when I finished the tour and sought out someone I knew. My roommate, Keith, was talking to two women. I joined him mostly because I didn’t like being a stranger and didn’t have the courage to walk up to anyone else, wine glass in hand, and quickly learn how inferior my educational background and my salary was to their’s. This was Silicon Valley — Silly Con Valley — where education alone made people important if even their minds didn’t stir up a single original idea.
The four of us talked about AIDS because one of the women — Diana Egly — was a volunteer AIDS educator. I listened mostly and learned. Diana’s intelligence and energy astounded me. I clung to every word. Next to Diana sat a scrawny little woman who followed the conversation similarly. Surely, the talk got around to mortality and this is where the small woman and myself got into the discussion because we’d both known people to die suddenly. I forgot what else we talked about — Lynn kept a better list, but at the end of the evening, she needed a ride home. Diana could not take her and her bike there. I offered that I had a bike rack. Lynn accepted and I hitched the rack and the bike to the back of my Tercel. Drove two miles to her house and, after I lifted the bike off the back and started to stow the rack, stammered out a request for a date.
That’s how this thing of sixteen years and counting all began. I still own the Tercel and the bike rack. They’re down in my garage. Lynn shares the bed.
Others who participate:
Want to participate? First either get yourself a copy of A Writer’s Book of Days by Judy Reeves or read these guidelines. Then either check in to see what the prompt for the day is or read along in the book.
Tomorrow’ topic/prompt: Write about being late.
