learning to drive

‘i had really weird dreams last night.’

‘what did you dream about?’ i asked looking down at my cup of blueberry tea and holding my phone against my ear.

‘i dreamt that you died. i was taking you for granted in the dream and then someone told me you died and i was so devastated! i was so relieved when i woke up, i was like, thank god!’

my friendship with quinn got infected with honesty before it could even walk on its own, and as it grew, it wasn’t ashamed of silly little confessions. and as it grew, it became strong enough to push boulders off my chest.

i didn’t talk to quinn the first time i saw him. i walked into a coffee shop with a friend, she asked for an iced latte, and turned to me. ‘i’ll have the same,’ i said to one of the baristas; the one that wasn’t quinn, the one whose name was, as i later found out, caleb and who was always in a hurry to close the shop whenever he was working evening shifts. my friend asked me why i didn’t want a hot coffee and i said i didn’t really care and she said she thought i hated iced coffees, and i said i didn’t, i just preferred hot coffee, and caleb said he was going to make me a hot one if that’s what i prefer, and i said i really don’t mind iced, and all that would be a completely trivial thing, except that it gave me more time to look around the coffee shop, and that’s when i saw quinn for the first time. he was wearing a tie dye shirt and had his long blondish hair pulled up in a bun. he looked like a misplaced surfer to me, that’s the first thing i thought about him, and the second one was that he seemed like a very happy person, too happy somehow.

the second time i saw quinn he asked for my name to write on a coffee cup. ‘whiskers,’ i said.

‘whiskers,’ he repeated with a definite lack of a question mark and sharpied a set of whiskers on either side of the name.

it had been almost half a year and quinn still hadn’t once made me feel inadequate or inappropriate. he has this wisdom about him, this ancient curiosity and possibly infinite acceptance that i had never witnessed before.

i was completely right about one thing from the very start – he has a surfboard, but he doesn’t have an ocean (he’s surrounded by giant waves of colorado mountains). he loves eating eggs and toast for breakfast and he constantly blurts out the most poetic things when we talk. he really likes praying mantises a lot and he has (had, until 2018) a flip phone. he whistles in public and he says ‘sweet’ a lot. he plays bass and he’s better at it than he thinks, and he’s getting better all the time. he used to leave notes with his name hidden everywhere when he was a kid, and he applied for a job at durango joe’s six times until he finally got it. he never let me win chess against him, and he told me his apartment door code about two months after we met. he always wants to get better at things; he wants to get better at loving people, he wants to get better at being sarcastic, he wants to get better at keeping his word. he laughs at silly puns like they’re the best jokes that he’s ever heard, and he hates it when people give him unsolicited advice.

quinn taught me to drive a car and he also taught me that not being apologetic about anything that i am or am not can actually work in practice.

 

i wrote that four years ago; four years later, we’ve been married for almost two.

a (relatively) long time ago, long before any betrothment arrangements, quinn said to me, ‘i wish i’d met you sooner so that i could have known you longer’. four years later, we’re still catching up.

four years later, he’s still teaching me to drive (now more seriously than ever), and he’s still trying to become better – at everything, at life (at car stuff, at taking care of himself, at being a manager (taking care of other people), at giving a fuck about countries and planets). it’s funny, the more you know someone, the harder it becomes to see them – to really see them. (maybe it’s like that one scene from ferris bueller’s day off; maybe if you get too close, everything becomes too blurry and distorted to see?) so once in a while i have to stop and look around – at this life i’ve started building with this person, at all the plants we’re growing, at all the plans we’re making, at all the places we’ve gone and the things we’ve seen and the experiences we’ve shared, and the people we’ve met – and feel lucky for the way that happenstances occur; completely wild chains of events that, in retrospect, seem to have been meticulously planned.

this morning, quinn woke up at 5:30 and told me about a dream he had in which i was mad at him; four years later, his nightmares still revolve around me, i suppose.

unfortunately (or very fortunately) there is no reason for me to be writing letters to quinn anymore (seeing as we share an address), but why should that stop me? or maybe i’ve come full circle and entered the ‘shouting my love from the rooftops’ phase again? either way, we can consider this one/both of the above.

what a happiness i’ve found, one that i never looked for or, in strange ways, felt deserving of – a friend oh so adventurous and compassionate and supportive; and so thoughtful and magical, and a million other adjectives that i could write out. the marvellous you, who makes me feel so safe and so daring; so cared for and so capable; and so loved; and like you and i can do anything (please refer to all the amazing, daunting things we have done).

aš tave myliu :*