#Yearof50. Entry 14: Meet Cute

I met my darling Mark Julien 20 years ago this weekend. For this entry, I will step back and feature Mark as my special guest author to share our origin story…

Stacy is the love of my life. He is my soul mate, my best friend and confidant. We have been together now for 20 years. To me he is always the best looking man in any room, and if he is not in that room I find myself missing his presence. To honour my relationship to this wonderful man, I thought that it was finally time for me to share with you how we first met.

In August of 2001, I was struggling to make a career for myself as a freelance illustrator. My friend Jan Sage was then director of admissions and recruitment at OCAD and, wanting to help me supplement my income, offered me a job as a recruiter for the university. Expressing an interest in the position, but not sure that I wanted to commit to the job, Jan suggested that I attend the annual recruiters’ workshop that was being hosted that year by Queen’s University. The workshop, Jan said, would serve to answer most of the questions I had about being a university recruiter and would provide me with all of the information I would need in order to make my decision. With an open mind, I agreed to attend the workshop.

Hitching a ride with a colleague named Julianna, we made our way to Kingston bright and early on a Tuesday morning. We arrived at the Queen’s campus uninformed about where to go in order to sign in for the three-day conference. Without the benefit of cell phones, I deduced that if we were from the admissions and recruitment department from OCAD then, logically, we would sign in for the conference through the same department at Queen’s. Somehow locating the admissions and recruitment office, we walked up to the front desk to inquire about the conference. Behind the desk, to my delight, a handsome man with the most incredible eyes greeted us. That person, of course, was Stacy.

With a kind voice and pleasant demeanor, Stacy filled us in about the conference. He enthusiastically told us about the day events and proceeded to give us directions to the residence where we would be staying. Smitten from the very beginning, I tried in vain to pay attention to Stacy’s instructions. But, in truth, my brain had its own ideas and, instead of processing what he was saying, two questions just kept repeating themselves in my head: “I wonder if he’s gay?” and “I wonder if he’s single”?

Quickly settling in, and eager for more interactions with Stacy, I unpacked, freshened up, and made my way to the first session of the workshop. It was during that session that I discovered that recruiters from each of the 20 universities from Ontario were all at this workshop to represent their schools. Wanting to do a good job representing OCAD, but determined to stand out, I resolved to make a lasting impression.

With as much stealth as I could muster, I maneuvered myself into Stacy’s vicinity as much as humanly possible. During the information sessions, I would time my departure to coincide with his in order to give us an opportunity to talk. During breaks,I would purposely separate myself from the group in the hopes of providing him an opening to come speak with me and, with every chance that I got, I openly tried to engage with him.

To my frustration, however, all my efforts seemed to go unnoticed. Occasionally, Stacy would compliment me on my wardrobe (to this day I have a great collection of funky, vintage shirts) but these compliments were quick and brief and never resulted in the kind of interaction that I was looking for. I like to refer to them as “drive-by compliments”, because by the time I turned to respond to them, Stacy would have already moved on and begun a conversation with somebody else. Clinging to the slim hope that those brief interactions with him were a sign that he was interested in me, I continued to persevere.

On the first night of the workshop, our Queen’s hosts decided to take us all out for a night on the town. After they bussed us all to a little Kingston nightclub, I decided to make full use of the dance floor and try to impress Stacy with my signature moves. As the night progressed, my moves began to garner me some attention from my colleagues. Though I enjoyed the attention, the real reason that I had taken to the floor—to urge Stacy to come and talk to me—still eluded me.

When our hosts announced that the bus that brought us to our destination was shuttling our party back to Queen’s, I knew that since Stacy lived in Kingston he would probably not be boarding the bus. Hoping that when our colleagues had left I could have some time alone with Stacy, I decided to stay at the bar; even though I had no idea how to get back to the campus.

By last call, with some liquid courage in my veins, I finally summoned enough courage to go and talk with Stacy. To my dismay, however, after only a few minutes of talking with him, Stacy excused himself for the evening and left me alone with my drink.

Armed with a terrible sense of direction, I was left alone to try and make my way back to the residence at the university. Though I remarkably made it back to the Queen’s campus with out much trouble, I had unfortunately forgotten the name of the residence in which I was staying. Convinced that the name of the residence that housed me was “Trinity College”, I wandered around the campus for about an hour asking for directions to a residence that did not exist. In the end, finding a sign with a campus map on it, I realized my mistake and eventually found my way back to Victoria Hall. Grateful that I did not have to spend the night sleeping on a park bench, I snuggled into my dorm room bed and, just before drifting off, wondered what in the world I had to do to get Stacy to notice me.

For the next two days, I continued to try everything I could think of to steal some meaningful moments with Stacy. Though he was always pleasant to me, at times I even thought that he was giving me signals that he was interested, we never seemed to get the moment that I was looking for.

On the last night of the workshop, Queen’s hosted a reception at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre. With art being very much in my wheelhouse, I decided that the reception would be the perfect place to make a lasting impression on Stacy. Knowing that night would be my last chance to woo him, I pulled out the tightest shirt from my luggage that I had and I arrived fashionably late to the reception.

When I got to the gallery, I grabbed a glass of wine and began mingling with the other guests in the foyer. When it came time to view the collection, I noticed that Stacy was greeting all the guests as they entered the galleries. Realizing that I would probably not get the chance to talk with him about the artwork, because he was manning the door, I reluctantly entered the galleries. As I viewed the work, however, to my surprise Stacy sidled up beside me and asked me what I thought of the exhibition. For the first time since arriving at the workshop I got the chance to really talk with him, and I convinced myself that there was a spark there worth pursuing.

Leaving the exhibitions with Stacy by my side, some of the other guests came up to us and asked Stacy why I was permitted to enter the galleries with a glass of wine. Unbeknownst to me, making sure no wine entered the galleries was why he was greeting people at the entrance. Having been busted for giving me preferential treatment, Stacy smoothly replied. “Well, Mark is an artist and I know he wouldn’t do anything to harm the work”.

Taking his reply as a sign that he was interested in me, I happily made my way across the street to the dinning hall where we were to be fed and, later in the evening, entertained by a dance. Arriving at the hall, having alienated my colleague Julianna earlier, I found myself without a place to sit. Thankfully for me, I had made a good impression on my colleagues from the University of Ottawa who, when seeing I was alone, kindly invited me to join them at their table.

Luck must have been on my side that evening, because when I looked up from my seat, in my direct line of sight, diagonally across the hall from me sat Stacy. As the evening progressed, though I socialized with my new friends from uOttawa, I kept glancing over in Stacy’s direction. Feeling confident because of our earlier interaction at the gallery, I eventually made eye contact with Stacy from across the room and raised my wine glass in his direction. Again I felt it, a spark so intense it seemed to charge the entire room.

Toward the end of the dinner, to my delight, Stacy made his way over to my table. Proclaiming that my table was “the most attractive one at the event”. I blushed. Only to have Stacy - to my great confusion - proceed to ignore me and instead talk up all of the women in the vicinity. Afraid that I might have misjudged him, I began to doubt the spark that I had felt.

Thankfully, as I pondered the situation over dessert, however, our eyes met again and I decided to let things play out until I got a definitive answer.

When dinner was over, I was one of the first people to take to the dance floor. Surrounded by my new uOttawa friends, I did my very best to own the floor. At one point in the evening, I noticed that Stacy had also gotten up to dance. Surrounded by his Queen’s colleagues, he had taken a rose from the centerpiece of one of the dinner tables and was dancing with it in his hand.

Determined to send my own mixed signal, I went over to where he was dancing, grabbed the rose out of his hand, put it in my teeth and then returned to the women from uOttawa that I had been dancing with. Knowing that Stacy was watching me, I then passed the rose from my teeth to the teeth of one of the uOttawa reps, initiating a game that would send that rose, from teeth to teeth, around the dance floor.

After sending the rose on its journey I quickly lost track of it. Then Micheal Jackson’s “Beat It” had come on and I clearly had to concentrate on the music and my choreography in order to get the most out of the song. Exhausted at the end of the song, however, I remember turning to leave the floor when Stacy stopped me in my tracks. With the rose in hand Stacy said, “Look what I’ve got.”

Without missing a beat, I looked him in the eyes and said, “If you want to pass that to me you have to do it properly”. Putting the rose in his teeth, Stacy passed it to me and when I went to retrieve it I lingered just long enough for him to realize that my intentions with him were different than they had been with our friends from uOttawa.

Finally getting the message, Stacy made up for lost time and asked me if I would like to go someplace else with him. With breathless anticipation, we left campus, hopped in a cab and made our way to Wally’s the only gay bar in Kingston. Seeing that it was a Thursday night, however, no one was at Wally’s, and so we made our way to two other bars until we finally decided to go to Stages. Though Stages is probably the straightest bar in Kingston, I didn’t care as long as I was getting to finally spend time with the boy I had been chasing for the past three days.

When last call came around, Stacy and I left Stages and began walking toward the Queen’s campus. At one point, Stacy stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and told me that I could either leave and make my way back to the university, or I could continue walking and go home with him. Being the sweet man that he is, he told me that he wasn’t ready for our night to be over and that he had no expectations other than getting to spend more time with me. Understanding that I wasn’t just some “trick” and also not wanting the night to be over, I agreed to go home with him.

When we got to his apartment, we went into his living room and I went directly to his bookcase and sat down in front of it. I have always believed you can tell a lot about a person from what is on their bookcase. Sitting on the hardwood floor, we began our talk about books. But that was just the jumping-off point. We talked about a lot of things that night and didn’t get off that floor until the morning sun started streaming though his living room windows. It was only at that moment that we stopped talking; only at that moment did we kiss.

With just a few hours before the workshop was set to begin again, Stacy asked me if I would like to try and get some sleep. He offered to share his bed with me so that we could snuggle. Wanting to be as close to him as possible, I of course accepted his invitation.

Excusing himself, he went to his bedroom and thoughtfully changed the sheets. He then asked me what I usually sleep in. When I said, “a t-shirt and underwear”, he went to his dresser, rifled through his drawers, and picked out his softest t-shirt for me to wear.

I can still remember the feeling of him holding me as we went to sleep. Even back then I think that I knew I had found the piece in my life that I had been missing –the one person who was destined to make me whole.

The next day, neither of us was in very good shape to participate in the workshop. I struggled through the morning sessions, tired and giddy, wishing all the while that I could have just stayed snuggling with him in his bed.

At the end of the morning we had to say goodbye to each other. I had to go back to Toronto and he was scheduled to go visit his family in Aylmer, Quebec. I remember being sad on the drive home with Julianna, but keeping that sadness and my three-day romance a secret. Those three days were mine and I wasn’t ready to share them with just anyone. Instead I replayed those days over in my head on the long ride back to Toronto. I must have been horrible company.

So much was uncertain back then, so much had to be figured out. All I knew was that I had found someone special and I would do everything in my power to hold on to him.

So, that is the story about how Stacy and I first met. Well, it is my version of the story anyway. I am sure Stacy has his own take on our first meeting and his point of view is probably quite different. Oh, and by the way: the name of the place where that fateful dinner and dance occurred was Ban Righ Hall. Exactly eight years later to the day, Stacy and I held our wedding dinner and reception there.

Like I said in the beginning, I have been with Stacy for 20 years now. During that time we have had our trials and our tribulations, our ups and our downs but through it all there is nobody I would rather have by my side. He is my strength when I am weakened, my compass when I am lost or confused, and my light in the darkness. My husband is smart and funny, charming and loyal, kind and brave and the first person I want by my side when things is the world seem uncertain. His example inspires me to be a better person, his unconditional love validates my truth, his presence emboldens and strengthens me and when I lack the courage to follow my dreams I only have to look into his beautiful eyes in order to find it.

***

In summary: I was a completely insecure idiot and thank the Powers that Mark had the courage to share his feelings for me. Also, tight shirts work wonders.