THEN: “It seems to me that the conversations I have with you are better than any conversations I have ever had with anyone else. So, if you feel the same way, I think we should become very seriously involved and probably get married. Or stop hanging out, if you don’t.”

Then I VERY loudly semi-shrieked “THE FIRST ONE” and we finished our meal, did not even kiss, and he left for the Alps.

Obviously I assumed he would die in the Alps and this would be the great tragedy of my life. He did not die in the Alps.

Then the day he got back from the Alps he emailed me to say “do you want to see 300 tonight at the movies, and then help me walk my dog?”

I had thought “walk my dog” was a euphemism, but in fact did find myself walking a very dubious dog around Hoboken with him.

Then we took the elevator up to his floor, and started frantically tearing each other’s clothes off as the doors began to open and were absolutely having sex by the time we got to his apartment.

The next morning I texted a large number of my friends to tell them “there’s NOTHING wrong with his dick” bc I had expected there would be a catch and was absolutely willing to work around most dick oddities.

My mom also got this text.

OH, additional cute detail, after the sex it was like 2am and I asked if I could sleep over instead of putting on my slutty clothes and walking to the PATH train and he said “I have cleared out this drawer for you, and also the right-hand side of the sink.”

So we adopted a kitten, got married and had three kids, and it all started in this apartment due to my uncontrollable desire for him (he had not yet blown out his knee when we were banging in the elevator NOR was it the cause.)

And he has never once commented on my increasingly weird and extravagant giving to causes/people he has no awareness of other than to gently say once that if I DID have any receipts for them, I should keep them.

(He gives to a Tibetan program that trains local doctors to do cataract surgeries bc the altitude causes a lot of eye issues. I make spite donations to RAINN in Katie Roiphe’s name.)

Anyway, I feel very lucky every day, even though he makes pun-based jokes and is insufferably vain and is a Late For Flights Person.

Please enjoy my upcoming nonfiction memoir: “Trains Are Great: An Autistic Love Story.”

In case I undersold his general vanity, you may remember he crossed everything out on his self-review the year he was unsuccessfully banned from coding in Python and just wrote:

“In action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god!”