A special message

November 19th was an auspicious day in history. It was on that day in 1979 that an amazing person was born: one Leslie Lopez, known here on Livejournal as datalopez.

I met Leslie in March of 2005, when she discovered my journal through a link that somebody else had posted to my Pirates of the Caribbean parody. She didn't really get the l33tsp34k, but she found some other stuff in my journal that she DID like, and pinged me via instant message one day to say hi. We talked and became friends over the next few weeks.

Time passed. The year wound onward and I became more and more impressed by Leslie -- her quick and facile mind, her ready wit, her musical tastes (she rekindled my interest in Pink Floyd after it had been dormant for some time), her love of family. I discovered she shared many of my interests -- Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Star Trek, classic 80s cartoons, progressive rock and metal, videogaming -- a kindred geeky spirit to me if there ever was one. And every once in a while she would send pictures of herself along as well. The pictures showed an utterly gorgeous young woman with shimmering dark hair, beautiful brown eyes and a dazzling smile. I kept wondering what kind of knock on the head she'd had that would damage her judgment to the point of being interested in me, but she insisted she'd sustained no such thing.

By then, several months later, her interest in me was definitely being returned. There was a hell of a problem, as Leslie lived on the very southern tip of Texas, more than a thousand miles away from me. It's damned difficult to get to know someone well when they live that far away, although we were doing our best, with frequent instant messages and emails going back and forth, and the odd postal letter and postcard (she went to Italy for the summer and sent me postcards from the places she visited). Plus the occasional phone call.

Still, I was gun-shy. After the disintegration of my last relationship (which started out as a long-distance one), I was reluctant to get into another one. That relationship had fallen apart because we hadn't spent enough time together for her to get to know me well enough, to really find out what I was like in person, before she moved down here -- something which I still feel bad about even now. So as I got to know Leslie I made sure to emphasize my many bad points: my mercurial temper, my general misanthropy towards the world at large, my acid tongue, my occasional bouts of depression, and so on. Every time I brought these things up, though, or acted true to my irascible nature, she would say that she didn't care or that my good points outweighed the bad ones. I wasn't convinced, but began to relax a bit more when I was talking with her.

Time spun onwards. By late December 2005 we were both fed up with long-distance contact and wanted to meet face-to-face. On the last day of the year, Leslie came down to visit me. The visit started off poorly when the airline lost her luggage, but things improved rapidly after that and when she left a week later, I felt a pang of genuine loss. We never spoke of it openly, but it was pretty clear that we were drifting into a relationship, as much as one can have a relationship with someone who lives halfway across the country.

As 2006 continued, we grabbed every chance we could to spend time with each other, either online or in person -- although due to the distance the latter was difficult. Still, we managed several visits, and with every parting Leslie took another piece of me with her. She said to me once that I was like a drug to her -- the more she knew me and the more she had of me, the more she wanted. It was mutual. She'll be here for another visit in late December, something I am looking forward to with unbounded happiness. In just a year she's had an amazing impact on the way I feel about myself, on the way I view the world in general, and most importantly the way I feel about her.

I usually think of myself as a fairly good writer. I'm usually able to sculpt with language to the point where the resulting creation expresses exactly what I wanted, and people often tell me that impression's correct. But in this case I feel utterly inadequate, helpless to express the depth of feeling I hold for this girl. We're separated by a thousand miles, by a distance of time (she's seven years my junior), and even by a small cultural barrier (as she's Mexican-American, while I'm about as whitebread as they come). Yet somehow, none of that matters to me. So I sit at this keyboard, struggling to find the words to convey how just a smile from her kindles an ember in my core. A sidelong glance from her makes my heart race, my blood burn, my ears ring. Her touch is magical, her scent intoxicating, her voice music to my ears. She makes me nervous while at the same time calming my fears and giving me confidence and strength in myself.

I've said to her several times that I have no idea where our relationship's going. But for the first time in a long while, that doesn't terrify me anymore. I face the unknown with a rush of exhilaration and hope that she'll be at my side to see it unfold too.

So on this November 19th, I want to wish the happiest of birthdays to my Texas star, my confidante, my listening ear, my kindred spirit, mi corazón, my beautiful, sexy, intoxicating princess-goddess Leslie. My own and my only.

Happy birthday, sweetheart. I love you.


(Me and Leslie at Stone Mountain this summer.)