We're getting married!!

They met at the house party of a politically active Mutual Friend in mid-autumn of 2016. There were games. There were gifts. There was tequila. There were costume changes. There were credible fears of rising fascism. There was a lot going on. To any onlooker, it would have appeared that Ben and Haley didn’t know each other. She came up to him sitting alone at a dining table, and she extended her hand. “Hi I’m Haley, I don’t believe we’ve met.” “Yes, it’s really nice to meet you.” But Haley and Ben were both saying something quite different with their eyes.

Ten months prior, Mutual Friend (who also happens to be a karaoke grandmaster) and his partner, invited Ben to a pop-music-sing-along at Café Su— a coffee and Chinese food restobar in old West Des Moines famous for dim sum and live performances of the digital saxophone. Unbeknownst to Ben, the occasion was being organized, not by Mutual Friend, but by the last person Ben would ever kiss on the lips. Sadly, Ben was mortified into silence by the semi-professional slate of performers including many local artists, musicians and public media personalities. He sat at his table with Mutual Friend, his face in his hands, complaining that he would never be able to sing karaoke again after someone’s particularly incendiary rendition of “Sunglasses at Night.” “It’s not even a good song!” Ben complained. Then then singer came back to their table and added, “God, I hate that song.” Mutual Friend consoled Ben, but not for long because he had prepared an epic, heart-rending ode to the still recently departed Whitney Houston. Ben finally left just as Haley was performing NSYNC’s “I Want You Back,” with choreography, to a 16-year-old's birthday party which had been absorbed and assimilated by the karaoke extravaganza. The teens crowded the mini stage with their cellphones extended, and Ben thought of Haley well into summer.

Then someone invented Tinder. It was the summer of Carly Rae Jepson. (Actually, like I said, it was 2016, but Ben was in his thirties and he lived in central Iowa, so he was on a four-year delay.) He felt romantic, and he thought anything could happen when the hot night wind was blowin' the odor of the rendering plant from across the Des Moines river. He swiped and swiped until he came to a familiar face. She was from Indiana. She handmade jewelry. She had freckles. He swiped right, and— She swiped left. Haley knew exactly who this guy was. Sure, he was okay looking. Sure, he was employed. Sure, he was available. But wasn’t he friends with “that whole group of people”? Wasn’t he 6 years older? Didn't that made him a bit middle-aged? It would never work, and the consequences would be too disruptive in a small town where friend groups were fragile but also stuck with their same members for eternity. Haley continued on her hot girl summer of fun but didn’t forget the boy with the warm eyes and the charming smile. Ben never forgot Haley. He went out to dinner with Mutual Friend sometime in August, and he asked about that girl from the karaoke party at Café Su. "I know of whom you speak," Mutual Friend said, "she’s pretty cool." “Pretty cool,” Ben whispered to himself, and he facebook stalked Haley for the rest of the summer and fall. Meanwhile, Haley’s ears began to prick up whenever friends would mention a guy named “Ben” who often left parties to go to bed early. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to go to one of these parties—early and see whom she bumped into.

Meanwhile meanwhile, Mutual Friend had been working tirelessly to produce a different outcome in the presidential election of 2016. When that failed, his quadrennial Late-Birthday/Post-Election/Post-Halloween party acquired a darker trajectory for all attendees. Ben showed up early, but did not leave early. In fact, he stayed quite late. When Haley found him, he was sitting stooped in a chair, craft-gluing googly eyes and a mustache to the tequila bottle that was keeping him company. Haley made his acquaintance, but the best they could communicate was through dance, because "the Spirit of the Party" decided that all party guests should don onesie Halloween costumes and run out onto the sidewalk at Ingersoll and 28th and gyrate for cars while playing “Tequila” as loud as possible from a Bluetooth speaker. Mutual Friend was a green dinosaur. Ben was a Chewbacca. There may have been others, but Ben was developing tunnel-vision for the young lady from Indiana in a bat suit, flapping her bat wings and running in tiny circles. They grew weary and tired. Ben tried to fall asleep on the hosts’ bed where the guests’ winter coats lay. Mutual Friend’s partner could be heard from afar complaining that she wanted her bed back, and Haley could be heard to say, “Well, I could take him home. I live across the street, and I have a guest bed.” Ben immediately found a second wind and popped up from the pile of coats and accepted the invitation from Haley before it could be properly repeated to him. Nothing happened! Haley walked Ben home and placed him in a bed next to a terrarium with a very protective crested Gecko. In the morning, she had to leave for work, so she left Ben water, Advil, breakfast items such as one might leave out for toddlers at the Art Center, and a hand-drawn map of the neighborhood leading him back to his parked car. Ben still has the hand-drawn map.

The very next day, they went to a movie together. The performances made Ben cry. Haley squeezed his hand. And afterward, they didn’t go more than a day or two without seeing each other for the rest of their life, except for when they travelled home for the holidays. They discovered, after the movie, that they had both grown up 500 miles away from Des Moines in a pair of small towns along the Michigan-Indiana border about 90-minutes apart. They discovered that they both loved art. They discovered that they both loved cooking. They discovered that they both loved Celine Dion. They each discovered what they themself looked like through the eyes of another person who saw them as awfully beautiful, in any weather, in any season. It made them both feel naked. It made them both act crazy. They try to talk about their relationship and take deep breaths when they’re angry. They try to contextualize things with their own upbringings, with their own parents’ marriages. They’re scared of not being with each other. They’re scared of how little they control. They want to be married, though they’ve been united since that first meeting at the party when Haley extended her hand, willing for magical possibilities, and Ben took it and said, with his eyes, “yes to this. And yes to all that will come.”