The Commitment of Roger and Laura
He's lonely, and a bit off, but at least Roger has love and Laura.

You will wind up peeping through a keyhole down upon your knees.

When I met Laura, those were the words coming from her stereo. They're from Bob Dylan's "She Belongs to Me." The words before them go something like, "You will start out standing, proud to steal her anything she sees."

***

It was your typical, "need-a-cup-of-sugar" thing, except what I needed was a signature. A signature for H.R. 3289--or CWAP, The Chesapeake Watershed Addendum Package. It's a bill to ensure the Chesapeake watershed reaches specific performance goals over the next three years: Two-percent increases in overall water quality and four-percent increases in total biological load. The entire package is currently, and forever, held up in committee.

When I heard the Dylan I noted a slight irony, but I didn't fall in love with Laura. There wasn't a soft glow coming through the window, or the slightest breeze of spring turning the leaves in the trees. She didn't have an unusual accent or a thin, ethereal sundress that framed her Hellenic figure. No witty, lovely words were exchanged.

No, there was none of that. I asked her to sign the petition, she did so somewhat enthusiastically and explained to me that she worked for Human Rights Watch. I made a note to get her my resume--because Human Rights Watch is the place for someone like me to work--and asked her a few polite questions about progressive politics. Perhaps I noted that she was interesting looking, but I didn't really think much of it. So I guess remembering the song is just a coincidence.

***
But I did fall in love with Laura. It happened over time, through pondering, steadfast dedication and close attention to her every detail.

People always ask engaged couples "How did you know? How did you know when you were going to get married?" I've heard a couple of people actually answer this question. One was my brother Steve when he got engaged to his tax attorney Suzanne at age 35. The other was our CEO, coincidentally also named Steve, after he got engaged to a tree-sitter from Earth First. A no-shit, hardcore tree sitter--her name was Butterfly. They met through a CNN interview during an activism conference. She was via satellite, from the tree, and he was on the panel. Unfortunately for Steve, she didn't want to partake in a ritualized corporate union. So he missed out on the big party, the loot and the gift certificates to Pottery Barn--you know all the cliches.

Both Steves had disappointing answers to the "how did you know" question. Steve one said it was during a moonlit walk along the tidal basin near the Jefferson, and Steve two said it was when Butterfly showed him the tiny North Face tent she slept in while she was up in the tree. Steve two is a queer for gear.

But my answer is the right one: Over time. Over time is how you fall in love with someone, by noting the little things.

***
And now, here I am, trapped in her apartment with a ring in my hand, and I have no idea what to do when she comes through the door. I can hear her saying, "What are you doing here?" a pleasantly shocked look on her face. Then me saying, very earnestly, "Laura, I know you may be wondering why I'm here, but I have something important to tell you, and I was hoping we could discuss it." I go blank after that. I've got the ring, I've got the roses, but I don't have the words and I need them.

The risk/reward equation is a bit dicey here and, obviously, the payoff is monumental. Laura loves surprises so that's the reward, the risks are: What if she has a bad day at work, what if there's horrible traffic, what if--God forbid--she gets in an accident on Lee Highway? The list is endless.

***
Laura's apartment is littered with the reasons I love her. I feel her presence so fully that--if she accepts me--I'll just move right upstairs and give all of my possessions to the less fortunate. Her apartment is your basic, snug one-bedroom. You enter through the living area, behind that is a small galley kitchen and, across from there, a three-foot-by-three-foot dent in the wall they call a dining nook, then behind that a fairly good sized bedroom with closets. The furnishing's in Laura's living room are unspectacular. It's your basic futon, coffee table, TV, bookshelf minimalism. But her belongings--her small belongings tell our story.

***
She has a framed poster above the card table in the dining-nook. The table that collects her jackets, scarves, sweatshirts, wallets, little change purses, coins, receipts, paper clips, a button. The poster is simply framed in Plexiglas and thin tubes of buffed black metal. It looks like one of those tourism maps of the United States. The kind with the drawings of the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building up near New York, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, maybe a covered wagon out in Oklahoma. Except this one has pictures of famous activists on it. MLK is down in Alabama, Cesar Chavez is out in California, some nun is up in New York. An Indian out in the plains--I don't know, Sitting Bull, let's say. There are others, but frankly I have no idea who they are.

This poster exemplifies Laura's passion for others. The sacrifice she's made in her life for the common good. She didn't have to be an activist. She has a government affairs degree from Georgetown and a graduate degree from Princeton. She's hung the diploma's discretely above her work area, which is blocked off by one of those Asian screens. My point is she could be up there with the big boys. She could be eating at 1789 and Citronelle instead of living in a salt box on Washington Blvd. She could be making fellowship money. She could be making think-tank money. But she forwent that and stuck with her heart. And that's charity.

***
There's a photo on her bookshelf that I like too. It's probably my favorite picture of her. There are lots of pictures of her on the bookshelf: Three with her and various friends in three separate but equal versions of the slightly tipsy at a bar snapshot. Two with mom and one with dad--dad is only half smiling. Two with old boyfriends which I begrudgingly forgive--one was taken at the beach and one at a scenic overview that appears to be in the Appalachians, probably at a pull-off along skyline drive. But my favorite is of her and her sister.

It's in a simple round frame and Laura's younger in it, probably taken when she was just finishing up college. The background appears to be at a park or maybe even a school--they're in front of a baseball field, possibly sitting at the bleachers. There's no one playing baseball or even around, the park seems deserted, even though it appears to be the middle of the day. It's just the two of them, smiling into the sun.

Laura's face is thinner, her skin looks just a little bit fresher from youth and summer. She has her hand up slightly shading her eyes, which makes her look just a bit coy--even a little sexy. The sun's hitting her hair just enough to make it look that right color of honey. But what's most notable is the look on her face.

I don't think she ever sees it, and I don't think this moment, in a hot, ho-hum park, ranks very high on her "most happiest moments" list. But there is something about the ordinary happiness that's captured in this picture, it makes me love it. I don't think Laura has had a lot of ordinary happiness in her life in awhile--days when you're just in the park and maybe you've smoked a little weed, and you don't give a fuck what happens, good or bad. For women like Laura, it's all serious highs--grant money, saved lives, economic sanctions--or deep lows--and those are really too grim to mention. I'd like a day when she has that look again, when she just doesn't care what happens. A day when she's off, followed by another, and another, and another.

***
There's another picture I like, but I took this one. It's of Laura getting into her car. I just took it when I was loading film to test if it was wound all the way, so I kind of expected it to be a waste. She's standing in front of the door of her white Honda, just about to get in and go to work. Her face is kind of stunned, like "why did you take that picture?" and her wide, silver fading to black wrap-around sunglasses make her look like she's off to fight some kind of urban warfare. Except her coffee and portfolio are her weapons. I like to call it her game-face picture.

I took this picture to work once after everyone was asking me when they were going to meet "the girl from Human Rights Watch." I think they were starting to think that maybe she didn't exist. So I brought the picture in and everyone was a little bit surprised, which, frankly, I knew they would be. I slapped it down right there on the conference room table before a legislative planning meeting and said, "There she is. That's Laura, the girl I'm dating." I said it loud and proud, just so there would be no mistakes.

"She looks, um, healthy." This is what Steve actually said to me. It's the first thing that this public activist who has testified eloquently before Congress could muster.

"Yeah Roger, good job. And man, she must have commitment huh?" Hasan, the lawyer, tried to cover up. The lawyers are always so much more with it than the politicos. "I mean the job and everything, she must be brilliant. Outstanding man!"
Trish, the other part-timer besides myself, mustered a noncommittal, patently female passive aggressive, "Oh, I bet she's nice."

Despite Steve's assertions to the contrary, Laura is not healthy. In fact, she's quite seriously unhealthy. She's fat. No, she's not fat. She is morbidly obese and it is a very grave disease for her and many, many, many other Americans. It is something that she has struggled with for quite some time, before I even knew her. It's something I've grown to accept, but still struggle with from time to time. It is her, it is part of what I love.

This is not to say that I accept it, because I do not. I do not accept that her disease is incurable, that she cannot overcome it. I refuse to believe that it will kill her, and I am adamant about this. I have vowed to myself that when we are married I will fight just as hard as she will to conquer this disease. Together we'll work through it. That said, I draw the line at stomach-stapling. I saw that on Dateline once and it is very dangerous, and just a bit defeatist.

***
I am sitting and waiting for Laura to come home from work and I still haven't thought of what I will say to her. Her black and white tabby Shakes is on my lap purring away like a motorcycle. Laura named her Shakes because when the cat purrs it gets going so much that the thing actually starts to vibrate. No shit, you can actually see the thing vibrate. It gets all curled up with its eyes half closed, sitting like some kind of Buddhist monk and works itself into a purring, vibrating, beatific state.

When I am laying on the futon watching TV or reading a book, she'll climb on my stomach and do that little kneading thing that cats do with their front paws. Then she'll lay down and start purring and purring, working herself into a frenzy. Once Shakes purred so much she shook right off the edge of the futon.

But Shakes has a good personality and I love her. Plus, she's known Laura longer than I have, and Laura's never made me a bowl at one of those paint-your-own-pottery places. She's never glazed a little cereal bowl powder blue, painted a rudimentary sailboat in the bottom of it and sketched ROGER in orange, black and white cartoon letters on the side. She has never done any of this--or anything remotely like it--for me, so Shakes must be alright.

It's good to be with an animal lover anyway. My parents had a dog when I was little. He was a brown Cocker Spaniel and they named him Buffy even though it was a boy. They said it was because of his color--"he's buff color," they said. Personally I didn't even know that was a color. But they had this dog, Buffy, and I think it really trained them to love something other than themselves. They had to feed him, look after him, make sure he stayed out of the garbage, walk him, teach him things. Once I came along it was easy--at the very least I could poop in my diapers.

Granted, cats are a lot more independent than dogs are. They'll go in a litter box, they can live just on food and water with no supervision for a long weekend and most will never learn anything they don't teach themselves. But cats are still a pretty big responsibility. The experience will definitely help Laura when it comes to handling kids. Of course, with any luck Shakes will belong to me as well, so it should help the both of us.

***
It's 7:05 PM. Dusk is invading the apartment and still I sit here with this purring cat wondering what I will say. How will I answer Laura's bewildered face. How will I tell her? What will she say? She won't be able to say anything if I can't say something first. Maybe if I go back to the beginning, maybe if I think about where it all started--how I began to fall in love.

I was coming up from the laundry room when I stole her keys. It was a Sunday morning, quiet. The little Asian boy who lived next door to Laura hadn't started crying yet. The hallway was still and they were just hanging there, one key inside the lock. The keys were left there by mistake and I took them. Without thinking, without considering the consequences, but knowing exactly what I would do next, I deftly and quietly slid the key out of her lock and headed out into the morning light and down to Ayers hardware, two short blocks away. I held the key that had been in the door tightly between my thumb and forefinger to keep it separate from the other five she had on the ring: Key to the front door, fat car key, office keys--useless--I only needed that one. Her key chain was a metal seal of some sort, to be truthful I never saw it, just felt it pressed against my palm.

There was no line at Ayers and I was in and out with a duplicate in no time. I slip the shiny double onto my own ring, slide her key back in the lock and forget it ever happened. And as far as anyone knows, it never did.

For a long time I just kept the duplicate key and never used it. It hung there, silver against my copper keys. I was tempted of course, not to steal anything, but just to see. Just to see what the other apartments in the building were like, to see how other people lived. It had nothing to do with Laura at first, just my own curiosity. The first time I used it, was just to wait for laundry--her apartment was one floor closer and she had cable. Then, I would go there to be quiet, to get away from the clutter and noise that seemed to manifest in my apartment. And the more I did that, the more time I spent in her little home, the more I fell in love with her. Her little things started to haunt me, I started to absorb her passions. It was amazing, falling in love with her, wanting to share her life, wanting to press myself against her world. It really was.

***
It is 7:18 PM, I am surrounded by the darkness of her apartment and I know now what I will tell her. "Laura, I've gotten to know you quite well in time." I will say this looking into her eyes. The key is clicking in the lock, she is turning it. "And we were made to be together."