The Cowboy and the Yenta: How I Met My Husband

I've enjoyed a love affair that has lasted over 30 years. Through clogged plumbing (both bodily and home related). Through dozens of financial roller coaster rides. And countless arguments, cocktails parties and orgasms.
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"Hey there." The sultry words were spoken.

A flirtatious smile was flashed.

An arm was thrust forward, pinning a hot body to the wall.

And so it began.

A love affair that has lasted over 30 years. Through clogged plumbing (both bodily and home-related). Through dozens of financial roller coaster rides. And countless arguments, cocktails parties and orgasms.

Most of you probably think it was my husband who backed me up against that wall. But it was quite the opposite. I was the one who cornered him.

We were at a party with dozens of airline pilots. It was my ticket to see the world; perhaps never having to work another day in my life. But none of these men in uniforms did "it" for me.

Not like the wiry, thin guy with the muscled chest, great smile and sexy beard. One look in his eyes and I was compelled to follow him down the hallway toward the bathroom.

As my future husband waited to use the facilities (or so I thought), I pressed my attention upon him.

As my husband puts it, he was forced to stare into the eyes of this short Jewish girl with more frizzy hair than he'd ever seen, as the beautiful blonde stewardess he had been waiting to meet came out of the bathroom, walked past him and out of his life forever. As if she was ever in his life in the first place.

And she probably never would have been. Because I soon learned he came with more baggage than most of the guys at the party.

He worked as a concrete finisher. He had two small children sleeping in the house next door and a wife, not an ex-wife (yet), but a wife, back home in Michigan.

But there was something between us. That animal magnetism that makes two people unable to sleep, eat or think unless they are with each other.

There was also a huge "wildness" gap. I was a Southern California girl, a child of the sixties. And as he put it, "the first yenta" he ever met.

He was from the Midwest. Loved to hunt, fish and split wood. The first modern "cowboy" I ever met.

Need I say more?

During his first visit to my beach apartment, he found me topless, watering my Wandering Jew.

On my nightstand he saw my vibrator (which I still own, by the way), Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut and my journal, in which I composed Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry.

It was almost enough to scare his Midwestern soul away forever.

Almost.

Because like I said, there was something between us. I obviously haven't won the Pulitzer Prize (not yet at least).

But I won the heart of the most wonderful man in the world.

Who knew how many great years would follow those two simple words. "Hey there."

I'm glad I had the guts to speak them.

I'm pretty sure he is, too.

It just goes to prove that sometimes you have to put yourself out there to get what you want.

(This blog is part of a GenFab Blog Hop @ #Genfab.)

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