Mark's Confession

JNB17 has the far better article here, but here's my reply, anyway:

Funny thing is, I have tried to win love with this argument: "You can not win love with argument." The line I used was "I can't debate my way into your heart."

I'm embarrassed. You can guess to whom I spoke this, or how many women heard this ... feh! It's like hitting a thin five-iron.

Not to bring this Blog entry down to my dirt.

My hockey experience is that while living in Iowa I watched Detriot win with Yzerman and Chelios and Scotty Bowman in the 2002 Finals -- with that "flinging octopus onto the ice" tradition in Detroit.

My best college make-out story is this, which I've never told:

I graduated from Marist College in the spring of 1990 and lived a bohemian summer on the road (maybe like this summer this year), moving from Tom Goldpaugh's house to other friends'. A girlfriend, A.S., tried, I now understand, to keep up with me, even sending me photos of herself in the mail. I was untouchable. A.S. was unconventionally pretty, a swimmer, deaf. I was not a star at Marist; in her way, she was. That said, she was my date to the formal, where the guy organizing our ride was Rik Smits.

Ok, so I get into SUNY New Paltz, where some female professor whose name I can't recall, a China history specialist? -- John, help me out here -- interviewed me and let me in, thanks to Carley Bogarad's intervention. I get my house with Kevin Dwyer and three other roomates up on Rt. 32 and I have a home.

J.D. was still a student at Marist applying for a New Paltz TA-ship. She's living off-campus, away from Marist, in downtown Poughkeepsie. A nice, neat, old house, with foyers and pilasters and alcoves and sit-in windows.

I have spent years bemoaning my idiocy regarding J.D. She and I touched everything but each other. She was smart, beautiful, stylish, and apparently wanted to be with me. I thought she was fat.

Before all that happened and didn't happen, J. was still at Marist and I was at New Paltz. I was still "dating" A.S. I hadn't touched a woman in my life. J. hosted a party for Marist undergrads on the subject of entering graduate school; I was the keynote speaker. Marist professors were there: T.R., D.A., J.S.

J.D. was hosting an after-party, also. God, would she remember this? I hope, for her sake, at 2.20 in the a.m. that she isn't.

J.D. grabs me and asks me to stay for the next party; never one to say no to drink ... I stay. Maybe I can hijack another Metro-North train (you remember that story). We see everyone off, I think.

Coming back into the living room, I see T.R. tonguing J.D. This throws me. I go someplace else (those old Poughkeepsie houses have many rooms). He departs and J.D. and I find each other. I say nothing. We are alone in the house. We begin kissing. For a half-hour. Clothes off.

We know the next party is going to arrive, and it does, with terrible timing. The first ring of the doorbell came from A. S.

And so I learned the art of ...

Thank you, New Paltz.

Sorry I couldn't connect a sports event to this story. It would have made it perfect.