A Modern Day Fairy Tale

Before I go on, I will mention that my Grandma passed this week. She lived her life and had a fulfilled and loving life. She was a great lady that took me to ballet and the movies and tea parties as a little girl. We were very close, even when Dementia took over her mind. For the past two years my mom & I were her primary caretakers and it has been a sudden and jarring loss but I’m happy she is with my Pop Pop. I want to thank all of the lovely friends, fans, ladies & gents that reached out to offer me condolences. It meant a world of differences. 

Much of my Instagram, and I mention him in almost every blog post, is my darling Preston.

And I get tons of comments and mentions of “your cute hubby” or “you two are SO sweet” or “Ew, gross. Get a room.” Or something in the like of how cute of a couple we are. Our ‘in person’ friends (since I consider all of you my new friends too!) often give us a sickly sweet “Awe!” every time we smooch or hug.  

A good example of this is one time we were at a rehearsal together and I was a little short of breath while we were singing. I tapped him on the shoulder and without stopping he passed me his inhaler, I took a puff, and passed it back. (we’re both asthmatic). Everyone in our cast seemed to think that was a testament to our true love. I feel like it’s more a testament to our mutual difficulty breathing…but hey, I’ll take romance where I can get it!

But a lot of my blogs have mentioned Preston, and he appears in my photos and on my Insta, and he always reads my blog, and I have gotten many comments about how cute and sweet we are.

So today, as part of a plus size fashion & lifestyle blog – I am going to be sharing the story of Preston & me. Or at least how we met and our modern day fairytale.

Actually, first of all. Let me just get this straight. Love is NOT a fairy tale. It is not these beautiful romantic sweeping moments while birds tweet and bring me my Modcloth frocks. It is not overwhelming love and twinkly cartoon eyes. It is loving, compassionate, romantic respect of one another. It’s also feeling comfortable peeing in the same bathroom while they are in the shower, and not feeling bad when you UGLY cry to Simon Birch, and acknowledging that you poop or pick your nose. It’s sleeping better when they are there – even if it makes you too hot. It’s going to see a bad play without them and regretting for months that they weren’t there to appreciate how bad it really was. It’s knowing that your partner can be ANNOYING. Like Preston eats at the pace of a snail on valium and that annoys me and I am a terrible back seat driver and constantly yelling while he drives and that annoys him. And that absolutely makes no difference at all in the amount of depth of my love for him. Or at least in my opinion, that’s what love is. It’s tough to say.

But anyway, I am always getting off-topic. It takes me twenty minutes to tell a story. Maybe that’s why I have a knack for blogging?

SHEESH! OKAY. IT’S REALLY TIME TO START THE STORY NOW, I SWEAR.

So, I swear to tell the whole truth, most of the truth (to keep it PG), so help me Blog.

Preston and I met on OkCupid in June of 2014.

I was working at a local theatre in the business office during the day and he was an actor there in the evenings. I had had the OkCupid app for about a year, even though I had been dating someone else. (the first boy knew – we would laugh about all the weird messages on there. I got a lot of foot fetish people.) But the other boyfriend and I had broken up and I had all but given up on dating for awhile. I was cool to be single and do nothing for a bit. You know, just rolling with the homies. (Clueless? Anybody?) We were not a particularly serious couple. We had dated on and off for a few months and have fun, frothy, whirlwind romance that we both knew had an expiration date.

Two weeks after we broke up, fairly amicably but we had been physically apart for a month before calling it quits – a little red circle appeared in the corner of my OkCupid app, notifying me of a message.

I opened it to see a pale guy frowning with a fake mustache. His message said:

“Always nice to find a fellow theatre nerd! I’ve been doing a lot of acting in Ephrata lately, have you ever done any shows with EPAC?”

That is a literal copy and paste from our OKCupid message. I thought it was kind of peculiar that he had mentioned the place I worked in his first message. So…I answered him.

Nowhere in my profile did in mention where I worked or what I did for a living. In his defense, I had only started a few weeks before that – immediately (like two days) following my graduation from college. It stood to reason that we had never met there. He had just finished up a show a week prior to me starting working there. Serendipity.

 

So just to keep up on the timeline – June 2014.

A few weeks go by. We chat through the app. I suggest we become Facebook friends. We chat through their messenger service. I ask other people at the theatre if “they know of Preston. Is he cute? Is he nice? Is he talented?”. Another week. It’s now the beginning of July. I give him my phone number….

And here’s where the story almost gets tragic.

HE DIDN’T CALL. Or text. Or do anything. He just sat around having my phone number. So I sent him another message or two on Facebook in the following days while he was sitting around and not texting me or calling me…or asking me on a date. Our communication fizzled.

Three weeks later (end of July 2014 now) and I’m on vacation with some friends and I have no cell service. We leave the cabin, get to town, and I get a text from some number I don’t know that says ‘Hey, it’s Preston. Blah blah blah.” I made a face, ask my friends if they can believe this guy, put my phone away and was like – “Yeah right, buddy. I give you my number and you don’t call for nearly a month. Fuck off.” I never answered him, but I never deleted his number.

I did what Preston now calls “ghosting him”. I took his shyness and awkwardness with the ladies as a personal snub so I stopped answering.

Fast forward – August & September. I date other people. Kiss other people. Just having good 22 year old fun. I have regrets about breaking up with my last boyfriend. I move in with my friend Joe (also Taylor & Rachel – but Joe is later in this story). Preston and I don’t speak or try to get in contact again.

End of September 2014 – Preston was in a production of Cabaret at the theatre I worked at. I knew this from our earlier conversations. One night I was working late in the upstairs of the theatres. (where the offices were) and he was rehearsing downstairs (where the rehearsal space was). I knew he was there and I wanted to meet him. I figured, what’s the harm? I decided I would wait until rehearsal was over to leave and hope to bump into him. An hour went by. Two hours. Three hours. I got tired of waiting…so I left. When I got home – I sent him a text that said I was sad we didn’t meet. He texts me back. Our natural chemistry and banter picks up again. Like we never missed a beat.

*Side Note*: At the time – I was in a production of Carrie: The Musical (yeah, like pigs’ blood at the prom – Carrie.) at a different theatre.

Back to the story. So both of our shows AT DIFFERENT THEATRES – opened on the same night about three weeks from the time I texted him. So we had NO time to meet at all. We continued to text.

At the same time – a mutual friend of ours (again, completely at random) posted a video of him singing….and I SWOONED. Actually –here’s a link to that video of Preston singing.. (He’s the one in brown with the hat that sings first)….But like….dayum son. He was so good and SO TALENTED. I had to meet him. Like honestly, watch this video and tell me you wouldn’t have been like ‘yeah, I’ll date the shit out of that guy.”

 

Beginning of October 2014 –

We text every day. But we can’t see each other because we are close to the opening date and have rehearsal every day and every night. (Being an actor is strenuous on your social life sometimes.).

We can’t meet in person yet because we have rehearsal. But I’m in the building in the mornings and he’s there in the evenings. So we start writing little post it note messages to each other. I would hide them in his costume pockets with little snacks or treats. He would leave notes and RedBull (my favorite) on my desk. We wrote love letters to each other every night. I wrote old fashioned love letters on this tiny yellow square every night and my heart would skip a beat when I would find another one. I still have every single post it note he left for me.

Cabaret (his show) and Carrie (my show) open on the same night. We wish each other break a leg. However, his show runs one week longer than mine. I decide that I will come to his show when mine ends. Carrie ends its run and Cabaret goes into its next week of performances.

So October 29th, 2014. I go see Cabaret. I’m restless at work all day. Pacing. Munching on my pearls. Reapplying my lipstick. I get hardly any work done. I annoy the shit out of my co-worker.

The show comes around. I go up and sit in the audience. The show begins…and there he was. I made my best friend Joe, who is one of the best looking dudes I know, with me. I’m clutching Joe’s arm to calm myself down. My leg is jiggling. But there he is…30 feet in front of me and we can’t say hello yet.

The show ends and I’m nervous to meet him. I make Joe leave. I say he’s too tall and good looking and it would be weird to bring another dude on my first date. He, being the best friend ever, agrees. He kisses me on the head, wishes me luck, says he’ll see me when I get home (because if you remember – Joe and I lived together) and leaves.

I wait upstairs for Preston. Eventually he comes up and we meet. Right there in the middle of the stage. We chat for a few minutes and decide he’ll grab his stuff and we’ll go to a local bar to get to know each other better and have a few drinks.

We’ve been dating ever since.

 

We kissed that first night, outside the bar. It was a crisp October night and it was a little misty. It was late and the street lamps were on.

After a few dates I remember going home to Joe and saying “Yeah, I’m going to marry that guy. I just know it. It’s a weird gut feeling.”

A little while went by. We started using the B & G words, officially.

It’s been almost a year and half since we started dating – but I feel that I have known him my whole life. And my life has become this real life story that I am loving getting lost in.

I love to see show after show with him. We have seen 30 shows in a year and a half. (but honestly, that’s like two-three plays or musicals a month – that’s a lot.) We get food or drinks or take walks and discuss IN DEPTH the show we have just seen. We analyze stupid stuff. It just makes us happy to talk so intricately about the theatre.

We like to go on little day trips to local sights. We’ve gone to lakes and casinos and malls and shops and thrift stores and tourist traps. We just get in the car and go.

We like to travel. It just a year and half we have been to five or six states together. We’ve stood in oceans and lakes and on mountains and in the snow. I’m hoping to cross more off. My dream is to go to the British Isles. I long to see Ireland and Scotland and Wales and Great Britain.

He always appreciates my body and compliments parts of my body that for so long I was ashamed of. His admiration and attraction to what I used to think were “the ugly parts” has definitely made me more comfortable in my own skin.

We act together. We love to share our passion for the stage. He has come to my performances and I have always come to his. We are taking the stage together for the first time… We’re performing in Tommy in the end of April! Squeee!

We are just about all shacked up. We nearly live together. And I am just fine going to sleep with him every night and waking up with him every morning. I’m fine sharing a bathroom and some drawer space until we can get a place that’s ours.

I adore him. I adore his talent and his mind. He adores me for my quick wit and humor.

 

Now I’m in love. Deeply, truly, in love. He satisfies me in every way a boyfriend can. He also annoys the shit out of me and I absolutely adore him anyway. I think that’s just about as true as love can get.

He challenges me intellectually, gets at least 80% of my references (to books, movie, theatre, etc.), he laughs when I laugh, admires me even when I have last night’s make up all over my face, tucks me into bed when I’ve been drinking, gets angry at what I’m angry at, can sing in such a way that I swoon, understands the true devotion of theatre, and does crossword puzzles with my dad. He holds me when I cry, pumps my gas when I’m too tired or cold, always lets me have the bathroom first, and works to make sure that I feel appreciated and loved every day. He has emotionally supported me while I’m looking for a full time and permanent job. I have mentioned before that I have pretty bad anxiety and often get panic attacks and he comforts me and lets me ride them out and never thinks it’s too much too handle. He doesn’t mind reassuring me seventeen times in a row that yes, he still loves me, and yes, he still wants to marry me. He never gets annoyed taking my instagram outfit pictures (spoiler alert – it’s almost always Preston). He takes endless selfies with me and doesn’t mind posing for picture after picture. (Actors, amirite?)

We have nothing to fight about so we have taken to improving fake fights as an old married couple. If something is wrong, and it hardly ever is – we discuss it rationally and move on or we bicker like school children about trivial matters. Like he wants to get a walking stick and I absolutely do NOT think that BECAUSE IT’S NOT TURN OF THE CENTURY BRITAIN  AND THE ROADS ARE PAVED AND EVEN SO YOU DON’T NEED A DAMN WALKING STICK. Or I think we should get a Golden Doodle when we live together and he thinks we should get many other dogs that are not mixed with a poodle and shed EVEN THOUGH YOU WEAR DARK SUITS FOR WORK THAT WOULD GET COVERED IN HAIR AND PET DANDER MAKES YOUR ASTHMA ACT UP. Clearly, I do not have strong feelings about this particular matter. So we bicker about stuff like that…but it is never serious and always has a resolution. 

I read this blog to him before I posted it (to make sure he thought it was accurate) and he said the only thing it was missing was that there was not a paragraph describing how annoying he is. So, Ace (my pet name for him), if you’re reading this – this is for you. He eats REALLY slow. Like he’s still eating a full twenty minutes after the second to last person finishes. He takes a super long time to get ready in the morning. He likes to stand really close to me (like his nose pressed up against my cheek) while I’m trying to grocery shop because ‘I just like to be close to you all the time’ and I’m like, dude I’m trying to buy spinach right now – love me later. He ALWAYS answers the Jeopardy questions before I can even read the whole thing. It is impossible to get him to leave a place. Like when we go to a party – I try to give him like an hour before I want to leave because I know it will take him that long to say good bye. He gets super crabby when he doesn’t eat. He becomes a Snickers commercial and is like Joe Pesci yelling at the Little League team. He uses my loofah sometimes and it makes my loofah smell like his boy body wash and then I smell like his boy body wash and I prefer my mint body wash. And I tease him about that stuff and he teases me about all the reasons I’m annoying and then we usually have a good laugh after fake ranting.

It’s sweet when people think the sharing inhalers or our Instagram being so on point or sweet glances or reassuring back touches or cute inside jokes are touching and precious and they think THAT makes us happy. But it’s so much more to that for me. It’s the rest of my life waking up and being grateful and reassured that he’s by my side.

He is not a perfect man and I am certainly not a perfect woman and we love each other just the same because we are perfect for each other. We are fairly certain and satisfied with the idea that we are going to get married eventually. When I say eventually – I mean when we are both fiscally in a place to comfortably start a life together. We’re making plans to move in together in the fall. (taking a few months to save money.) We are wholeheartedly and truly never tired of each other. And if that’s not love – what is? (Then you love me? I suppose I do…Sorry, Fiddler on the Roof).

Whatever. But every day our life gets more and more like a romantic comedy. And you know that even through some zany misadventures – we will end up together in the end

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I hope you enjoyed reading my mushy gushy story about how we met and our life together now!

So here’s the “end of blog” spiel!

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Love all you wonderful ladies (and gents!) out there!

How Very,

Abby ❤