Chapter 2: Love At First Sight
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     A few years back I met a girl named Elizabeth Seidel. She was a pretty girl with long, coffee-brown hair and willowy arms and legs, the kind of girl whose solid trunk could lure a squirrel out of its tree or give a family of blackbirds reason to relocate. Her eyes were enormous and green — every bit as welcoming as the mat of synthetic green grass resting beside the wading pond at the foot of my bed, should I ever wish to wipe my feet. She didn’t know who I was, she said.
     That made two of us.
     Elizabeth was a college girl from Washington State. She was studying philosophy, Western mostly. Theology interested her too — though she was quick to point out how she considered organized religion sexist and barbaric.
     “Well yes, I suppose the patriarchs were a bit stodgy,” I said.
     “Stodgy nothing,” she snorted. “A bunch of loons wandering through the Levant, their dicks stuck in their donkeys. Not ideal circumstances under which to prescribe a code of morality.”
     “Or foreskin care, for that matter,” I said. “Dry heat or no.”
     I’d met Elizabeth in a bar called Sonny’s Tavern Christmas week, 2000. I was sitting alone at a corner booth drinking a bottle of Boone’s Farm wine, strawberry, when she approached me. I had no razor with me at the time.
     “Hello,” I said, staggering to my feet.
     “Hi,” she said. “Mind if I join you?”
     “Not at all. Please.”
     “You look pretty drunk, if you don’t mind my saying — and me, I’m heading in that direction. So I figure we may as well carpool, y’know?”
     “Yes, good point. Please, sit.”
     I sat back down and she pulled in alongside me, snatching away my bottle. “Boone’s Farm,” she smiled. “My favorite.”
     “That makes two of us,” I said. I motioned for her to take a swig. “Bottoms up…?”
     She took a long draw of the wine and smiled. “Oh, you have no idea.”
     It was love at first sight.

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Chapter 3

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