Being a writer, I always imagined that my "how I met my future wife story" would be as odd and full of chance encounter, and romantic grandiose as many of the plays and stories that I create. Seeing her on a crowded train platform, just as the train I'm on is pulling out of the station, our eyes meet and I immediately know she's the one. I try desperately to find a way to jump off the slowly moving train, but alas it is too late and I watch as the outline of her figure gets smaller and smaller in the distance. Months later, I am in a quaint coffee shop in a small town with cobblestone streets, and I see her enter and order a small macchiato-the same drink I happen to be sipping on. I can' t believe it! It's the same woman from the train platform. I don't even have to approach her. She turns, sees me, our eyes meet again, and we move toward one another simultaneously to say hello-and the rest is history.
This is not our story-that sounds like it took place in 19th century France by the way-in fact ours is the opposite of old school. We met thanks to the modern day technology of the internet-much to our surprise. This was before I had even mastered having a socially acceptable Facebook page-let alone meeting my future life mate as a result of a witty "About Me" blurb and an awkward profile pic on a dating site called OK Cupid-but that is actually exactly how we met. I was in Atlanta writing for the TV show "Let's Stay Together," and spending my days on set doing what I love most. However, I was not getting out in the city and meeting people like my concerned friends thought I should be. One friend in particular who had called to check on me one evening as I was probably binge watching something on Netflix, or reading Gone Girl, suggested that if I was too lazy or socially awkward to go out and try to meet people by exploring the city, I could make friends in the comfort of my own room. After all, that's what she had done being a community organizer and traveling so much with work, gone on Ok Cupid, found women who were in the city she was going to be working in, and invited them to take her out for a coffee, or give a tour of the city- and this apparently had worked great for her. After much resistance, I finally decided that meeting people from home would win out, but my intention was never to find someone I would actually want to contact or meet up with in reality. (It is here that I will interject that Candice's best friend was also- at the same time- pressuring her to go online to meet people since she as well had recently moved to Louisiana and would rather stay home and read Harry Potter than go out on the town to try to meet new friends. Neither of us had ever gone on an online dating sight and only did so at the strong encouragement of our various friends who were tired of listening to us complain that we didn't know anyone and had no social life.)
After spending three minutes on my About Me blurb, putting up some ridiculous pictures on the site, and deciding not to use my real name but an instead an alias-my middle name Adrienne, I waited to see if anyone would take the bait. A couple days later, I had some faces show up in my inbox and I immediately became terrified. Now what? I started sharing my online social experiment with my fellow writers on the set and it quickly became a source of entertainment for them. One such day, when I was making my way back from craft services, I checked my Ok Cupid inbox, and had a very witty inquiry written by a woman who appeared to be from New Orleans. She commented on liking my name-Adrienne-because of the movie Rocky. I immediately liked this more than the others because I had never seen Rocky but had always wanted to, she wasn't actually in Atlanta, and because she didn't care that I wasn't in New Orleans. Perfect. Clicked on her picture-a great head shot from the neck up- and decided after thinking about it for 24 hours-to message her back. What ensued was a month long pen pal exchange-full of witty banter, hilarious jokes, interesting question and answer sessions, and even quizzes. I was officially intrigued and looked forward to her messages daily. My fellow writers however were a little more skeptical. "What if it's some old white man from Arkansas who is using a fake picture and is just lonely and wanted to make friends with a black lesbian," they would ask me. I thought about this. Could that actually happen? Maybe I should ask her to text me a picture. So I asked-and so she did-again-a great head shot. I brought the pic to my fellow writers who instead of ogling at how pretty she was in the picture, became more suspicious of the fact that every pic she had sent to me was just from the neck up. "What if she doesn't have a torso-what if she's just a floating head?" I was immediately disturbed. I guess someone could still be living if they only had a head. Yikes. I'd have to go back and ask for a pic of her torso? That's too weird-maybe of just her legs-even weirder. Maybe I could just tell her about my writer friends suspicions and see her reaction-which is what I did. And she responded with a LMAO and a pick of both her legs and torso but not her head. It was then that I knew that this girl had some serious potential. To make a long story short, after only writing letters on the site to one another for a month-we decided to actually talk on the phone to make sure that the other person sounded normal, once we passed the voice test, after another month of just phone calls, we decided it might be nice to finally meet. Her birthday was coming up and Alicia Keys was coming to Atlanta on her birthday weekend. I pitched he the idea of coming to ATL for her birthday and I would get us tix to the show. She liked the idea and the date was set. Of course my writer friends had all sorts of theories and tales about what would happen when she showed up at the airport-which made me more and more nervous as the day of her arrival approached.
It was a Thursday evening. I circled the Atlanta airport arriving slightly too early, waiting or a text that she had indeed arrived. Picking someone up from the airport is stressful enough. Picking up someone you have been communicating with for two months who you still aren't sure yet is actually real, is even more stressful. The text arrived, she walked out of door A-and BOOM-well, you've seen her folks-I was absolutely giddy! She got in the car, we went for drinks at a karaoke daiquiri spot, she was the same witty, observant, intriguing, fun, and charming women I had been corresponding with. The weekend was a huge success and well... oh I forgot the best part! I brought her to the set to meet my writer friends so they could actually see that she was real. It happened to be on the day that the episode I had written was being shot. In that moment, everything had come together for me-a career milestone, a beautiful amazing women in my life, and the opportunity to prove to my writer friends-that yes-making an online love connection was very real and possible-and the rest is history! Oh, and at some point I did actually tell her my real name was Zina....
