Dennis and Celia at Nice Dream Café in Yucca Valley, CA
We met in New Orleans
On August 15 of this year, Celia and I will celebrate 17 years together. Since I'm writing this for a male audience, I'm going to make it immediately relatable.
Rewind to my life as a single guy, before we met. It's 2009. I'm 39-years-old.
I'm a member of The New Orleans Athletic Club, and I'm taking a shower after a solid workout. I've been on a self-imposed moratorium after the carnage and fuckery of a 6-year toxic relationship that grenaded itself like an imploding supernova, leaving some serious emotional scars that have me apprehensive about ever dating a woman again.
On one hand, I love my solo routine. Work is going great. I'm putting money in the bank, I'm liked and respected, and the line just keeps going up and to the right.
I'm in the best shape of my life. My cardio is phenomenal, and my lifts are officially in the 300/400/500 range for bench, squat, deadlift. My male friendships are solid, since I work with people who are locked in, and I train with athletes who compete.
It's been four years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the town, New Orleans is lively and fully open for business after a rough rebuild, and as always the town is full of wild personalities and lots of beautiful, colorful people. And here I am taking a shower in a marble shower stall with a brass fixture, a handsome specimen of a young man, and I feel two competing feelings inside of me as the soapy water pools in the drain between my feet.
One: I want sex. It's something I like, it's something I'm good at, and it's something that I definitely miss, especially in a town that monetizes sexuality.... so it's always in your face.
Two: I'm honest with myself that the idea of a female companion is still interesting for me, even though I have survived a breakup that challenged my ability to ever trust a woman again.
And so I go home, get on my laptop, and put an ad on social media to test the waters.
Somehow Yes
Again, it's 2009. Dating apps are still young and innocent, and you can post long form content without hitting a character limit. So I put up this insane wall of words that may have been interesting for someone in NYC who likes brilliant, complicated artsy guys, but in New Orleans the reaction is more like "yeaaaah.... I'm not reading all that."
But one person did read it. And she responded with an email from an encrypted server: [email protected]. Now in fairness, she wasn't the only person who responded. But all of the others were catfishing bottom feeders who live on these sites and trawl daily for new posts.
But she read it, and she related. In fact, she identified, because I essentially typed out in full exactly (and I mean EXACTLY) what I was looking for in a woman. I referenced the 80s flick Weird Science, where some nerds build a hot robot, and said in my ad that if I could build a woman, this is what I'd build. I also said, "Please put something about a black jellybean in the subject line when you respond, so I'll know you're not a bot."
So here's this chick "somehow yes", with her encrypted email, who signs her emails with only the letter "C" (but won't tell me her name), and her subject line says, "I Prefer Not to Follow Instructions."
Why, bro? Why was this intriguing for me?
Well anyway, after a long back and forth, we finally met at Cabrini Park, which was a dog park at the time. She had her two dogs, I had my two dogs. We smiled, picked up hot dog shit with thin plastic bags, then later went out for a steak. She had a beer, I did not. I quit drinking in 2007, and am in fact still sober at the time of this writing.
I should keep it real, and say that I have dated some of the hottest women on the planet. I'm not bragging, I just think it belongs here for context, because my caustic, codependent relationships were often with high maintenance women who were fiery and fun off the rip, then pure evil after about a year or two.
But with Celia, I remember most that I just liked her vibe. She was kind of plain-looking, which is exactly how she described herself in her emails, but she embodied all of the things that I think a guy should prioritize in a long term partner: intelligence, compassion, motivation, integrity, and humility.
So we had dinner, then another, and before you know it we were dating.
Spanning Time
If you know me, you know I've had a wild life. I went to Cooper Union in NYC for Fine Art in the early 90s, and without ever meaning to be (no, but really though) I ended up being kind of a hipster artist poet musician guy.
When Celia met me, I was a gallery director in the French Quarter; but I also had a well-established reputation as an art teacher, an avant-garde artist, open-mic poet, and street musician.
By contrast, she graduated from Carleton College with a liberal arts degree, then Boston University for law. She went on to work at some big name firms (think: Suits) in NYC and Charlotte, NC before changing her career course and doing juvenile defense in New Orleans.
So all this to say, she was uptown girl from New Canaan, CT practicing law, and I was a scrappy downtown guy from Philly, NY, and Vegas who hustled to make ends meet and had no real plan other than staying out of trouble and trying to figure out my shit.
I worried that this would make her see me as a fuck up, but she found it refreshing. She owned two houses when I met her, was comfortable with her earning ability, and wasn't necessarily looking for a provider.... just someone to date, have fun with, and hopefully fall in love with.
On one of our dates, I asked her if she wanted to watch a movie I kinda liked, Buffalo '66. It came out in 98, I thought it was a good insight into my idea of quality, and she took the ride. Many years later, in 2022, a British band named Wet Leg released a song called Wet Dream, with the lyrics:
You said, "Baby, do you want to come home with me? I've got Buffalo '66 on DVD"
She sent it to me with the message, "Once again, we seem to have become a cliche".
I mention the movie specifically because in it there is a scene where the main character, played by Vincent Gallo (also the movie's director), is in a photobooth with Christina Ricci, who plays his girlfriend. He is very intense throughout the movie, and places high importance on these images. He wants to share them with his parents, whose disapproval of him is the central plot of the film, and instructs her that he wants the pictures to "SPAN TIME." He keeps repeating it, "Think spanning time. I want to span time!"
This has become one of our longest running inside jokes. Tonight at dinner, some 17 years later, I turned the camera to her and said, "Cel, look at the camera Cel. Cel.... SPAN TIME. We are SPANNING TIME, Cel." And just as she always has, much like Christina Ricci's character, she just smiled and was her usual silly self as I engineered the shot for my audience.
Okay, so what's the point?
Good question, bro. And honestly I don't know. I guess the point is something like, "Hey, so you probably know I'm an OG life coach for men, and have been doing this for more than 13 years under the brand Man-UP! Life Coaching. Well, I thought you should know that at 55-years-old, I'm here to tell you that if you find the right person and do the work, it's worth it."
Worth it how?
Well, we have a son who turns 16 on July 30th. Do the math on that one. She got pregnant in the first 3 months of our dating adventure, and it forever altered our trajectory.
Bennett was born with achondroplasia dwarfism (he's a Little Person) and level 3 autism. So our life immediately involved children's hospitals, emergency surgeries, and all kinds of other drama that we never saw coming.
She changed career directions, passed the bar in California, and we moved out to San Diego with a two-year-old kid, 3 dogs, a cat, a couple cars, and no real plan. It has been a wild ride, my friend.
Yet here I am, sitting at my table in our awesome forever home here in the high desert typing this to you as Bennett, Celia, and our husky Hannah sleep. I had a really nice date with her, and as always was reminded that she's my ride-or-die, who has stuck by me through thick and thin, and vice versa.
She loves her job as an attorney working remotely on an appellate panel for custody cases. I am absolutely crushing it as the founder and head coach at Man-UP! Life Coaching. We both help people, all day every day, and while we're not 'fuck you' rich, we're doing quite well. I would consider myself successful.
But probably the most important thing, and the reason I finally decided to dedicate a blog post to this woman in my life, is that I realize how much meaning it gives my life to have this family of mine. We truly are spanning time, and when that time runs out, well.... it is what it is. But for now, I'm present with it. And I can honestly say that I'm truly happy.
And I want that for you. So I thought I'd share, because guys don't write love stories, so there's nothing for you to read out there in the wild to assure you that what you hope for in your heart of hearts is possible.
It is. And I guess that's the point.
