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In college, on just about every spring break or summer trip, I took on the name Dick
Cheney. He was an obscure Secretary of Defense back then, not the guy we know now, and I
“My name is Sherry and this is Abigail,” some nubile young woman I just met might say.
“Dick Cheney,” I would respond, putting equal and vigorous emphasis on the first and
last name. I’d never heard him actually talk at that time, but I probably sounded a lot like him at
two in the morning after inhaling beer and pickling in a hot tub.
One night Dick Cheney was hunkered down in the water, the only thing showing was my
Even in my state of half consciousness and obscured vision, I knew this was someone I
could be proud of in the morning. She was pretty, had quite the body, and I found out later her
father was richer than God. Anyway, we hit it off for a couple hours, obviously on our way to a
serious long term commitment of at least a day, when Dick Cheney got very sick.
Whatever the case, it came on fast. One second, I was deeply in lust with a total stranger,
the next, I felt like I was close to death. I’m thinking it might have had something to do with lack
of sleep, too much alcohol, and way too many hours of being Dick Cheney in the hot tub.
A group helped me to a room, dumped me in a bed, and stood around staring at me like I
was already dead. Not ten minutes later, my hot tub companion had run off with this Lurch
looking dude who was so drunk he was staring out of the top of his head.
Maybe this spring break story makes me look like I have little respect for women, but I
think a friend of mine came closer to the truth. He told me I always acted obnoxious in order to
insulate myself from failure. He said I did it all the time. In other words, by being Dick Cheney, I
was free to fail right and left and, yet, not be a failure. His statement did not command
immediate credibility with me, since he had only been a psychology major for two weeks and he
was smoking an English pipe at the time, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more I think my
It turned out that the woman I would later marry was on one of those Dick Cheney trips.
We knew each other slightly, but hadn’t quite found each other yet. Bethany now claims she
spent her Spring Break days looking for me. This is her bit of revisionist history. She was
looking all right. And she was looking good. But she wasn’t looking real good for me because
Dick Cheney wasn’t a moving target and he wasn’t making a secret about the services he was
offering. I was in the hot tub the whole time. I led singing in the hot tub. I led drinking games in
the hot tub. I chased unsuspecting coeds out of the hot tub.
But I haven’t always been so forward with the ladies. There had been a time when they
intimidated me into inaction and silence. It was in first grade. We were in the carpool line. A
pretty girl got out of the car ahead of mine. My dad said, “She’s waiting on you. Go on. Walk
with her.”
I looked at him like he was crazy. He wanted me to walk into the school with a girl? On
purpose? My dad literally pushed me out of the car. If the little girl knew the panic she was
causing in me, she never seemed to show it. She stood there at the top of the steps, waiting. And
I took smaller and smaller steps, determined to wait her out, going so slow I was getting passed
by ants.
I’m sure my dad got a kick out of watching my first of many painful encounters with the
opposite sex. To be honest, until my wife and I got together at the right time and the right place,
I’m not sure I ever picked up the pace with the ladies much.
Even though I knew the woman who would become my wife in college, we didn’t really
know each other until a few years on the other side of it. By then, we’d both grown, and grown
Our first date happened while we were in college, though. Bethany asked me out. I didn’t
know her. This bright eyed, spirited girl appeared out of a crowd at a bar, marched right up and
asked me on a date. She reminded me of a cheerleader, only she had a beer in her hand.
Of course I said yes. Then some meathead tried to kick my ass in the parking lot fifteen
minutes later. Said he was good friends with Bethany’s current boyfriend. She forgot to mention
that little detail. Bethany kept a whole portfolio of boyfriends on call during college. I think she
was doing what you’re supposed to do in college, which was having fun. (I know I should have
Well, our first date wasn’t that fun. It was a dance and she quickly lost interest in me. I’m
beyond the insecurity now, but at some time in my life it mattered to me that other white people
who couldn’t dance might say something about my white man’s overbite. Up until that point, for
the black tie times in my life, I was the guy who put a cumber bund on his head. Think about it,
you don’t really critique the dancing ability of a guy wearing part of his formal attire as a
bandanna. Just like you don’t really judge the scoring ability of a guy who gets in a hot tub full
of girls and announces that he’s named after the male sexual organ.
But that night, for whatever reason, the cumber bund on the head seemed so high school,
so juvenile, so ridiculous and, thanks to my insecurities, our first date was a total failure.
I reconnected with Bethany a few years later at an afterschool program for inner city kids.
We became friends, sharing hot, long afternoons with dirty, poor children. Looking back at it
now, I didn’t stand a chance. I was already attracted to her, then I saw her around those children.
These were kids living in life’s shadow, children that God, and everyone else, had forgotten long
ago. Bethany had a love for those children, and a love for life itself, that simply made me want to
love her.
Bethany’s presence still gets me high. But she is a good addiction. She is someone I want
to make laugh. She is someone I want to make proud. I will always crave her approval, her smell,
her kiss.
More than anything else, she made me want to take a risk. Bethany made me willing to
take the cumber bund off my head and dance a little, no matter how wooden the moves, or how
My wife still makes me feel as randy as the Dick Cheney of the spring break hot tubs, but
she also makes me care if I’m in hot water with her. She makes me feel like that first grade boy,
with the pretty girl waiting for him at the top of the steps. Only this time, I took her hand, and