In the spring of 2004, I was working in sales in Melbourne. An IT guy was deployed from our Sydney headquarters to help set up the internet in our new office. Al had a laid-back vibe and played bass in a band and I immediately liked what I saw.
I was in my late 20s and had been single for a few years, living what I liked to think of as a kind of Secret Life of Us existence in St Kilda (it was the era), drinking, smoking, reading good literature and writing (unpublished) poetry while dreaming of perfect kisses.
Complications with the job meant Al was forced to stay in town a few more days than expected. Fatefully, his company credit card wasn’t working, so I offered my couch. The following nights were full of jugs of Beck’s at the Doulton bar in St Kilda, Thai food and talking long into the night about literature. Since Al had a girlfriend back in Sydney the pressure was taken off – we could just get to know each other.
It was on Tuesday, the second night of Al’s stay – chicken parma night at the pub – that yet another conversation about books and poetry led to his spontaneous by-heart recitation of Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken. The pub was heaving, but Al possessed the natural drama and witty flair of an extrovert. Despite the ruckus around us, at that moment I only had eyes for him. Al told me he also sometimes wrote poetry, and I knew then he might just be the perfect guy for me.
The great pity, as I lamented to anyone who would listen after Al left town, was that I had met “the one”, but he had a girlfriend already and lived in another state.
What I didn’t know was that soon after returning to Sydney, Al had broken up with his girlfriend because he’d realised the relationship was lacking in the kind of natural spark we had so quickly established.
Over the coming months we kept finding work-related excuses to call and email each other, and by Christmas we’d dropped the professional pretence and were texting and calling each other privately, flirting shamelessly. Early in the new year I decided to test if our connection was real. When I asked Al if I would have somewhere to stay if I came to Sydney for the weekend, he responded via text: “Abso-floggin-lutely!”
I booked a flight for February and after a slightly awkward airport pickup we set off for his sharehouse in Darlinghurst.
We were partway through a tour of the house when we kissed for the first time. I knew immediately my instincts had been true.
After that weekend we never really looked back. A year to the day after our first kiss, Al proposed, and exactly a year later, we married. True to the poetic spirit that had so endeared him to me, Al surprised me at our wedding by dropping down on one knee and serenading me with Jon English’s song Six Ribbons. In February it will be 18 years since that day. We now live with our two children in the high country of Victoria and both still read poetry, though less so at the pub.
