Our first touch

Tom and I met at work. It was UT/TV. Maybe it was 1990 or so. I got a job fresh out of graduate school working with two writer/producers. Tom worked with his business partner as directors, editors, and videographers. My team did not like Tom’s team and Tom’s team really did not like us. But Tom and I hit it off.

Secretly.

We started dating on some federal holiday like President’s Day or MLK Day. A day off work. It was a sloooow start. I lived in Montrose in a cute little house. He lived in an apartment over off 1960.

One night we went out and I don’t know if it was the first date or the fifth but we went into this gas station on the corner of Montrose and Westheimer. Tom was paying for something and I was at the counter with him. And the pinky of his right hand touched the pinky of my left hand. It was an accident. Neither one of us moved and I don’t know about Tom but I swear the earth stopped moving. I could not think and I could not breathe and all I was thinking was that we were touching! We were touching! People in movie theaters blocks away could not hear because the beating of my heart was so loud. We were touching! It was the single most memorable second of happiness in my life.

When Tom was in the hospital last January, I would lean over and sing to him. It was always the same little derivation of “You are my sunshine” and when I would finish he would always say “I love that song.” And then I would ask him how many kisses he wanted. If it is was me laying there I would have said 892. But Tom was much more actualized, far less greedy, and believed in tomorrow. He always said numbers like “seven”, or “five”. The last time we did it he said “six”. And they were good kisses. I put my hands on both sides of his face just like he did the day we got married. And we had six slow, gentle kisses. And two for good luck.

And those kisses were even better, though I never would have believed it, than our brushed pinkies on the corner of Montrose and Westheimer.