The Time I Outsmarted My Wife Part 3

It doesn’t take a detective to realize that at the end of this story, Wendy and I end up together. So I don’t think I’m spoiling anything here. I’m chronicling this timeline and series of events so that other below average, socially awkward people might have hope of doing what I did. It is not impossible for the unlearned, unwashed and visually unpleasant to successfully win the affections of those that may seem unattainable. My purpose with this story is to prove that all can be possible if you keep your wits, plan and execute while never moving your eyes from the prize.

Almost immediately after Wendy came over to use my computer, I found myself with the overwhelming desire to write my feelings down while in my summer quarter nutrition class (Looking down, I really should have paid more attention in that course). The words became a poem and the poem really sounded more like a song in my head, so I rearranged it a little and soon I had lyrics to a song about my feelings. My musical confidence was extremely high that summer, because a small record label had noticed our band and wanted us to record some demo songs for a full album. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that what I wrote might be an actual song.

What makes a love song magical is how someone connects to the sentiment of the message of the song. If the message is relatable and is delivered with the proper feel and expression, the listener will let the music dance around in their mind as a soundtrack to the listener’s own personal experiences.

Where many love songs go wrong is when they are much too specific. For instance, the line: “I know you want to leave me, but I refuse to let you go” is relatable to 99% of the animal population with emotions. While a line like: “I want you back even though you slept with my cousin for Nickleback tickets,” excludes too many people from relating to the sentiment, and thus not creating an emotional connection from listener to the music.

The world is overrun with love songs of people pining for love or passionate, unquenched desire. On the flip side, there are some pretty excellent love songs that are seething with jealousy and desperate heartache. Dramatic tragedy and tears over what is ultimately a chemical or hormonal imbalance stimulated by a drive to mate or procreate. In fact, the two areas of the brain that control the impulses and emotions of love and corresponding receptors (limbic system and frontal lobe) together are nicknamed “the Marvin Gaye” cortex. (Don’t bother looking that up because it isn’t true.)

I wanted to write a song that fell in between those other types of songs. My love song was about a complete and utter lack of confidence, doubt, very little self-respect and the shame of having to stalk the person you wanted to be with from afar because you were too worried they would think you were a loser. I was sure other people in the world felt hopelessly outgunned when it came to loving someone beyond their station. Or maybe it would be just a niche market tune.

If you read the lyrics without music, you might be tempted to cut yourself a little, so we made it a bouncy, quick waltz. That was enough to balance the weight of the self-esteem “issues”. I wanted to give it a feel of the Vince Guaraldi Linus and Lucy tune from the Charlie Brown specials because I mention Charlie’s pursuit of “The Little Red Haired Girl”. In fact, we named the tune “Chuck” after Charlie Brown because that’s kind of how that whole situation was.

I didn’t use the term “love” in the lyrics because it seemed like there were all these struggles a sad sack needs to get through before the idea of genuine LOVE can be addressed. The whole thing sounds like a stalker song if you read it with that in mind. If for some reason Wendy would have disappeared, this song would be considered credible evidence to at least have me picked up by the police as a person of interest. I had lines in it like: “passed by her window again, curtains wide open but I don’t look in.” Those lyrics and a windowless van would be enough for a small town to form a posse.

The thing is, the song was written in a way that even if Wendy heard it, she wouldn’t think I wrote it about her.

In less than a month, the band had rehearsed the tune and the guys liked it enough to put it in our regular rotation. We also recorded it as part of our demos that summer. Apparently there’s a government grant that bands become eligible for if they allow their drummers to write one song. That’s how Phil Collins got rich.

So put all that song business in your back pocket. Wait, don’t sit on it. Just set it aside and we’ll pick up where I left off when Wendy left her “Thank you” note to me (I still have the note by the way, romantic or hoarder? You decide).

She had me up to her apartment in a very casual and non-romantic way to make dinner for me and a couple other people she felt she owed thanks too. I’m not going to pretend it was something that it was not, but I’m also not going to pretend she didn’t invite me by leaving a note and a plate of her amazing chocolate chip cookies at my door. (I’m sorry, I know that was a double negative sentence.) She did do that.

The night before my final year of college was to start, on September 23, I was thinking of anything but Wendy. I just didn’t think it was going to work out. I hadn’t seen her car around at many of her usual places and I hadn’t bumped into her. I stopped looking for the light in her upstairs apartment window. I was alone in my apartment, putting together a cardboard life-sized display of Jim Carrey from the movie Liar Liar so I would have someone to talk to, when my phone rang.

Knowing it was probably one of my intoxicated friends calling to take advantage of their only non-drinking friend to pick them up and take them to the fast food joint of their choice, I quickly grabbed the phone. I was shocked that it was not a hungry drunk dude, but the same voice I had heard almost a year earlier.

Phones back then were analog and not digital yet, so the sound quality of a phone call was much better than anything we hear today. Wendy’s voice dripped like warm honey into my ear in a completely unexpected explosion of adrenaline and hope. I also panicked because I was only in my underwear and she was talking to me. I tripped over my coffee table trying to get cover before I remembered that she couldn’t see me through the phone.

It turns out, one of Wendy’s jobs was working for the campus police in the dispatch office. She explained that when she got bored, she would just look people up that she knew and give them a call just to say hello. She told me she remembered me and that I came back with a clean record.

This was it! This is not a drill! Wendy has chosen to call and speak to me out of everyone she knows on campus. My months of attacking her psyche with “random” encounters of humor and usefulness had paid off. I had trained for this. I knew exactly what I had to do. My GOD! It’s been hours since I took my meds! I’m going to screw this up! I’m going to say something embarrassing! SLAP! Pull yourself together DAMM! These things never happen at the “ideal” time. Now sit down in your easy chair and take a deep breath. One step at a time.

“Steve? Are you breathing?” Wendy asked after hearing my deep breath.

“Yes, I also eat and communicate with others. I call it ‘being human’”.

Not your strongest start, but go with it.

“Wow Wendy, it’s been a long time since you called this number,” I changed the subject quickly.

“I don’t think I’ve ever called this number,” she said.

“I know. You haven’t called it since I’ve lived here and that’s been over two years,” I said as Wendy immediately laughed on the other end.

Wendy had made the move, whether she was aware of it or not, that I needed her to make in order for any chance of us being together would work. If I were to pursue Wendy while she had a boyfriend, I would be letting her know that I didn’t respect her relationship, and therefore her, enough to be worth someone to date. I would be an untrustworthy person. As long as she was still dating her boyfriend, I knew I could not flirt, insinuate or position myself as anyone but a friend. If she flirted with me, I couldn’t flirt back, not while she was in a relationship with another person, pony tail or not.

However, I could ask her as many questions about herself and her life as I wanted. But the key wasn’t to ask questions to get answers to things I wanted to know. What I needed to do, was ask honest questions where the answers created confusion and doubt in her mind about her boyfriend. No snarky comments or judgmental tones either. My job was to always take the boyfriend’s side if she were to ponder bad feelings towards him. I couldn’t have her thinking in any way that I was trying to undermine him as her boyfriend.

“Wow, your boyfriend is a pilot? I wanted to be a pilot for a long time but never had the stomach for it. I bet he takes you up all the time. When did you go up last?” I asked with genuine enthusiasm. Because I knew the answer wasn’t “all the time”. Even “sometimes” isn’t “all the time,” and why hasn’t she been up with him more? I innocently asked completely reasonable questions that anyone might ask. I just had a different purpose.

“Hmmm, it’s been a while I guess,” she said as she tried to figure out how long it had been since this cool pilot boyfriend had actually taken her up in a plane.

“I’m sure he’s probably been busy. I know those airline pilots have some crazy schedules.”

“Actually, he isn’t flying for an airline, he’s still just getting his ratings and building hours.”

“Oh, well he probably has to make longer trips to build those hours then. I’m sure he’ll be by to visit you soon. When’s he coming over next?”

“Hmmm, I’m not sure,” She said with a genuine note of uncertainty of where the relationship was. I on the other hand knew exactly where the relationship was, and it was not at the top of the pilot’s priority list.

I didn’t want to depress her either, by running the entire call this way. I had no idea how long I had with her on the phone. At any minute, a call might come in about some Sophomore streaking across the lawn of Barto Hall, or a suspicious odor from under a door in Beck and Wendy would have to hang up and do some police dispatching. My best bet was to ask her as many general questions about her as possible and when her boyfriend came up, act incredibly interested in all the things he could be, but wasn’t, doing for her. I kept her laughing. This call had to be fun for her even as I was ruining the image of her boyfriend from inside her own mind.

We were on the phone for about a half hour and she had to hang up to take another call. I felt completely satisfied. I had gotten some excellent work done and completely re-opened her file. I was sitting in my filthy little apartment with a euphoric glow emanating from my body for several minutes. You could probably see me from space. The phone rang again.

Wendy had called back. It was maybe seven minutes and she called me again like we hadn’t even hung up.

“So, did a family of bears enter the dining hall looking for Golden Grahams again?” I joked, probing for more answers.

“No, there was a call for me to run a license plate for a traffic stop,” she said casually, “Then my boyfriend called through.”

“That was nice of him to call and check on you,” I knew he didn’t call to check on her.

“Uh…no, he wanted to know if he left his jacket at my apartment,” she said, just a little hurt. Time for one last emotional haymaker.

“I bet you have it on right now don’t you, because you like the way it smells, huh?” I said in a teasing voice meant to provoke the painful realization that she could care less about his stupid jacket, and WHY hadn’t he called to check up on her?

“No I don’t and I don’t have any idea where it is or what it smells like,” She said, not understanding that she just told me that she didn’t love her boyfriend. She continued, righting her disposition, “Anyway, I feel like I’ve been talking about myself this whole time. Tell me about you, Steve Damm.”

And the call went like this for three more hours. I was glued to the phone, carrying on an extremely controlled conversation, learning more about her and giving her less about me. I knew this call was it. I was on the right path. Everything was falling into place, and as long as some selfish student didn’t overdose on Robitussin that night and require all of the police dispatch’s attention, I could make this girl fall in love with me.

The call finally ended at midnight. It was the end of her shift and she would head home. We both had our first day of classes starting early the next morning. (Well, she had classes early the next morning. I had a rigid “no classes before 11am” policy.) So when we hung up, she wasn’t the only one who wanted to talk more. I was officially in over my head. Any idea that this was just a heavy crush was gone and I was left to think about what the score really was.

I wanted to be with her right then and there. I was thinking in terms of forever in a situation where I wasn’t even part of the equation. She was a stunningly brilliant young woman with a bright future and I was just a sad single guy dressed in a stained t-shirt and tiger print shorts who couldn’t fly an airplane.

I went to bed that night with that sour sick feeling in my stomach. It’s worse when you are raised up by hope but slammed back down by reality. I had just about slipped off to sleep when I heard the knock.

I answered my door, not to find a lost intoxicated friend about to spill nachos on my floor, but Wendy, standing outside, dressed in a coat and hat straight out of a Paddington Bear book. She smiled as she saw the tiger shorts.

“I couldn’t sleep, would you like to go for a walk with me?” casually waving away the fact that it was midnight-thirty and she had important classes to go to in the morning.

“Yes, I could stand a walk,” I said through a poker face as I doubled up my focus. It’s GO TIME DAMM! Don’t touch her, don’t try to kiss her, don’t flirt with her. Just walk alongside her and talk like two people trapped together on an elevator. You are a spy for the CIA and you will give the enemy only what is useful to you and not to them. Make her feel like she’s the only girl on the planet, without letting her know that you would tunnel through the Earth’s core in order to bring her back fresh, authentic Chinese cuisine.

We walked all over town that night. I stuck to my rules. I absolutely could not be the one to initiate romantic contact in any way. If there was any hope of us being together as a healthy couple, she couldn’t harbor any feelings toward me of being the reason she and Flyboy McPonytail broke up.

I had several opportunities to make a move that night. She was practically inviting me to kiss her. Inviting me with cookies and an embossed card tied with a silk red ribbon and sealed in wax stamped by her own two luscious lips. I did not. I was waiting for more.

We said goodbye at nearly 4:30 in the morning and went back to our apartments. I pretended to move my feet above the ground to disguise the fact that I was floating. That would have invited suspicion.

I reassured myself that what I was doing was the right thing. If the movie Brewster’s Millions has taught us anything, it’s that if you don’t go for the $300 million, you’re going to always wonder if you could have had more. In the movie, Richard Pryor is a poor baseball player who stands to inherit a ton of money. He has to choose to take the “wimp” clause of the will for one million dollars, OR if he successfully spends $30 million in 30 days without a thing to show for it, he would inherit $300 million. In this metaphor, a long term relationship with Wendy would be represented by the $300 million, though the actual value in incalculable. Kissing her on the walk, would have been worth the measly one million dollars.

After the walk, we were inseparable. We spent just about every moment outside of work or class, just hanging out and talking. We would stay up late discussing music I liked, or books Wendy had read all the way through. I could tell I was making progress even though I kept a distance and tried to respect that she was involved with someone else. This lasted about a week before something strange happened.

Late one evening as we were listening to music and Wendy was bopping around her apartment having a good time, and I was trying not to look interested, Wendy’s eyes caught mine and she paused. I had let my focus lapse and a glimpse of longing, desire or adoration must have been visible for just a split second. I knew I had been caught red handed and if I didn’t think quickly, all my hard work was going to fly out the window. It wasn’t the right time.

“Steven,” she said with authority as she looked in my eyes, “there have been occasions when I spent time with guys who were friends of mine that thought something more was going on than really was between us.” I pulled it together as she continued. “I am in a VERY committed relationship. I don’t want to give you the wrong idea. Do we understand each other?”

OH MY GOD! DID SHE REALLY JUST SAY THAT TO ME? Yes she did. She called me out. I have to respond now. Why would she say that? Why would she be so bold? WHO SAYS SOMETHING LIKE THAT? I have to tell her something! Are we making eye contact with her? Yes. What’s my facial expression? Blank. Steve Damm you magnificent pile of man! You still haven’t given it away. What’s her expression? Smiling. SMILING? What do you mean smiling? Right now she is smiling at you and trying to read your thoughts through your mind. AHA! She wants to know how I feel about her! Well, for heaven’s sake DON’T tell her! But don’t lie to her either! Your only play is to out-bold her right now. Give no information but instead throw it back at her like it was incredibly arrogant… Say something now!

“Wendy, don’t flatter yourself.”

And the Oscar for Best Actor in a dramatic performance goes to… Steve Damm! In Five Seconds Ago!

I said it as confidently and direct as I could. I held her stare until she broke it off, embarrassed and a little sad. Embarrassed because I had met her fire with ice, and sad, because she wanted me to admit to feeling the way she felt. But she STILL had not made the first move. After that moment, I knew I could keep up the performance indefinitely. Forget acting, I could be an undercover police officer in organized crime.

We shook off the awkwardness of the situation, because after all, neither of us wanted this situation to end. We continued to hang out as before. Now it was just a game of reverse Chicken, with both of us trying to see who could stay away from the other the longest.

Wendy had heard the song I had written, as the demos came back sounding very good. She liked the song especially well and I wasn’t worried about her figuring it out, because as brilliant as she is with statistical data analysis of psychological assessments, she couldn’t follow a line of lyrics with a ping pong ball. But she loved the song. She was about to hear it played live for the first time.

On Friday October 3^rd, my band was playing a gigantic party in a field outside of town. Hundreds of people were crowded in front of our rickety stage and screaming our names. I’m not going to lie to you, if I ever wanted a girl to see me, it was when I was playing drums. And it sure doesn’t hurt when other girls are shouting your name. Wendy was there and heard me play. It was one of our best shows. I played my little butt off and there in the crowd, as we played the song I wrote for her, Wendy beamed back at me, completely clueless.

She played roadie for me and helped me load up my gear after the show and came back to my apartment to unload the gear. I was sweaty and gross from playing hard, so I hopped in the shower to rinse off. Seriously? Do you think I’m going to post that something happened in my shower? This is a family blog.

After my shower and emerging fully clothed to my living room, I found Wendy was stretched out on the couch. I sat down next to her as the stereo played in the background. Wendy sat closer to me than usual.

“You were amazing tonight. You’re an amazing drummer. Did you really write that Charlie Brown song?” Wendy asked quietly.

“Thank you, and yes, the band was a big help but yeah, the words and ideas were mine.”

“Do you write a lot of songs?”

“Not many. But when I do, I enjoy it.” I said, hoping this wasn’t going where I thought it was going.

“Have you ever written a song for someone?” She asked.

“I think the best songs are the ones written for other people,” I said, hoping I could launch into some music trivia about Carly Simon and Warren Beatty to change the subject.

“Would you ever… Would you ever write a song for me?” She asked as she looked into my eyes. It was a direct question. I couldn’t avoid it. The time had arrived to come clean. It felt right. This was it.

“I already have Wendy,” I said as I moved my hand to brush the hair over her ear. “Chuck is all about how I feel about you.”

Tears fell from her eyes as I carefully explained how much she meant to me and how I didn’t want it to change our relationship. She told me how conflicted she was, and I let her know that I would be to her, whatever she needed me to be, friend, boyfriend, someone to take a walk with, but I just wanted to be in there somewhere. I still didn’t make a move to kiss her. If this was going to work out, I couldn’t. It had to be her decision.

Three days later, she kissed me. SHE kissed ME.

She has been the last woman to kiss me and the only one I want to kiss me ever again. She kissed me the day we got engaged and she kissed me the day we were married in Maui. She kissed me when my son was born. She’s kissed me thousands of times since. She will probably kiss me tonight as well. She’ll definitely kiss me if I read this to her.

That was the first and last time I outsmarted my wife. I’m totally fine with that and that’s the Damm truth.