In the first semester of my sophomore year in college, I fulfilled my life's dream of living in London. On the first day of my drama class at the University of London, the professor called the roll. One of the names she called was George Michael. It was 1988, and we all gasped. A boy known as Rex answered "here."
Rexy and I got to talking in the student union cafe a couple of weeks later. He was a member of my college's study abroad program, but we'd never interacted: The majority of us chose to live in flats in central London and partied together, but Rex chose to live with a family way out at the end of the Northern Line. He told me he loved to cook. I had been living on scrambled eggs and soup for a month, and I blurted out, "You should come over!"
The next afternoon, we took the tube back to Queensway and walked around Safeway buying ingredients for lasagna. That afternoon was the first of many times I perched on the front of a shopping cart he was pushing. We spent the night eating, drinking copious amounts of cheap Portuguese wine and laughing. Rex pretty much spent the rest of the semester on the couch of our midtown flat.
After one semester back at Elon, Rexy moved back to Virginia. He'd been kind of floating, changing his major repeatedly and not showing enough interest for his parents to foot the out-of-state tuition. My roommate Kathy and I were sad, but the three of us commuted between Elon and JMU to get together every three months or so.
Rexy at the time was struggling with coming out, and he wasn't fooling anyone with his wallet picture of a big girl who was supposed to be his long-distance girlfriend. In his frustration, he developed a really serious impulse shopping and charging habit. Don't get me wrong, I was on the receiving end of this addiction, and I got some freakin' awesome gifts, and some really strange ones -- including a five-foot-tall Swiss Colony sampler that Kathy and I never did finish -- but I grew increasingly worried about my Rexy.
So when I was about to graduate and had no plan other than to move to Raleigh where my favorite clubs were, I called Rexy (who'd come out by then and was disappointed at our anti-climactic reaction) and asked him if he wanted to come with me. He called me back an hour later and said, "Okay."
Rexy and I moved to a flop apartment not far from the State campus. We stayed there for just over four years. We were poor as paupers and both worked two jobs. Our treat to ourselves about every couple of months was to hit the Sunday Buffet at Golden Corral. We'd wear sweatpants and make a point to arrive during the last hour of breakfast, stuff ourselves, then drink coffee and smoke cigarettes until the lunch spread was served and then force even more food down our gullets. Then we'd go home and lie on the floor of our living room, moaning, sighing and snoring as "Beavis and Butthead" blared on the television.
We fought like cats and dogs, especially at the laundry mat before we were able to get our own washer and dryer. We'd go for days without speaking and then forget why. We both had really bad judgment with our approach to meeting men, and we got our hearts broken more times than I care to remember.
But we also developed a beautiful partnership and took care of each other through some really brutal things. Those stories don't belong here, they're just for Rex and me to block out/savor/learn from.
We split up to go and live with our respective boyfriends in 1995. I lasted four months with mine; Rex and Ray are still together.
Rexy was a bridesperson standing by my side in my wedding in 2006. He escorted my mama in and out, as he is one of her favorite children. Steve asked Rex to sign as an official witness on our legal, North Carolina wedding certificate, and as I watched them sitting there together, signing the most important document in our lives, I wept and made a mental note to myself to tell Rex nothing would make me happier than to sign his someday.*
(Steve and Rex both loved that I captioned this last photo on my personal Facebook album, "She's legally your problem now, Mr. Sweetypants.")
*2019 update: Rex and Ray just celebrated the fourth anniversary of their legal marriage and 24 years together. My heart is full.
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