Wake Me Up Before You Stop Arguing

It’s the Fall of 1988.

George H.W. Bush has just defeated Michael Dukakis for the presidency. Rain Man is about to rule the box office. And the number one show on television is The Cosby Show.

(Don’t blame us viewers. We didn’t know.)

And I was, by any objective measure, doing just fine, thank you.

I had just come back from covering the Seoul Summer Olympics for the Today Show -tanned, well-traveled, and perhaps slightly full of myself. I was a network television producer living in New York City. I was young. I lived in a nice apartment on the Upper West Side. And I was, as they say, cutting a swath. All over the place.

Across the Upper West Side. Across every city the Today Show sent me to. Across several time zones and at least three continents.

I was working hard, to be sure. And I was having fun. A lot of fun. A lot of no-strings-attached fun. I definitely wasn’t looking for a relationship.

But blind dates? Blind dates were something I was always down for.

There was something about a blind date that appealed to the optimist in me. I was like Forrest Gump in front of a box of chocolates. Forrest didn’t know if he was gonna bite into cherry or caramel.

I didn’t know whether I was off to meet a supermodel, the girl next door or a rabbit-boiler.

And I liked not knowing. It was exciting.

Which is how I ended up at an Irish pub-style restaurant in downtown Manhattan on a Friday night in the fall of 1988, clueless to the fact that I was about to meet my future wife.

Here’s how it happened.

A guy I played softball with - Mike McManus - was married to Maureen. Maureen’s sister apparently worked with a gorgeous, single, beauty going for her Master’s Degree at Columbia University. The sister wanted to set her up. She asked Maureen if she knew of any single guys who were worthy. Maureen asked Mike. Mike asked me.

After Mike’s description of her, I said yes immediately.

Tall. French. Black. A model.

Mike, you had me at girl.

SIX DEGREES OF BLIND DATE

The night arrived and when I laid eyes on her, I was smacked right in the gob.

She was tall. And lithe. And stunning - an Audrey Hepburn face, with dark spritely eyes, and effortless elegance. Mike’s description made her sound beautiful. He was right about that.

But French? Not exactly. Her mother was French Canadian.

Black? Not quite. Just very tan.

A model? Nope. But honestly, she could have been one.

My buddy Mike McManus had gotten none of the details right.

I didn’t care. I was already in trouble.

Her name was Yvonne.

There was just one problem. A pretty big one.

Yvonne wanted absolutely nothing to do with me.

She had agreed to this blind date on one condition - that it wasn’t your run of the mill blind date. This one would feature other couples too. Three of them. So she could escape into group conversation if necessary.

You see, she was just coming out of a long term relationship with a successful doctor who had callously broken her heart, and she was not particularly interested in auditioning replacements. Not yet anyway.

And especially not tall network television producers with maybe a little too much confidence, a passport with two dozen stamps and a recently acquired international tan.

TOUGH CROWD (OF ONE)

I made the table laugh. I was charming, funny, engaged. Mixed metaphor aside, I deployed every tool in the arsenal.

Yvonne sat to my right and - I kid you not - said a grand total of zero words to me.

Never one to give up, and somebody who liked romantic challenges, I tried to make small talk. I noticed her watch, which was interesting. Distinctive.

“Wow,” I said. “What a cool watch.”

She turned away from me as if I had just attempted to snatch her purse. And said nothing.

She literally wouldn’t give me the time of day.

Okay. Fine. A man’s got to know his limitations. I waved the white flag internally.

But I wasn’t about to let the whole evening go to waste. It was a Friday night, for chrissakes. I passed up a non-blind date or two for this.

So I pivoted back to the group, told stories, kept the energy up. People were laughing. Everybody loved me.

Everyone except Yvonne, of course. She remained magnificently, infuriatingly indifferent.

THE DOOR OPENS A CRACK

And then - something unexpected happened.

One of the other couples started arguing. Nothing dramatic at first, just the low hum of a disagreement that had probably been building since before they left their apartment. But it escalated. Voices were raised.

Then the guy from the second couple weighed in, defending the first guy.

His girlfriend did not appreciate that he was siding against her friend. She started in on him - sarcastic, pointed, and not particularly quiet or subtle about it.

Now couple number two was fighting.

I looked to my left. Mike and Maureen McManus my safety net, the one couple I actually knew, the entire reason I was sitting at this table - were exchanging words that were not warm.

Three couples. Three simultaneous arguments. One spectacularly uncomfortable Irish pub.

I looked at Yvonne with a bit of an eye roll.

She looked at me with a similar face.

It was the closest thing to a moment that we’d had at that table.

So I leaned in close and whispered in her ear.

“Honey - promise me that will never happen to us.”

She laughed.

A real laugh.

And just like that…the ice melted and it was game on.

WHAM, BAM! YOU’RE WELCOME MA’AM

We left the restaurant - and the couples therapy sesh - behind and drifted uptown, both of us living on the Upper West Side. I had an apartment in the Alden on West 82nd and Central Park West. She lived in student housing at Columbia. We had approximately forty blocks of city between us and absolutely no reason to rush.

We ducked into Lucy’s - a bar a few blocks from my apartment (hey - ya never know) - and settled in. Lucy’s was fun. It had crazy tropical cocktails in which they put plastic sharks, dolphins and whales. They also had a kickass jukebox.

At one point - something she still hasn’t lived down - Yvonne mentioned that she loved the song Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go by Wham!

I misinterpreted this.

What she was saying was: I enjoy this particular piece of mid-eighties pop music.

What I heard was: an invitation. A hint. A subtle suggestion about the direction the evening might be heading.

It was not. Wishful thinking.

But I’d already decided to pump twenty dollars into the jukebox. In quarters. One song at a time.

Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go played for the better part of the next hour and a half.

The bar was not pleased. Yvonne thought it was hilarious. That’s what mattered.

THE GARBAGE PILE GAMBIT

We hit a couple more bars after that, wandering through the Upper West Side on one of those perfect New York autumn nights when the city feels like it was designed specifically for you. And somewhere along the way I came up with what I still consider to be one of my finest romantic notions.

New York City sidewalks, as you know if you’ve lived there and can guess if you haven’t, are lined with enormous piles of garbage bags awaiting pickup. Mountains of black plastic. Towers of refuse. It’s one of the less glamorous sides of city living.

I made the brilliant suggestion that every time we encountered one of these piles,we should stop and kiss. (The deck was stacked in my favor for sure.)

A way to make something gross into something nice.

Yvonne looked at me.

“That’s disgusting. And kinda romantic. I’m in.”

It worked.

We kissed our way up the Upper West Side, one garbage pile at a time.

I walked her to her door. Hugged her. Gave her one last smooch. Said goodnight. Watched the door close behind her.

And stood there on the sidewalk for a moment, next to what I can only assume was a fairly significant pile of garbage.

Knowing my life had just changed in a big way.