Alice's story, part 1

"Suggest a topic!"

"Something that made you feel very proud or very ashamed?"

We're comfortably ensconced in Alice's living room. Alice's two dogs kick back belly-up on the floor while a ferret clan clambers around a tall cage behind me. I've known Alice for two or three years, but I've never heard the story she's about to tell.

"He wasn't my first boyfriend," she explains, "but definitely my first real boyfriend. I was very certain I was going to marry him." She's talking about her high school sweetheart, a fellow we'll call Joel who she'd met through a dinner set up by a mutual friend. He was dorky, she says, but had a great body, and Alice and Joel quickly discovered shared interests from musicals to Monty Python. She recalls the early days of that relationship: "He always wore too much Adidas cologne. The couch would smell like him for days. And I remember those first uncomfortable nights where he would sit next to me on the couch and you don't know how to act around each other because you're in high school, you don't have any experience." There's a big smile on Alice's face here. Time has worked alchemy, turning these awkward early moments into fond reminiscences.

For my part I momentarily feel fractionally more awkward, reflecting that I'm still not totally sure how to act when I sit next to a girl I like on the couch, but the moment passes.

Alice mentions offhand that she found Joel more handsome as their relationship grew deeper. I wonder aloud why that was. Alice answers almost immediately: "I think whenever you establish a relationship with someone you begin to understand their quirks. You understand why they toss their hair a certain way. You understand when they wink like this or when they smile like this it means... this. So you begin to notice -- he kind of had this certain way of looking at me, and I knew that what he was saying was, oh my gosh I love you. And so that look became just the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen!"

I listen carefully. It's interesting to hear Alice echo something I've noticed in my own friendships and relationships; I always find women more attractive when I'm friends with them, and my last serious girlfriend said the same thing about me. (I wasn't sure whether to be happy or chagrined.) Alice's explanation makes as much sense as anything I've been able to come up with myself. That, and just having enough positive associations with a person turns their face into a welcome beacon.

For these first minutes of our conversation, Alice only foreshadows what would eventually come between her and Joel. Actually, I wouldn't have predicted it. She's mentioned his parents, but mostly in a positive context: "they instantly felt like my other parents," she said of how they practically adopted her. "They were very attentive." It turns out, though, that attention is not always a good thing. We'll get into that tomorrow.