Stories about how couples meet and fall in love are some of the very best types of conversations to have over wine. Regrettably I can’t offer you a nice glass of pinot to sip while you read this, but I thought it would be fun to share the story of how my wife and I met. It’s fun tale chock full of drunk driving, sex and reality TV, and it pairs well with a heaping side of personal shame. I promise it won’t be dull. Besides it’s Valentine’s day, and I forgot the flowers.

A Davis Love Story*

When I was at Davis I shared an apartment with my cousin Amanda right next to campus. It was a nice, peaceful place with hardwood floors, old plaster walls and a second story view of tree-lined B street. Amanda and I were good roommates. I usually had a little bit of extra cash for the bars so I’d treat her to drinks on the weekends, and for her part she’d keep the apartment spic and span. As a bio major she had a thing for cleanliness. As a future winemaker with an appreciation for Brett, I guess I had a higher tolerance for filth.

I remember Amanda lecturing me once about making sure that the dish sponge dried all the way out in between uses. According to Amanda, if it didn’t the sponge would quickly become a veritable zoo for fornicating microbes. With colonies of bugs crawling all over the kitchen sink, who knows what ghastly health problems we might have to endure? I’d of course point to our trusty anti-bacterial soap sitting on the counter, but that never seemed to satisfy. I just remember her exasperated look and her mumbling something about mutation and resistance under her breath (she would have made a great technical enologist, but a lousy winemaker. Embrace the bugs, I say). I think the whole dish sponge thing is partly why I don’t believe I ever did end up cleaning a dish while we lived together.

All in all it was a pretty sweet deal. But (fortunately as it turns out) all this nice family camaraderie and idyllic college living ended the night MTV came to town.

Sorority Life was the brainchild of some short fellow named Fulvio. He and his wife were the producers, and their grand idea was to follow a group of girls through the process of going from pledges to full sisters throughout Spring quarter. There was just one problem with their plan. Because national sororities had rules which forbid Fulvio and his ilk from filming their rush, the producers had to find themselves a nice naive local charter without all the pesky bureaucracy. They eventually chose ΣΑΕΠ but, perhaps predictably, the turn out on Rush Week wasn’t quite what they were hoping for. So, in need of some camera friendly faces, ol’ Fulvio resorted to some classic social engineering and sent a team out to scour the local pubs. You can’t just leave a reality TV show to fate, after all.

Fulvio found what he wanted in my cousin and our neighbor Jordan down at G Street pub one spring evening. The pitch was something classy, like: “We’ll make sure you get on TV if you go down and rush this sorority.” I’m pretty sure all the girls heard was “TV,” and really, who can blame them. They were going to be stars.

About a week after they agreed I remember pulling up to my apartment complex and watching this surreal train of cameras snake out behind them as the two of them walked down to the Fast and Sleazy. Soon after that my cousin was gone, off to live in the Pledge House the ethically-challenged Fulvio had rented and retrofitted for easy filming of his girls. Not being a huge fan of Reality TV, I kicked back and adjusted to enjoying life with just me and my dish sponge microbes. I visited the pledge house a few times, and a friend of mine even streaked it one memorable evening. I think he managed to get his ass on every camera. He was very thorough. But in general I kept my distance. The whole thing just seemed wrong.

Fulvio, it turned out, was wrong and didn’t end up staying long in Davis. The word on the street was that his wife, the co-producer, didn’t especially appreciate him diddling a certain curly brown haired pledge (no, not my wife or cousin). The questionable ethics of banging the on-air talent was problematic for her apparently. Not to mention the whole issue of marital infidelity. In any event, by mid-quarter Fulvio and his wife were gone.

I’d seen Candace once or twice briefly when I’d helped Amanda move in, but it wasn’t until after my night in the hoosegow that I actually got to spend some quality time with her. I’m certain she was impressed. It’s not often that you get the opportunity to pick up your future husband from jail.

How I ended up getting put in jail is almost as silly as how I ended up getting out. I mentioned that I lived on B street? Well, my watering hole of choice was G Street pub. Great place. Live music, pool tables, and the bartender was my neighbor. Best of all it was close. If my alphabet counting skills are correct, B to G is just 5 blocks. So I really have no explanation for why I decided to drive my Jeep home that night, just 5 blocks from home after drinking until 1 in the morning. But if I hadn’t, and if that sleazy grease ball producer Fulvio hadn’t gone trolling for young lovelies and recruited my cousin, I might never have met Candace, love of my life.

Next: I (futilely) request a discrete pick up from jail, we finally meet, and the actual love part of the story begins.

*Names and some details have been changed to protect the sleazy.

Family