And Then We Went out for Burritos

If you'd like to know how many text messages I got yesterday the moment after Sidney Crosby scored the overtime goal that made Canada the Olympic champions of 2010, the answer is this: a whole lot.

Most of them were supportive toward me (and my heartbreak for my rumored fiance)--my mother said, He needs you! Comfort him!--but one of them, from one of the boys I went to grad school with, said he was pleased with the outcome because he loves Sidney Crosby and Canada, and as far as he was concerned, America sucks.

It took all the strength I had to keep myself from responding this way: I'll cut you, bitch.

Because as much as I grew up loving Canada, and as much time as I have spent in Canada, and as much as I support Canada's claim on hockey, I was solidly pro-USA in the hockey tournament, for obvious reasons. And last night that reason let an overtime goal into his net, and after he did that he fell straight to the ground. He smashed his face into the ice and just stayed there for a minute. And I thought, Oh, Ryan. I know. It's okay. Really, it is.

And you could tell just how much he wanted to kill himself then and, well, for the next twenty minutes while the Canadian team celebrated and the Americans had to stay on the ice and watch as they waited for the medal ceremony to be set up. And those boys couldn't even crack the smallest of smiles as the silver medals were hung around their necks. They couldn't even try. I felt so awful for my boy, who got quite a rousing round of applause from everyone in the arena. He still looked like he was two seconds away from taking that medal and slicing it across his throat to see what would happen. See?



Oh, don't you just want to fold him into your arms? Don't you just want to push that hair back off his forehead? Don't you just want to kiss his temple and say, "Let's go key Crosby's limo, okay?" And don't you want to actually follow through with that--key Crosby's limo--and then take Ryan Miller to some dive-y Irish bar where there's a loud band playing Flogging Molly songs, and don't you want to bring a tray of Car Bombs back to the table for him, and don't you want to drink with him until you're both drunk and stupid and singing, and don't you want to get up and do a little jig just to make him smile, just to make him laugh?

Still, even though it's clear that's not exactly how he spent his time after the game yesterday, he did end the day smiling a little bit. He went to the closing ceremony, and the camera went straight to him, got right up in his face, and you know what? Ryan Miller was smiling. He was holding out his phone, recording the whole scene, and he was smiling. See?



Maybe he's smiling because he was able to put things into perspective, to know that he and the team did some pretty fantastic things over a two week period. Or maybe he's smiling because he realizes how good he looks in that hat. (But we aren't surprised by this, are we? We've discussed this before.) Either way, he no longer looked like he wanted to off himself, and that made me happy. Because he shouldn't. I can't tell you how happy that two weeks' worth of hockey made me. I don't get to watch a lot of Sabres games here in Bruins-Land, but I loved watching him play on the world stage. I loved watching all of them play. (Especially David Backes, the boy who was playing for the Mavericks while I was at MSU. If anyone is ever wondering what Midwestern boys look like, he is a PERFECT EXAMPLE. Minnesota was filled with boys who looked like that. Tall. Strong of jaw. Broad of shoulder. Can you see why I am so boy crazy?)

What they did was really something else. No one thought they were going to be that good. But they were.

So, it's no shock really that when I went to bed last night I dreamed of Ryan Miller. This is no big shake--I dream about him a lot--but last night he was sad, so sad, and it was up to us--Western New Yorkers--to cheer him up. He hosted a charity Frisbee-throwing contest when he got home from the Olympics, and I got into the game somehow.

Honest to God: In the dream I was paired with a handicapped child who couldn't throw the Frisbee at all, and I thought, Jesus! Ryan Miller is never going to notice me because this little girl and I, our combined Frisbee throwing is going to be so rotten! But that little handicapped girl and I threw our Frisbee the best we could, and when it was really, really rotten, I tried to teach her how to throw it less-rottenly, and when he saw I was doing that, Ryan Miller sent everyone home and invited me in to his house.

What happened next would displease my father.

Then, the next morning, we woke up and talked about how we needed to practice kissing some more, so we did, and then Ryan Miller said to me, "How about we go get some burritos? I know a great little place."

And then we went out for burritos.

So, as you can see, everything works out for the best in the end. Silver's okay. Actually, it's spectacular. And so is a morning of kissing and burritos.

Crooked

Bad news from Buffalo.

Ryan Miller has a girlfriend, my best friend texts two days ago. And then this morning my father sent me an e-mail with a link one of the local radio stations had put up so everyone could gawk at the pictures of the new girlfriend. And they are pretty gawk-worthy. After all, she's been in Maxim. One of the pictures the radio station jocks put up features her wearing nothing but an unbuttoned dress shirt. She's turned to the side and squatting so we are all afforded what could loosely be described as "an eyeful."

I immediately forward this link on to my office-mate, who, like everyone else at school, humors me about my love for Ryan Miller ("Have you started planning the reception yet?" my office-mate will ask. "Have you chosen your appetizers?").

I can't compete with that! I write to him.

She's strictly arm-candy, he writes back. He'll get tired of her, and who'll be waiting in the wings?

I guess the answer is me. I'll always be waiting in the wings--hopefully in a way that is more charming than it is stalker-ish. Or if not me, then maybe someone like me. Sure, it's true I know nothing about this new girlfriend except that she likes to take her pants off and be photographed in her underwear--and, yeah, I can see why that would appeal to even the smartest, most enlightened of men--but it's just that I've always hoped that Ryan Miller would get a girlfriend who is the sweetest, kindest, smartest, most adorable girl-next-door. I would be totally okay with it if he started dating some elementary school teacher from the suburbs, a girl who has a closet full of smart cardigans, a girl who routinely has to scrub paste off her hands after work, a girl who has had to sprinkle sawdust over vomit when Billy McQueen had a bad reaction to the brownies the Room Moms brought in to celebrate the February birthdays. She would have glasses. She would have a collection of plaid headbands. She would be well-versed in pie-baking.

I feel like Ryan Miller needs a smarty. Someone with an advanced degree in something other than hotness. Hey! Guess what! I have an advanced degree, and it's certainly not in hotness. My degree is an MFA in creative writing, and I've got a decent set of good qualities that come along with that, like, well, I know all the words to Salt-n-Pepa's Shoop. Surely that's got to count for something. It might not be a Maxim model, and it might not be the elementary school teacher with the heart of gold, but it's somewhere in the middle, and that might not be a bad place to be for a man who's played so brilliantly during the Olympics.

And, in addition to playing brilliantly, he's been doing something else quite well these past two weeks: Getting stubbly.



This picture was taken today, after it became clear that, well, Finland wasn't going to be winning the game anytime soon--it was, after all, 6-0 in the middle of the third period--and so Ryan Miller got to go to the bench to rest up for the big gold medal game that'll take place on Sunday. And that meant the cameras kept cutting to him--sans helmet--and that made my afternoon, which I was spending baking placek (and was thus already pretty great), even better.

Earlier, during the first period, I'd called Greg, one of my friends from grad school--the boy who had the bad fortune of having to sit next to and put up with my hysterical shrieking at most of the Maverick hockey games--and said, "HOLY SHIT! ARE YOU WATCHING THIS RIGHT NOW?!"

He wasn't. He was driving back from an teaching gig in Detroit, but he wanted to know how it was going. I told him it was going pretty well, considering the US had scored six goals in, oh, the first fifteen minutes of play.

"You know," he said, "the other night, we were watching the Olympics, and we saw Ryan Miller getting interviewed after the game, and I guess I never really knew what he looked like. So when I finally saw him, I thought, Jess is madly in love with that?'"

"Well, in his defense," I said, "after the game with Canada, he looked like he'd lost fifty pounds. He looked tired. He looked like death. And, well, he's got the crooked face."

"A VERY crooked face," Greg said.

"Yeah, but it's a very appealing crooked face," I said.

And, oh, is it ever. It's enough to make a girl stand in the middle of her apartment at 4:00 in the afternoon, screaming, "YOU ARE A GOD!" at the top of her lungs, clearly giving her neighbors something to wonder about.

So, really, all that's left now is to ignore the news from Buffalo, to forget that Ryan Miller is dating some exotic-looking Maxim model, and spend some time hoping and wishing that that boy, that crooked-eyebrowed boy, helps us get gold on Sunday.

I've got my fingers crossed.

Best Rumor EVER

So I have an upper-level creative writing class this semester, and here's the thing: I am in love with that class. It's a particularly deep and soulful love, and I spend a lot of time thinking how I'd like to fly that class to Vegas, get it drunk, and then marry it.

Today I was headed to this class, and I passed the chair of the department in the hall. She'd been teaching in the room where I'd be teaching in a few minutes.

She grinned at me. "There is a pretty big rumor about you being spread around," she said.

"What?" I said. I was trying to figure out what was so rumor-worthy about me. Earlier, I'd caught a few minutes of Scrubs while I was eating my breakfast, and on that episode Carla was spreading a rumor that the hot new Latina nurse used to be a dude. I hoped no one was trying that with me.

"Just wait until you get into class!" the chair said, and then she was gone and I was left to face my students.

"WHAT?" I demanded as I crossed the threshold. "WHAT IS GOING ON?"

(I did not add, "DOES ANYONE IN THIS ROOM THINK I USED TO BE A DUDE?")

"YOU!" one of the girls shouted. She pointed accusingly at me. "YOU ARE ENGAGED!"

I almost fell over. "What?" I asked.

"People are saying you got engaged!" she said. "To some hockey player! A guy who plays for the Sabres!"

"RYAN MILLER!" I said.

"YES!" she said. "The goalie!"

And then I shrieked. And jumped up and down. A lot. "THAT IS THE BEST THING I HAVE EVER HEARD!" I said. Of course, what made it good, what made it really fucking good, was that people--multiple people--apparently believed it.

So, to celebrate my engagement, here's a picture of my fiance with some random animals dressed in hockey jerseys:



God, that boy can wear a suit. Mercy.

Damn You, Make Me Babies.Com!

So, the other day I was on Facebook, and over in my news feed an odd little picture popped up, and what it was was this: it was a picture of a baby that had been generated when my friend's picture had been combined with another friend's picture.

As soon as I saw that, I knew I had to have my own composite baby. Which meant I followed the link on that picture to the website that made it. Which meant I spent a good chunk of time uploading pictures of all the guys I know so I could plug those pictures in with mine.

In my defense, this was in the name of science. I wanted to know which of my friends (or exes or imaginary lovers) would produce the best looking child. Here are some of the results:

Reaction:Fair enough. I was wrong. If Ryan Miller and I do ever manage to fall in love--which we so should--our offspring wouldn't look as hideously long-faced as previously thought. I think I'd finally be able to tell Keith to suck it; after all, he was the person who said that if Ryan Miller and I ever had a baby, it would come out looking like the Scream mask.

Reaction: Sad. You can totally tell this girl is going to grow up to have a uni-brow. My genes and Ryan's genes should just never meet.

Reaction: Apparently New Boy and I (remember him? Oh, who could forget?) would have very rosy-cheeked babies. Rosy-cheeked babies that look like they might grow up to become Jonathan Tucker. I'm not against that.)

Reaction: Hey, look at that. If I'd ever had a baby with the Boy From Work, she would've been cute. And a fan of daisies, apparently.

Reaction: I have the feeling that Josh would never allow one of his children to dress up as a duck. I'm fairly certain that when Josh does have kids, he'll dress them up for Halloween as members of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony.

Reaction: See that baby right there? That baby's got the look of a very precocious literary superstar. That's what happens when you combine the genes of a fiction writer and a poet.

Reaction: This one freaks me out. It is eerie in its accuracy. If someone else had combined these pictures and then shown me the result without telling me who the parents were, I'd be able to take one look at that and say, "Holy God, that's the Wily Republican's baby, isn't it? That's what the baby would look like if he and I had had kids?" That kid looks so much like him it's ridiculous.

Reaction: I saved the best (funniest? most disturbing?) for last. Keith and I? Yeah, Keith and I would've had fat, fat babies.

And Yet Ryan Miller Is Still Not My Husband

My mother has a habit of collecting magazines from the girls at work.  She takes their O magazines and Cooking Lights and Real Simples, and she puts those in a pile with her own Better Homes and Gardens and Country Homes, and when she's done reading them, she puts them in a giant box and gives them to me.

When I came home at the start of July, she hefted a box into arms.  

"Here you go," she said.

"I haven't finished the last box of magazines," I said.

"Take those magazines!" she said.  "Bye bye!"

So I did.  And because I didn't have the last box of magazines she gave me home, I dipped into the new box.  Last night I was in bed, tolerating Jimmy Fallon only because Alec Baldwin was on, and I think Alec Baldwin is some sort of comedic genius--seriously, that episode of 30 Rock where he channeled Tracy Morgan's father? AWESOME--and the two of them were actually being pretty funny together, and I was ignoring the fact that I think Jimmy Fallon is sort of a tool, and I was doing all this while flipping through one of Oprah's magazines.

When I got to the back, where there are a slew of inspirational, motivational articles, I got sucked into one about making your own luck.  Most people who consider themselves lucky, the article argued, actually make their own luck.  They approach life with a charming, outgoing attitude that appeals to other people, thus opening seemingly "lucky" opportunities with very little effort on their part.  People who consider themselves unlucky actually make themselves unlucky, and they often walk by amazing opportunities that could be blossoming before their eyes.

The article centered around the story of a psychology professor who had been trying for tenure--she'd worked nonstop for, like, four years and then finally got her tenure--and the day after she was awarded it, she woke up and realized she had no life.  So she made a promise to herself.  She was going to get a life.  She was going to enjoy things more, and she was going to try to make herself appealing to men.  She was going to be more outgoing and spontaneous.

A few hours later, she pulled into the drive-through dry cleaners and handed off her clothes to the man in the store.  They flirted.  She gave him her number.  He called later that evening.  They fell in love and eventually got married.

The article advised this: if you think it, it will come.

And I started thinking about that.  I wondered if maybe I'm always setting myself up for being unlucky.  It's not that I think I'm unlucky in everything.  I think I've been very lucky in lots of areas of my life--family, friends, and especially work--but I seem to be the resident sad sack when it comes to men.

And maybe I do talk myself into being unlucky in love.  Maybe I always start off poorly.  You wouldn't believe the level of neurosis brewing in me at the beginning of a relationship or even when I've decided there's a boy out there I think is cute.  I immediately start making lists in my head, and at the top of those lists of things that make me unappealing to men is this: my teeth.  This guy will never like me, I think, because I have jacked up teeth.  I look like a jack-o-lantern.  A beaver.  A woodchuck.  I look like a beaver or a woodchuck carved into a jack-o-lantern.

Before I left Maine for Buffalo at the end of June, my office-mate and I were discussing the possibility of me doing some Internet dating, and I said if I decided to do something like that he was going to have to be my profile editor, my picture approver.  I said, "I'll have to make sure I have a close-up picture that shows me with an open-mouthed smile."

"Why?" he asked.

I smiled for him, to show off my gap.  "Because of this," I said.  "Guys need to see that.  It's a pretty big part of my face."

"Because of WHAT?" he asked.  He narrowed his eyes to peer at me.

"My gap."

"Oh, give me a break," he said.  "I didn't even notice it."

I told him he was a liar.  I told him it was impossible to miss the gap, which used to be much bigger before I had braces, before they did the frenectomy to eliminate the flap of skin that caused my teeth to sit so far away from each other, before they added resin to my two front teeth to make them appear even closer together.

"You have a beautiful smile," he said.  "I don't want to hear anything more about the gap."

"Just the same," I said, "if I ever do this, I am going to make sure my profile picture has an open-mouthed smile just so the guys aren't shocked when they meet me."

He thought that was a whole bunch of worrying about nothing, but then I told him stories from when I was in middle school, when my arch enemy, a boy named Dallas--he nicknamed me Beef because he thought I was chubby and ugly--leaned across the table in science class and stuck a pencil between the space in my teeth.  He laughed and jabbed that pencil at me while I shrieked and tried to get him to stop.

And then, of course, there's that night from grad school, years after anyone had made fun of my teeth, when a drunk girl harassed me about them and made me feel like I was eleven years old again, and I spent the night gluing my lips together so no one could see my teeth.

And while those are compelling reasons to be nervous about how I appear to the opposite sex, maybe (definitely) I dwell on them too much.  The author of the article would probably say that if I changed my attitude, if I really believed it, felt it, wanted it, if I woke up thinking I was going to meet a good man, a nice man, a man who doesn't care how different my teeth are, then that would probably happen.

But you know what? Telling an author to visualize something, to really live and believe the things in her head, is like instructing an accountant to spend the day using her addition and subtraction skills.  I'm a skilled visualizer.  I've pictured it and hoped for it and--the article said this step was important--prepared my mind for the potential opportunity every day of my life.

And yet Ryan Miller is still not my husband.  

To be fair, I've spent a lot of time over the years preparing myself for what it would be like to finally get it together and get a good guy in my life--even guys who aren't even celebrities; guys I went to school with or worked with or met through friends--but none so vividly as Ryan Miller.

My Ryan Miller love clicked along at a healthy pace that year I came back to Buffalo after graduate school.  That year while I was adjuncting at the big university in town I was driving the 40 minutes each day and spending a lot of that drive time, which was happening during the Sabres' seriously hot streak, imagining ways I could somehow happen into Ryan Miller and make him love me.  

Everywhere I went, people were telling me stories of how they bumped into Ryan Miller or knew someone who bumped into him or knew someone who was the sister of the girl who was dating Ryan Miller.  My students said they saw him at one bar.  My friends said they heard rumors Ryan liked to be at another bar.  People were full of advice that was given to get me a chance at glimpsing the goalie who looks so good with stubble and a winter hat.

But I never did get to see him.  In person, at least.  (Well, okay, except this time.)  On my drive to school each morning, I constructed elaborate plans that were surely going to get me close to him.  Generally, my daydreams--my visualizations, my mind preparation--involved my friends and I going to some swanky bar, wearing swanky clothes, and drinking swanky drinks when a few of the Sabres happen into the bar.  One things lead to another, and Ryan Miller--shy, uninterested in scoring with one of the blonds throwing themselves at the team--will be introduced to me by one of the other guys, who decides I look smart and savvy and like a good match for their thoughtful, brooding goalie.

Don't judge me.  I was bored on those drives.  I was scared I would never get a real job and that I'd be an adjunct forever, stuck trying to teach students some of the most important things they'll ever learn, all for $2,500 per class.  I was angry with the Wily Republican and fairly certain I was never going to love anyone as much as I loved him.  

I was cranky.  I needed an active fantasy life.  And so I busied my mind.  I prepared for the potential opportunity.  

And yet, yet, yet.  No Ryan Miller.  Still no Ryan Miller.  

I think lucky people are still just inherently lucky.  The article said a person who thinks she's unlucky will never see a twenty dollar bill on the sidewalk as they breeze past, but I have a good streak of finding lost money--one time my father and I found something like fifty dollars scattered in small bills in an Old Navy parking lot--but I can't find a man who will stay to save my life.

But even so, this doesn't mean I'm giving up the occasional Ryan Miller daydream.  Sometimes during a particularly rough day on campus, I'll glance up at my bulletin board, where there are two full-color spreads of Ryan from the Buffalo News--and I'll think, Christmas break.  I'll be at a bar.  We'll meet.  We'll talk about the musical loves we have in common.  I'll give him good books to read.  A few months later, the cameras will cut to me during the game--I'll be sitting with the other girlfriends and wives--and the commentators will talk about me, about how Ryan Miller has been especially on, especially good, especially precise since he started dating that college English professor, and aren't we all lucky that happened?

It's not a bad daydream to have.  And if it in any way gets me closer to a hockey husband--or, hey, just a good guy who will love me and my jacked up teeth--then fine, then okay, then bring it on.

Maybe Our Kids Will Be Able to Wear Hats without Looking Like Complete Assholes

This weekend the love of my life--and here I am referring to the hockey love of my life, Ryan Miller--was injured by some punk on the New York Rangers. God, I hate the Rangers. I hate them a lot.

The fact that Ryan Miller is injured makes me nervous. It makes a whole bunch of people nervous. And pissed. I was listening to the post-game report on Saturday night, and the announcer came unhinged. It was almost as if he'd forgotten he was hosting a radio show. He sounded more like he was sitting in his living room, a cooler of Canadian beer cracked open at his feet, and asking what the hell was wrong with the NHL these days. The Sabres, he said, were fools not to go after the kid who took Miller out behind the net. Damn fools. You weren't supposed to let anyone run at your goalie like that. Your goalie. He just didn't understand why, on the very next play, one of the boys hadn't dropped his gloves and thrown a punch to say, "You know what? You're never going to do that again, ass-head." He wanted blood.

That sounded good to me, too, and to most of the Buffalo fans who called in to tell him he was absolutely right and that the boys should've gotten busy breaking some noses, some teeth.

Still, even if Ryan Miller is injured, and even if he's out for a vague and undisclosed period of time--which gives me heart palpitations in a not-so-hot way--I was able to get some slightly nicer heart palpitations when I checked on him tonight:

Holy God. That's the best he's looked all season, and I say that fully remembering how ga-ga I went when he showed up with a snazzy new hair cut earlier this year. Now, though, it's a whole new ballgame. He's stubbled. He's winterized. He's gruff. It's a complete A+ effort.

Seeing that video gives me hope. I've discussed at length the kind of genetic soup the two of us would send on to our kids, if ever I managed to meet, charm, and snag him for my own. The horse face. The giant forehead. Ours would be some long-faced children. But here's where the hope comes in: Ryan Miller looks pretty stellar in that hat. In fact, he also looks pretty stellar in this fedora too.

Me? I have never looked good in hats. In fact, I look like an asshole in a hat--any hat that was ever made, except, maybe, for the hat Greg gave me before we left Minnesota, and that's just a miracle.

And that's something that has always made me a little sad. There are some adorable hats out there, and it would be nice to have another accessory at my disposal, but I'll never, never, never be a girl who looks good in a hat. And even if that's something I would pass on, maybe, just maybe, it could be counteracted by the gloriousness of Ryan Miller's hatted head.

So that--the issue of the hat, the possibility of little do-gooding, hockey-playing children who look adorable in any kind of headgear you could throw at them--is the only thing that's giving me a little bit of hope right now. Without that hope, I'd be spending all my free minutes thinking what I would do if I bumped into that Rangers punk in a dark alley somewhere. It would involve blood and other unpleasant things. That much I can be sure of.

When a Picture of Ryan Miller Shows Up in Your Mailbox, You Know It's Going to Be a Good Week

Behold Ryan Miller, the Sabres' goalie. Behold my future husband:

I know. I know. If you need to take a minute, take a break, take a deep breath, go right ahead. He is stunning. It's his hair. It's his neck. It's his hands. It's the guitar on his knee. It's that damn crooked eyebrow. All of that's enough to take a girl down.

Or at least this girl. I spent an awful lot of time over that post-grad school year in Buffalo listening to songs like this one or this one and cooking up clever little montages in my head--places, scenes, or situations where I might just happen to run into Ryan Miller and and be so cool, so charming that he'd ask me to have drink with him. It wasn't a terrible way to spend the year.

And now that I'm in Maine, I suffer through Ryan Miller withdrawals because there's absolutely no reason that his face would show up on the television screen or in the newspaper around here.

Of course, that doesn't mean my life is completely Miller-less. Thankfully, I've got a small army of people back in Buffalo who are looking out for my best interest, which is why this week I got several frantic e-mails titled things like RYAN MILLER STUFF! and YOU WILL LOVE ME FOR THIS! and R.M. GREATNESS!

Earlier this week, the Buffalo News had released this little gem of a video that went along with this article. Needless to say, I got both of those things, and I got them quick. The video was in my e-mail several times over, and the next day when I braved the cold to get my mail, I found a letter from Steph--and inside was a carefully creased copy of the article, which is going to be pasted to my office wall, next to the last Ryan Miller expose the News ran. In her note, Steph mentioned that even her mother was getting in on the act. When she sees anything having to do with Ryan Miller, she'll say, "Ooooh, Ryan Miller! Better send it to Jess!"

My love for the him is legendary.

My love for him sometimes whips me into a frenzy. I mean, come on. He plays the guitar! He's a perfectionist! He takes photos! He's charitable! He's sly and witty! He's anal! He's concerned about his couch cushions! I bet no one would ever have to tell him to rinse his toothpaste down the sink at night. I bet he appreciates a good meatloaf. If that doesn't sound like a man who should be with me, I don't know what does.

The other day I read on his blog that he loves Ryan Adams (oh--thinking about him singing the chorus of this is enough to make my temperature spike). I also read he's looking for new singers and songs to liven up his play list. And I can't tell you how many minutes I spent wondering how, how, how I could e-mail him--not anything about loving him, of course--that would make me crazy--but about Josh Ritter and Cory Branan and Brendan Benson and how I think he would like some of their songs and how, if he let me, I'd show him all the best ones and he could learn them and maybe--just maybe--play them for me some day when I'm back in Buffalo.

God. If only.

If His Hair Were Any Sexier, I Would Faint. FAINT.

The new hockey season has begun, and even though I am no longer in Buffalo, this pleases me. It pleases me because it means my life will now have 90% more Ryan Miller in it. And more Ryan Miller? It's always, always, always a good thing--especially when he's sporting this hairdo:



Oh, Ryan! Ryan! Ryan! Ryan! You aren't the most exciting person to listen to--in fact, if you were a college professor, I guarantee your students would write snarky little things about you on your evaluations--things like, Professor Miller has as much personality as a dry sponge or Professor Miller can put me to sleep quicker than that sound machine I bought from the Sky Mall catalog--but that doesn't really matter to me. I know that if I had the chance, I could make your voice elevate above that I-am-calm-I-am-in-control voice you serve up to reporters. I am confident I could find some sort of pitch in you.

I should probably also tell you, Ryan, that the other day someone left a notebook in one of the classrooms at school, and it kicked around for a few days, so I finally opened it to see if I could figure out who it belonged to. There was a name in the notebook, but it wasn't a name that belonged to any student at school. The name etched on the inside cover was your name. It said RYAN MILLER and it had an exclamation point after it. RYAN MILLER! And I instantly knew that, yes, that notebook belonged to one of my students because on the first day of class when I introduced myself to the class I told them all the important things about me: where I grew up, where I did my schooling, and what I love. And one of the things I love is hockey. And one of the things I love about hockey is you. And I tell my students to remember your name because if they do it will be very beneficial to them in the future. It might help them to ace that one category called Totally Random! I throw into Grammar Jeopardy. It might help them win candy, bonus points, and the eternal respect of their instructor, who spends way too much time in her office gazing up at the picture of you from the Buffalo News that's tacked up on her cork board--it's the picture where you're standing in front of City Hall and looking all steel-thighed and skyscraper-legged.

God, you're hot.

My Cousin and I Have Dated the Same Guy. Don't Judge Us.

In the middle of winter last year, I went on a blind date. The boy was a boy my uncle knew from the place where he likes to play pool and smoke cigars. My uncle swore the boy had a good job, a nice disposition. He swore I would like him. He swore we would be a smart match. I said okay, but pretty much only because I'd been drinking. I'd been drinking and eating a lot of brownies and feeling sorry for myself because I'd been back in Buffalo for months now, and I hadn't yet figured out how to make my heart stay out of my throat every time the Wily Republican called. It was time for an intervention, and so I let my uncle set it up.

The boy and I were going to go to dinner, then maybe a movie, but a few days before the date he called and asked me if it would be alright if we changed our plans. He had gotten a hold of his father's season's tickets for the Sabres and was wondering if there was any chance I was the type of girl who'd rather go to a hockey game instead of a movie. At that point, I was in the middle of my somewhat ill-advised delusion that I was going to meet and successfully charm Ryan Miller, the Sabres' goalie, and convince him that I was his ultimate dreamboat. I figured there was a chance I could make this happen, and the two of us would be married, and that when we were introduced at the reception, we'd run in underneath the team's crossed sticks as everyone chanted Let's Go, Buffalo!

So I said yes. I said, "Yes! Let's go to the hockey game!" The way I figured it, even if the date sucked, I would see some fine hockey and perhaps get my face on the Jumbotron at just the right second--the second Ryan Miller had his face tipped up as he drank from his water bottle. I also figured that's all it would take, and that in that second Ryan Miller would understand that I was the type of girl who thought it was not at all weird that my best friend's bust of Abe Lincoln was dressed up in his own construction paper jersey to support the Sabres' run for the Cup. And what hockey player wouldn't admire that?

The twist of fate that landed me and my date at the hockey game was a lucky, lucky, lucky one. I don't know what I would've done if we'd been forced to wait for a table and then food at a nice restaurant, and I don't know what I would've done if we had to drive from the restaurant to the movie theater and decide what we wanted to see.

The boy, while nice, was completely not for me. I knew it the moment he opened his jacket and revealed that his glasses were clipped around his neck with one of those eyeglasses chains that are all the rage in nursing homes. That might seem like a small and petty thing, but trust me when I tell you it's not. It seemed to me that if he was so consumed with the idea of mislaying his glasses that he would be consumed with a lot of other safe, steady, precautionary measures. He didn't seem very spontaneous. And say what you will about predictability and steadfastness, but there is something inside of me that needs a little more than the same old thing over and over and over. The boys I fall for are always a little off, a little strange, a little wild. The Boy From Work, after all, cornered me by a bathroom and kissed me less than forty-eight hours after we started working together. That kind of thing would have never occurred to my blind date.

So, after our quick dinner at the club in the arena, and before we went down to our seats I snuck off to the bathroom. After washing my hands and fixing my hair, I texted Diana. He is wearing his glasses on a chain around his neck! I typed frantically. A few seconds later she responded. He doesn't sound very wild, she said. You need a little wild.

And that was exactly it. She understood exactly why I was a little panicked about making it through the rest of the date. It wasn't that it was unpleasant--he was nice, sweet, gentlemanly--but it was saturated with guilt. I knew that after he dropped me off at home, I wouldn't go inside and call my girlfriends and squeal about how much fun I'd had and how excited I was to see him again. Instead, I would be calling my girlfriends and telling them it was beginning to become clear to me: I was compatible with no one. I was never going to be loved, not ever. I was going to die in bed with my fifty-nine cats I'd named after famous literary figures.

When the boy called for another date, I ignored his phone call. I waited a few days and tried to muster the courage to call him back and tell him I wouldn't be seeing him anymore. This was something I'd never done before. I'd never rejected anyone. I was really used to being the one who was getting the brush-off. And that's what made it so hard for me. I felt awful about the sudden role reversal, and I didn't know how to go about it. Should I tell him the truth? Should I tell him he was just too dull for me? That I had no interest in being naked around him? Or was it better to fabricate some lie and tell him I wished it could be different--oh, if only!--and it were different, we'd be able to keep on seeing each other, no problem.

In the end, that's what I did. I cried for about forty-five minutes before I picked up the phone and told the boy that I'd just picked up another section of composition at another local school (true) and that I'd be so consumed with developing this new class to meet the school's requirements that I'd be too busy to do anything with him for months, and that it wouldn't be fair to ask him to wait around until I was less busy (false).

I felt like an asshole. I still do.

Well, a month later I saw my uncle and my cousins again. My uncle didn't seem to give two hoots that it didn't work out with his friend, but my cousin seemed a little more ruffled about the whole thing.

"What do you mean he's too dull?" she asked when I filled her in on the date and my reasons for declining another. She's known this guy for a long, long time. She's hung out with him several times. And when I was drinking wine and letting her father talk me into going out with him, she gave him her endorsement when I asked, "Hey, he's not some weird toad, is he?"

"He's really great! And he's cute!" she'd insisted. In reality, my date looked a lot like Andy Richter, but without his goofy charm and bumbly voice. But--to be fair--my cousin and I don't really have the same taste in men. Whereas she gravitates toward the "interesting looking" boys (think: bald or grossly short or both), I've been accused on many occasions of liking frat boys. We definitely weren't working with the same definitions when we discussed my date's looks.

But it wasn't his looks that caused me concern. It was the wild. I told her about the glasses, about the monotone way he spoke at dinner, the polite way he clapped when the Sabres scored. She said that didn't sound all that bad. She asked if I was sure I hadn't maybe been too quick to judge. I said no, no, I hadn't. I said, "If you went on a date with him, you'd see that, too," to which she said, "Well, maybe I will. I've thought about it before." And after that, we both went on drinking and eating desserts and talking about how gross our brothers are.

I hadn't thought of our discussion about my date in a long time, but when I was back home last month after the Boy From Work and I came back from Mexico, my father threw a party, and my cousin and her family came to that party. As soon as she walked in the door she grabbed my arm and said, "I've got to talk to you."

I nodded.

"I went on a date," she said. "A date with someone you know."

I blinked. My cousin and I hadn't gone to the same school. There weren't many people we had in common, except those who shared blood with us. Who that I knew could she have possibly been dating? There had been a brief second when I wanted her to date my friend Josh's best friend, but that never got off the ground. I wondered if the two of them had been secretly consorting behind our backs.

"Who?" I asked.

"You know who," she said. "Robbie."

"Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh," I said. "Robbie. Right. And how did that go?"

She looked stricken. "It wasn't good," she said.

"How come?"

"He's so dull!" she said, and then she listed the things he had done over the course of the night that caused her alarm. There were many things. But my cousin is a stronger girl than I am. She went on another date with him.

"Wow," I said.

"I felt like I owed it to him," she said. "Maybe we just got off on the wrong foot. Maybe he was nervous. Maybe I was nervous. I wasn't sure. I just wanted to be sure."

So we continued to compare notes about this boy and our dates and how we realized we were both the types of girls who needed something wild, something spontaneous, something more. We both admitted our date will someday make some girl a fine and sweet and doting husband, but that girl just wouldn't be one of us. Neither of us was going to get the opportunity to stand up at the other's wedding and give a little speech about how we'd dated the groom, too, and we were so thankful it didn't work out. There would be none of that. And it wasn't until later that I got the chance to sit around and reflect how weird it was that we spent time sipping mojitos and discussing just what it was like to be on a date with the same guy. Only in my family. I swear. We are such freaks.

Dear Ryan Miller--My Desire to Have Your Babies Remains Strong

Especially because of this:



The first time I saw that--during the Ice Bowl on New Year's Day--I was so pleased I almost fell out of my chair. And I was at a house belonging to a member of the Boy From Work's family, which means I was trying to impress people, trying to be on my best behavior, but I still almost fell out of my chair because your commercial was probably the best thing I've seen in a long time.

Yo-Mama-Ween. Man, that gets me every time.

Love,

Jess

My Goalie Is Cuter Than Your Goalie

The other day I found a picture of my future husband Ryan Miller, and in this picture he is standing with fellow Buffalo Sabre Derek Roy (he's the one with the hideous shirt) and New York Islander Rick DiPietro (left).



There are a lot of things I could say about this picture--starting with the asking of the question that's sure to be on everyone's mind: WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING WHEN YOU PLUCKED THAT SHIRT OUT OF YOUR CLOSET, DEREK ROY?--but I will get to that later. First, I need to discuss a critical error in my own judgment that reared its head a few years ago.

I used to have a crush of Rick DiPietro. As a fan of Sabres hockey, I realize this makes me a traiter and a rat, but I have my reasons. First, this crush developed during the winter Olympics, and as anyone can tell you, I am a girl who has great stake in the winter Olympics. Every night I padded out into the living room in sweatpants and slippers so I could sit in front of the TV with a plate of brownies and a fistful of tissues. I mean, My God. The way they can edit sports footage and splice it with tender interviews with the Olympiads...those film editors are just asking for all the weepy girls of Americas to honk their running noses into a Puffs Plus.

I took the 2006 winter Olympics very seriously. I had schedules printed and hung around the apartment so I was constantly reminded of when the slalom was going down, when the speed skaters took to the ice, when the figure skaters triple axeled, and when the hockey teams gathered in front of the popping flashbulbs to play the world's best game. I was obsessed with Olympic hockey. The games were good and interesting of course, but there was something else I was interested in, and that something was Rick DiPietro and his amazing eyebrows.

Sure, there might be plenty of stories out there that say Rick DiPietro is an ass, a snob, an abusive boyfriend, and a carrier of herpes, but I didn't want to believe that back then. I just wanted to stuff my face full of brownie and sigh, sigh, sigh as he skated onto the ice with his face mask raised. When he waved to the crowd, he was really waving to me, the biggest fan of his hair and eyebrows, a girl who was sitting on a plaid couch in Minnesota, a girl with far too much chocolate in her mouth and far too many balled-up tissues in her lap.

I've since changed my mind about Rick DiPietro. I now choose to believe he is an ass, a snob, an abusive boyfriend, and a carrier of herpes. A particularly raging case of herpes. I choose to believe these things because there is room in my heart for only one goalie, one future hockey husband, and that man is Ryan Miller.

My last year in Buffalo was very important in shaping all sorts of things about me--my self-image, my future plans, and my writing--and it was also important in reaffirming my love for Sabres hockey. If ever there was a year for me to be back in the Queen City, it was last year. Everyone in the city was ga-ga, ensorcelled, completely over-the-moon for the Sabres. And because of this, everyone in the city spent an awful lot of time in bars over the course of hockey season. The pizza, wings, beer, and vodka that was consumed in those months was obscene. No one could stop talking about it. The city went insane. And then this video got made:



Yes, I'm a big enough girl to admit that I have cried during that video on several occasions, but that's just how wiggy people got last year. It was a good kind of wiggy, where everyone in the city suddenly loved each other. It was nice. It was touching. I miss it.

And because of last year, I am now a one-hockey-husband kind of girl. My heart belongs to Ryan Miller, who, as it's been noted before, is my head's doppleganger. (Not me, not my face. My head. The actual shape of my head. Seriously. Ryan Miller and I? Same head.) If these aren't reasons enough to marry a man, I don't know what are.

Now, back to the picture:



In this picture--taken at a party for Esquire--it is so clear that Rick DiPietro is pretty proud of himself for being so hot, which he totally is. (Hey, I'm not blind. Empirically, that guy is attractive, but I still believe he's got a snarly case of herpes.) But he looks out of place. He looks kind of doofy. He looks like he's some B-List Hollywood actor who decided to come down and hang out with some hockey players. In fact, he kind of looks like Kelly Ripa's husband.

But my boy, my man, my future husband looks pretty stellar. He looks just like he should: vaguely uncomfortable, slightly startled, and ready to hit the open bar. That's what hockey stars need to look like at parties. After all, who wants to be confused with an actor? Not Ryan Miller, that's for sure. He's no pansy. He stops pucks for a living. Very fast-moving, potentially painful pucks. He puts his body in front of them and says, Hit me. Go ahead. Just you try.

That's why I'm pleased when he shows up to events looking like this:



Yes, the fact that he is standing next to Derek Roy, who looks like he stole that shirt from his grandmother or maybe a disgruntled employee of Hot Topic (it's a very confusing shirt)--is doing nothing for him, but I like the way he's leaning in toward him, all concerned-like, all, Stay close to me, Derek, and I'll attract the women with my tall body and excellent thighs, and once they're here we'll just pray that they ignore those jeans that make you look thirty pounds heavier than you actually are. Now that's a good friend. He is, as always, a crooked-faced, scary-eyebrowed, tall, beautiful boy who is wearing a pair of jeans like there's no tomorrow. Dear God, our children are going to be attractive.