Ah, summertime in Atlanta, Georgia! Could there ever be a more perfect time of the year? I'm sitting out on our back patio on a summer evening, working on my second glass of wine and messing around with my laptop. A few feet away, my husband, Gary, is about to put the steaks on the grill (he's really a great cook!). What's that old song from "Porgy and Bess"? "It's Summertime and the Livin' is Easy". That really sums up what I'm feeling. At the back of our lot, the trees are gently swaying in the soft breeze and my mind goes back to some very special summer nights when I was in college.
It was the summer between my sophomore and junior years at the University of Georgia. At the end of the spring semester I had made the decision that I wasn't going to go home for the summer. Although I dearly love my father, I just couldn't handle his controlling ways ("When you're under my roof, you go by my rules, blah, blah, blah"). I had left home two years ago and I wasn't going back to that environment.
I had been working at the UGA Bookstore part-time for the last year and when I was offered full time employment for the summer, I leaped at the opportunity. Unfortunately, I had to vacate my dormitory and find a place off-campus. The place I ended up was a bit of a dump; an old Victorian-style house that had been converted into student housing. I shared the upstairs with two other women and, let me tell you, it was definitely not luxurious! While we had our own bedrooms, we had to share a bathroom, a small living room and an even smaller kitchen.
My roommates were about as opposite as you can imagine. Beth was a South Georgia farm girl and one of the coolest people that I've ever known (she and I still exchange emails from time to time). Although she frequently put on a hick country girl act, she was an absolutely brilliant student (a Chemistry major) and had a nearly 4.0 GPA. As for my other roommate, Janet, about the kindest thing I can say about her was that she was a fourteen carat pain in the ass. She was totally into her religious thing and didn't hesitate to tell me and Beth that we were going to hell unless we lived like she did. She was always sitting in our living room area reading her bible while Beth and I were either "B.S.ing" or trying to watch TV. She was so bad that Beth and I took to calling her "Mrs. Jones" since we thought that she should have gone to Bob Jones University or someplace like that. Since Janet was from South Carolina, I always wondered why she had decided to come to UGA.
At any rate, as the summer semester began, I was hard at work in the bookstore. A couple of days before classes began, I was busy stocking shelves when I noticed that a cute guy, a few feet away, staring at me (especially when I was bent over, working on the lower shelves). When I looked back at him and smiled, he acted very flustered and turned his attention to the open book he had in his hands. To tell you the truth, I was intrigued with the guy from the very beginning.
Finally, I figured that I needed to force the situation. No guts; no glory, right? I finished putting the books on the shelf, walked directly over to him and purred in my best Georgia accent, "Can I help you find something?"
To my surprise (and amusement) his face became as red as UGA's school colors. All he could stammer was "Uh, Ah, Uh. No, I think not."
"OK", I smiled back at him. "Be sure and let me know if I can help you." Still red-faced, he nodded and I went back to work. However, during the next few minutes, I could sense that he was still staring at me. It was getting close to closing time for the bookstore and I was getting ready to call it a day when I heard someone step up behind me. I turned, and there was the cute guy looking down at me.
The heavily-accented words seemed to tumble out of his mouth, "Excuse me. I would very much like to know if you would be available to have a cup of coffee with me."
I almost laughed out loud. Did he really ask if I was "available"? His choice of words may not have been the greatest but his manner won me over. I smiled at him and told him that I would like that and I would be off work in fifteen minutes.
We walked to a close-by sandwich shop and, over coffee, introduced ourselves. His name was Avi and he was, of all things, a soldier in the Israeli Army. The Israeli military had sent him and five of his fellow soldiers to the UGA College of Engineering for the summer session. Although Avi didn't talk much about the purpose of the trip, I did get the impression that it was fairly important and that he and the five others had been selected with great care.
I can't deny it. I fell for Avi two minutes after we began talking. He was totally unlike the college guys that I had been around for the last two years. He was shy, totally unassuming, obviously very intelligent, and very handsome. That "cup of coffee" lasted well over four hours and we talked as if we had known each other for months. When Avi asked me for a date, I readily accepted.
To put it bluntly, our first date and the one after that were COMPLETE disasters. Don't get me wrong: I did have a great time (on both dates) until Avi asked me to come back to the house where he and his fellow soldiers were staying. First of all, their house was in even worse shape than the place where I was staying but that was not the problem. The big sticking point was that we could find absolutely NO privacy.
I'll be truthful about it. I was ready to go to bed with Avi almost immediately into our relationship. And, Avi felt the same way. I felt bad for him since it was obvious that he and his buddies were on a real shoestring budget. They had pooled what little money they had for an old beaten up jalopy and I knew that Avi had spent a ton of money just getting his textbooks for the summer session.
Still, I was really getting frustrated that we couldn't "do the deed" (as we used to say).
On both dates, Avi had taken me up to the room that he shared with another guy and just as things were progressing nicely, someone would walk down the hall and completely shatter the mood. On the second date, Avi was just pulling my panties down when his roommate walked up and knocked on the door. I was so frustrated that I could have SCREAMED!
When Avi asked me out for our third date, I accepted but wondered if we would ever get any further than we had the previous two times. When Friday night finally rolled around, I dashed back to the house, took a quick shower and prepared for our date. I heard Beth greet Avi at the door so I hurriedly threw on a blouse and denim skirt and ran into the living room to greet him. Both Janet and Beth were talking to Avi and I could see that even Janet was impressed with him. As Avi and I left, I turned my head to see Beth giving me a huge smile and a thumbs-up. "Don't I wish", I thought to myself.