What’s the sleaziest thing you ever did?

I don’t necessarily mean something involving K-Y and/or alternate uses for common household implements, though I’m certainly not judging. (If you really want to talk about it, my email is to the right. No, I’m kidding.)

(Of course I’m not kidding. Send .jpgs too.)

No, I mean something that kind of makes you go “ewwwwwww!”—morally, ethically, or maybe a dollop of both. And does the end ever justify the means?

The short version of how Lea and I met is “through a mutual friend.” The longer version is that Lea was a guest at my girlfriend-at-the-time’s birthday party. We were introduced, and immediately I thought “hmmm, if I wasn’t the, you know, birthday girl’s boyfriend, I’d be hangin’ with her.” I exchanged a little pleasant conversation with her, and that was it.

Or so I thought. (Imagine appropriate transitional music.)

Fast forward two months to Big Spring Jam II, way back in the fall of 1994. Who should my girlfriend and I run into but Lea and her friend Andrea, hanging out? Oh, and there are more pieces to the story by now. My girlfriend was about to move to Nashville (to move in with the woman I dated before her, and no, I’m not making that up, but that’s another post), so we were mostly broken up (read: mutually aware that we were futureless but still sleeping together, because Nashville was going to lower the boom on that soon enough, so why not?).

Which meant that, fueled by a little liquid courage and some damned fine Webb Wilder rock ‘n’ roll, Lea was standing directly in the flirting lamp, and that sumbitch was lit up all over the place.

We said hi again. We laughed a bit about how poorly some very well lubricated folks were dancing. I touched her way too much—her back here, her shoulder there, you know it goes. I deliberately ended the encounter before I could do something stupid that would undo all of the coolness equity I’d just built up, and I was feeling pretty damned pleased with myself. “Holy shit,” thought I. “I was such a goober for so long, and I am now invincible. No woman intimidates me. Feel my power! RAAAAAAAAA!!!!”

I was pumped. I was psyched. My girlfriend would move, I’d ask Lea out, and it would be all good, gnome sane?

So we were driving home from the Jam when I realized I didn’t know Lea’s last name.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.

This plan has gone so damned well, and it’s about to collapse utterly because of this!?! It’s like we flew to the moon and forgot the little doohickey to undo the hatch.

I was on the verge of just asking my girlfriend (and risking the associated verbal abuse, which I can’t say I think would have been entirely unjustified) when the light bulb over my head came on.

(This is the sleazy part.)

My girlfriend and I got back to my apartment. After (probably), um, that (I can’t remember for sure), she went to sleep. When I was sure she was out, I sneaked downstairs and went through her purse to research her address book for my future wife’s last name and telephone number.

Ewwwwwww!

Fortunately, Lea’s maiden name starts with a D, so I didn’t have to go very far. I found it, copied it down, replaced it, and went back to bed.

Lea and I are about to enter our 12th year of marriage, so on balance, it had to be the right call, right?

Happy Valentine’s Day!