Livia and Jeff: How it began (116/11274)
Livia: I first met Jeff at a Graduate Christian Fellowship (GCF) function fall of my first year. He sat at my dinner table and told me not to work more than 40 hours a week. I remember looking at him and thinking “These nerdy boys can be kind of endearing when they smile.”
Jeff: I have no memory of that night (yeah, yeah). My first memory of Livia is the second time she visited GCF, a few months later. I remember thinking, “This hot girl won’t last long in GCF. She’ll be driven away by all the lonely nerdy boys.”
Livia: I didn’t meet Jeff again until I visited GCF again in the spring. He impressed me in a couple ways — he was the first person to introduce himself when my friend and I came in and stood awkwardly by the door, and later for the spring retreat, he said “May I help you with your bags?” I thought it was a very polite way to offer help. At retreat, our friend Steven informed Jeff that there was a telescope at the retreat site. This is kind of dumb, but something about the way he jumped out of his chair to see the telescope just struck me as really cute. I was interested in him from that point on.
Jeff: Yup, still thought she was cute.
Livia: About a month later, GCF had a St. Patrick’s Day party. I saw Jeff as I walked up to get food, so I thought “All right Livia, Just go talk to him.” Striking up my most casual manner, I said, “How’s it going, Jeff?” and we started chatting. I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point the polite small talk degenerated into trash talking. We traded insults for the rest of the night. I thought his insults were a bit unpolished and lacked subtlety, but I still had a great time. We were there talking until everybody had cleaned up and we were the only two people left. I got home that night and announced to Eric Syu, who happened to be online, that I had a crush.
Jeff: There was something about the way Livia came up and said hi. Well, that and girls don’t come up and talk to me very often. Either way, my reaction was “Wow, is she hitting on me?” And then, “Nah.” But we continued to chat throughout the night, and even flirted a little. I tried to go easy on the insults, though.
Livia:By that point in my life, I felt I was pretty good at reading guys. I was pretty sure Jeff was interested — all I needed to do was set the bait. So I emailed him about some swing dance lessons at MIT, “just to prove that there are dance lessons at MIT.” After a few emails back and forth, I ended the thread with a “Well, if you ever want to go dancing, let me know.” And sat back and waited.
And waited…
Jeff: It was a busy time for me. I said to myself, “As soon as I get less busy, I should probably see if Livia still wants to go dancing. Of course, she probably tries to recruit dancing partners all the time, so don’t get your hopes up.”
Livia: Thus began one of the most stressful three months of my life. Every time I finally convinced myself Jeff wasn’t interested, I’d see him again, and we got along so well that I’d change my mind again. Some people get butterflies in their stomach during early courtship periods like this. I got two months of really unromantic digestive problems and probably went through a whole bottle of pepto bismol. Finally, I decided I had to resort to the nuclear option. That’s right. I asked Jeff for computer help. Being the nice nerdy boy that he was, he gladly came over to my office on a Saturday to help me figure out how to set up my weblog in wordpress. As we worked on our blog, I subtly implanted the idea of having dinner together by asking “What are you doing for dinner tonight?” After we were finished, he asked me over for chili. It probably was a good sign that Jeff was so engrossed in talking to me that he forgot to put the seasoning in the chili and also forgot to set the oven timer for the cornbread. But at that point I still wasn’t sure what he thought of me.
Jeff: Ok, I was fooled by this one. I thought she actually needed help. But when I got there, she set up her web page with no help from me at all. Later I learned that she is a PHP whiz. Later, when she basically invited herself over for dinner, and when she got all embarrassed about asking me if I had ever dated, I got a strong impression that she liked me. But I still didn’t do anything about it. I still needed another month to work up my nerve.
Livia: Over the next month, we exchanged emails and hung out more and more. We even went dancing — but Jeff still operated under plausible deniability. The flirting — I mean trashtalking — became more and more shameless, until more than one of my girlfriends exasperatedly asked “He STILL hasn’t dtr’d you yet?” (DTR’d = defined the relationship, for those unfamiliar with the lingo). Finally, on July 17th 2006, Jeff’s birthday, I made him guacamole and we had a small picnic in Killian court. Conversation turned to how it was hard to meet girls in our male dominated fellowship, when Jeff said nervously “Well, the funny thing is, I met you at GCF.” Pregnant silence — and then
“I guess I should stop wasting your time and tell you I like you.”
“Took you long enough,” I replied.
“Sorry.”
And the rest is history.
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