poppin' a wheelie in a blimp

If one more person asks me if Matthew got down on a knee to propose, I will be forced to make up more ridiculous lies.

You know what would have happened if he'd gotten down on a knee? I would have gotten down on a knee as well to help him look for the contact I'd have assumed he lost. And then if he'd asked me to marry him when we were both down there, I would have tackled him just to be funny.

You know how a lot of people have fixed ideas on how things should be? Not me. There are rituals that I respect, rituals that I cannot think of right now but am positive exist. And I've spent far more time in my life wondering IF and WHY I'd get engaged rather than dithering over the details of what that would look like.

Here's how it went for us. We met and then I left town. We wrote and I came back. We decided we were bf/gf and then I left town again. We talked every day and he visited me on the road and again I returned. We both had a feeling all along that we were going to stay together so one day he grabbed my shoulders when we were standing outside and said something like, 'Look! Will you just marry me?!' and I was like 'Yeah, I will.'

We met a custom jewelry designer, Keith Farley, and I told him that I don't like engagement rings and I don't like diamonds. I said I wanted an industrial-looking asymmetrical piece of metal. I wanted the ring to be more interesting than pretty, chunky not dainty. A week after Keith finished the ring, Matthew took me to dinner and put it on my finger. We whispered to each other, smiled, and kept eating.

And then I slooowly began telling people. Why slowly? Because I'm uncomfortable with attention and I'm allergic to high-pitched squeals. But I'm learning to deal. And I'm not saying that people shouldn't be excited, I'm just saying don't be surprised if I flinch.

But this question of the KNEE. Are you all just fucking with me? Do people really do that? If they do, I'm sure that's very nice for them. Matthew, however, had the good sense to understand that I would have made a mess of that plan. The other night Sara asked me if he got down on a knee. No, I said, but he did perform a gymnastics routine involving several back handsprings and an aerial.

Later, I got an image of a blimp.

'What if you took me up in a blimp to propose,' I offered to Matthew, 'And then popped a wheelie for emphasis.'

He pointed out that you cannot pop a wheelie in a blimp because there are no WHEELS.

'Well what's it called when stunt pilots flip the plane around?' I asked.

He told me, 'Barrel roll.'

'What if you took me up in a blimp and did a barrel roll?'

We laid in the dark imagining how much that wouldn't work and then I thought of another, 'What if you took me to a Shell station and bought a scratch off and made me scratch it off and inside it said Jessica will you marry me?'

'That's very trashy,' he said.

I told him, 'That's what I'm going for.'