This Tangled Fairytale

Once upon a time, two young weirdos got lost on a mountain.

They were searching for a secret stone chair, the knowledge of which was bequeathed to them with the promise they would not reveal its whereabouts among the tangled trails rising above the San Francisco Bay and beyond.

These were the ancient days before GPS or cell phones—though not before battery-operated flashlights, though neither of them had thought to bring one. They did, however, shlep a guitar, a battered trumpet, two chicken avocado burritos and a couple of beers to celebrate the sunset, which was fast approaching. After several hours of fruitless searching, the quest for the hidden throne was abandoned, and the two wanderers aimed now only to find their way back to their car before darkness descended and presented them as mountain lion bait.  

Shivering under the same foggy cloister of redwoods they’d circled several times already, neither of them could agree on which direction might lead them back to civilization. While they had been acquaintances for over a year, their relationship had remained thus far platonic, but they crabbed at each other like an old married couple. The thought of spending the night together in the forest held all the allure of sleeping with a wet sponge.  

“I would never want to be your girlfriend!” the girl with the shorn head and hairy armpits hissed as they passed a particular mossy rock yet again.

The boy from Savannah shrugged back. “Ain’t nobody asking, princess.” 

Mark and I did not find the stone chair that day in 1995, but we did make it out of the Mount Tamalpais wilderness alive and in time to eat the last burrito in front of the latest episode of Friends (streaming your favorite show on demand lay far in the distant future, kids.) Little did we know that the experience of emerging with friendship and humor intact onto Pantoll Highway where we hitchhiked back to the car with a stoner dude who was very confused as to why we were playing sloppy jazz riffs in the middle of a dark road would somehow lead to romance a few months later. (That we were the only two single Jewish kids either of us knew probably helped, along with my first glimpse of his ripped surfer bod.)

Thus began this 25 year-plus long fairytale, though if any longtime couple tells you that means happily ever after, then one of them is probably in a coma. 

Once upon a time…