Essentially this is what happened… I had been saving up for about five months, slowly building up enough money to get her a ring… We talked about marriage a lot, and about three months into me saving up, without her knowing what I was doing, she became sort of paranoid about my views of marriage. At one point, there was concern about whether we would stay together because she didn’t want to “waste her time” with someone who didn’t want to marry her. Meanwhile she was also without job, and I was having to supplement her expenses, etc. So money was tight.I know, not very romantic.

But important.

About one month goes by and we have a big fight… She says that in a year she has to move out of the city, she can’t take it anymore… This concerns me because i’ve been planning on trying to get back into school and study something, anything… just so i can do something less menial and more monetarily rewarding. This means another long distance relationship. So the meager allowances into the savings account begin growing to substantial deposits…

She stops asking me for a full month and I’m worried she is going to ruin it by bringing it up again… at the beginning of September I begin going to ring shops. I really wanted to get her a Tiffany’s ring but they are all set in platinum and all REALLY expensive and I’d never marry her if I’d waited, so I begin looking at other stores… I run across this one store that I like a lot.. I can’t seem to find anything else… So last Friday, I take off of work. I get paid and put the majority of my check into the savings account. Mary sees that I’m staying home from work. I ask her to call in sick for me, which I’ve never done before, but I thought it would give her a hint…

She didn’t get it.

So she leaves for work, I spend the whole day shopping for the ring, and end up going back to the shop I liked and buying the ring I had seen before…

I make reservations at this restaurant called The Cub Room . Not the best website, but oh well. Then I go into the city to wait for her to get out of school. I’m tottering around Washington Square Park watching people play chess thinking, I have a ring in my bag that is worth more than anything I’ve ever owned, and I’m in a park… If I were to ever get mugged… this would be the worst time..

So she is supposed to be done with her meetings at 5:00. I made reservations for 6:00. I call her at 5:15 to ask her if we could meet. She tells me that she is still with a student… She can’t meet just yet.. She asks me where I am. I tell her I’m at the park. Now this is Friday, our usual day for date night (it is a night I set aside and we don’t make plans for at all, we go out or stay in watch a movie… the main point is we goof around together this day), so she wasn’t surprised about this. Finally at 5:35 she calls me back and we meet up to go to the restaurant. We get there in time.. and there is no one in the whole restaurant. We sit down. She orders the lobster papperdelle… I tell her to have wine, too. Even that doesn’t make her suspicious. I get a chicken under a brick… Jokes about how we can use the brick to “escape from the window” get bandied about. Dinner goes by without a hitch, both literally and metaphorically. I kill myself.

I keep telling myself, proposing at the restaurant is bad form.. and it is way too early. Very cliched… in a bad way. I had scouted out an art gallery not far from the restaurant. She has been arguing that we don’t go to many art galleries… museums.. etc. So I say that this place seems interesting… and we should drop by. There is much debate. She debates with herself. Literally. She is tired from her ten conferences today, and debats over going out or going home. We go to the art gallery and I’ll quote Mary about this part: “We saw some really interesting paintings and sculptures and etchings by current-day Spanish surrealist artists and some bizarre stuff in the back including a weird ass graphic art and acrylic combo painting of Courtney Love smoking with a sign on it that read “On hold for Courtney Love.” I told Mary I didn’t believe the sign… she said she believed it until I called her on it…

We leave the gallery and begin wandering around downtown Manhattan. We cut across the streets and end up walking through a warehouse district where unfortunately Mary got a bit scared… but I wasn’t because there were stores that were open nearby. All the same, we finally got to a location I liked, Hudson River Park, which stretches along the side of Manhattan next to the Hudson River (as you might guess by the name). The nice thing about it is that you see New Jersey on one side, and Manhattan behind you, and Jersey City is beauitful at night. So we walk and sit down next to the river… We talk about which building is which, watch the lights on the water. Walkers keep passing by…

I fumble to get the ring out of my bag, giving Mary the excuse that I want to empty my pockets. I deftly pull my wallet, cell phone, out, stuff it into the bag and slip the ring into my pocket… I was happy because she was oblivious. I begin looking around. People keep walking behind us. It’s annoying. Finally I put my head next to hers and say, “I love you more than anything…” She smiles and says the same, then I slip onto my knee and open the ring case and propose. She says yes, but get off of the ground you’re embarrassing me… I grin widely and put my head in her lap hugging her, saying I hadn’t said all I wanted to say… Which I then say. And won’t record here. Then I slip up onto the bench again and slip the ring on her finger.

And that was that… So there you go. That is it. Nothing to see here, move on down the road. Nothing to see here.