As my best friend and I were gabbing over coffee, talking about her new relationship, she asked me how my dating life was going. I responded by saying that my last date undid his pants in the middle of the bar, so it was just peachy.
She then asked me about a guy from a few months ago. I immediately started talking, in a spastic manner about the “bowtie man”: the man who made me feel what Carrie Bradshaw called the Za-Za-Zou.
I stopped myself because I felt annoying as I did not know him that long. I felt like that until the moment my friend took my hand and said that time doesn’t define a relationship. She was right because in just one moment, one person can change your life.
In Les Miserables, Marius sings “How strange/ This feeling that life has begun/ This change,/ Can people fall in love so fast?”.
When I first saw the bowtie man in a bar amongst all the dirt and drunk people who could not dance to the blasting dubstep I felt that extraordinary feeling and asked myself: Can you feel this way about someone in a second? However, let me make something clear, this was not love. I mean this is not Les Miserables, or Romeo and Juliet or Blossom.
As Mindy Kaling once said, “I do not believe in first sight, but I believe in crush at first sight”.
What happened between the bowtie man and myself was a momentary connection; a fleeting instant of passion and understanding that would only last two weeks, but would change my life. This is because he set me free.
Now when I think of him I am not mad or sad. Rather, I am calm, which is how he had made me feel during the time I knew him.
It was miraculous in that when he was there I was confident and comfortable with both him and myself because I knew that, in that moment, I was where I was meant to be. It was something I had never felt before, which made me uneasy, but it is something I enjoyed.
With the Za-Za-Zou you only remember the feeling. Like Carrie Bradshaw when she met Burger, when I think of the bow tie man I cannot see his distinct features. Even though he did not know my last name, he knew more about me than even my friends. These moments changed my life because he undid me, not only physically, but also emotionally and mentally. Through this experience I have also come to know that this moment will happen again.
Do not fear about moving on, readers, because there will be another moment where you will say: “This is it.”
Sometimes it won’t be it for a long time, but someday, with someone, that moment will turn into many.