Another Crazy Coincidence

My boyfriend Travis believes in astrology. Maybe his belief trumps my non-belief, and something weird about our planetary alignments can explain all the it's-a-small-world coincidences that have cropped up in the time I've known him.

Travis recently forwarded me an email he'd gotten from a friend of his: it was a photograph taken at a New Year's Eve celebration in 2004. I'm in the picture. So is Travis's ex-girlfriend Carrie. Travis didn't know either of us when the picture was taken.

I have no memory of having met Carrie at that party, but there's no doubt we were both there: photographic evidence. And that's not the only strange coincidence.

If I hadn't just seen that picture of her, I wouldn't have thought anything of it when she randomly showed up at my house a couple of days ago.

As it was, I didn't immediately realize who she was. A neighbor of mine brought her over, introducing her – not by name – as an acquaintance of his who was possibly in the house-buying market. Although it was New Year's Eve and the place wasn't in terrific shape, I gave her the whole tour. It wasn't until after she left that I began to wonder why something about her seemed familiar, and began to connect up certain facts with certain other plausibilities. I had a hunch, so I emailed my neighbor and asked the woman's name – and sure enough, it was Carrie.

She and Travis dated for about a year, probably 2007ish to 2008ish, and it was he who broke it off.

If she makes another appearance, should I tell her we've slept with the same man?

Would she be more or less likely to buy the house if she had any inkling of what's transpired here? Can she sense the Travis juju on an unconscious level, and if so, will it draw her in or repel her?

I told Travis – who was pretty weirded out by the thought of his ex buying this house – that I planned to take a page out of his book: I wasn't going to tell her. I'd keep the coincidence to myself, and wait for it to bite me in the ass later, probably at a most inopportune moment.

You see, the first time I met Travis was not the first time I'd met him. When he first contacted me on OKCupid, in April or May of 2009, he was aware that we'd already met, and I was clueless, and he didn't say anything to clue me in. When I met him in person, he seemed familiar in some way, but I chalked that up to having seen multiple pictures of him online.

The stage was set for a minor social disaster. Sure enough, on date four, the truth came out. We were at a Krishna party of some kind, which meant that there was already a surreal quality to the evening. While there, we ran into a friend of Travis's, whom I immediately recognized: “Oh, my god, it's Sallie! I haven't seen you in years,” I said. “I think the last time I saw you was that night you dropped by my house with those two friends of yours,” I went on. She seemed uncomfortable, for some reason, and soon said her goodbyes.

Travis and I took our plates of food back to our chairs under the palm tree strung with little white lights, and I where I went on, excitedly, “What a coincidence! I have to tell you this story – it's a chestnut.”

Many people had heard me tell the story of the night Sallie dropped in, and I was excited for a chance to tell it yet again. That evening marked a pivotal moment in my personal history, and I set about setting the scene for Travis with not inconsiderable relish.

I'd just taken my son Denali to see King Kong, and I hadn't slept in three days, because I was eaten up with jealous anxiety about my husband's infatuation with Lilianna, which was brand-new. This was in January of 2006. So I'm all movie-dazed, and Denali is chattering, and we're walking up to the door of our house from the west, when lo & behold, there comes Lilianna, walking up to our door from the east, and we no sooner do we converge than Parker throws open the door, and I discover that there are three strangers sitting at the dining room table. Parker's let them in. Oh, that's right, I recognized one face: Sallie, whom I'd met once before. Then Parker LEFT me ALONE with this bunch of strangers, or near-strangers – Parker and Lilianna were off on their first date, and Denali went to bed, and there I was...

(Here I paused, because Travis's eyes were glazing over, which was odd, because other people had found this a very engaging story...)

Seriously, Travis, you have to realize what a BIZARRE evening that was: no sleep, three hours of gigantic ape, talking astrological signs with people I didn't know...

(Here I paused again, because some facts had fallen into place in my brain, with an almost audible thud, CLICK: I knew that Travis had actually dated Sallie years ago, and yeah, come to think of it, Sallie had shown up at my house with two ex-boyfriends of hers, so hmmm, that meant...Holy Fuck.)

I stared at Travis. He looked a little green.

You have been in my house, haven't you? That's what I said – not, That was you, wasn't it? It was something about his having been in my personal space, in a memory that belonged to him before it belonged to me: like Goldilocks, eating my porridge, sitting on my chair, and sleeping in my bed!

“Yes,” Travis confessed. (He later told me that his next thought, unvoiced at the time, was, “Well, it's all over with this one. Too bad – it was nice while it lasted.”)

If anyone were ever to ask me, “What was the Most Awkward Moment you ever experienced on a date?”, I'd give the award to that one, for sure.

So, it turns out that Travis, and people he knows, have all along been making regular appearances in my life and those of people I know. (See my “It's a Small World” post for yet another example of this kind of coincidence.)

It's very odd. I really wouldn't be surprised to some day come across a photograph proving that Travis and I actually first met on a New England beach in the mid 1970's: I'd have been a toddler, in a sunbonnet and sandy drawers, and he'd have been a disaffected teen, but stranger things have been known to happen.