Rock Creek Park

I had met Connie seemingly at random, October 18th, 1996. I was recently separated from a very bad thing, two sons taken far, far away, lost and drifting, and doing a very new and important job.

I worked in Poway California for a small (I was actually the first hire in June) fuel cell car company. The first program, the raison d'etre for the company, was a contract with Georgetown University's energy program to develop a 40 foot hybrid fuel cell bus. This was a new thing at the time. I felt honored to be the first hire, to go to Vancouver BC to the Mother Ship, to be trained very much like a bootcamp in a technology which I had loved from afar for years...The wife had told me, yes, take the job, and had promptly left me and absconded with my babies to Washington state, while I was in the middle of 'boot'.

In early October, Rick C., the honcho and the man who had believed in me, still does, said 'hey John, I need to you to do a thing for me in a few weeks. I was eager to please and he filled me in on the details...

"You just need to go meet the team and be yourself. You're going to do great."

I showed up in DC the day before, late. Didn't sleep well. Wrote a poem about/to Rory the elder of my sons at 3AM. Tossed in the anonymous hotel bed almost until dawn. Got up early, hopped into the rental and jetted cautiously to Tysons' Corner Virginia to meet the twenty or so men who comprised the sub-contracting team on the bus program. Battery guys, bus coach guys, power electronics guys, and the fuel cell guy, me. Like riding a bicycle...

07:45, October 18, 1996. I met Sam Romano, a legend, the former program manager of the Lunar Rover projects, now the head of the Energy Program at GU. Jim Larkins, his capable and affable second, a former Air Force Major who had managed airborne laser programs for DARPA. These guys were the shit. They welcomed me, but from the first there seemed to be something hanging in the air, and the nervous and jumpy Romano said

"Where are your materials? You seem to be traveling a little light".

What is he talking about? Over the next minutes it became clear that Rick had failed to communicate to me that I was on the hook for a four hour presentation of the fuel cell technology, PEM fuel cell technology in general, the specifics of our engine design...I and a couple of engineers had only been making the diagrams and drawings for the engine for three months. I felt like an immediate impostor. Adrenaline exuded from my pores. I had a moment of panic, and mastered it. My face must have looked blurry for a moment as I went through this rapid series of emotions and settled on the relaxed smile of a West Texas boy, complete with cowboy boots, jeans tucked neatly in.

"No problem, Sam. I got this. I need some acetate sheets and a sharpie. I need a lot of black coffee. I will reproduce the materials in the next twenty minutes and we will do this thing."

Thanking the gods for a photographic memory, which had been a curse in times of sorrow, I disengorged the complete design drawings and process flow diagrams onto eight or nine 11"x17" acetate sheets and said the only prayers I could remember.

I told them I was ready at 10 after 8. I faked a confident saunter into the large, ornate conference room, with tables arranged in a horseshoe, twenty three men I didn't know, and a lectern in the hot zone, with a really fancy overhead projector at its side.

The panic threatened to rise, and then I saw her.

There was one woman in the room, seated in the middle at the back. A vision in a plum sweater, brown hair and eyes, a broad smile that genuinely seemed to encourage me directly, eager curious eyes, wanting to know what I had to say...

Four hours later I was spent. She had been my anchor for the whole thing. I locked onto that smile, those hungry and curious eyes, and gave an amazing presentation. I flirted with technical details, expounded, expanded, responded to good questions and stupid ones with respect. By the end I knew the faces, names, voices and personalities of the men I would work with for the next four years to make this beast roll.

I didn't yet know her name. She hadn't been introduced. As it all wrapped, and Sam and Jim congratulated me and gave my directions to the Silver Diner where we would have lunch (I had bonked in the process of the morning, I thought there would be snacks...), I locked onto the fine young woman making her way out. Sam caught my laser-like focus on the feminine divine, and introduced me. He had the great good sense to make himself scarce at that point, plus he was just a very busy man. Always on to the next thing.

"Hi, I'm John Fisher. I really appreciated you being here."

"I'm Connie Tath, the program accountant, and contract administrator for the GU Energy Program! It's so nice to meet you! You really know this stuff. I've never been to one of these before and I was just really impressed with your knowledge."

"Aww, thanks. If you're not busy, I would love it if you could show me around Georgetown tonight."

It was Friday night, and Connie accepted with a very cute and vulnerable smile.

We spent the entire weekend talking and eating and making love. It was the best weekend of my life to that point. Not just sex. Not even the sex. The intimacy, another human valuing me for who I was...intoxicating. I had it bad.

Over the next months we fell deeply in love, writing each other several times a week, sending photographs (remember those?). I came back to see her for the first time at Christmas. I had been in Tacoma, WA visiting the boys, in my ex's house just prior, was trapped on the wrong side of Tacoma Narrows Bridge by the Ice Storm of 1996 for five days in Wendy's house. Misery and pain. I escaped, a cold night turned the icicles on the Narrows Bridge, which had been deadly spears dropping to the deck, into an epic holiday tree decoration. I made it out and caught a plane to DC, and arrived at Connie's one room efficiency in North Arlington, VA. We spend six days together and by the end I knew this woman would be my second wife, eventually.

We went to Rock Creek Park to roller-blade, it was a dry winter in DC and the conditions were perfect. The trail was thankfully immaculately paved, and wide. Connie had her own skates, she worked out five days a week, three hours at a time. Her heavy muscles were a huge turn-on, she was not a dainty girl. She did yoga as well and had taken me to a class, I was hooked on that and her. I bought my first roller blades that day, and we went for it. The hills were a challenge, inline technique was new to me. I had only ever been on four wheel skates for birthday parties and street hockey in Brooklyn, and I was generally quite lame that day. Connie didn't care about that. We held hands and went until my hips and ass ached (more). Hours later, the pain became a rhythm, and I forgot about it with Con by my side...

The skates, and the better ones I got later became a fixture in our relationship until maybe 2002. We moved in together in Mission Hills (San Diego), CA in April. Drove across country together across the south. Skated in many towns and along southern highways. Kept her kitty dosed. Saw so many things with our own eyes and through each other's eyes. Skated regularly together for hours around the little lake in San Diego. We married in 2000, the divorce from Wendy was protracted by legal shitstorms, Con stuck by me. The skates, inline, moving forward with power, hand in hand, side by each, were the metaphor for our best years.

I wish I could say it went on forever. It didn't.