The Saga Takes A Detour...

The saga continues! Let’s take a short, but important detour…

Try as I might, I cannot make time stand still. Life just keeps moving along whether you want it too or not. As I lost myself in my new circle of friends and in the game, the rest of my life was still going on as well. I worked and even went to classes. I was also very “into” hanging out with my non-gamer friends (Laurie, Regina & Beckie) at Chill hockey games. It is probably no surprise to hear me admit that I never do something half-way. I just jump in waist deep and keep on diving. It’s 100% or nothing. Some call it a flaw in my personality – but others seem to enjoy that part of me. Love me or hate me, I guess.

I’m opening up the piece of my life known as the “hockey years” (1993-96) so you will be able to have a complete picture of who I am. My mother will call this my “slut phase” or something equally insulting. You see not only was I an avid hockey fan, but I also became very interested in one hockey player in particular – Sergei, who was our team’s goalie. Born in the Ukraine, he was six feet of drool worthy perfection in my eyes. I sat glued to my very cold seat, watching him play in as many games as I could attend. In fact, that is how I met Laurie & Regina! I was on a bus trip to Erie, PA to see the team play on the road for the first time. When we stopped over in Wheeling, WV for a game, I met this dynamic duo. They had an odd, quirky sense of humor and were fun to hang out with – my kind of people. It is hard not to see them as a united and inseparable pair. I often felt like the third wheel in our growing friendship, but that is probably only natural since they had been friends for a long time prior to meeting me. Even though we didn’t have an immediate bond, it was one that would last many years.

Back to Sergei (see above) - I was so madly in love with him that it was embarrassing. Despite my sexual experiences following my divorce, I was still rather naive. Maybe it was because I actually liked this guy for real (and wanted him to like me back), but just trying to get the courage to speak to Sergei after a game would leave me blushing and sputtering like a teenager. Regina knew how to speak Russian and she “helped” me memorize a few choice lines to say to him. I later learned (in rather embarrassing fashion) that what she was teaching me to say was far from what I thought I was saying. I’m sure Regina thought this was wickedly funny, but I trusted her and I have to wonder if I could have had a better chance with Sergei had I not started out my attempts at a relationship with him offering to jump in bed with him.

I did get the guy in this story though...Sergei finally called me when the season ended. We actually engaged in a brief “fling” the following season when he was playing for a new team in South Carolina. I would travel to see him when his team was on the road. It was a relationship that was based mainly on sex, although for a brief glorious time it was more than that. He would actually call me from South Carolina and in one perfect shinning moment after a game in Huntington, WV, he came out of the locker room and put his arm around me in front of everyone to see! I thought my heart would burst out of my chest in happiness and pride. Alas, I was young and stupid. I acted too much like an adoring fan and he quickly lost interest in more than a booty call when it came to me.

My time with Sergei was not a complete loss however. Landing Sergei gave me sexual confidence that I never knew existed. I figured that if I could get a guy like Sergei, then I should be able to get most any guy I wanted. I stopped wearing jeans and jerseys to games and wore short skirts instead. Yes, a ‘hockey ho’ had been born! I hung out in the tunnel near the locker rooms after the games and partied at the clubs they often went too. I drank way too much and spent far too much money going to bars and games. The boost to my confidence and ego though made it worth while to me.

Of course there were lots of others girls doing the same thing that I was. (I could tell you some really interesting tales about that!) Yet, I never really felt like I fell into that class of ‘available ladies.’ Those girls would sleep with anyone who asked as long as they were on the team. It didn’t matter who they were or even if they were married. I had higher standards. Despite what my mother would have you think, I only accepted a few offers during my hockey-wild-child stage. What set me apart from those other ladies was that I was only interested in one player at a time. He was always a goalie and I always knew him personally for a decent amount of time before I went home with him. Also, I never accepted offers from married guys. I could have had a lot more notches on my bedpost if it were not for these rules – but I stuck to them faithfully.

Mostly, I had a good time during this stage in my life. To be honest, I felt like I deserved to have this time of careless fun after everything I had been through. When I got sick of the Chill, I started hanging out with the away team and their players. I didn’t get all the guys I wanted, but I was able to land some that even I felt were out of my league. I also met some really great people along the way and got a little high whenever one would nod to me from the ice. You should see all the goalie sticks and pucks I have! ;o)

During this time, I became less shy and more assertive. If I wanted something – I went after it at full speed. It was all very unlike me, but it was a change I was glad to see. I was tired of being meek and letting people walk all over me. I was tired of being that quiet girl in the corner…I wanted to stand out and be noticed! Gone forever was that blushing, sputtering child. (Well, except for the time I met Marty Brodeur in the stairwell of a hotel in Pittsburgh - but that shouldn’t count because he was God-like in his beauty, talent, charm and presence. What a man!) I admit that there were probably better ways for this change to occur, and Lord knows I made a fool out of myself more than once, but this is the way it happened and I am not ashamed of it.

I have no idea what my friends thought of me during this time frame. I brought Barb to a few games, and she of course heard about my victories and failures, but she mainly remained silent about my conquests. I think this is because I never ‘dated’ these players – they stayed neatly inside their compartment of my life and didn’t spill over into my life with her and the game. She remained relatively single while all of this was happening – give or take a gamer guy here or there. She wasn’t really the girlfriend type in my mind, and frankly it felt weird whenever she would hook up with someone. I admit to being glad that those times were very infrequent.

As for my other friends, I was too obsessed in my own life to really take notice if they approved of my behavior or not. Sometimes I felt like they were jealous of my successes, because they obviously had their own crushes too but without the same outcomes. Then again, they were not willing to take the same chances I was so they didn’t have to deal with the pain of being turned away either. Other times, they probably thought I was out of control and worried about me.

Despite my new confidence and bolder ego, inside I was still the same insecure, lonely person I was before. I wanted much more from these guys than they were willing to give me. I wanted a lasting relationship. I wanted to be special. I was never these things to these people…and I was never able to fool myself into believing otherwise. I was so tired of being nothing more than a few hours of fun and companionship. It was eating me up on the inside. Somewhere along the ride, it had stopped being fun.

In the fall of 1995, I decided that I needed to make a change and that is when I met Brian…and as fate would have it, he was looking for a change too. I didn’t know it then, but I had finally met the one person who would not stay neatly bottled up in his little compartment in my life.

Being with Brian was about to bring all my worlds crashing into one another...