During my last semester in college some guy friends decided to have a bar crawl with shirts, nametag lanyards, and lots of drinking. It was one of our most organized efforts. The title of the bar crawl was "Fuck K, K Sucks" referring to the infamous K who introduced me to M. There was an ongoing joke that no one liked K in our group of friends.
This was about a month after M and I began seeing each other. My serious relationship of four years had finally finished and I was loving the single life. M had begun to study for the MCAT and was moving in with his parents after college. Neither of us were committed to the idea of a relationship, so in that month we had purposefully avoided putting labels on what "we" were.
I walked into the third bar of the crawl that night, late from work, and plopped down on a bar stool next to M. Immediately, a friend of a friend turns to me and asks "So, are you guys dating?" M turned to me, and we grinned nervously, saying "Uhhhh...we're not sure." I ordered my first drink quickly.
Drink after drink, bar after bar, it was becoming clear that we were a couple. M draped his arm around me when we were sitting on the couches. He'd circle an arm around my waist when we waited for the bartender. Later in our relationship I would realize these gestures of public affection are a rarity but they are always out in full display around other men. Hmmmm, very territorial.
In one bar, there was a strong smell of permanent marker coming from the men's bathroom. It was overpowering. I sneaked a peek in there to see what the hell it could be, and in HUGE letters across the stalls was "FUCK K, K SUCKS BAR CRAWL 2010". It turned out that M defacing most of the bars' bathrooms! My goodie-two-shoes self would never deface a bathroom, but boys will be boys so I rolled my eyes and told him to keep out of trouble.
At our last bar, however, we were all relaxing downstairs and the owner of the bar comes down and says "Are any of you "K"? Silly, naive K, immediately volunteers himself. The owner is furious because someone wrote the bar crawl's name on the hand dryer (M!!!!!). The owner gives K a washcloth and some chemicals and asks him to scrub it off.
The landslide that brought me to fall in love started right in this moment. M stood up and went with K to scrub off the marker. He admitted he was wrong and helped fix the problem. He was such a man about it. After twenty minutes of their absence, I checked in on them. Both of them were scrubbing at the hand dryer chuckling. Like naughty children.
And that was the moment I realized that I could love M. Something so silly and insignificant led to 3.5 years (and counting) of happiness and heartbreak.