When the semester started in our new department, quite a few people asked Mister Boyfriend and I about the nature of our relationship and, most particularly, how we met. I was surprised at people's curiosity, but I guess most folks aren't used to a couple with an eighteen-year age difference. Since I imagine that other people are curious but unwilling to ask, and because I've come to enjoy telling it, I'll write it here. As couple's stories go, it's a fairly good one.

Mister Boyfriend and I have exactly the same undergraduate degrees and were members of the same Honors Program. Yet, somehow, we never managed to meet as undergrads. We even took the same Shakespeare Seminar and never spoke to each other the entire semester. I noticed him because he was the only tall guy with a long ponytail in the room, and he spoke frequently in class. It was a three-hour seminar, so we took breaks halfway through. My only specific memory of him from then is from a break period, when I was standing close to a group of people he was talking to about smoking, cappucino, photography, and visiting his parents. (No idea why I remember that.) I didn't think much more about him, and he doesn't remember me at all from that course.
Two years later, I started graduate school and took Queer Theory during my first semester. The advisor told me who else was in the class and I remember going down the list of five people and ticking off names I knew, and then asking her, "Who the hell is Jeff Ward?" When I got to class, I figured out that he was the smoking, cappucino-making photographer from the Shakespeare Seminar. He also turned out to be really smart, and he kept bringing rare books to class and showing them to me. One day in class, he mentioned that he had a blog. I didn't think much more about him.
He was in another class with my best friend, and we talked about him occasionally. One day she said, "You really should look at his website. He has a lot of his pictures up there." So I did, and I started reading his blog. And I couldn't stop reading. I read him for most of a Saturday, and at the end of it I thought, "I have to know this person," immediately followed by, "But only as a friend, because I am too busy." I emailed him. He sent me an oddly short, terse reply.
The next week, Ben Stein came to speak on campus and our Queer Theory professor made both of us go with her to hear him. Jeff took off like a shot afterwards, and we chased him down and made him get a cup of coffee with us. A couple of weeks later, the professor, her girlfriend, and each of us drove up separately to the Hot Springs Film Festival, and went drinking afterwards. Had a great time. When I came back and told my best friend about it, she said, "Oh my God, you have a crush." And I very indignantly replied, "I do not."
About a week later, I emailed him again and asked him to go get a cup of coffee with me. A platonic cup of coffee. He said okay. We talked about photography in the Barnes & Noble cafe until they shut it down. Then we stood around in the parking lot and talked about how neither of us was looking for a relationship because we both planned to move away to Ph.D. programs. Then we kept talking until three in the morning. We've never stopped.
That was two years ago today. We were Just Friends and pretty quickly Probably Not Just Friends and, by Christmas, In Love. A few days ago, we were talking about how rare it is to still be this giddy - and this happy - after two years. I still feel lucky nearly every day, because there is nobody else I laugh so much with or who understands me as well.

I love you, Mister Boyfriend. Happy Anniversary.