this guy's in love

just a quick one today, folks. mrs nice guy and i were married in july, four-plus years ago. BUT it was eight years ago this week that we first smooched. meaning, the other day was our smoochaversary: eight years of sweet, sweet greasin' up and rubbin' down.

flashback to 1998: the then-future mrs nice guy was my roommate. i had feathered hair, a moustache and few prospects in my chosen career as a betamax repairman. she was a K Street player, lobbying hard for the tobacco industry and stealing prescription money from oldsters. like some awesome '70s sitcom we were close friends, living platonically in a two bedroom Washington DC apartment (with our two ghetto cats and weird neighbor who lived with his dead mom, upstairs from a sexually and ethnically ambiguous world bank euro-type and across the street from some fat chick who paraded around naked all the time -- i told you it was like sitcom).

so, yeah, we were just that: friends. until, that is, eight years ago last thursday, when i put the patented mr nice guy private dancer moves on the future missus. the rest is history. you'll have to ask my wife for herstory -- she seems to think she made the first move because i am a "pussy," which, if i were being honest with you, i'd admit is true. i won't bore you with the gritty details, but they involve a vacuum cleaner, late-night japanese television and sexual tension you couldn't cut with a steak knife.

eight years, three apartments, two cities and one kid later, we're still SOLID AS A ROCK UP IN THIS PIECE. so let me dedicate a little ditty to you, my bride. a little uptown Burt Bacharach, taken way downtown by the one and only James Brown. here he is, singing a sweet soulful love duet with the female preacher, Lyn Collins. listen up: This Guy - This Girl's In Love.

readers: check out that spoken-word intro and see if you can decode it for me:

JB: If someone was in love with you, would you be able to ... to dig it?
LC: No, I don't think so.
JB: You couldn't dig it?
LC: No.
JB: But would you like that?
LC: I'd love it.

seriously, i knew James Brown (all due respect) was a weird dude with weird friends, but i'd need me much stronger drugs than anything i have in my house to figure out what the hell that exchange means. any ideas out there?

meantime -- happy smoochaversary my little wifebird. may we have eleventy thousand more. you are a brave, fierce and irrationally tolerant woman. i live in terror of the day you come to your senses.