I met Mona at just the right time in my life. It had been nearly two years since I hit my personal bottom -- wrecking my car, getting lost in a cornfield and ending up in the psych ward -- but because that happened, I had been finally diagnosed with bipolar disorder and got on the right meds for it. So by the time I met Mona, heck, I was practically a normal person (if you aren't too particular). At least I was sane and stable. I had a job and an apartment, and friends who never once had to tell me they were worried about me.

I had even had a few little romances that I handled like an adult. There was Claire, the artist that I posed for, and then Jayne, who was one of the other models. And then there was Andrea, a co-worker at my first grown-up job.

In each of those relationships, I had been a mature adult having a good time and decided for myself when to end the sexual part of the relationship -- though I remained great friends with both Jayne and Andrea. Even with Claire, whom I grew to dislike, there had been no great drama or heartbreak at the end. She just moved away to take an opportunity in New York, and I was relieved because I didn't have to actually break up with her.

I loved Jayne and Andrea as friends -- they remain two of my closest friends now -- but I ended the romances because I could tell that neither was going to be my True Love (because both told me they never wanted to raise a kid). I knew I had plenty of time to find my True Love, but the only way to do so would be to keep dating girls until she turned up. I was starting to get better at the screening process and would slip in strategic questions during the getting-to-know-you conversations.

When Andrea invited me to a party and told me there would be someone there she wanted me to meet, naturally I quizzed her like a prosecutor on who this girl was and why Andrea thought we'd be a good match. She did not crack under pressure, and all I learned was that Andrea had known this chick since college, that they played sports together . . . and that she had red hair.

At the party, Andrea led me by the elbow through the crowded room until we approached a cluster of five or six girls standing in a circle. One of them had radiantly red-orange hair and was wearing a little green top that exposed her muscular, white freckled shoulders. I couldn't see her face until Andrea called out the name "Mona" and the girl turned to face us, her hair swirling gracefully with the movement as if she were an Irish supermodel in a shampoo commercial filmed in Technicolor on a windy day by Wes Anderson.

I was so captivated by her hair I was not prepared for her eyes. They were as blue as any blue eyes I had ever seen, and she focused them on me like laser beams that were going to transport me to an alien ship -- and I was ready to go.

Psychologists say that you can't actually "fall in love" at first sight; that you can only fall madly into physical desire at first sight. Okay, well, I definitely did THAT part. I madly desired her white, freckled skin, and her earlobes, and her full pink lips and her well-muscled arms and shoulders, and her bold nipples that now arose behind the thin fabric of her little green top as her eyes abandoned my own to travel down my body all the way to my toes and back up again, pausing for a long moment on my chest as I felt my own nipples harden in response.

Andrea, by this time, had strategically vanished, and every other human in the room faded into background characters as Mona and I sat together on a loveseat and had our first conversation. Andrea would later tell me we were both spraying pheromones like lawn sprinklers and that everyone within range started feeling inexplicably horny. I'm pretty sure she made that part up.

As we sat there talking, I told myself not to rush it and not to open my heart until I had at least asked my True Love screening questions. Yet I was already falling in love with her eyes, and in them, I imagined us living together in a little house with a white picket fence, waking up together on Saturday mornings to the skitter of dog toenails on the hardwood floor.

That, however, was not what was on her mind. Her mind was just focused on pussy -- mine.

And she got it too -- that very night, I'm a little embarrassed to admit. In all my previous relationships, there had been at least a few dates first. Even with Kelly in college, although we had sex spontaneously without actual dates, at least we had known each other for a while and had multiple conversations first.

But I knew this time might be different. We clicked instantly, flirted deliciously, and made each other laugh. Then we danced until we were sweaty and out of breath. She was braless and delightfully bouncy. I always go braless, but I'm smaller, so it isn't as noticeable. Andrea had been my ride to the party, but after she saw we were hitting it off, she came by and gave us a bullshit story about why she couldn't be my ride home after the party and could Mona please do it? Meaningful glances were exchanged all around, and Mona graciously agreed.

Then somebody put on slow-tempo music and we danced again, but this time we were holding each other. We were both wearing fashionably tiny summer tops, so we were touching each other's bare backs, and because we are the same height, our eyes were at exactly the same level.

And so were our boobs! We were both pretty turned on -- our nipples poking out behind the thin, damp fabric of our little tops. Mona was leading in a standard box step, which is four beats, and on the third step, she pulled me close, and one of her hardened nipples grazed my own. I thought it was accidental at first, but then on the next third step, it happened again, and her eyes confessed to me. On the next third step, I matched her lead like a good dance partner. We made it happen over and over, and as we got the hang of it we started alternating boobs so our other nipples wouldn't feel left out. It was wildly arousing. We hadn't even kissed yet, but our breasts were totally making out!

When that song was over, Mona suggested maybe it was time to "drive me home," and I was ready for what that meant. We left the party together, and she led me to her car, which was a tiny two-seater BMW, and in that car is where we first kissed. And not just "a kiss," but 10 or 15 seconds of necking like teenagers.

I gave her directions to my apartment and enjoyed watching her in profile as she operated the stick shift, racing through the streets. A prim little part of my brain was conflicted, not sure sex should happen that very first night, but after that nipple dance, it just wasn't a very difficult decision to make. "Want to come up?" I asked.

As soon as we were inside and the door was closed, we were kissing and ripping each other's clothes off. She stayed the whole night (I was afraid she might say she had to leave), and in the morning I made breakfast for us. We spent the entire day together, not just having sex, but taking walks and going to restaurants, and then having sex. Several times. And that night we slept at her place. I was in a swoon the whole time. Suddenly, I was in a wonderful romance with an amazing woman that my mind and my body just could not get enough of. Naturally, I was already imagining us having babies and growing old together -- though I guessed (correctly) that she might not be thinking the same way.

In those bedroom conversations, we told each other about our lives. Unlike me, Mona knew she was lesbian about a minute after puberty kicked in. She came out at 13. She also played every team sport her school offered, and so she saw other girls naked in the locker room. They hugged each other in victory and gave each other butt pats. Since everyone knew she was gay, Mona says she was very careful not to give any hint that she was turned on by any of this, but she was. There were other lesbians, most of them still closeted, and she became pals with them but tended not to be attracted to them if they leaned butch. She had the hots for girly-girl femme types, but most of them were (or seemed to be) straight.

In another conversation, I told her about my nudity habits, some of which she had heard about from Andrea. When I told her about sneaking out at night as a teenager to run naked and roll in the grass, Mona sat up in bed in surprise. I was afraid something I said was creepy to her, but it was the opposite. She told me her little sister, Molly, had done exactly that and that she (Mona) had decided she wanted a girl just like that.

That was music to my ears because I was already in love with her and wanted her to fall in love with me, and I remember saying, "Well, I'm a girl just like that." I wanted to add, "so maybe I'm the girl you're looking for," or "then we must be made for each other," but I didn't say either.

We had gotten involved so quickly that we didn't have time to talk about a lot of background details like, you know, whether one of us might be mentally ill. I actually felt I was at a really good place in that regard, though perhaps a bit manic compared to normal people. A disadvantage of mania is that you don't quite notice when people around you are trying to communicate their feelings in subtle ways, and you just gallop on with whatever you are hyper-focused on. So I didn't realize I was pushing our relationship too fast. Coincidentally, a recruiter contacted her out of the blue, and she got a job offer in another city. It was a good offer ... and I was smothering her ... and she decided to accept it.

Nowadays, when Mona and I talk about this period in our history, we refer to it as "The Troubles."

She broke up with me using the time-honored tradition of doing so in a crowded restaurant. It was a swank, expensive restaurant and I was all dressed up.

When she started telling me about the job offer, I was guessing she was going to ask me to move there with her and live together. Then she told me she had come to realize that she couldn't be the person I wanted, and it was best to part ways now before we got too deep in each other's lives.

If Mona was hoping I wouldn't make a scene in public, she was wrong. For a few seconds, neither of us spoke while my brain kept rewinding the audio and playing it back. It was a very quiet restaurant, and in the silence, one could hear the clinking of cutlery and the faint murmur of politely subdued conversations. For the other diners in that restaurant, this pleasant atmosphere was abruptly interrupted by my very loud sobs, which came out of me convulsively as I grabbed my purse from the table and fled. My purse strap must have caught on something on the table because I heard a crash of expensive glassware behind me. In the parking lot, I tripped and fell, scraping my knee and tearing my fancy dress. As I limped to my car, I remembered Mona had made an excuse why we needed to meet at the restaurant instead of going in one car, and now I knew why.

I don't quite remember what happened the next few days, except I spent most of it crying in bed. I called in sick from work, in part because I was expecting to get slammed by a tsunami of hardcore clinical depression on top of my broken, mangled heart. With my bipolar condition, actual chemical depression can be triggered by upsetting life events, and this definitely qualified. Yet, it didn't come, and I was left with nothing but my ordinary regular-person heartbreak. I was almost disappointed.

Jayne came looking for me the next day, and she brought a fifth of vodka, a bottle of tonic and two limes. That took care of the next two days. She stayed over because after we drank more than half the vodka, she couldn't drive, and she slept naked with me. No, that doesn't mean we had sex. She just held me while I cried into her abundant cleavage, and she let me talk and talk and cry and talk. In the morning, she had to go to work, and I realized I had no tears left so I finished off the vodka and fell into a mercifully dreamless sleep.

I did not know that in my stumbling drunkenness, I had dislodged the power cord connected to my phone and answering machine -- so I did not know Mona was trying to call me. I woke up late in the evening feeling terrible and went into the bathroom to pee, brush my teeth and take ibuprofen. That effort exhausted me, and as I walked back into my bedroom, I heard the pounding on the door. It was Mona, swearing that she loved me and begging me to take her back.

This was everything I had hoped for, pleaded for and prayed to the Universe for. Mona wanted me back! She wanted me back! That night we made love again, and I felt so grateful to her for coming back to me. But in the morning, I realized I did not feel quite so grateful. I should not have HAD to feel grateful because she should not have DONE THAT to me in the first place. I would not have done that to her! Even if I had decided to break up with her, I wouldn't have done it that way.

So I had some resentment. Yes, she came back to me, and yes, I wanted her back -- desperately. But maybe not, you know, THAT desperately. I found my spine and told her I wasn't sure I DID want her back, because I only wanted to be in a relationship with someone if I thought it was possible she could become my True Love. And I didn't want her to fucking waste my time unless she felt that it was possible I could be her True Love.

That is the first time I ever saw Mona cry. She said that was why she came back -- because she realized it could happen that way with us.

And -- spoiler alert -- it did!

She would later tell me that this was the moment she knew she loved me and wanted to spend the rest of her life with me. I told her that I fell in love with her way earlier than that. She asked when, but I didn't answer right away and changed the subject. Then, later on, I said, "Do you remember that first day we met? When Andrea first introduced us at that party? The very first time we set eyes on each other?"

Mona laughed and said, "Of course I remember that."

"It was then."

"What was then?"

"When I fell in love with you."

Our wedding!

Our (first) wedding was outdoors on a sunny, crisp September day in a ceremony in front of our friends and family here on our property, and we both wore white wedding dresses. Mona normally doesn't wear dresses or makeup in her daily routine, but likes to get dolled up on special occasions. Mona is beautiful without makeup and has a bazillion freckles on her face and I like being able to see every one of them, but it is also quite sexy when she does put on makeup because then I see the contours of her face in a different way and it is as if I am seeing a porcelain statue of her. Our families and friends were all here, and instead of one of us being walked down the aisle by a parent, we had the chairs arranged so there were two diagonal aisles and we each had a parent walk us down the aisle at the same time, getting closer and closer as we approached the altar.

Through Margot's friend Lia, we found a Wicca Priestess who performed the ceremony. Mona didn't care one way or the other, but I am kinda into the whole Earth Goddess thing, though I have my own version of it. See my page on Spiritual Stuff for more on that if you are interested.

Of course, it was not a legal marriage, but I (naively) didn't care that much whether the State recognized my marriage. I didn't invite The State to my freaking wedding. We made it as legal as possible -- signing a domestic partnership contract, which she had a lawyer draft. It spelled out our unshakable intention to remain a united couple for the rest of our lives, saying that each of us wished for the other to be the primary person consulted in emergencies, in the event of death, etc. We knew that in some situations, that contract wouldn't mean anything legally, but we wanted it anyway. We were fortunate that our families were supportive, so we knew that if one of them was officially designated by the courts to be a decision-maker, that they would defer to what we wanted. Lots of gay people don't have such supportive parents.

A note from Future Libby: I wrote these pages more than a decade before the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. Since our original wedding, described here, the marriage laws started to change in different states, and each time we took a little vacation in order to get married legally in those places. Then, finally, in 2015, the court ruling came down, and we got married again in the state where we still live.