We met on what we guess you’d have to call a partially blind date. Trisha had never laid eyes on Jerry, but Jerry, totally by chance, had spotted Trisha twice, once on a bus, once crossing a street. He’d liked what he’d seen, so you can imagine how pleased he was when he called to pick her up and saw that their mutual friend had unknowingly fixed him up with someone he’d already had a few fantasies about.
On our second date, we went shopping for a kazoo for Jerry to accompany his five-year old daughter on a tape they were making called “Songs That They Knew.” We took a walk through the Hoboken, New Jersey, campus of Stevens Institute, overlooking the Hudson River and the entire stretch of the West Side of Manhattan. For no good reason other than that we were falling in love and needed to get physical, we raced each other across the grass. Trisha won.
Back at Jerry’s apartment, we stood against a kitchen counter and made out. Jerry, the idiot, had an appointment to meet a friend for a movie in Manhattan, so we stayed upright and clothed. For the moment. That was the spring of 1987; we’ve never kissed anyone else again.
Trisha Lester and Jerry Oster
Chapel Hill