Day 78: Sophie Was My First Choice.

It's weird to see the first man you ever loved (Day 43) and the first woman you ever loved within 35 days of each other ... especially when you haven't seen either one of them for a combined 16 years.

Sophie is in town interviewing for some hotshot academic job, so she came over for dinner last night. It was both completely normal and totally surreal. It's not everyday you have dinner with someone you used to wake up with every morning, someone you haven't seen in several years but were once in deeply love with.

I met Sophie back in the spring of 1991, almost 15 years ago. She'd come to this country from England to get her Master's Degree at a college in upstate New York, and was working as a personal trainer to make ends meet while she finished her degree.

Oh yeah - and she was in a serious, long-term relationship with another woman. (Which, for those of you keeping count, makes Maggie the second already-attached person I've ever fallen for.)

But I didn't know Sophie was attached when I met her at the tennis club. I didn't even know if she was a lesbian. I just knew that every time I saw her, I looked twice. I'd never dated a woman before, but there was something about Sophie that brought every long-standing desire I'd ever had for women to the surface. Finally, I broke down and booked her as my personal trainer as a way to get to know her.

I know. Lame. What can I say?

Within a few months, we were a couple. Within six months, we were living together. And within a year, I was applying to film school in Los Angeles.

Looking back on it, my relationship with Sophie definitely influenced my decision to head West. My job was high profile (music critic for the city's daily newspaper and weekly guest entertainment critic on a top-rated morning radio show), and I was finding it hard to come out of the public closet. I'd told my family and friends right away, but I lived in dread of someone calling in to the radio show and outing me to the world (well, my world, anyway). I was happy with Sophie, but I was also scared.

When I was accepted to graduate school in Los Angeles for screenwriting, there was never a question in my mind - I was going. Sohpie, who had finished her degree, was running out of ways to stay in the country, so she decided to move back to England until we could figure out a way for her to legally return. And so, after an unforgettable two-week road trip across the country, we separated.

Sophie's ticket back into the country was to go back to school for a new degree. She moved back to attend USC in the fall of 1993, when I was starting my second year of film school.

Two years later, we were finished. Sophie's life had grown to revolve around her school - and all the work she had - and mine revolved around trying to get my career going as a screenwriter. There was also the small detail that I'd fallen for someone else, but that's another story for another day. It was a tough breakup, but we came out the other end still caring for one another.

Sophie's life has done nothing but blossom since we ended. She's now a tenured professor at a New York college, she's been with Christina for almost ten years, and together, they have a baby daughter.

I kept a detailed journal over the months that I was falling in love with Sophie, and last night, I pulled it out and read through it. While it's embarrassing to see what a goober I was (yes, I actually wrote a song for her), it's also very sweet. I feel very fortunate that the first woman I ever chose to be in a relationship with was someone I had such deep feelings for, not to mention someone I still get to count among my friends. I've made a lot of dumb decisions in my life, but Sophie sure wasn't one of them.