Two days later we went on our first date. Classes had not yet started, so each of our schedules was open. We had made plans for dinner. I remember feeling excited and a little nervous. He picked me up at my dorm room and we got into the bucket seats of his light blue Oldsmobile Starfire and drove into downtown Boulder for dinner at the Walrus Restaurant. It was a popular spot but not typical college fare. We had a nice time and we talked a lot about his family, my family, growing up, and how we came to be in Boulder. He was a senior, and I was a third year transfer student.
After dinner, he drove me up to scenic Flagstaff Mountain, just west of downtown Boulder where the flat plains meet the first foothills of the Rockies. Ben parked on the side of the road, and we got out for a while, taking in the spectacular view of downtown. I remember thinking it was so beautiful looking down on Boulder and the lights below and how lucky I was to be there. Then we stopped at Chautauqua Park on the way down from the mountain. Toward the end of the evening, Ben tried several times to do more than just kiss me—I had to keep brushing him off and telling him no. He eventually dropped me off at my dorm room and we kissed good night.
From that night forward, we were pretty much inseparable. We certainly liked each other, but I do not think that either of us at the time thought, This is the one. I liked him and thought we had a lot in common: we were both from the East Coast, we both loved to ski and swim, and we both liked the outdoors.
For the next eight years, we pursued one another around the country with me doing most of the chasing. We dated that first year while we were in college. Then, when Ben graduated from CU, I moved back East, where he went to medical school and I went to work in the hotel industry after a brief stint at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. Ben attended St. George’s University School of Medicine in the British West Indies. We dated on and off during those years, both of us living elsewhere and experiencing what the world had to offer us. He was deeply invested in medical school, the ensuing internship, and then his residency. Putting my life on hold for those years while he had little or no time for a relationship, didn’t make sense to me. So we started seeing other people.
It was while I worked as a concierge in the lobby at the historic Parker House in downtown Boston that I met Keith Knudsen, one of the original Doobie Brothers. I recognized some of his fellow band members from my album covers, but I did not know who Keith was. He introduced himself to me at my desk and we chatted for a few minutes. Quite unexpectedly, he invited me to their concert at the Cape. He seemed very sweet and down to earth, so I said “yes.” I gave him directions to my apartment and as he walked away, I asked him what he did. With a smile, he quietly said, “I’m a drummer and I do some vocals.”
“Oh,” was all I could manage to say.
I was living in Brookline, a town outside of Boston at the time. I lived in a three bedroom apartment on the third floor of a house in a working class section of town. It was a great place, very nice and clean. I lived with one of my college roommates from Centenary and another girl who was a graduate student at Boston University. Keith picked me up that night in a limo and we drove all the way to the Cape—just the two of us. The band was touring for their “Minute by Minute” album. I was so nervous and excited that night.
On the way to the concert we made small talk, then I picked up one of the Minute by Minute albums that he had on the seat next to him and asked, “So, which one of you guys are related? Which ones are the brothers?”
He smiled and said, “None of us are related. There are no real brothers in the group.”
“Oh, wow, I didn’t know that,” I said. Then I took out the album insert and pointed to it and said, “I have never really understood why you would put a picture of a piece of burning trash on this sleeve. What is the significance of that?”
Keith looked at me for a second, threw his head back, and laughed—not in a mean way, but in a gentle, funny way. “Maurita, that’s not a trash bag, that’s a doobie, a joint. That’s where the name the Doobie Brothers comes from.”
“Oh,” I laughed right along with him because I had no idea.
We had a great time that night and the evening ended very late with a goodnight kiss at my apartment door. That began an almost two year on-again, off-again relationship. I had grown up with money, but nothing like this lifestyle of private planes, limousines, and luxury hotels. We were both honest that first night; he explained he was separated from his wife and in the beginning process of divorce, but he was also seeing other people. I told him about Ben and him being in medical school, so we both just took the relationship as it came. I had no illusions about where my relationship with Keith would end up, so I just went along with it. I saw him pretty much anytime he was near the East Coast. He would leave me a ticket at the counter at Logan Airport, and I would fly off to be with him on tour—sometimes for a weekend, sometimes for as long as five days. I went with him to Philadelphia, New York, Connecticut, Cape Cod, Montreal, and Nova Scotia. I even flew a couple of times on the Doobie Liner, as they called their private plane with their familiar logo was on its tail.
I enjoyed the attention and excitement for a while, and when Keith said he had fallen in love with the woman with whom I believe eventually became his second wife, I was sad, of course, but happy to have had such a great time while it lasted. My pattern of finding comfort in the shadows of unavailable men continued with Keith, and what a shadow that was.
Moreover, there is something about me that addicts are attracted to and something about me that makes me attracted to addicts. My father was distant, and addicts are typically distant. This emotional disconnect is what I was familiar and comfortable with. It is no accident that I would someday marry someone who steered away from intimacy. And it is no accident that I got involved with Keith, who would someday battle his own addictive demons.
I didn’t see Keith Knudsen again until the summer before Ben’s disclosure to me about his sex addiction. The Doobie Brothers were touring again and playing in Myrtle Beach. I took Ben, our oldest daughter, Ella, and my nephew to the concert. Keith invited us backstage after the concert. It was great to see him again. He looked happy and healthy and gave the kids signed t-shirts and drumsticks. Ben took the kids back out on the field, and I sat down with Keith for a few minutes. He was happily remarried, and he had been in recovery for eight years. That was news to me; when I dated him I did not realize that he was an addict. We got up and gave each other a hug and that was it. I never saw him again.
Then, in February of 2005, Ben was watching CNN and learned that Keith had died of complications due to chronic pneumonia. It was a difficult loss for me as I had always hoped to talk face to face with him again—but this time as two people in recovery.
Eventually, Ben and I got back together, better than before. That was during his three year-long residency in Baltimore. The weather had already gotten cold that year as I was preparing to go north to Wellesley for the Thanksgiving holiday.
“I have something for you,” Ben told me. It was almost midnight. I had just gotten home from working the evening shift at the Hyatt Regency Baltimore where I was an assistant front office manager, and I still had to pack for an early morning flight.
I sat down next to Ben and looked at him and said, “What is it?”
In his hand, he held a small, velvet ring box. He handed it to me to open. I opened it and it was an engagement ring.
I asked, “Is this an engagement ring? Are we getting married?”
He said, “Yeah, I want to marry you, but I haven’t really thought about when.”
I was a bit shocked. I was happy that he gave me a ring, but I was
