On Love: ‘As soon as we got together, it was the easiest thing in the world’

Mark Gail/TWP - Alexis Johnson and Joseph Walpole married at the American Visionary art Museum on July 16, 2011 in Baltimore, Md.

Alexis Johnson knew Joseph Walpole’s type. She’d lived on a floor full of engineering majors her freshman year at Boston University. “They were nerdy,” she says. “And not in a fun, nerdy way, just in a really weird way.”She and Walpole had mutual friends and went to the same bars and parties, but they rarely spoke. I’m sure he’s just like the rest of them, she thought. Their most intimate conversation came when Johnson needed help with her shoe as a group of friends prepared for a formal dance.
“I was like, ‘You’re an engineering major, right?’ You can fix this,” she recalls.

He used a steak knife to carve a new hole in the strap of her shoe and passed it back.
Walpole, who was a year behind Johnson in school, didn’t form much of an impression of her. But in April 2006, he was the first of his friends to buy the video game “Guitar Hero.” When Johnson, a game-lover, heard that a mutual friend was going to Walpole’s place to test it, she exclaimed, “I’m coming over!” and proceeded to hold her own with the guys all night.
“I was, like, ‘Wow, that’s pretty cool,’ ” says Walpole. “And that was the first time we hung out with just three or four of us, so we actually had time to chat.”
The next week they saw each other at a bar. Johnson, whose father was an enthusiastic home brewer and now owns the Judge’s Bench Pub in Ellicott City, noticed that while others were drinking Bud Lights, Walpole was sipping a glass of La Fin du Monde, an ale from Quebec.
“It’s a beer I knew and a beer that I kind of respected,” she says. “It was just interesting, like, ‘Wow, I wouldn’t have expected that.’ ”
They talked for much of that night and met up again after a pub crawl four days before her graduation. As they walked home together, he kissed her.
They started spending every free moment together but knew their time would be limited; the day after graduation, Johnson would be setting off on a two-month cross-country excursion before trying to find a job back home in Maryland.
“I just remember being really excited during this time and trying not to think about her inevitably leaving,” says Walpole. “But it was also, like, ‘I can’t believe this — how long have we known each other that we never got together?’ ”
The morning of her departure, Johnson sped over to Walpole’s place to say goodbye. He gave her a mix CD to play on the road, but their goodbye hug was interrupted by Johnson’s dad, who called to say he was double-parked and it was time to go.
“I remember very distinctly the feeling after her leaving,” says Walpole. “Being, like, ‘I don’t know what just happened.’ ”
“I felt the same way,” she says. “We left it very unresolved.”
The next day, he e-mailed, saying, “So, we should still keep in touch, right?”
Walpole became Johnson’s virtual traveling companion as she drove through the continental United States, visiting state parks and music festivals. “It was definitely nice to have someone to check in with and have that comforting voice,” she says.
Their rambling daily conversations uncovered quirky senses of humor and similar musical tastes — she found herself listening again and again to the CD he’d given her. And while he is laid-back and reserved, he was drawn out by her chatty effervescence.
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