What is my girlfriend’s name?

The Mystery of Red Dress Girl

What is my girlfriend’s name? We’d been dating for eight months and I still didn’t know her name.

I was too drunk when we met to care and just saved her number as red dress girl. Now it was way too late to ask.

The first few weeks I kept waiting for her to say name, but she never did. I tried the Starbucks trick and when they asked for a name, she said Jessica.

Finally, I thought I’d solved it. But the next day, she told them Amanda.

And the day after that, it was Sophie. When I asked her about it, she said she didn’t like strangers yelling her real name, so she always gave fake ones.

I looked for mail at her apartment, but everything was addressed to current resident or valued customer. Her electric bill was paperless and autopaid from an account she said her dad had set up years ago.

When packages arrived, they just had her apartment number on them. She said she used some abbreviation when ordering online because her name was too long for most forms.,

Her friends all called her different things like babe and honey and girl, like everyone was in on some conspiracy. When I asked one friend what my girlfriend’s actual name was, she laughed and said, “You’re so funny.” and changed the subject.

I started to wonder if the friend even knew. Something cold settled in my stomach at that thought.

I tried to get her driver’s license when we went to a bar, but she said she didn’t have one because she grew up in New York where nobody drives. She showed the bouncer something on her phone that he accepted.,

But when I asked to see it, she said the battery had just died. We went to five different bars over the next month, and she never once showed physical ID.

I suggested we take a trip somewhere tropical, so she’d need a passport. She got excited and started planning, but then said her passport had expired.

She said the renewal process was backed up for months. When I offered to help with the paperwork, she said her birth certificate was at her parents house in another state.

They were traveling in Europe, so she couldn’t get it. At restaurants, I’d make reservations under my name, then pretend I forgot, and ask her to check if she had one.,

She’d just tell them we were looking for a table for two, and they’d seat us anyway. When hosts asked for her name, she’d point at something on the menu and start asking questions until they got distracted.

It was almost like she’d practiced it. I tried getting romantic and asking what her grandmother called her as a child.

She said she’d had so many nicknames she couldn’t remember them all. When I asked what teachers called her in school, she said she’d been homeschooled and her mom just called her sweetheart.,

Every story somehow avoided her actual name. Her credit cards just said valued member, which she claimed was a privacy thing her bank offered.

Her gym membership was under some corporate account from an old job. Her laptop had no name on the user account, just a smiley face emoji.

Even her Netflix profile just said me. And when I asked about it, she said she thought it was funny.

I looked through her yearbooks when she was in the shower, but her pictures had been cut out of every single one. She said her ex had done it in a jealous rage years ago.

The one photo that remained showed her, but the name underneath had been covered with white out. She said her ex was seriously disturbed and changed the subject.

I started getting desperate and suggested we get married as a joke to see what she’d say. Instead, she got really excited and started planning our future together.

When I asked what name she’d want on the wedding invitations, she said let’s just do something simple like join us for our celebration. I found her college diploma in a drawer.,

The name section was water damaged and completely illeible. She said a pipe had burst in her first apartment and destroyed a bunch of important documents.

The degree and university were perfectly clear, but the single line with her name looked like it had been specifically targeted by water. I tried to be clever and said we should practice signatures for our future wedding.

She drew elaborate loops that could have been anything. When I asked her to write it in print, she said she’d always preferred cursive.

When I asked her to spell it out, she got a phone call and never came back to it. At this point, I’d started to wonder if maybe she was in witness protection or hiding from someone.

But she posted on social media constantly and had hundreds of friends and lived a completely normal life. She just somehow never said or wrote her actual name.

After almost a year together, I got an invitation to a friend’s wedding and had to fill out the RSVP card. She handed it to me and I stared at the line where I was supposed to write in her name.