A/N: This third chapter provides some background on on Gil Grissom, who is awaiting his first session (as lecturer) at the 50th annual American Academy of Forensic Sciences ("AAFS") conference in San Francisco, California. In the fourth chapter, they meet….

Please also read the A/N at the end, if you're so inclined; it's further information on my understanding of Grissom for this story and essentially part of the text.


Gil Grissom

For once, Gil Grissom was ready. Unlike Sara, he was not, on this particular day, running late. He had flown in the day before, as planned; checked into the hotel where the conference was being held, as planned; and picked up the conference materials, again as planned. His best courtroom (expert witness) and conference-presenter suit was hanging in his hotel room's closet. He ate dinner in his room while reviewing his notes and materials for the events at which he'd be speaking that week, then he went to bed early. Although he usually worked nights and slept days, after so many years on the graveyard shift he had learned to take sleep whenever he could get it (and to get by on little, if necessary).

When Grissom woke in the morning, he was rested and had all his materials ready to go. A little over half an hour in advance, he headed to the conference room where he would be speaking. He had everything. He thought he was prepared. He thought he was ready. Gil Grissom was wrong. Gil Grissom was not ready. Gil Grissom was in no way prepared for what awaited him in that hotel conference room.

Gil Grissom lived and worked in Las Vegas, but he had been raised in Marina Del Rey, California and obtained his degrees from the UC system. He was thus not a stranger to the Golden State, though he had only occasionally ventured to San Francisco and even then only for work.

Unlike Sara, Grissom's parents had had a contented marriage, but, like Sara, he lost his father at the age of nine. The circumstances of his father's death were not criminal but still somewhat traumatic for the young Grissom; his father had died lying on the couch while Grissom sat in front of him watching TV, not realizing anything had gone wrong. So Grissom was raised mostly by his mother and had a pleasant but otherwise uneventful childhood in Marina Del Rey. Grissom's mother was deaf, but he communicated easily with her through American Sign Language. Nevertheless, Grissom was, again like Sara, an only child; Grissom's mother spent most of her time working to support their small family of two; and Grissom was by nature a bit of a loner, so, after Grissom's father's death, Grissom spent much of his childhood on his own.

Grissom would later tell his colleagues he had been a ghost in high school, and this was an accurate assessment. Grissom was, like Sara, exceptionally bright and ultimately graduated from high school early. Grissom also had interests many of his peers did not share, such as bugs and dissecting dead animals. So, regardless of whether Grissom chose to ignore his peers or his peers chose to ignore Grissom, Grissom was again generally alone.

When he started college, Grissom was younger than his peers, and he was still, generally, alone. Later, when he began his doctoral studies, Grissom found himself interacting more with people around his own age, although they were all still in college. And, finally, toward the end of his doctoral studies, Gil Grissom got his first girlfriend—well, that's aside from Nicole Daley, the nice young lady to whom he had proposed when they were both in the second grade. Though he was in the final year of his doctoral studies and the girl was in the final year of her undergraduate degree, they were the same age. The girl was nice and smart and pretty, and she quite liked Grissom. This was all new to Grissom, of course.

Grissom's mother still mourned his father, and, from his view of his parents' marriage all those years ago, Grissom had taken away an idealized view of love and marriage. At this time, he imagined he would one day have a wife, a couple kids, a dog, and a white picket fence. After all, that was just what one did. These were all vague concepts to him, though, and not real expectations or even real desires. Grissom liked the girl well enough, and, not being familiar with these things, he imagined he loved the girl, too, and maybe even thought he would marry her someday. Decades later, when Grissom finally found himself truly, madly in love for the first (and only) time, he would realize how laughable his initial imaginings of love had been; he'd realize it hadn't been much of a relationship at all. But, at the time, he imagined himself in love.

Imagining himself in love, Grissom wanted to please the girl. He did what he could to please the girl. He did things with the girl, although not so often as she would have liked, because he spent so much time on his studies. Grissom even started going to Las Vegas to win at poker, so he would have enough money for both his science experiments (including his first body farm) and the girl. Grissom wanted to please the girl in all ways, and he'd never been with a girl before, so he even found books giving him tips and techniques on how to please the girl. Grissom was considerate, and, as in all things, Grissom was a good student, so he studied up and he practiced and he became quite proficient at pleasing the girl in this way, technically speaking, though he always thought himself lacking in some sort of artistic merit—something someone else might have called passion. He thought this should be the peak of his connection with the girl, but it never really was, and it always left him feeling somewhat sad and disconnected afterward.

Eventually Grissom and the girl were both graduating from their respective studies. Grissom would be working in the LA County coroner's office, where he would be the youngest coroner in LA County history, and the girl was going to pursue graduate studies on the East Coast. Neither Grissom nor the girl had considered altering their own plans for the other, and neither was quite willing to say what the exact status of their relationship would be once they had parted, but they both promised to stay in touch regularly. Of course, they never spoke again. Grissom was not sad about this development; he probably hardly noticed. The girl likely was not that sad either, though he wouldn't know because he never spoke to her again.

After this, during his 20s, Grissom dated sporadically, but never anything serious, never anything longer than a month or maybe two at a time, and even then Grissom was never very involved in the relationship, if it could even be called that. He maintained his technical proficiency, but still he found something lacking. He always hoped sex would bring him closer to whatever woman he was seeing at the time, but it never did. It still left him feeling sad and disconnected afterward. So, what he often hoped would bring him closer to a woman would instead often signal the end. Luckily, Grissom was hardly ever bothered by this.

Given his experiences in his 20s, by his 30s, though still young and (as Catherine Willows would later recount with some glee) still very handsome and very much a target for female affection, Grissom had pretty much given up on dating. He had certainly given up any youthful thoughts he might once have had of a wife and a family. Grissom would very rarely go out on a date or two, and even more rarely go out on a date or three and go home with the woman, but this was mostly just to remind himself that he didn't feel he was missing anything.

In his early mid-30s, Grissom even dated a young woman at the local deaf college for several weeks, but he only did so at the insistence of his mother, who had met the woman at the college while giving one of her occasional visiting lectures on the visual arts. The woman would continue to be friends with Grissom's mother, but the relationship (such as it was) was of so little significance to Grissom that he soon forgot the dalliance had ever taken place. (Many years later, this omission would not win Grissom any favors with his wife, who was forced to hear about the matter for the first time from the woman's own mouth.)

By the time he had reached 40, Grissom was well and truly over dating, he had concluded. He'd made a life for himself in Vegas. He had work, he had science, and he had bugs. He was very content with all these things. His attempts at dating had only ever made him feel sad and disconnected. He would still very, very rarely go out with a woman, if asked, but again only to support the conclusion he was much better off on his own.

So, one must conclude that on that fateful day in February 1998, at the Hilton San Francisco and Towers Hotel (the one on O'Farrell, between Mason and Taylor, just a couple blocks off Union Square), Gil Grissom was very much unprepared for what lay ahead for him, in the almost but not quite empty conference room where he would soon be speaking. A young woman of whom he had no prior knowledge, CSI Level 2 Sara Sidle of the San Francisco crime lab, lay ahead for him. And, like Sara, he could not possibly comprehend what the consequences of their meeting would be.


UP NEXT: NEXT CHAPTER: FEBRUARY 9, 1998. SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA. WHEN GRISSOM MET SARA.


NOTES

On the background of one Dr. Gilbert Grissom (a few further thoughts):

I'm sure almost anyone reading this probably has their own thoughts on Gil Grissom and his background, so I wanted to expand a little on what my thoughts on Grissom were when writing this, beyond what fit into the narrative. (I guess I should give a spoiler alert on this, but I assume anyone reading this has seen to the end of the first season of CSI: Vegas; consider that your spoiler alert for my comments in the last paragraph.)

Growing up in the era he did, and seeing his parents' marriage when he was a young child (his mother later claimed she and Grissom's father had never spent a night apart when he, her late husband, was still alive), I imagine a young Gil had at one time vaguely expected he would grow up, get married, and have the stereotypical nuclear family—because he would have thought that was just what one did.

Toward the end of his doctoral studies (which he apparently completes at the age of 22, though I don't know if that's after his August birthday in 1978 or before it in 1979), when he's finally around enough people his own age, he meets a girl who likes him and who is nice to him, and he starts dating her, and he thinks himself in love—he just doesn't know any better. There's no spark, but he doesn't recognize that. He's also really into his studies and his other scientific pursuits, and they always take priority—science takes the pot. When the relationship with the girl ends, he isn't upset. He still generally imagines some future family life for himself, though, because, again, that's just what one does.

After his relationship with the girl ends, he tries to date occasionally, but his heart is never in it, and he's very much just going through the motions. He doesn't have any trouble getting dates if he wants them because, hello, he's young Billy Petersen, and he's a stone-cold hottie. He doesn't even have to ask girls out. The liberated ladies of the 1970s (and on) are asking him out. Still, there's never any spark on his side, but he doesn't really get that; he still doesn't know any better. Plus the science and now his job still always take priority; he loves them both. This is a self-perpetuating phenomenon because, as the things that really interest him take priority, his attempts at dating and anything even resembling a relationship (and I don't imagine there being any other relationships of note, nothing longer than a couple months, maybe, at maximum—and even then with him barely seeing the women) do not go well. As a result, even more he prioritizes science and work. So then the dating and any attempts at relationships go even worse; he's really not into them, and his heart is still never in it; ultimately, they make him feel sad and disconnected from humanity. At the same time, due to all the horrendous things he sees on the job, his opinion of humanity is plummeting.

As this continues, he begins to think there is something wrong with him; he sees something inherently lacking in himself and how he is with other people, if he tries to get too close to them. He builds walls: barriers between himself and other people, barriers between himself and the rest of the world, barriers between himself and humanity. His earlier vague ideas of an eventual marriage and possible family fade out completely. He otherwise remains good-natured but detached. He fears being known. A shell grows around his heart. He still very occasionally goes out on a date or a few dates and maybe very, very, very rarely goes home with a woman, but at that point it's all just to prove to himself that he's made the right decisions and he's not missing out on anything; it still leaves him feeling sad and even more disconnected. Things stay like this for quite some time.

Then, nearly twenty years into this process, after he is (in his own mind) truly a confirmed bachelor for life, he meets this young woman. Her beauty and her brilliance and her wit (I think he'd find her witty, given how much they seem to speak the same language and operate on the same wavelength) and all her other charms all hit him basically at once, almost simultaneously. For the first time in his life, he feels a spark, and she feels it, too. For the first time, he really cares about beauty. But by this point he's put up all these walls and grown this shell, and he's fully convinced of his own ineptitude in relationships. So he has absolutely no fucking clue what to do about it—this spark, this woman, this beauty. He feels like he'd be this inexperienced teenager trying to court the woman, because he's never done any of this properly; he's never actually cared about a woman like this before. He's convinced that he would ruin any serious romantic relationship with the woman, that he's just not good enough for her. And, the longer he knows her, the more convinced of her goodness he is. For over seven years he has no real clue what to do. But then really, even though he seems to learn for a while, we could say that for seventeen and a half years he still doesn't completely get it; he still has this underlying insecurity about his own suitability for love and relationships and marriage; he still thinks he's not good enough for the woman. In the end, though, I think he gets it. He is fully obsessed with his wife (in the best possible way), and I honestly don't think he gives a fuck about much other than her.

Now, if perhaps you want a reminder of the hotness of a young ('80s) WP, I recommend you check him out as Richard Chance in To Live and Die in L.A., Russell Murdock (seriously, the DILFiest of all DILFs) in Amazing Grace and Chuck, and Stud Cantrell in Long Gone.