“Would you recognize my handwriting or would it look like some chicken scratches that belonged to some nameless, faceless person?”
“I think I would and even if I didn’t all I would need to see are your words. I always know your writing, you can’t hide that from me.”
He smiled looked down at the ground and walked down to the water’s edge.
“One of the guys told me we are just reeling in the years but I told him he was wrong. We are just getting started. Can’t lie and say that some things aren’t different. Can’t say that things haven’t changed but the really big things haven’t. So my hair isn’t what it used to be and my body isn’t as taut as it once was these aren’t important.
They bother my ego but my hair doesn’t mean a damn thing to me and the body, well I know the sort of exercise that helps people lose weight and stay happy.”
This time she was the one who smiled.
“You may look like an old man but you think like a young one. It always comes back to sex for you, doesn’t it.”
He rolled his eyes.
“No, it doesn’t always come back to sex. But the thing is that you are really sexy and I love you so I like showing you my love.”
She smiled and this time she was the one who reached for his hand. They stood there in the twilight staring at the water lost in the moment.
And in the silence he swore he could feel her asking him to prove he would go the distance. He thought about telling her he would but he couldn’t think of the right words to say.
He stepped in front of her, took her face in his hands and kissed her on the mouth and smiled.
She smiled back at him and they sat and watched the final rays of the day turn into the first moments of starlight.
Sunday afternoons are sometimes bittersweet for me, mostly sweet though. They aren’t the foundation of who we are and what we are about but I see them as being the time when we shared the moments that made it clear that dreams and fantasy could be reality. They were the moments when we saw how love could compress time and make hours feel like minutes and when the pain of the past was erased.
They were when we proved to ourselves that there had to be a time somewhere down the road to dedicate to us. A time when we could hold hands and not feel the pressure of time and responsibility to others. A time when we could let go of outside obligation and love again as if we were teenagers with life experience.
Neither of us ever expected to find that feeling of first love again or believed it could happen more than once with the same person but it can and it did. And we learned that time really has no meaning for people who are right for each other because a kiss that happened a decade or decades ago had the same intensity as one today.
And we learned again that sometimes you have to risk having your heart torn apart so that you can heal the wounds of the past and love more deeply and completely than before.
Teenage bodies are hard, supple and nubile. They can do amazing things repeatedly and without the consequences of age. But teenage minds don’t have the depth and wisdom of life experience. They don’t understand or appreciate what life brings. They don’t understand that sometimes the heartache of the past is precisely the thing that makes you love the present so much more.
And though the present may sometimes feel more challenging and harder on the ego. Though it may sometimes be harder to tear off our clothes and show our bodies as they are now those teenage bodies never did experience the kind of feelings that our older, more worn and much wiser can.
Back then foreplay was to be rushed because you couldn’t risk being in trouble with parents.
But now all is different and in many ways so much better. Because when you live a little bit longer you learn to appreciate things so much more.
And you realize that there is a reason why sometimes you let your girl walk for a while on her own. You let her do what she needs to do but you don’t let her get so far away she can’t see or hear you. And you make sure that if she goes for a walk she knows you haven’t tossed her aside.
You still think she is beautiful, wonderful and an amazing woman. You let her know you cherish her and that there are no finer moments than when you are in sync and taking on the world together. It might be as simple as holding hands while sitting on the couch or the sort of torrid sex that leaves you both breathless and amazed at just how much trust you really have in each other.
Because you are two individuals who are strong and independent who together form something more than when apart. Because when things are hard you want to lean on each other and when things are good you want to share it with the other.
Because even if you don’t say I love you he/she always knows you do.
That means if I hope to write 98 best sellers I need to stop writing posts about how sock monkeys have more writing talent than most bloggers and start writing novels.
The link in the post above goes to one of my other blogs, TheJackb. That has been where I have focused most of my attention.
This joint you are currently hanging out in is where I house most of my fiction. I have written hundreds of thousands of words but I haven’t been good about trying to really turn them into a book.
There should be enough material here to do so but I haven’t focused upon it the way I should, at least if I truly want to turn these stories into something more.
Some of it is because part of me looks at these pieces and rolls his eyes. The post underneath this is about 2k words or so but every time I look at it I cringe.
It feels awkward and stilted.
But you can’t write stories by refusing to put pen paper. You can’t take words and turn them into a tale without putting them together on paper and asking someone to read them.
I don’t know why I haven’t pushed harder to turn at least one of these threads into a full blown story. Could be fear, could be something else.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter why because as Master Yoda says there is no try. It is all about do or do not.
She can’t see herself in my eyes, doesn’t see what I see and wonders why I feel as I do about her. She looks in the mirror and remembers the girl she used to be but has a hard time not seeing what time has done to the girl. The changes are cataloged and detailed individually and though she knows time has been kinder than to her than some other women she still doesn’t get it.
With each stroke of the brush she tries understand how he can love her so damn much because it still doesn’t make sense but much of what he does is almost incomprehensible to her. Sometimes she wonders if it is all based upon sex for him. Men can put it anywhere and as long as she lets him put it where he wants he’ll keep calling.
Or that is how it used to be all those years ago. That is how easy it used to be to get a boy. If you wanted him to hang around, wanted his attention you could always use sex to get it and keep it. It wasn’t what she wanted or how she was now but there had been a time where she and the other girls had used their sexuality to get what they wanted.
She had quickly grown out of it as had most of her friends but there were a few who never did. That just made her shake her head. It was impossible to respect a grown woman whose self esteem was so wrapped up in having men pursue them. She liked men and always had but she didn’t need a man to make her feel good about herself.
****
Sometimes it makes me crazy to feel these flames burning inside my belly and to know it is because of her. I am not the kind of person who lets my guard down easily, not the person who just lets strangers walk around inside my head.
But I gave her the key years ago and unless I actively work on keeping her out she strolls through whenever she feels like it.
Sometimes I think about it all and try to figure out how we arrived at this place because I figure that I if I understand it I can gain better control of it. The thought makes me snort and I wonder when I became such a control freak and what I am afraid of.
I can hear her tell me we can be friends and that I shouldn’t spend my time trying to “bonk her.” I remember nodding my head and her eyes focusing on mine. I don’t think she believes I won’t try but I don’t tell her that I am sure she wants me to. It is that push/pull thing that happens between men and women.
When she hugs me goodbye that day I swear she presses up against me with her whole body and tries to figure out just how happy I am to see her.
We hold on to each other for a moment and then I go to kiss her cheek but catch part of her lip. It is awkward and I really don’t know how it happened. Can’t tell you if we did it intentionally but it affects instantly and she notices. She smiles at me and starts to walk away but I grab her and pull her back.
My arms are wrapped around her from behind and I feel her shift her body. We have done this dance before and there is no way to hide the obvious from her.
“I guess I am happy to see you.”
It doesn’t sound cool or sophisticated to me but I am praying she doesn’t care.
She doesn’t say anything but she doesn’t move away when I press up against her so I put one hand on her hip and the other grabs a handful of hair.
It is clear to me now I have permission to keep going and part of me wonders if this hadn’t been part of her plan all along. It would make perfect sense for her to have decided before she saw me whether she wanted this but I am not going to waste time thinking about it and I am not going to ask.
But later on I will put my head against her chest to listen to her heart pound because it turns me on and because I want to confirm she enjoyed it as much as I hope she did.
****
She wonders if he feels her pulling away. Things don’t feel right to her but she doesn’t want to hurt him, especially when he looks so happy to see her.
When he kisses her hello she kisses him back and decides today will be it. She tells him that she has lots to do and apologizes for not having much time and then takes him into the bedroom.
‘Let’s do it.”
He watches her climb into bed, sees her slip off her pants and watches her pull the sheet over her lower body. It turns him on to watch her but this time he senses she is not all there. So he walks over to her side of the bed, pulls off his pants and stands there staring at her.
“I want your mouth.”
She leans forward, closes her eyes and takes him but he doesn’t close his. He is watching now because he wants to see if she is doing it because he asked or because she wants to. They have been together for long enough for him to know the difference.
When he doesn’t wrap his fingers in her hair or grab her head she stops to ask if he likes it and he smiles at her.
It feels good, always feels good but he is too aware of her not being present and decides he needs to do something about it. He doesn’t want to say anything because he is worried that given the circumstances anything he says will come out sounding much worse than he intends.
So he pulls the covers down and when she invites him in he smiles and climbs on top of her.
“We don’t have much time.”
Those words ping pong around his head. They have had done it a million times and every which way possible but this time he doesn’t hear “I want you.” Instead it comes out inside his head as “I don’t have any interest but I can’t figure out how to get out of it.”
It frustrates him so he tries to figure out how to get her more involved. “Honey, I want you to be on top.”
She tells him no and tells him to “go for it.”
In other circumstances that would have made him smile and he would have gone for it but now he can’t. Still he figures there is a chance he is wrong about it all and he tries to make sure she enjoys it
“I am going to manhandle you.”
“Ok, go ahead.”
That sets him off because long ago she had told him he didn’t have to always be so gentle and that she wanted to feel his strength. “I want you to manhandle me. Throw me around, pound me!”
She hadn’t been kidding either. When he started to let go she pushed him harder and if she thought he was holding back she told him it was ok to go harder and they did.
His eyes narrow but she doesn’t react or recognize he is irritated by her response or lack thereof. Her distance is aggravating him because he feels the wall that she has put up and senses they are in a precarious place.
It takes him a moment to realize that he really is pounding her and that neither of them are pleased by it. He knows she is not upset because he is being rougher but is angry with her and himself.
Angry because he recognizes he is trying to use his physical strength to knock down a wall that doesn’t exist in the physical world. So he finishes, rolls over and heads straight to the bathroom.
It is the first time in his memory with her that intimacy has left him feeling anything but great. It frustrates him even more because the hallmark of their relationship is how well they communicate.
She has always told him that is one of the things she treasures and he has always told her he does too. He has explained many times that very few of the women from the past would describe his communication skills as she does because he didn’t talk to them like he did with her.
When she leaves his place he says little but his body language makes it clear he is unhappy. Mostly he is silent because he is waiting for her to share what is bothering her and when she does he explodes.
They argue about what could have and should have been and then focus on what is. He tells her if she wants to walk to go ahead and then says he thinks she would be quite foolish to do so.
****
Hours later they are past the argument and they have worked through most of the issues. Some still exist and until they are willing to commit larger changes they always will.
But for the moment they are content with the agreement and they promise to love each other always and swear they will continue to figure to work it out because the pain of being apart hurts more than the irritation of the few remaining issues.
He asks her if she is still his girl and he smiles and promises to be his forever. He smiles and wraps her up in his arms and whispers in her ear that he has never stopped loving her and never will.
She smiles at him and tells him if makeup sex is always this good she plans on fighting more. He laughs and tells her they don’t fight that much and she disagrees.
But when they talk through it they agree that compatible isn’t the right word to describe them because it is not strong enough. She says she doesn’t know if she believes in soul mates any more and he says it doesn’t matter.
When she asks why he just smiles and she asks him to explain but he refuses. She doesn’t like when he holds back and tells him so. So he laughs some more and reminds her that he is the boss and she says no way.
Later she’ll tell him that sometimes that kind of talk irritates her and he’ll laugh. When she yells at him for laughing he says he is laughing with her.
No would really describe us as he and she, they would always refer to us as a couple. But a big part of our strength is our ability to live without each other.
When she tells him that doesn’t make any sense he explains to her they are two people that share one heart and that it is a huge muscle that is strong enough to let them go about their separate ways until the time when they can be together.
She smiles and tells him that she loves when he is romantic and kisses him. He kisses her back and tells her he has never kissed sweeter lips.
They fall asleep on the couch still holding hands.
*****
She has pulled away from me again and put up the wall but it is not as high nor as thick as it once was. Or maybe what has changed is now I see the handholds she left in it and the cracks she put out so that I can find a way to climb over it.
I know her better than she thinks and I see things differently than before. She still doesn’t see her reflection in my eyes or understand things as I do but that is part of the attraction and part of how we complement each other.
When she tells me to go away, to let go and give up I don’t listen because what I read between the lines. She won’t ask me to do more than I have done because she thinks it is too much and when I offer she declines.
But I don’t worry because there is a connection I can’t explain that never goes away. We don’t stay angry with each other. We don’t get tired of each other.
That is different. It is unique and it is special because it doesn’t apply to others, just to us.
The fire that burns never goes out. I stopped asking why. Stopped trying to figure it out and just accepted that it did and it does.
Once I did that things changed and good things happened.
Don’t ask me to tell you about the future. I know what I think but I am unlikely to tell you what it is. Just know that I am built to take what is thrown at me, to endure what I must and to adapt and adjust.
Some walls come down via demolition and some come down through more intellectual methods. I know how to handle both.
I don’t know if you ever really believed I would be willing to turn my world upside down and inside out. Can’t say I blame you because initially you saw a man who dragged his feet and wondered if he was just talk. And then when I started moving that magical window had changed and you thought it would be too hard to make things happened so you pushed me away.
We know how well that worked out for you. For a long while you found ways to stay busy and keep your distance. There were lots of reasons to maintain it and in your mind no reason to believe the status quo could ever change.
That made it easier to keep that distance. Made it easier to chalk it all up to something that probably wouldn’t have worked because there were too many differences and too many challenges to overcome.
Things outside of our control happened that required your full and complete attention. Same thing happened for me but one of the differences between us is that you saw it as confirmation that there was no future and it hurt more than you expected it to. Add the pain and frustration to all of the other things that were going on and it was even easier to convince yourself that it was something that never could be.
But I am built differently than you are. I am constructed to see possibilities and opportunities that others walk away from and to run into the burning building because I never believe the fire will consume me. I just know that even though it hurts like hell I can take it and if I try hard enough I come out the other side.
You might think I am casting judgment upon you, saying you give up too easily but I am not. You might think that I took a swipe at you but I didn’t because our differences are part of what make things so good between us, when you put them together there is a balance that doesn’t otherwise exist.
When I first felt you watching from the shadows I wondered if my mind was playing tricks on me. I thought it was just a broken heart aching for contact, begging for what was missing but time passed and I began to believe.
Time passed and I started to recognize that I really did feel you and that you were part of my life, even if you were standing in the shadows.
That crazy third eye that lies behind our chests and next to our hearts showed me you were still there. That is how I knew you never stopped loving me and how I knew if we spent time together you would let your guard down.
Time passed and in one of the craziest moves and moments of them all it all came together. Came together just when I was prepared to say I had been wrong about it all. Just when I was ready to walk away and not look back you showed up and came back into my life.
The first time I saw you my heart ended up in my throat and I didn’t know what to do or say. You were more beautiful than ever. I stared at you and wondered if I would make it through the entire meal without bursting.
When you stood up and walked out the door I hoped you couldn’t feel how intensely I was staring at you. I remember you turned around and looked at me and I quickly crossed my arms and tried to nonchalantly drop them in front of me.
It was a moment that reminded me of being high school, something that girls never had to worry about because your attraction to someone else is never as obvious as ours is.
When we got to our cars we shared an awkward hug and for a moment I thought of kissing you hard on the lips but I decided the better option was to wait and see how you played it.
I did and I was right.
Right because I was confident that it was better to let you think about it all, process the evening and that if that crazy third eye was right you would end up in my arms of your own accord.
And then you did and it was better than expected.
It took a while to get there, but once you kissed me I felt you melt into me and I knew that I had been right and all of the crap from the past washed away.
One kiss made it clear that all of the pain and longing had been worth it and I knew that I would do it all again.
I remember when you told me how much you had missed me how part of me cheered at having been right and how part of me wondered about all the time we had missed.
And then I wondered how it would go because I knew that this time would probably be limited and that there would be a moment that you would retreat back into the shadows because you thought about a magical window that had passed and would need time away from me to really appreciate what we had and what we are…together.
++++
When we are happy, sad, angry or upset we are the person the other wants to talk to and or spend time with. When the world is wearing us out and we need help recharging our batteries we are the person who helps the other keep going.
When we praise each other we glow and when we curse we shrink.
There is an exchange of energy between us and it impacts us both positively and negatively.
We are best friends who never tire of each other and hate being apart. The depth of our love is uncharted and it will only stop growing if we actively work to strangle it of life.
Part of our strength is that we don’t just love but like each other. The differences sometimes irk us but not in significant manners and they only are prominent when we try to convince ourselves that we would be better apart.
I have never stopped holding your hand and am always there to kiss the tears away.
You can spend your moment in the shadows but I haven’t any doubt that one day I will come take your hand and pull you right back into my arms.
That is not me bragging or trying to be bold. It is just what that crazy third eye tells me.
One kiss is all it has ever taken for us to get lost in our world, it is not such a bad place to be either.
He watched them fly by him at speeds he didn’t dare match but wished he could and wondered what their story was. A man and a woman on a motorcycle, her arms wrapped around his waist, wisps of long dark hair hanging outside of her helmet.
Traffic wasn’t an impediment and apparently neither was fear of being laid out on the highway or sent off the road into the desert. He was looking into his rear view mirror when he spotted them weaving in and out of the lanes and cars.
Hadn’t taken more than a few moments for them to pull along side and shoot past him but they had been there long enough to make him remember, wonder and think
****
“We need a code or sign for when we want to do it. Something we can share so we know when to leave a party and go back to your apartment.”
He smiled at her and said she should be careful what she wished for because she might get it.
“I don’t know about who you dated before me, but I won’t ever say no and you are the one who should be careful. I don’t have your refractory period.
“Look who is using big words. I think I am going to wear you out.”
She laughed.
“Men are clueless. You all think you are the greatest lovers ever and act so surprised when women make it clear that we like sex as much as you do. We just don’t brag about it like you guys do, we have more class.”
He was about to respond when he saw the twinkle in her eye and recognized she was teasing him.
“Maybe I should just grab your hips and then you’ll know I want to leave.”
She rolled her eyes at him, “I told you men are clueless. You grab my hips and every woman will know exactly what you want and exactly where we are going.”
“Why do you care what they know or think they know?”
“Because there is a difference between knowing and wondering. I don’t care what they think but I would rather keep them out of our business. They don’t need to know what they are doing.”
This time he rolled his eyes.
“Are you seriously trying to tell me you haven’t told your friends about us. You may think I am clueless, but I am not. I don’t believe for a moment your girlfriends haven’t heard about our dates and details about what we do in bed.”
She giggled, “they might know a few things but you shouldn’t worry about that.”
He began to protest but she covered his lips with hers and told him she was certain she could make it up to him. He smiled and she led him to her bedroom. It was Thanksgiving break and it was one of of the few times her place was quiet.
There were six girls sharing that apartment and in spite of her protests he was convinced they knew more about him than he liked.
Some of that was because two weeks ago her roommate had walked in on them. She had quickly apologized and walked back out but now every time she saw him she would smile and bark or ask him if needed a Milkbone.
When he asked his girlfriend if she knew anything about it she just laughed and told him he should take it as a compliment. He had tried to be cool about it and smiled but he was embarrassed and afraid to tell her why.
So even though she told him that they had the place all to themselves tonight he couldn’t quite relax. His nervousness began by translating into an ability to the raise the flag.
It was the first time that had ever happened to him. She told him to relax and said she was certain she could help him. Eventually her help fixed his problem but he couldn’t stop thinking about it so when they got down to business he started pumping like he was being chased by the devil.
Moments later he told her he loved her and collapsed.
Two hours later he woke up naked in her bed…alone.
When he walked into the living room she was reading a book. It took him a few minutes to realize she was angry and then even longer to recognize she was angry with him.
That just upset her more and so he walked home wondering why they had only done it once when they had the place to themselves.
Years later he would think about that moment and smile because that was the fight that led to them not talking for a week but it was also the one that made him realize he loved her, so he figured it had multiple benefits.
****
Three nights earlier they sat next to each other at their farewell dinner. Knees touching they talked about the future and the past and wondered how life could play so many games.
After graduation they had planned on moving in together and getting married. She told him she wanted to be pregnant around 28 or 29 with their first and then space out the next two or three with a few years in between each. He laughed and told her you couldn’t plan everything in life and she agreed but maintained that wasn’t true for everything.
“Some things can and should be planned.”
He knew better than to argue the point and didn’t, but part of it was because he didn’t care and he figured it was easier to just nod his head and go along.
They split a bottle of wine and then climbed into bed. She laughed and apologized for wearing sweat pants but told him she had shaved her legs so all was not lost.
“Let me see.”
She smiled as he pulled them off of her and ran his hands up and down.
“I am not going to be the only naked person in this bed, you better take those shorts off right now.”
He saluted and said “Yes ma’am!”
She looked him up and down and as she told him it looked like someone was happy to see her she smiled.
When he climbed on top of her she laughed and said her head was spinning and then asked him to get a condom.
“Hang on a minute I love feeling you without one.”
“Baby, this isn’t a good idea. I want to have your baby, but not now. Go get a condom and you can have me any way you want.”
Suddenly he grabbed her shoulders and started pumping hard and just suddenly he groaned and collapsed on top of her.”
“Did you just cum inside of me? What the hell. Baby, I told you to get a condom! What are we going to do if I am pregnant?”
“I don’t think you’ll get pregnant like this.”
He knew she would go off after that and she did. He listened to her lecture him about how stupid an answer that was and how he couldn’t say that. She knew her mother had gotten pregnant quickly which meant there was a good chance it could happen for her too.
“If I am pregnant we’ll get married sooner. Right?”
The question caught him completely off guard. Looking back he understood why that made her sad and angry but at the time neither had been his intention.
“Um, I guess” was all he could say.
She told him to get out and said they were done.
Weeks later he received a note saying she wasn’t pregnant and nothing more.
He wasn’t sure if was relieved or not. She had refused to talk to him since that night. She wouldn’t take his call or respond to any of his letters and the few times he had shown up at her apartment her roommates had told him to go away.
One time he had reached out to her friend Martha and asked for help but not much had come of that. Martha had told him she still loved him but that she was hurt and suggested he give her time.
So he tried Martha’s approach and all that came from it was the note that she wasn’t pregnant. A month afterwards he saw her at the student union talking to a bunch of people.
He walked up said hi and she hi back. She didn’t tell him to go away but she didn’t try to engage him so he decided to wait and see what happened.
A few minutes later a guy with blue eyes and blond hair walked up and started talking to her. She smiled at the blond and starting talking to him.
That was all it took. He walked up to the blond guy and told him to “fuck off!”
The blond guy had enough time to say “fuck you” back but not enough to see the fist that came flying at him. He hit the ground and curled up in a ball.
“You stupid asshole! Why did you hit him?”
He was too angry to respond so he walked away and made a point not to look back. Later that night he was surprised to get a telephone call from Martha.
“It is not my business but you made things a lot harder on yourself. I have never seen her more upset. She loved you more than any other guy I have seen her with, but your temper just got your into trouble. You should apologize and if you can fix it.”
That was too much so he screamed at Martha, “she can fuck whomever she wants now. I am done.”
“You are an idiot. She is not sleeping with anyone.”
****
“How long will you be gone and when can you come back? This is so unfair. I don’t understand how after all this time life can bring us back together and pull us apart again.”
“I have spent the better part of the last seven years trying to get a project like this. It is the kind of thing a career can be made on. This is the next big step, but I promise I will be back as soon as I can.”
She looked at him and smiled, “I know baby, but it hurts. I can’t believe we got a second chance and this happened. What are we going to do?”
It was the kind of question he never expected he would have to answer, especially not from her. Twenty years ago he expected she would be his wife and the of his children.
Instead they had married other people and built lives apart.
Now they were both parents and both separated from their spouses. Neither of them had planned on this. They had bumped into each other at a reunion and spent time talking but for a long time nothing had happened.
She had told him she didn’t know what she was going to do about her marriage. She wasn’t in love with her husband any more but she didn’t want to hurt her children by splitting up the family.
For a long time they didn’t much contact and what little they did made it clear to him that romance wasn’t a question. So he never did anything, never said he thought she looked great or mentioned any interest in her.
One night they ran into each other at the grocery store and then he did something that surprised them both.
He put his hands on her hips and slipped by her.
It felt relatively innocuous. His body didn’t touch her, but static electricity between his fingers and her body created a little shock and they both jumped.
“See, after all these years I can still make you squirm.”
It was supposed to be a joke but instead of laughing she said, “we should find out.”
And then they crossed all of the lines and colored outside of the boxes.
****
When she hugged and kissed him goodbye at their farewell dinner she told him she believed this could be their time. He smiled and said if she held his hand he was certain they could.
He told her again he had never stopped loving her and asked her if he sounded like an idiot. She said no and said she hadn’t stopped loving him either.
And then he packed up his stuff and drove off to take on the big dream of his career. This was going to be the moment where he began to really prepare for the future, for the life he didn’t just want but needed.
This was going to be it. He felt good and was certain that she would be a part of it. It was funny how life worked.
As he sat there trying to figure out what made him think about it all he realized that he had been looking at the woman on the motorcycle, there was something about the way she looked straddling the bike, bent over at the waist that reminded him of “his girl.”
That made him smile again. He thought she would be pleased to hear he thought she looked like a girl who was probably twenty-something.
Their first time back together she had asked him what he thought and when he told her nothing had changed she had laughed. “You don’t have to lie to me to get lucky, I am going to sleep with you regardless of what you say. Remember we like sex as much as you guys do and grown women don’t have to play games about it.”
“Well then, I am going to have you in every position. I just have to decide how I want to start.”
She laughed again.
“Men never change. You are not 2o any more but if you can keep up I suppose we can try whatever you want.”
He saw the twinkle in her eye and for a moment the years blurred.
“Before we start I just want to tell you I love you.”
That caught her off guard.
“I love you too.”
****
Ninety days ago she told him she decided it was too hard and that she was going to try to work things out with her husband. He told her understood but didn’t say a word about how hard it was or how it crushed him.
For a couple of days he moped around and wondered how things had been turned upside down and inside out. He felt stupid, how could she break his heart…again.
But then he thought about how unexpected it had been and figured if lightning could strike twice there was no reason why it couldn’t strike a third time. And the truth was that he was living in a different city and that until he moved back home there was no reason to be upset about it.
That made him feel better and even though the rational part of him said it sounded ridiculous he figured there was nothing wrong in believing it to be true.
And then one day he was going through his garage and her picture fell out of a box.
She was standing with her back to the camera, head turned around smiling at the photographer. She had signed the back, “come grab my hips.”
He smiled, kissed the picture and said “I hope you felt that. One day I will.”
Well I suppose like all relationships you could say there was a rise and fall, a high tide and low tide. You could come up with all sorts of analogies and metaphors if you wanted to.
And if I wanted to I could relate it all to magnetic strength. We could talk about pull force for a bit and try to decide if that is the proper way to measure it or get into a different discussion about magnetic field strength.
That could be interesting, talking about Gauss or Tesla (1 Tesla = 10,000 Gauss) and how it relates to this but then again I have never found a good way to write an equation that accurately depicted and measured love.
What I know is we loved each other very much and that in the early days our timing had issues and those issues made things much harder for us because circumstances prevented us from giving ourselves to each other the way we really wanted to.
That is not to say we didn’t because we did but in the days before we finally made a real go of things we often found ourselves in the position of being unsure what to do because we couldn’t spend time together as we wanted to.
Men and Women
Unless you are a fool you won’t be surprised to hear that men and women sometimes see the world differently and that affects our approach to how we handle circumstances, challenges and opportunities.
Ask my crazy wife about these times and she’ll start by yelling at me because she says it is unfair to call her crazy and she is right, it is. But since she is not close enough for me to pull on her pony tail or smack her butt I have to tease her in other ways.
Sometimes that makes the girls crazy because they says it is a bit disrespectful but they also understand how much love there is between us and mom is always the final arbiter of what goes on, at least when it comes to that.
She also likes to see herself as the historian who most accurately and keenly remembers how it all began but if you ask her about Wes and Linda she’ll say “huh” and then tell you that I don’t know a damn thing. But I know more than a damn thing, I know many things and I remember much that she thinks of differently.
In the early days that used to bother me a bit, I used to get frustrated by what I thought of as revisionist history but over time I realized it was how she protected herself from some of the pain and frustration of circumstances.
Now I could tell you about those early days and how she pushed me to do things in a certain way and how she expected it to be handled. You probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn I frustrated her then because I didn’t behave as she wanted and that was part of what led to the initial split.
Wasn’t the only thing but it worked as a convenient excuse she could use to help drive a wedge between us and was part of how she convinced herself that we were better off going our separate ways.
In my younger years I might have been upset by the differences in opinion about those days but I am not who I was and frankly since we have been together for decades now I see no reason to fight about it. Let her be right or let her be wrong and the upshot is the same.
Ultimately my interest lies in making her happy so if it makes her happy to believe the tale as she would tell it then that is ok with me.
What cracks me about those days is that after she gave me my walking papers and told me to have a nice life I spent countless hours ignoring that and doing exactly what she had once asked me to do.
Now you can call it too little too late if you want but the fact is that five years of silence was broken when I moved to her town. Or maybe it is more accurate to say the first time I saw her after those years of silence I felt the kind of stirring down low that I hadn’f felt in years.
This is not to say things had been broken or dead down there but they certainly hadn’t responded that way since I had been in high school or college.
She wasn’t just hot, she was beautiful and oblivious to how good looking she was. She had always been attractive but where some women aged poorly she hadn’t. In some ways time had made her even better looking than before.
Dancing Partners Again
When she first discovered I had moved to town she was angry and though she didn’t tell me to stay away she made it clear I shouldn’t call upon her and I didn’t.
In part it was because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to open that door again. I worried a bit about what would happen if I did and she pushed me away and what I would do if she didn’t.
Because if she brought me in close again I could see a time when a fickle heart might decide that circumstances wouldn’t allow for her love me as she wished and I would get my walking papers…again.
You can attribute that to differences between men and women. She would see that as being smart and practical and I would call it dumb and foolish.
Don’t tell her I said dumb and foolish, it is bad enough when I call her crazy. See, I told you I like teasing her.
So time passes and she doesn’t hear from me which I expect got her to wondering a bit because she knew my feelings were still there but I wasn’t chasing her.
That was intentional on my part. I wanted her to miss me and she did.
Eventually she reached out to me by telephone and asked me if I would like to have dinner with her. I said yes and we made arrangements to meet.
The day of the dinner I played around with cancelling because I realized I was really angry about everything. I was hurt and disappointed and part of me worried that I would yell at her and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to.
But I was also concerned that I might miss out on an opportunity to reconnect. Don’t ask me why I thought it might be possible, I just did.
So I didn’t cancel the dinner but I did make a point to arrive a few minutes later so that I could scope things out from the outside. I parked my car next to hers, looked at the restaurant and saw her standing with her back to me.
When I walked inside I tried to give her a hug and a kiss but she moved away so I did my best to pretend like I hadn’t been snubbed.
She launched into a conversation about her life and told me what she had been doing for the last five years and then took 30 seconds to breathe and hit me with a series of questions about my life.
I answered them all and found myself fighting to keep my distance because it felt like no time had passed between us.
That sort of comfort and connection is a rare thing. The most honest answer I can give you is the moment I saw her I knew I wanted to sleep with her but it took less than five minutes of listening to her to realize it wasn’t just physical.
I wanted my dance partner back.
But it didn’t happen that night.
I tried
I tried to be cool. Did my best to be interested yet slightly aloof because I didn’t want to seem too eager but I wasn’t nearly as successful as I hoped.
After dinner I walked her to the car and when we got ready to leave I surprised myself by trying to kiss her. She didn’t push me away and scream but she didn’t kiss me back or give me a reason to think that trying again would work. So I didn’t.
I went home and spent the night pacing and smiling.
We talked quite s a bit during the days that followed and I wasn’t surprised when she asked me to have lunch with her. This time around I was far more relaxed.
The conversation again just flowed and I couldn’t stop smiling. She must have guessed what was on my mind because she told me we could be nothing more than friends and that she couldn’t get involved.
I nodded my head and told her that was fine and explained that I wasn’t sure if I needed to take a pill because things weren’t working properly.
It wasn’t a complete lie but it wasn’t totally true either. I don’t think anyone will be surprised to hear I was hoping it would intrigue her enough to try to figure out for herself whether that was an exaggeration or not.
She did and it wasn’t.
What Came Next
What came next was one of the most joyous and fulfilling times of my life. We decided to see each other and reconnected more deeply than we had when we had first begun.
We were older, wiser and more experienced but more than anything else we knew what made us happy. It was each other.
Yet we still had to deal with some issues surrounding bad timing and circumstances that were outside of our control. For a good long while we managed to work it out and then a job opportunity forced me to make a decision about staying.
It was hellish, the kind of choice no one ever wants to make. I had a career opportunity, the kind of thing that can change your life waiting for me. We talked about what to do and she encouraged me to take it.
We expected it to lead to some very big things and figured there was a 85% chance that I would be able to move back within 18 months.
I was excited to accept it but reluctantly did so because I was nervous that time and distance would pull us apart again. I remember the sick feeling in my stomach when I locked my car and drove away that final day. Something inside me said it was just a matter of time before she would tell me that circumstances were too hard.
But unlike the first time she gave me my walking papers this time I felt things were different. We had something rare, special and amazing, so much so you couldn’t ignore it.
I figured if she did end things it wouldn’t be forever, just a temporary thing.
I am sure that sounds funny to you because today you can’t imagine us ever being apart but there was a time when that was different.
If I tell you now I was confident that we would find our way back to each to each other you would say of course and so would she. But back then it was different, back then she wasn’t certain.
She knew how determined I was and believed that I loved her but she wouldn’t let herself believe with unrelenting certainty that I was coming back because she didn’t want to get hurt.
And because from her perspective circumstances made it look like I very well might go a different direction Circumstances made her wonder if I would stop fighting because it was easier to go a different way.
Well I can’t say I fault her for wondering because she didn’t look at life as being anything more than a series of random events. There wasn’t besheret, soul mates or meant to be. There was just random stuff that happened.
Maybe that is why I like talking about Mr. Tesla and his magnets because science she understands and believes. Science is something she relates to so when I talk about magnetic field strength as it relates to us she smiles because that is something she can believe in.
Or maybe it is because she thinks I am smart, witty, handsome and humble. Either way I am just glad she made the right choice way back when.
There is a song that is only sung when we are together, a beat, rhythm and harmony that is only felt when our bodies are touching.
Once I worried it was a song that could only be sung once, a moment never to be repeated and touch never to be felt again.
Anger, frustration and rage merged with sadness made me ache. I did so alone and apart, wondering how it could hurt so much and feel so empty.
These were hallways I had walked down before, rooms I had visited and doors that I had opened and closed.
And then in the silence I heard that sound that I thought I would never hear again. I closed my eyes and used only ears to guide me forward. Sometimes I stumbled over things and bumped into walls I couldn’t see but with every bump the sound grew louder and my heart pounded harder.
I don’t know how much time passed between the moments. There was music. There was silence and then there was music again.
I heard your voice and listened to you sing and then without thinking I raised my voice and together we sang our song again.
And ever since it has never been silent.
Touch makes us happier and our smiles broader, wider and stronger but our song never stops.
Words Left Unwritten 