Unforgettable

A long time ago, and therefore very far away, I was in love. It had happened before. It’s happened since. Never like the time in question though. Not even close. It’s one of the stranger twists my life has taken.

We were in our mid-late 20s when we got together. We both loved music, liked movies, enjoyed good fiction, and appreciated good food. The sex was off the charts. It got hotter over the four year course of our affair. Really.

The problems were simple. First and foremost, she was a fundamentalist Christian. I’d been brought up the same way, but managed to break the chains. She couldn’t. Her father was a preacher and her social support system, save me, was hardcore Jesus-freak. She had basically outgrown that simplistic view of the universe, but was too indoctrinated to make a break with it. Lastly, she wanted kids and I didn’t. She tried to talk herself into not wanting them, but she did (want them). In the end, Jesus and motherhood doomed “us”.

It’s been nearly 15 years since we last spoke and I still miss her. Sometimes it still hurts. Only for a minute though. Time cures that sort of thing, albeit very slowly. Our relationship made no sense. Love can take on a life of its own, however, and when that happens, all you can do is hold on and hope it doesn’t destroy you. I wanted her, but I know that for her to have been happy, I’d have had to have given her a couple of kids. I’d also have to be studying my Sunday School lesson about now. In a phrase, the price was just too high for us to pay.

Naked Tornado Drill

Once upon a time in the early ’90s I caught a “love” piece on a morning talk show. Two young women who’d penned a book were describing signs that a relationship was in trouble. They advised men that when their girlfriends no longer come to bed in the nude, things aren’t looking good. I almost certainly scoffed at the information. For some reason, though, I still remember the tidbit.

In the late ’90s I was living in Germantown, Tennessee. That’s where rich and wannabe-rich Memphians tend to live. (I was neither but that’s another series of posts.) It’s also where lots of tornadoes of the deadly variety seem to touch down. I lived there between ‘93 and ‘99 and in that time tornadoes killed people in Germantown on at least two occasions.

One night in the Spring of ‘98 the tornado sirens woke me from a sound sleep. Germantown’s tornado history and the fact that my room had several large windows inspired me to climb from bed and seek shelter in the hall. I remember feeling a flash of concern for my girlfriend and our tiny basset hound puppy.

I found the puppy in my girlfriend’s lap. She was seated on the floor in the hall, riding the storm out, such as it was. I remember being mildly amused that she’d chosen to save the puppy, but hadn’t bothered to wake me. A smarter man might have suspected, then and there, that something was wrong with “us”. She was even wearing a cotton nightie. I didn’t get it though, until some months later when she summarily ejected me and the by then hefty hound from her life. Live and learn.