I knew if I fell for him it would end my life. From the first glance at his form, all eager angles, my brain began its war with that thing that lies beneath it–the heart? Unruly and savage thing with no sense. My underconsciousness recognized him from when we’d been in love before, maybe a few hundred years ago, the last time the universe expanded. I’ve always had to fight against becoming a dirty hippie. I’ve never been one of those clean, lemonade people; I’m a dusty coffee shop corner damned liberal, born too many generations after the romanticism of my commie kind was crushed. But I can pass, with years of struggle I learned to pass as a sunshiney kid, a pretty consumer girl. He would undo all of my hard work, I could tell in that first minute. He would fall in love with me in a hopeless touch-me boy moonlight way and I could deign to pleasure him, but I would end up in a marriage to a man my family approved of, all of us loving each other and our towering, dusty book shelves. Contented happiness. End of all adventure.
NO! I rebelled against his touch–his heart I mean, before we ever kissed fingers. I could feel his identity slipping through the wiggles in my brain matter and settling itself among my love neurons. I rebelled! Tried to chase him out with scorn and ridicule. That’s how you know I really love someone. Mockery is the mail under which there seeps a shameful wound, and all that.
But there he is, living with his girlfriend and their open relationship. Open for him, she can’t seem to cheat. So I’m the unethical, if permitted, other woman.
And I love him more than air. Oh well.
