It transpires like this: My wife, Cathy, whom I have been married to for x number of years (x = heart memory, buried memory, misty and unaccounted for. The lost time blows over the plain of my inner world, leaving shadows like gaping mouths rolling ever closer.) decides that enough’s enough. She quit her job, she quit church and when that didn’t make her life better, she quit me.
I know Doug because he installed our home alarm system. It was always going off while we were at work and the police visited our house on many occasions to try to catch the ghost who kept triggering it. It may have been our dog, Frodo, or it may have been a warning, a dispatch from the universe to find a bomb shelter. So one day Doug comes in to where I work to set up the alarm system there. He’s heard about the divorce thing and he invites me to go out with him and his girlfriend to a bar. I’m not really a bar kind of guy. I’m not sure what kind of guy I am at the time and I guess I seize on this moment of flux and decide that from now on my life will be different. So I say “yeah.”

Doug lives a few blocks from the small kingdom I have been exiled from, namely our house. He has an arcade and a surveillance system. I meet a bunch of people and immediately forget their names. One couple is divorced, but they are trying to date each other again. This is meant to give me hope. Part of me is already waking up. Part of me is insane with glee that I am free again. I don’t want that kind of hope. Not anymore.

We go to this dive called “Misty’s Hideaway” and I can tell it’s somewhere I would never have decided to venture into on my own. I decide that if I have a beer and a pack of cigarettes, I’ll be fine. I’ll have something to do with my hands and something to put in my mouth when the inevitable uncomfortable silence arrives. I sit with them at a back table and begin to study the crowd. So it’s come to this, I think.

But then I see you talking to this guy who looks like he walked out of an article in Rolling Stone, circa 1986, during the hair metal era. I have no idea who you are, but I’m transfixed. I’m already jealous of this guy. I’m already hoping you’ll blow him off. Impossibly, you eventually stop listening to him tell you about a dream and you walk over to our table, into my dream.

Somehow you know the people I am with. You start talking to me. I have no idea what was said. I decide that you’re out of my league and don’t try to impress you and instead just talk to you like a normal person. I may have bummed a few cigarettes from you. I can’t believe how beautiful your eyes are, so I look at my drink or the ashtray or a mark on the table instead of staring.

I watch you dance and it is the most terrifying sight I have ever seen. I am not ready to move through a world that shimmers in a heat haze generated by your gyrations. My heart is gathering itself from a hundred blasted bits and it cannot deal with such beauty.

Doug is having an after hours party and I make sure you know you’re invited. I fear that you won’t come. I fear that you will come. Doug notices my interest and wonders aloud if he should tell you that I want to “take you home and fuck your brains out.” I decide not to tear his throat out.

You do show up at his house. You remember me from the bar. You mingle about the crowded house as though you know everyone. I listen to everything you say. You talk about white water rafting on the Colorado River. Everything you say is an adventure.
When you leave I mutter something about hoping to run into you again. You hand me your phone number. I couldn’t believe it. It was like someone handed me a map to Narnia.

I will always be mindful of the interconnectedness of things. I will always see you for the first time.

We meet for lunch for the first time at Woody’s, some café a short distance from where I work. On the phone I am so excited and nervous that all the street names rearrange themselves on my map and fictitious intersections spill out of my babbling mouth.

As we talk at lunch, I wonder if I should say anything about the divorce and potentially ruin my chances with you. I decide not to put any spin on my answers and answer your questions completely and honestly.

I will always tell you the truth.

I am at a barbeque with the other members of my church small group, talking to Pastor Alan as he grills burgers. This man once had a demon attached to him while he was still a pastor. He was asked to leave our church because he believed in demons and the supernatural and all sorts of “crazy” things. He left to start his own church and I followed him.

I tell him about you and he warns me not to become involved with you. He fears that because of my compassionate heart I will become entangled in your life and try to rescue you somehow.

I nod and completely ignore his advice.

I will try to follow my heart, even if it contradicts the wisdom of men.

You’re stretched across the couch in my apartment in the heights, intoxicatingly beautiful. We’re having a wonderful discussion/argument. You’re saying things that part of me has always known to be true, yet I am arguing against you. It has been a long time since I’ve had such a stimulating conversation. Cathy would always get mad whenever we had a “debate.” She thought I was trying to prove that I was smarter than she. I was just exploring a topic, trying to understand it from different angles. This method rarely goes over well with most people, including you. Everyone always thinks I am advocating a point of view when I am actually exploring a line of reasoning objectively.

You’re trying to convince me that the people in my stories are real, existing in another dimension of possibility. I insist this is quite impossible. I am forgetting the long conversations I used to have with imaginary mice and dragons in my bedroom growing up. The group of very ordinary children I would visit in a completely invented thoughtspace. The wispy dark creatures with glowing eyes, uncoiling from the ceiling, skittering about the furniture. I invited them into my house and they never left.

Your opinions, thoughts and beliefs are precious to me.
The fact that you speak what is true is more important than whether or not I agree.

You have invited me to come over to have brunch with you and your children. I am nervous about meeting them. What if they don’t like me? What if they think I am an intruder? What if they generation gap me and make me feel old? I enter your house for the first time and they are all looking at me. I forget their names and who is older than whom.

You show me your artwork and I am very impressed and at a loss for words. I feel like anything I say would be stupid and ignorant. I try to convey my lack of understanding and un-connectedness with your artwork, but it comes out all wrong.

I get the tour of the house and see your bedroom. It is one of the most inviting and sensual places I had ever been in. I guess that I would probably never see it again.

I love your family and your home and I know that they are not mine.

I will always be grateful to you for sharing them with me, though there is nothing I could do to deserve them.

We are at an event out in the desert where they have the 3-sided hole. Aaron is with us. I am dating Amy and our relationship is at its platonic zenith. I see you as a beautiful woman who am friends with, someone I care deeply about. I look forward to our cigarettes and glasses of wine out on your porch. This is who we are. A week ago I was talking to Jodi on the phone and talking about going to this event. She teased me about maybe you and I could snuggle together in a sleeping blanket. I explained that it wasn’t like that; we were just friends. Besides, there was Amy.

I faced the evening with a bit of guardedness. This gathering had all the trappings of some kind of pagan shenanigans and I wasn’t sure what to think about it. But by end of the evening I was covered in glitter, my feet washed, my head anointed with frankincense, I was wearing a sarong and tripping on mushrooms.

And you were dancing, dancing, spinning and bending. A flame, a dream, a shadow, a reed, the invisible flow of life energy.

I want to know and love each of your changing shapes.

A tale from folklore:

A boy began to climb a mountain.
Halfway up, he encountered a snake coiled in the shadows of a rock.
“Little boy,” hissed the snake. “Winter is coming and if I do not make it over to the other side of the mountain, I will freeze to death. Please put me in your pack and carry me with you to the other side.”
The boy immediately replied,
“But you are a snake. Snakes bite little boys.”
“No,” said the snake, “I will not bite you. If I did, you would die and then there would be no one to carry me over the mountain.”
The boy considered this and it seemed like wisdom. Warily he agreed and slipped the snake into the pack on his back. Together they journeyed up and over the mountain.
When they reached the other side, the boy took the snake out and said, “There, on this side you will be safe from the winter.”
“Thank you,” said the snake and bit the boy.
“Why did you do that?” the boy cried,
feeling the poison flowing into his body.
“It is in my nature,” said the snake.
“You knew what I was before you picked me up.”