by Joan Brady
I gulped, unable to make any other sound come out of my throat. Joe loved me? Was it possible? Of course it was. Joe wouldn’t lie. He wouldn’t waste his time or energy on lies, unlike most guys I knew.
What I couldn’t understand was why Joe had said he loved me but had also told me earlier that romantic love would come later and that it wouldn’t be with him. Well, maybe he had changed his mind. He’d changed his mind about a lot of other things, like his approach to the Ten Commandments, so why couldn’t he change his mind about his relationship with me?
I studied the face of this man who said he loved me, looking for lies but hoping for truth. The sky had turned orange with the glow of approaching sunset, and it tinted Joe’s bronzed face with a glow not unlike the special effects of a movie.
“This isn’t a movie, Christine,” he said, locking his eyes with mine. “You look just as lovely in this gentle light, as you think I do. Because you are me. And I, of course, am you.”
“B-but, you said I shouldn’t fall in love with you,” I said hesitantly.
“That’s right,” he answered, shooting a poisoned arrow straight into my heart. “But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t love me. In the purest, most unspoiled way,” he added. “The way I love you.”
The poison arrow was neutralized and fireworks were exploding again in my heart. Now I understood. This was real love, the kind I’d always been searching for. The kind that had been within me all along. Realizations began sweeping over me like a bolus of epinephrine shot through an intravenous line. All those heartaches! All that unrequited love in past relationships! It had all been so unnecessary, and now I saw it all so clearly. All I’d ever had to do was see myself for who I was, love myself for who I was, then simply share that love. Whether or not it was returned didn’t matter. It was only important that I allow myself to really feel something, really love, with no need for anything in return. Why hadn’t I seen this years ago? How much heartache I could have saved myself!
Joe tightened his grip around my hands and said, “You see, all along it was your ego that prevented you from really loving. You didn’t want to give anything unless there was a guarantee that you’d get something back. You still didn’t know that the real joy is in the giving.”
“But what about people who take advantage of that?” I wanted to know. “People who are greedy and who take all you have to offer, but they never give anything in return?” I trusted Joe with my heart and soul, but as for the others of his gender, I still had serious reservations.
“They can’t take advantage of something you don’t give them,” he said. “Give them your love, but don’t ever give them your very self. That only belongs to you.”
Okay. That made sense. But I still wasn’t satisfied. After all, wasn’t that what marriage was all about? About giving yourself completely to someone? Was Joe saying that marriage didn’t really work? The statistics certainly backed him up.
Naturally, he heard my thoughts. He let go of my hands, pushed himself back in his chair, and studied me from across the table, completely ignoring the cheeseburger the waitress had just put in front of him. “Marriage does work, Christine,” he said earnestly. “You’ll find that out soon enough. But it only works between two people who have slain their own dragons and who understand that real love is what grows in a heart that has been fertilized with the seeds of self-awareness and a heart that is strong enough to sustain that hard-earned sense of self.”
It made perfect sense. No wonder relationships had never worked for me in the past. I had been using them as a quick fix; a Band-Aid solution for the hard work that I really needed to do. What I had really needed all these years was the courage to look at myself honestly. And of course, that would have required letting go of my ego.
Joe was staring at me when I finally snapped out of my daze. The orange glow of sunset had intensified, and now everything was enveloped in those soft and subtle flame-colored shades of evening. The sand, the sky, and even the ocean waves that lapped gently on the hard-packed sand of low tide were bathed in those muted colors of the dying sun. Joe watched the light show with pride and waited patiently for the question he knew was burning in my brain.
“Are there really men out there who understand the real meaning of love?” I asked, certain that there couldn’t be. After all, I’d dated an awful lot of men and none of them had even hinted at this kind of discussion.
“Some,” Joe conceded.
“Some? How many? Where can I find one?” Suddenly I was excited. I had to find one. Time was running out.
“Hold your horses,” Joe said, chuckling. “I must admit that there are more women than men who understand the concept of true love. Women are just more perceptive that way. But there are some men who understand it too.”
“Where are they?” I asked enthusiastically.
Joe shook his head in amusement. He pulled his plate back in front of him and began to devour the now cold cheeseburger. Eating my cold BLT was the last thing on my mind, but I knew better than to hurry Joe when he was about to teach me something.
“They’re everywhere,” he finally answered.
“Be specific,” I pleaded. “Is there one in this restaurant right now?” I wanted to know as I scanned the patrons from this mellow little beach community.
“Um hmmm,” he answered without looking up from his burger.
“Well, which one is he? How do I approach him?” I was impatient to make up for lost time.
Joe patted delicately at the corners of his curvy mouth with the tip of his napkin with maddening slowness. “You don’t approach him,” he finally answered. “It’s more complicated than that.”
“Well then, how do I meet him?”
“You attract him. It’s much more effective than approaching him.”
“But you made me get rid of all my really hot looking clothes,” I whined. I hate it when I whine.
“Not that way.” He smirked, continuing to eat that damned burger. “That’s your ego getting in the way again.”
Damn. He was right, as usual. Would I ever learn? “Well, if I can’t appeal to his hormones, what do I use to appeal to him?” Just as I asked the question, I realized the answer, but Joe beat me to the punch.
“You use an honest heart,” he said. “You simply be yourself. Your real self. You start doing the things you really enjoy, doing them every day, several times a day if you like. You wear the clothes that make you feel most comfortable and most like yourself. You listen to the kind of music that truly moves you. You trust your body to tell you what to eat instead of trying to adhere to some crazy diet. Eventually, an enlightened man will catch all the vibrations that emanate from your contented soul and BAM!—he somehow shows up on your doorstep. It’s as easy as that.”
“But how does he find me?” I couldn’t afford to take any chances.
“That’s for him to figure out. You don’t need to spend your time learning what another species needs for survival. Just concentrate on your own survival and the rest will fall into place.” He caught my doubtful look and added, “I promise.”
• • •
By the time I crawled into bed that night, my head was spinning from all that Joe had taught me. I didn’t want to forget even the slightest detail of the day’s lesson and so I decided to write the essence of our conversation in my journal. I didn’t want to trust my memory on something this important.
I jumped out of bed and sat at my desk, facing the waxing moon that lit up the tiny room. As the ocean hummed its soothing lullaby outside my window and the moon spilled its iridescent glow onto the paper, I wrote:
DROP THE EGO. BE REAL.
AND WATCH WHAT HAPPENS.
7
IN THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED, A curious thing began to happen. I noticed that I actually seemed to enjoy my job. I even caught myself smiling from time to time, and no one was more baffled by that than me. I had been stimulated by my job at times and very challenged by it at others, but as far back as I
could remember, I had never enjoyed it. I didn’t think you were supposed to. Ever since cutting back on my hours (not to mention cutting back on my income), I was not as all-consumed by my job as I once had been. Work had become just another small part of my ever more interesting life. Or maybe I was becoming more interesting.
Learning to leave my ego out of my everyday life turned out to be the most important lesson I’d learned so far. Somehow I had taken the blinders off and the world around me became a fascinating place. I no longer saw my physical appearance or the image I projected as the center of the universe. Instead, I grew intrigued with more important questions, like what the people who scan the beach with metal detectors were finding. I checked out what the fishermen were catching, and I realized that seagulls open clams by dropping them on the rocks. Instead of reading women’s magazines with the endless articles on how to be beautiful and sexy, I read newspapers and learned about world events. I already knew I was beautiful and sexy simply because I exist. Most surprising of all, I was able to pass a mirror without needing to reassure myself that I looked all right. I didn’t need to criticize myself anymore. I was too busy finding ways to enjoy myself.
My favorite discovery of late was the saxophone music of a local musician named Jim MaGuire. I happened to hear his latest and little-known CD while I was browsing through a beachfront music store during my now abundant free time. I had intended to buy some soft rock, something like Kenny Loggins or Carly Simon, but the haunting notes of that saxophone wafted through the store’s speakers and hypnotized me. Something in the music touched me in my very soul and turned it liquid. It made me want to dance and flow like an undiscovered mountain stream.
I’m certain that the teenage clerk immediately classified me as an old fogey or a nerd when I asked him where I could find that particular CD. I didn’t mind. Things like that didn’t bother me since I had learned to leave my ego behind. I had no need to be considered “cool” by anyone, and it was a lovely feeling. I couldn’t wait to get home so I could sway and dance to the music in private. I wouldn’t even have cared if the one piece I’d heard in the music store was the only good one on the whole CD.
I stopped at the grocery store on the way home, since I knew the refrigerator was practically empty. It amused me to realize how unstructured I’d become lately. In the old days, before Joe breathed life into my life, I worked forty hours a week and had designated Monday as grocery night and Thursday as laundry night. I would never have allowed the refrigerator to get empty or the laundry to pile up, but things like that didn’t seem so important anymore. These days I spent less time at work and doing chores and more time discovering the world around me. Sometimes I was astounded to find that I had forgotten to eat, which is something that I had never dreamed possible.
I kicked the door closed with my foot as I entered my little beach cottage with arms full of groceries. I unpacked Jim MaGuire’s saxophone music first and popped it in the CD player, even before putting away the frozen yogurt. I certainly had my priorities straight. I rocked gently on my toes in time with the soothing strains of music as I whipped up a creative salad. Never in my life had I craved vegetables, but for some reason lately, all kinds of new appetites were springing up in my life. Usually I only made salads when I was punishing myself for being a few pounds over my idea of ideal weight, but now I really wanted a salad. That had never happened before, and from the fit of my “racer red” running shorts, I’d apparently lost a few pounds lately without even noticing it. And that had certainly never happened before.
I lit the two vanilla candles I had bought at the grocery store and poured a glass of Chardonnay, which I never got around to drinking. I closed my eyes and wrapped both arms around myself and drank in the music of Jim MaGuire instead. I rocked gently at first, swaying and dancing to music that flowed like summer sunshine into the darkened caverns of my heart. I was completely engrossed in the loveliness of the moment, and when Jim MaGuire coaxed his horn to an almost impossibly high note, I swirled past the hide-a-bed sofa . . . and into a pair of tanned and muscular arms.
“Joe,” I murmured, eyes still closed, not at all surprised to find him dancing in the living room with me. I didn’t understand how I even knew it was him without opening my eyes, but I did know that none of that mattered right now.
He said nothing. He just drew me close to him in perfect rhythm to the music and placed his well-defined chin on the top of my head. My ear rested against his muscular chest, like the first time I’d met him, and once again, I heard the ocean waves instead of a heartbeat. I peeked at those rugged, masculine arms holding me and felt an overwhelming sense of well-being, as though I were protected from all possible harm.
He pulled me close until I was one with him. My feet were his feet and we drifted languorously and in perfect synchrony to the mellow and fading musical creation of Jim MaGuire. I don’t know how I knew exactly which steps to take, but I knew better than to ask questions like that. When Joe was around, it seemed anything was possible.
“All things are possible all of the time,” Joe murmured silkily into my ear. “And there is never a time when I am not with you. There are only times when you lose your awareness that I am with you.”
There was no need for a reply on my part. There was no need for anything, in fact. I simply allowed myself to melt into him and to be one with this . . . this . . . Being. We flowed to the music, and when the final haunting notes of the saxophone hung in the air then floated off in the distance as the piece ended, my heart was overwhelmed with emotion. I knew it was against all the rules, but I was in love with this man. Hopelessly and helplessly in love with him.
Wordlessly, Joe guided me to the plush cushions of my cream-colored couch, and we sank into its accepting embrace, my head still against his strong and protective shoulder. Tears pushed their way to the forefront of my eyes, then overflowed down my face. They were tears of some unnamed feeling, not sad tears, but joyful ones. I quickly buried my face in his chest, embarrassed by my lack of restraint and ashamed of my runaway emotions. “I’m sorry” was all I could offer as an explanation for this childish outburst.
Graceful fingers stroked and explored my hair and a tender kiss was woven into my tresses. “Never apologize for being who you really are. For showing what you really feel,” he said into my hair, his breath warm against my scalp.
Oh, God, how had this happened? How could I be falling in love with God? It must be against some kind of very basic rule. Leave it to me. I was probably looking at some serious time spent in hell for this one, yet somehow it didn’t matter. How could this kind of love ever be wrong?
I pulled away and lifted my tear-streaked face to him. “I love you, Joe,” I whispered. “And that’s against all the rules we agreed upon,” I painfully admitted.
Joe studied me silently for a long moment, and then those bottomless brown eyes took on an amused glint and he said in a perfect “Joisey” accent, “Yeah, so?”
I was dumbfounded. I had expected a lecture and what I got instead was a green light. I started to say something, but Joe quickly put his finger over that little hollow above my lip and quieted me.
“Christine,” he said softly, eyes shining, “don’t you see? It’s perfectly all right for you to love me. It’s your interpretation of what you’re feeling that’s a little off base. But the basic feeling is right on target.”
I stared at him blankly. As usual, I hadn’t a clue what this was all about. “I think maybe you need to put me in a remedial class,” I said exasperated with my inability to understand the things that Joe tried so patiently to teach me.
Joe’s laugh was as fluid as the saxophone music in the background. “You’re being awfully hard on yourself, don’t you think?”
“But I don’t get it, Joe,” I complained. “I thought we agreed that I wasn’t supposed to have any romantic notions about you. And now I’ve gone and blown it all by letting myself fall madly in love with you.”
He cupped my face
in those large, graceful hands and held my gaze with his fathomless, mahogany eyes. I thought maybe for once, I was hearing his thoughts because I didn’t see his lips move, but I heard his voice as clear as a seagull’s song when the wind is blowing in just the right direction. “It’s not that way at all, Christine,” he was saying. “What you’re feeling for me is real. Very real. But you’re calling it by the wrong name.”
“What am I calling it?”
“Romantic love.”
“So what is it, really?”
“It’s genuine love. Love in its purest form. The kind that just wants to be expressed. The kind that asks for nothing in return. The kind you’ve been searching for all of your life.”
He was right, of course. Was this man ever wrong? This was exactly the kind of love he’d described to me the other day at lunch. Now he was providing me with an example. Clearly there was no crime in loving Joe this way. I wanted nothing from him but the opportunity to express the feelings that he dug down and pulled out of me. It was all right to love Joe this way. In fact, it was the most natural thing in the world when you really thought about it. After all, he was me and I was him. Our very souls were somehow intertwined and this kind of unselfish love was the very genuine result of that special connection between us.
For once in my life, I was experiencing the real thing. Incredibly, there was no pain. What a concept! Love, real love, doesn’t hurt. Suddenly I was filled with an overwhelming sense of myself. Of magnanimous love for myself. It didn’t matter how I looked or what I accomplished in this life, I LOVED MYSELF! For the first time. Finally.
