by Nate Allen
He searched his inventory for the appetite he’d once had for her and it wasn’t there, the desire and adoration gone, replaced with that redrum/murder moment of seeing the true reflection in the mirror, and that what he thought he had seen didn’t exist. Had it always been his projection of her significance in his life, and his perception of significance in hers? Probably not, but if we’re attracted to people who see us as we want to be seen, as we see ourselves, then perhaps conversely by some sad irony and awareness, not so much to the people who’ve come to see us for who we really are… And they’d both lost their appeal.
We are an imperfect species. It is said people like us for our perfections and love us for our flaws. If you find someone who loves you in spite of them, it’s a testament to its strength and legitimacy, and by that measure accurate to say that he loved her and always would, but he had come not to like her in the learning process. He wished it to be different, he wanted it to be, but the heart has its reasons…
She was no longer that quintessential M.I.L.F. he remembered her to be, but instead a W.I.F.E., a Woman I’ve Fucked Every-which-way, or just a wife… And someone else’s at that, a fact that no longer sat well with him. The expiration date of it felt familiar. Perhaps she had felt it as well, and this was her way of giving him back what she had taken, her way of letting him let go of her. Who knows? For a time he wished he’d never met her, but only for a time. He’d loved her in a way he’d forgotten how, and nothing worth having comes without a price. It’s impossible to be that intimate with another human and not leave part of yourself behind. They had conducted business of the most personal variety, made “intimate” transactions, trafficked in emotions, exchanged deeds to parcels of each other’s emotional, spiritual, and sexual properties. She had made quite an impression on the man …and he would long feel the bruise. It’s always the scars unseen that hurt the most.
Now that the moment was finally at hand, it was surreal, like an inmate serving a life-sentence who finds himself outside the prison walls at long last. The plan that had been the underlying theme of his life for over a year, the revenge-like element that had given his emotional OCD a bone to gnaw on, had worked. Now what? He had imagined it a hundred different ways. Fantasized he’d whip that shit until his bone collapsed, then paint a sticky portrait on her face… But he’d already rendered that masterpiece when she’d volunteered the canvas, and like a “Smiley Face” it could only have the one interpretation for him, reminiscent of a happier period.
Instead, what he wanted to do, what he needed to do was get to that moment and then as she lay begging for his attention and naked in every sense of the word, tell her he couldn’t do it. Tell her that he wasn’t attracted to her anymore, get dressed and leave her lying there in a lonely hotel room after he had spent months weakening her defenses, regaining her trust, and forcing her into an uncomfortable acknowledgement that she cared about him and loved him as well. That would be the closest he could come to what she had done to him, an act of cruelty only he could bestow upon her.
It would have killed her in a sense, or at least left her lifeless, taken that last bastion of confirmed desire and affection from her that she had privately clung to in her darkest moments during their year apart. He had worked so hard to get there and it had taken so long, when all was said and done he couldn’t deny himself the satisfaction of getting a nut …nor be as unkind. His goal and agenda had always been to get something of his back, not take something of hers in return. No matter how it had fueled the pursuit, even in the fantasy, he couldn’t do it. Love will take a bullet for you, hate will throw one at you, and he couldn’t pull that trigger. I guess that says it all.
The occasion itself wasn’t particularly memorable. It had too much baggage and associated expectation for it to have been, but like a psychological bloodletting, it was cathartic and it would give him the closure he sought, in that “you can’t move forward until you let go of the past,” way. A sad but necessary formality, like signing divorce papers …absent the marriage. It would allow him to unburden himself, and perhaps for the first time in his life, say “tag, you’re it.” The dawg had his day.
Whether you wish to call it “destiny,” “fate,” or mere “chance,” the truth is that at the end of our days, perhaps some of the most significant occurrences, moments, and relationships in our lives are nothing more than just a matter of timing, a consequence of being in a certain place at a certain time …synchronicity, as it were, or “meaningful coincidence” as the case may be, whatever it was, it was indelible. Not a watermark, not a stain, but a tattoo on his heart.
In that collection of phrases he kept he had one that he had reserved for her, “Some people come into our lives for a reason, some for a season, some for a lifetime …and some for a day,” and she was all of the above.
Let’s face it, affairs are messy, they never end well. We make decisions in life that we have to live with, and he had no regrets only a bit of rumination, not a change of heart, but a change of needs. She would remain his favorite mistake, in the best “worst” year of his life, the third woman he would always love. But he wouldn’t need to see her again, as if he had gotten that last necessary credit required for his graduation.
Amidst all the things he had felt was the desire to love again …unrestrained and uncomplicated. She had planted that seed in him and it’d taken root. He knew that some of the most interesting and beautiful items in the landscape bloom late, and it was that season in his life. And in the continuing education of the man, she had given him a remedial course in what it would feel like when he found it. That was her gift to him.
He would write a last letter afterwards, it was an epilogue to their play, or perhaps an epitaph to the relationship, who knows for certain? He had never actually said goodbye to a woman.
It read:
Rae Anne,
Thanks for the opportunity to spend some quality time with you. It was “warm and pleasing,” but I’ll always miss the “hot and bothered.” I am glad that I have served to make you feel better about yourself, but I must confess over the course of time I have come away from seeing you, or “not” seeing you as the case has often been, not feeling so positive about myself, beginning to realize the role I have been relegated to is one for which I am unsuited.
I am a different person for having known you, and I’m convinced overall that is a good thing. This “friendship” has however reached a point for me where it no longer serves a purpose, and you told me once “I shouldn’t do anything I don’t want to” and this is that intersection where I must take a different path. While it has been sparse in terms of the time we have actually seen each other, I want you to know you have occupied much of my thoughts since that moment we first met.
I told you that “always” and “never” are big words, and I use them with caution, but I can say with some certainty that I will always love you, and I will never forget our moments together, only time will tell how we truly remember each other. Perhaps, if it is meant to be, we will see each other somewhere down the road. Life isn’t linear, but cyclical …rolling along, and sometimes we find ourselves in a familiar place with a familiar face.
I hope your journey takes you someplace agreeable. I am exiting stage left as they say …Bogie and Bacall we’re not …but we will always have New Orleans …and a couple of tattoos ;) Travel well…
Love,
-Jake
But he couldn’t send it, no real surprise there “right?” It would just sit in his “mail waiting to be sent” folder indefinitely, evidence of his weakness where she would always be concerned …the poor bastard. Apparently “goodbye” was another word he used with caution.
Instead he would simply put her where she rightfully belonged, “R” for Rae Anne, and he wouldn’t think of her for a time, not like he had anyway. That was of course until he heard her name mentioned on the local evening News a couple of months later. The station’s onetime weathergirl with the aptly exploited childhood n
ickname, the revered Preacher’s daughter, the respected Professor’s wife, the beloved Sportscaster’s ex-wife, mother of three …who just happened to be the woman he had secretly had a two year relationship with, was part of the broadcast again …only this time as a story. Believe me when I tell you everyone was talking about it …except for our boy Jake. The quietly confident man was just concerned and quiet, and you and I know he had reason to be. The affair that had begun with the brilliance and perfection of a diamond had turned into a romantic kidney stone …and he had passed it, but it was far from behind him. Some secrets are indeed, begging to be told, silently screaming in need of a voice, seeking permission, clemency, or immunity from what they may reveal about us.
He had protected her in that regard you’ll remember, but doing so had left him exposed. If there’s a recipe or script for these things he fit the role as if he’d been born to it …or it had been written around him. Everything suddenly took on new meaning. Aloof and unattached translated to deviant and antisocial, self-defense just a euphemism for violent tendencies …“promiscuous” and “immoral,” …he was the other man, and the kind who wouldn’t go away when told to …obsessed and dangerous, aka stalker.
You can marginally hide your activities in this day and age, but you can’t erase or disown them, and there was DNA of every sort on the surface and beneath it that belonged to him. Jake knew it would only be a matter of time before someone came along inquiring about the married girl… Once that happened, it was highly conceivable no one would be investing too much time or energy in looking beyond him …aside from himself and his two closest friends. And as time would reveal, the people who thought they knew him best, didn’t know him as well as they thought….
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The Author Wishes To Thank…
PUBLISHER
Wolf Xpress
A subsidiary of North Carolina State University Bookstores
&
Teri Hellmann, Manager: For her patience, time, efforts, and tolerance of me…
COVER
The cover image is a photographic representation of a tattoo collaboration of Nate Allen and more importantly…
Tattoo Artist Christy Alexander
[email protected]
Photograph by Jamen Allen
Graphics and Design
By John Starbuck, Marketing & Communications
NC State Bookstores, Campus Enterprises
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