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Love works best on a desert island
Her name?
That’s private. Let’s call her Kimberly. A party at a friend's house. Suddenly
there she was, sitting right next to me. I couldn’t speak. Was she beautiful?
I’m not sure. It’s a word that means different things to different people. What
I was sure about was that her face would haunt me forever. I was in love
instantly. Utterly, hopelessly. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. In her face
lay all my answers. It was like a homecoming, providing refuge, nurture and
rejuvenation.
Then she
turned and looked at me. I was a skeleton, the flesh stripped from my bones by
some scorching, nuclear wind.
She spoke. It
was something fairly banal. My wits lay scattered, the blood hammering in my
brain, powering my eyes to drink in her image. You only ever meet someone like
that once in a lifetime. I was excited and afraid. It was as if I’d been down
on my luck and had found a suitcase, not knowing if it contained either a
million bucks or a bomb to blow my head off. And there lay the problem……...…
Anyway, I
don’t know what reply I finally managed. Something garbled. But here’s the
thing-----she heard my words differently. She knew exactly what I really wanted
to say and, to my swooning joy, she let me glimpse an answer in the depths of
her eyes.
Friends jostled around us. The spell was
broken. I hated everyone for being there. I wanted to push my way past and find
her. But great fear was washing over me. It was as if I had caught a whiff of
nitro-glycerin from the still-closed suitcase I was holding. So I put the
wretched thing down and my thoughts went like this........
Now you
might not agree, but it is so easy for even the most solid relationship to slip
away. It’s this world we have fashioned,
there are too many distractions. Too much temptation, conflict, and
disappointment. Sadly, the demands of modern society are too many. Yeah, yeah, I
know. I haven’t forgotten; and people can
change! Well, of course they can, but I honestly believe that true love can
survive even that. No, the problem was that what had sparked between me and Kimberly
was just too damn downright dangerous. Forget the suitcase, I'd left that
behind---it now felt like someone was pressing an unknown, experimental, heavy
gauge weapon into my hands which I had not been trained to use. A weapon to be
used against the rest of the world, and maybe, if it came to that, on Kimberly.
Forget afraid. Forget frightened. I was
terrified.
Now, if we
had both been the only ones on a remote desert island with endless days and
nights of sea and sand, I’m sure it could have worked. No weapons needed there,
end of story. The trouble was, I did not know of any handy desert island.
Kimberly had
now completely disappeared in the crowd. I tried to find her, but couldn’t. I
was crushed. How could she leave me like this? And then I saw her.
She was at
the door, leaving the party. I had to stop her. I lurched forward, but her eyes
stopped me like a gentle hand to my chest. The tiniest sideways shake of her
head. I knew what she was saying; its best this way. Don’t follow. This is too
big. It will annihilate us and maybe others too. So be sensible, even though
love is never so. We can’t let it happen, not here in this world. And, since
you don’t know of any handy desert island to whisk me away to, well……..
And she was
gone. I did not follow. I knew she was right, that she was much wiser than me.
Some years
later I learned she had married a B-movie actor. Someone maybe like David
Carradine, Dennis Hopper or Bruce Campbell, but not nearly so talented as them.
Then they split up and she went to live abroad. Her ex died shortly after. I
understood that.
Now the point is that I might have taken a
chance and risked us losing our lives because men like me do not have much
wisdom. Besides in matters of common sense and emotional savvy women are always
many leagues ahead. Most of them are very sharp, very clever, and they know
exactly what must be done and how to do it. This so intrigued me that years
later I explored this theme in my writing. And often the first few lines I
wrote would come out all shaky as my Kimberly's face swam briefly before me. I
still miss you, Kimberly, but you saved our lives---and life is so very
precious, even if mine is still empty without you. I’m just an ordinary man,
only you were no ordinary woman.
Many of you reading
this might say I was a coward. So be it. I’m still alive, aren’t I? And so is
Kimberly. And life is so very----- yeah, yeah, there I go again! But you might
be right, though, since I sometimes think, what with the life I have now, maybe
it would have been worth losing it over Kimberly? Wouldn’t even a few moments
in her arms have been worth my entire life? Did I do the right thing?
Should I have gone after her? I still wonder..........
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