Part I
We parked on the top of the hill overlooking the river. It was dark and the lights from the houses below reflected on the water as it made its way through the city. Our conversation, once silly and light as we sipped our five dollar lattes, waxed philosophical as she killed the engine. One of many mixed CDs played on the stereo at low volume.
Her hair, long and blonde and the colour of wheat, was piled on top of her head in her signature ponytail. She leaned her seat as far back from the steering wheel as possible and made herself comfortable as I spoke about the ideas like The Hundred Monkey Theory, or Reincarnation, or Coincidence vs Fate.
She was four years younger, barely twenty, and I almost felt in my naive way that I was her mentor and she was my protege and I was passing on all the information that had been crammed into my head over the last two years. It was exhilarating to have her undivided attention, to have her laugh at my witty repartee, to share things with her I wished someone would have told me when I was twenty.
Over the last six months or so I found myself enjoying her company more and more, and we found reasons to hang out on almost a daily basis. We would see each other three to five times a week, sometimes she’d come over with a case of beer and we’d just hang out, other times, like this night, we’d head to the mall to shop. She was a girly girl. I was not. She lived at home, I was a newly wed. She had money to burn, I was barely squeaking by. Luckily the conversation was usually good enough to keep us both entertained.
She had a great laugh, and was just the right amount of zany to make her fun but not too quirky. She reminds me, still, of Carrie Bradshaw at age twenty, except without the horse face.
We had a friendship that just sparked in all the right ways and I don’t remember having a girl friend who made me laugh this hard this often but who could turn around and talk about religion, philosophy, theoretic or abstract concepts without batting one of her long lashes. All these thoughts twirled around in the fog of my brain until that night, when they came to a screeching halt hitting me full on with the force of a sock full of quarters.
i was in love. with her.
How did this happen? I frantically asked myself as I kept the conversation going smoothly, not letting on to this enormous light bulb that had just gone off in my mind and was temporarily blinding me. Oh God, how did this happen?
Once I had said it out loud in my inside voice, there was no taking it back. I couldn’t hide from it any longer.
Physically, girls were nothing new. Oh, the odd party there may have been one too many drinks, one too many curious girls, one too many guys, one too many suggestive glances..., one two many dares, did i mention one too many drinks? Curvy, soft, girls... Physically; girls were nothing new.
But this. This was beyond the physical. Sitting in the car on the top of the hill, I wanted to kiss her, to put my mouth on her soft mouth. Not an ounce of liquor. anywhere. I wanted to connect with her in a more meaningful way. I was terrified beyond belief!
Woah, back the truck up, back this fucking truck up! my brain screamed to my unlistening pounding heart. There it was - my epiphany...an elephant in her tiny little car. We sat there. Her bubbly laughter floating on the air, and me trying desperately not to love her.
I had never really considered myself to be anything but straight before this moment, all my physical, drunken escapades being chalked up to the great ‘experimenting’ chalkboard in the sky. This had definitely changed my perspective, adding curves to what used to be straight. Blurring lines that were once clearly drawn in the sand.
I was not only emotionally drawn to her, but intellectually stimulated and of course physically attracted to her. I raced through the many different scenarios and possible outcomes that were imaginable in my head over the course of those few seconds of revelation and I was relieved to come to the conclusion that I wasn’t gay. I was still deeply in love with my new husband...still very much attracted to him, still lusting for him. But that did nothing to fix the problem, because now I was faced with the awkward situation of being in love with two people. At. The. Same. Time.
One of whom was completely oblivious, sipping her coffee, and talking about Sacred Geometry. The other; the man I had been in love with for almost ten years, at home - secretly wishing for a threesome (I’m sure) but also unaware of the emotional connection that I, myself, had just been made conscious of.
What the hell am i supposed to do now? I thought, and what could I do?
