Up in the aerie, it's after dark, the drier is going, the house is clean even the bathrooms, I'm wondering what to write, feeling frustrated and not like I'm losing it exactly but boy my trips down memory lane take weird trajectories that I don't quite see coming. As I went through my day I found myself thinking about someone who I had dated on & off thirty years ago, or a bit more, while I was in college.  I actually don't remember very much about him, just his appearance - absolutely gorgeous, dramatic dark looks and beautiful green eyes.  Are sapphires green?  His eyes were like jewels.  He had a nice smile too.  Arrestingly beautiful looks, and when he fixed his gaze on me - he slew me.

Besides his visiting me at the dorm on those frigid January nights - what do I remember?  A night I spent with him in his Beacon Hill apartment.  We made love, and afterward I couldn't sleep, I was too nervous or anxious, just this feeling of excess phlegm, I kept swallowing (I was a terrible smoker, I'm sure that was the cause).  I remember a wakeful night lying next to him, hoping I wasn't waking him with my constant swallowing, which seemed loud & annoying even to me.  The next day, or maybe a different time altogether, we had breakfast early in the morning in a diner in Cambridge, not far I think from that salt & pepper mill bridge.  I remember being in another apartment he lived in, at some point much later on (6 months? a year? more?) when I began to date one of his roommates, they all lived together in a flat in Brookline.  That was awkward, very awkward.   

And honestly, I don't remember much else, just a nice sort of afterglow feeling now, all these years later, remembering quite vividly what he looked like, the intense physical connection we had.

A little while ago I was in the closet hanging up clean laundry, and I peeked into my Pandora's box of old papers, including college journals, my personal Rosetta stones.  I leafed through them quickly, most of them were from the wrong time period when I was seeing other people, including not one, but later even a second of his apartment mates.  God, I cringe now thinking about the awkwardness of it all, as if Boston/Cambridge didn't have about a zillion guys in it - I had to - serially, mind you, over a span of a couple of years - have extended involvements with three guys who were all very well acquainted with one another, frat brothers, in fact, perhaps - no, probably, most likely even - very good friends?  (For the record, there were at least two others there whom I never dated or looked at once, though I still feel bad about the teflon pan that I used a metal spatula on, causing one of them to go ballistic on me.  In a nice way, considering.  I know - those fresh teflon pans were precious - I get it.  I was just dumb that way.)

So I'm paging through the journals and now I do start seeing some references to R, mostly about the awkwardness of encountering him while I'm dating this other fellow.  But here's a good one.  I do remember having met his fiancée once (though I have no recollection of her whatsoever), and I note it in my journal.  This was at a supermarket.  Later it was reported that she said of me, "So - that's the other woman?"

Considering how warm my thoughts are at this point of this former lover R, I was quite surprised to read all the really negative things I had to say about him, how I perceived him.  I have no independent recollection now, really, except that ultimately the relationship was frustrating and went nowhere but there was always this great attraction.  In one of the entries I actually allude to the fact that whatever journal notes I had made while dating R, I had kept in my "New Yorker" diary, a hardbound annual book that I haven't seen in years, and that I'm quite sure is long, long, long buried at Fresh Kills.  Very unfortunately.  I was bad about keeping things together that were important to me.

And that's it.  I don't feel silly, exactly - well, maybe a bit - to be thinking of him so many years later.  It's just that there's this mystery guy, sorta kinda (mostly not though), and my mind frets it, absent more compelling or pressing intellectual activities.  No, I didn't read more than a couple of pages of McGilchrist today - I should re-devote myself to that pronto, I know. 

I walked at the conservation area this morning - an amazingly beautiful day - cold but somehow reminiscent of summer in just how sunny it was.  More comfortable, really, than summer sun, the late autumn sun feeling tonic rather than too strong.  Afterward I went to a store that was having a sale and bought myself a couple of pairs of jeans.  I have lost quite a lot of weight over the last couple of years, and gotten toned and am overall in much better shape.  I actually like my appearance in the mirror now, and I think I have quite a nice figure.  Far from perfect, but quite shapely.  I think I look pretty hip too, certainly so compared to the bitties.  My hair is about shoulder length, and dark brown, a shade that I think complements my skin tone.  I'd be a size smaller but for my great fondness of rosé and French camembert - my figure reflects my priorities and my appetites - 

P.S. Thank you so much Tim, Sunday afternoon DJ on KZE, for playing Bringdown when you did. I had been trying to download it all afternoon for a listen, ever since someone in Texas landed on my blog by googling the relevant search terms, and then lighting - surely not by accident - on a particularly lurid other post of mine as well. Was that you, Romeo? I had a good laugh imagining that it was.

Sweetest dear, whether you were a good guy or not, whoever you are now, wherever, I wouldn't mind perusing a volume called Intense Love with you and putting my leg up against the bookcase.

XOXO