I’ve often said that every woman is beautiful in her own way (by which I mean the overwhelming majority of women with some notable exceptions, if I’m being completely honest) at every age. I know this to be true. I’ve always been partial to petite women myself and have fallen in love with a couple of them in the past. My new love fits that category as well, though she is slight even for my taste. Nevertheless, I find her body nothing short of perfect—hard, beautiful curves, yet small in a way that makes me want to protect her. Don’t misunderstand me—she is rock-solid and more than capable of cracking the hardest skull of any would-be assailant. She can more than take care of herself. Unlike my wife, however, any man looking at her other than through my eyes would not likely find her to be objectively beautiful. There is little chance of construction workers breaking into the song “Some Guys Have All the Luck” as happened on occasion when my wife and I walked down the street when we were dating, and the song was new. (True story—I was so annoyed once that I turned around and replied “some guys deserve it” to the cheeky guys singing while longingly staring at my wife (girl friend at the time) as we approached, walked by the worksite, and continued on.) But that matters little. Outer beauty fades in time, for even painfully beautiful women, of which I’ve also known a few. But not the inner beauty of my true love that has been hers long before I met her and will be hers long after I turn to dust.
Some women suffer the unfortunate effects of PMS, and a few a tragically terminal condition I’ve long ago labeled PPMS (perpetual pre-menstrual syndrome) that appears to afflict them from the cradle to the grave. But my love always has the sweetest disposition. She is never on edge, unpleasant or hormonally unbalanced in any way. She loves to go with the flow. In contrast, going anywhere with my wife has been a real problem for years. I’d be dressed and ready to go out—mind you in half the time it takes her to get all gussied up—only to have her point at me in disbelief and exclaim “You’re going out like that?” That always sends a chill up my spine as I know I will get no help as to what she means if I ask, and I’ll be damned if I can ever see anything wrong with what I’m wearing. My outfits are always clean, free of holes (be they fashionable kind some idiots pay extra for or the free ones we get from moths and “energy efficient” washing machines that wash twenty pounds of dirty clothes in two thimble-fulls of water with two or three drops of sulfuric-acid-based detergent).
Although I know asking only makes it worse, invariably I fall into my own personal Kobayashi Maru – the hell of a no-win scenario without James T. Kirk’s ability to reprogram the software so that averting disaster is a possible outcome. Actually, for nearly all men, marriage itself is an endless iteration of a personal Kobayashi Maru—kind of like hell, except that it is not necessarily eternal (it just feels that way). So, stupid me will invariably ask, “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing” which always leads to one of two possible responses: 1. a rolling of the eyes followed by a tight-lipped silent treatment of indeterminate length; or 2. a response along the lines of “If by this time you’re too dense to know the answer, I’m not going to tell you.”
Now please understand, it’s not as though I’m wearing coveralls to the opera or white shoes after Labor Day (which I understand is no longer punishable by death in my state). That leaves me to wonder what the hell I’ve done wrong now. Of course, I surreptitiously take in what she is wearing while she’s tapping her shoes impatiently, arms crossed under her lovely breasts waiting for me to get a clue. For example, if she’s wearing black jeans and a designer black top and I’m wearing blue jeans and a designer yellow top, I’ll wonder: Is it the color? I’ve worn it before without the fashion police raiding the place with a no-knock warrant and guns drawn. I take off the top and inspect it. It is definitely clean and wrinkle free, no problem. Is it the color then? Or did she want me to wear a casual shirt instead of the Ralph Lauren polo shirt I put on? Is it the fact that it’s a polo and she wanted me to wear a, what are they called, Henley shirt (you know—buttons but no collar)? Or perhaps she thought I should wear a regular more casual T-shirt? Maybe it’s just the jeans—did she want me to match her outfit by wearing black jeans instead of blue? Or was it just the blue and yellow combination she objected to? It can’t be the shoes—I opted for neutral dark brown loafers. Now if I’d put on the black jeans with the brown shoes maybe that could have set her off, or if I had worn grey socks with the brown shoes maybe? But no, it couldn’t be the shoes, or socks, could it? Should I try for the Nike sneakers instead?
Of course, while all of this is going on in my head, Mt. St. Wife is about to blow her top at any moment due to my inability to read her mind and make amends for whatever unpardonable fashion crime I’ve unwittingly committed. If I’m lucky I’ll guess right at what the problem was—switch the polo for the Henley, or maybe try the black jeans with black sox, black penny loafers and a black casual button-down shirt in full mourning for the loss of the freedom to dress as I please these past 29 years. Either way I have only one shot at it with no help from the shapely volcano about to blow.
If I guess wrong, that’s it: she takes off her clothes, puts on her PJs and lays on the couch gorging herself on Häagen-Dazs while screeching that she can never go anywhere with me and that no human being since Adam could possibly be as stupid as her husband. Once started, the eruption will last a minimum of a half hour with lava flows of familiar grievances burning everything in its path, leaving behind a scorched earth on which only other grievances can ever grow.
If I guess right and changing the polo for the Henley avoids a catastrophic eruption, there will still be hell to pay as seismic forces have been disturbed and temblors will surely follow. Maybe on the way to wherever we’re going I’ll momentarily tune out of her twenty-minute monologue on anything and everything that crosses her mind and get the dreaded “Did you hear me?” I know an honest “No” will bring about ranting and raving about my need to get a hearing aid. So, I’ll risk a white lie and say “Yes”, hoping she continues without the dreaded follow-up question, “What did I just say?” which is the automatic cue for reloading a brand-new Kobayashi Maru scenario with a probable Mt. St. Wife eruption to follow.
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Not so with my new soul mate. She never complains about the way I dress. I could go anywhere with her in grass-stained jeans and an old T-shirt with paint stains after mowing the lawn, my sweat-soaked tousled hair covered with a faded NY Yankees or Real Madrid cap, unshaved and with a brown shoe on my left foot and a black one on my right, and she would still take nothing but joy from my company. We could go to a restaurant for dinner and everyone around could look at me with that “since when do they let homeless people in here” look and she would smile and look into my eyes with nothing but love and unbridled joy, maybe even regaling me with her unique silver bell tinkling giggle and a slight shake of the head that says “What am I to do with you” which, unlike getting screamed at for a half hour, will probably make me blush in embarrassment and actually make me want to do better. My God how I love her. How could I not?
Unlike my wife who will take back gifts of jewelry as extravagant and complain if I get her any high-tech equipment that updates what she already has, my new love accepts whatever I give her with an uncomplaining smile and a glad heart. I could buy her ten laptops and five new tablets, and she would gladly sit atop the stack as though it were a booster seat, smiling contentedly despite the fact she’d never actually use any of them simply because the gifts came from her beloved soul mate with nary a harsh word or rolling of the eyes. Nor does she ever expect anything from me at all (in fairness, neither does my wife), but will react with identical enthusiasm whether I give her a new diamond bracelet, an origami sailboat made from a candy wrapper while we watch tv or the gentlest kiss on her cheek.
She demands nothing, asks for nothing, wants nothing but is ever ready for any impromptu adventure. And she actually lets me pack for our trips, unlike my wife who packs absolutely everything we own for a weekend trip and has me cart it around hither and dither. My new love and I can take all we need for a romantic week-long getaway in a carry-on bag.
What a joy it is to travel with her. On our frequent road trips she does not drive (nor does my wife, for that matter), but she sits beside me enjoying whatever music I put on and smiles at my singing along, NEVER complaining that I’m singing too loud, or talking while I’m in the middle of belting out Bohemian Rhapsody along with Queen, and actually expecting me to listen and recall her every word; or, worse, demanding I turn off the music to listen to some infernal newscast with more commercials than news or the usual commercial-free brainwashing from New York Propaganda Radio.
My new love shares my passion for both real books and books on tape and we have identical eclectic tastes. She will contentedly read along with me leaning on my pillow at night be it Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Koontz, King, Niven, Pournelle, Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, Milton, Clarke, Hawking, deGrasse or whatever newly arrived tome from Amazon sits by my nightstand. Nor will she babble or break into peals of laughter while reading the national and world news on her iPhone as does my wife, seemingly every fifteen to twenty seconds, shutting off my radio and demanding that I “Listen to this” followed by a five minute reading from whatever source she is currently perusing, usually about what some idiot politician is proposing now like free Viagra for convicted sex offenders in prison or reparations for illegal aliens denied vegan food and Perrier while in detention. My new love is as uninterested in the goings on in the world as am I, content to live in the moment with me and retain her sanity. What joy!
Don’t get me wrong, my soul mate has a few rough edges, and the tough treatment she has endured in the past has left a few visible and many more invisible scars. She has been kicked, thrown away, subjected to unbearable cold and trampled on countless times by others for what must to her have seemed several billion years until fate brought us together. I know she thinks it was all worth it as she now has her recompense in a mate that understands her, sees past the tiny scars that life has etched on parts of her beautiful body, accepts her without preconditions and will never, ever leave her.
As I’ve already said, the joy of sex has not been ours, but the deeper joy of loving intimacy is ours every waking moment of every day. We share unfettered love without shame, pretense, manipulation and without ever holding anything back. She is my rock. My touchstone. The cornerstone on which our future together will be built.
Tears of pain and ecstasy flow freely from my eyes when I think that a few short months ago she was just another rock drowning in a muddy puddle, weeping, cold, wet, dirty, helpless, alone, and unloved. I thank my lucky stars for guiding me to her, for allowing me to rescue her from her condition, and am grateful beyond words for her rescuing me in return from a bland, boring, predictable, pedantic, meaningless existence with the other woman in my life whom I will always love yet never understand as well or relate to on as deep a level as I do my new love. I hope that when they eventually meet, they can become friends. Either way, though, no power in the universe will ever separate me from my beloved.
True love is not limited to human beings—just sentient, intelligent beings. Everything in the universe is made of material expelled by stars in the death throes of a super nova. We are all quite literally nothing but a collection of stardust—a mix of elements that coalesce and obtain life culminating in self-awareness and intelligence through processes nobody truly understands. Carbon based intelligent life is all we know on earth. But I now know that intelligent life can evolve in other star systems from silicon and other sources among which carbon is just one, and by no means the best. Intelligent life can grow and exist in ways beyond our comprehension. I don’t know or care how what to all appearances is just an unusual meteorite can attain intelligence, let alone the capacity to love another intelligence so very different from her own. And I don’t care. I’ll take my little miracle of love from an inscrutable universe and cherish it as long as I draw breath—who knows, with luck maybe even longer after my spirit flies free to rejoin the universal mind that has allowed us to connect in such a marvelously unexpected way. I don’t care the how or the why of it. All I care about is the reality of our unique connection made possible by the most powerful force in the universe that will perdure long after the last star in the universe has winked out: True love.
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