The one that got away.....

I go over and over them in my mind, the conversations, the long lingering looks, the way you would touch my face or my hair. I can see the sincerity on your face when you would look into my eyes and tell me how you enjoyed being with me, and how it wasn’t just the amazing sex, but something more. I can remember how you would hold me, and how the first thing you did when I walked into the room was kiss me senseless. Then, when my head was reeling and I was practically love drunk, you would ease back, smile that charming, devil may care smile and then say “So how’s your day?.” My answer was always invariably the same. I would smile back at you and say, “Its better now”.
I can’t pinpoint the moment I fell in love with you. It might have been when you talked about your ex-wife and how you were always so careful never to say anything really nasty about her, but instead would talk about your daughter and how much you missed her and wanted to spend more time with her. Maybe it was when you talked about how your daughter was growing up and how she wanted to spend time with her friends instead of with her dad. It could have been the gleam in your eye when you talked about taking her shopping and how you enjoyed spoiling her. It could have been when you talked about your work, and how you liked being the boss, but how sometimes you missed being one of the guys. Then there was the self deprecating humor when you would say you made the mistake of climbing into the ditch to work alongside your men, and remembered how long it had been since you’d really been just one of the guys. But there were other things, things that made me certain of how much I loved you. There was the way you talked about your father and how close you were to him. There was responsibility that you took for him when he became ill, when you started handling his financial affairs and taking care of his house. There was the frustration you would show me, about feeling like you’d given up so much of your own life to take care of him but how it was the right thing to do. There was the guilt you showed over wanting to have your life back, knowing that in order to do so, you would have to let go of your dad. There was the compassion and the warmth that you showed me when I talked about my mother’s illness and her death. The way that you wiped my tears and held me, and how you made love to me after.
Then there are all the other reasons… the not so sweet ones. There were the dirty little whispers in my ear while we sat at the bar in our favorite restaurant. How you would say something so painfully outrageous that I would be blushing like a fool every time the bartender approached us. There was that cocky, male swagger that told the world just who you thought you were. There are a hundred reasons, and a million moments when I looked at you and felt that overwhelming rush of emotion, and where because of all my neatly packed baggage of heartbreaks and disappointments, I never gave voice to that feeling.


And then there was that final piece of the puzzle, the one that always niggled at me. When every fiber of my being was screaming to just tell him, to just have the guts and shout it from the rooftops if need be, there was a small part of me that held back, that waited for that other shoe to drop—because some small part of me didn’t believe. Even then, some small part of me recognized that when something seems too good to be true, it usually is. And you were definitely too good to be true. Suave, charming, well mannered, a good dresser, well groomed but not perfectly—enough imperfection left to proclaim you completely male, erudite… and a gifted, skilled, masterful liar. Machiavelli would have been envious of the ease and skill with which you practiced your deceptions.


Everything was a lie—the ex wife, who wasn’t an ex; the daughter who wasn’t being kept away from you by an angry, bitter former spouse, but who was at home with her mother, wondering why daddy always had to work late; there was the 14 year age difference between us, which thanks to some blessing of genetics, you could convincingly condense to 5; there was the he-man occupation in the construction world, when in fact the only thing you constructed were webs of lies while you repaired someone’s computer; there was the father who might have been ill, but who wasn’t alone, and certainly did not depend on you for his care as he had a wife who saw to his needs; there were the long absences that you explained away because your job required you to travel, or because you had decided to relocate to Florida to have more help with your father form your irascible brother, who probably doesn’t even exist. Those long absences to Florida were either a vain attempt at fidelity on your part, or perhaps there was another woman, or two or even three, with whom you chose to play the perfect, almost attainable lover. You pretended to be a man whom every woman wants, and you did it skillfully enough to hide the fact that you are the kind of man every woman fears.

You are the one that got away.... You got away with theft, with rape by deception, with adultery, with fraud, with being a miserable excuse for a human being.  In the end, your spineless wife didn't even leave you and you are still at home setting a miserable example for your daughter of what men are supposed to be like.  You might have gotten away with it, but you did get caught.  So perhaps the next time you undertake a deception of this magnitude, maybe you won't be quite so confident or smooth.  Maybe you will stumble just a bit in your lies.  Maybe you will remember the misery of looking into the faces of your wife and daughter and knowing that they know, that they see what kind of man you really are.  Maybe the voice in your head, the one that makes you doubt and question, and wonder... Maybe, if there is some justice in the universe, maybe that voice will sound like me.