Decades ago, more that three, I’d say, I was working as a freelance used and used book seller, often worked out of the store of a fellow dealer, opened the store for him. Anyway, in the course of about a week a bodacious, statuesque brunette came in one day, asked me to get an obscure book on ancient Greek grammar,–that was an easy one for me to get–and maybe one or two others. I spoke to her only a couple of times after that.
One day, totally out of the blue, I did something I’d never done before and have never done since: it was a beautiful, very warm late spring day, and when my business associate turned up and this lovely young woman arrived, then left, I said goodbye, walked out the door and followed her down the busy city street for two or three blocks. When I reached the corner that took me home, I let her go. I’m not, I should add, the stalking type.
At around that time I lived in a two bedroom apartment, very desirable, in a great part of the city for young, ambitious people to live in, and I needed a room-mate, had an ad in a local paper. About a week or ten days after that “stalking incident”, when interviewing prospective room-mates, when I went downstairs to great the next one, guess who was standing right in front of me, clear as day: the girl I’d followed down the street! I was too,–is gobsmacked the right word?–to mention any of my earlier dealing with her as I showed her the place, which she seemed to like; and as time passed and she caught a glimpse of my library and stuff that was lying around, we began to walk about books, literature, the world of ideas and other “weighty” matters.
To make a long story short, she said yes, she liked it, and she clearly she liked me as well. We had an instant rapport, empathy; and within a week we were roomies. The rest of the story is more complicated: let’s just say she had a boyfriend she didn’t really love or even like that much, while the two of us got along swimmingly: the day after she moved in we spent the next 72 hours together. Most of it was talk, as it felt too early for things to go further (though go further it did), and it was obvious we both felt that way. It was also equally obvious that we wanted to be together as much as possible.
For the well over a year and a half it was on and off with this woman: read into that what you will. It was the best and most,–if you’ll excuse the expression–soul satisfying relationship I’ve ever been in. Private people though we were, and introverted to the extreme, we were much of the time, aside from a fling on her part that lasted about a month, and a couple of returns sto the old boyfriend, nearly inseparable the whole time except when we had other things to attend to, which happened often, needless to say.
No, it didn’t end in marriage, and as she moved out of the city to another, wanting very much for me to accompany her, I demurred, chose to remain where I was,–the city, that is, I moved to new digs after six years in the same place–and it was one of the worst decisions I ever made. My life was never so happy again,–that’s one mystery (why?)–and she married a guy, again, whom she didn’t really love, broke up with him. To make a long story short she remained away, even as we got together a few times; and we spoke and corresponded often and at great length, but after a while we drifted apart, she finally found a guy she could live with, though my sense is that while it’s a good enough marriage, it’s not off the charts. We were off the charts.
I’ll never know why this miracle, and it really was one, came into my life, especially the strange way it did; nor shall I ever fully understand why I didn’t make the best of the relationship. I like and can handle intimacy, but I’m an odd guy and the stars sort of have to be aligned for something to work out. For once, they were, and I let it go. There are reasons for this, and the fault, such as it can be called, lies as much with me and the kind of person I am as the way she was. We both fumbled badly in the end; and she handled it better than I did.
The aforementioned story, and I feel sorry that it took a long time to tell, has mysteries at the core, especially as they pertain to, again, to use a word I don’t much care for, intimacy. I’ve known couples that had decent marriages that weren’t so close,–why?,–you ask, because I knew them very well–and they didn’t have what I and this woman (I just can’t bring myself to use her actual name), had, for what now, decades later, feels like a few brief shining moments. It wasn’t; it lasted longer than that, and I’ve never been able to find anything within a hundred country miles ever since that was half that good. This too is a mystery.
