Had dinner last night with MB and it was, quite simply, wonderful.

We watched a little of the OU-Kansas State game on television while we shared the meal and talked.

Both of us feel deeply the loss of our relationship and both of us still love the other deeply.

Despite all, it was so easy to be with her, so comfortable and comforting.

She’s doing very well in Memphis and has a fabulous new job, new house, new church home, new friends and new life. She is undoubtedly doing exactly what she should be doing, blossoming in a garden of her own making. I could not be more happy for her.

I believe we both instantly felt that the connection between us still exists and that we will always be in each other’s life in a significant way.

She’s staying with my best friends, the Oz and his bride. That’s perfect.

Today, she’ll pick up the last bit of stuff she had stored here in OKC and take it back home to Memphis to her new and larger home. It’s a little bit of a sad chore, I think. MB has many many many people here in town that love her to death. Her work as an artist will be sorely missed by all of us and by her gallery, JRB, where Joy was a big supporter.

A random tangent: MB’s father was my hero. Over a period of several years, I never heard him tell a lie or say a bad thing about another human being. He was clearly a loving father who earned the lifetime respect and love of all four of his children and several grandchildren. He was a simple Presbyterian minister, but a giant in my mind and an inspiration.

I’ve been corresponding the past few days with MB, my lost soulmate. She’s coming back to town to pick up some detritus she’s had stored here and can now accommodate in her new home she’s just purchased.

We’ve broken each other’s trust and shall never again have what we once had, which was beautiful, brilliant and very deep. I love her still. I believe, without knowing, she still loves me. But, life goes on and some bells can’t be unrung.

She told me she’s read this blog and that I’m “messed up”. I believe her when she says that. I expect it’s EXACTLY what she thinks. Besides, she never quite had the facility to lie.

Most of all, I suspicion that she thinks I’m “messed up” because life DOES go on. She was the most comfortable with her first X husband who never found any woman to please him after her and lives a quiet life in some kind of hunting cabin in the backwoods of Arkansas near Hot Springs. How she could expect that I’d follow that example is beyond me — I don’t hunt or fish and I think it’s camping out when there’s no mint on the pillow. Ah, well.

She tells me that we can talk about anything but what she doesn’t want to talk about. I think it’s funny that she believes she can set the agenda and be in charge of what I’ll bring up and what I won’t discuss. We’ll have dinner when she gets into town Saturday and, in fact, I’ll likely respect most of her wishes as I’ve always done.

And, therein lies the nub of it all.

I respected her and her wishes. I catered to her. I deferred to her. What I finally got for my troubles in that regard is that she took it for granted and felt entitled to my deference and attentions. When, finally, it became a matter of HER compromising what she wanted for the sake of making ME happy … well, it wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

I guess the universe unfolded as it should, even if it wasn’t the way I wanted it to unfold.

I wonder if it’s unfolding to suit her.

I wonder if there are nights when she thinks that it isn’t so easy to find a man like me. That I’m not so fungible and easily replaced. I wonder how comforting she finds her independence and absolute control over herself when the nights get cold and lonely under grey skies.

I wonder if she misses my companionship as much as I miss hers.

I wonder if there are times when she thinks it wasn’t so unreasonable for me to want to be a first priority for her at least some of the time and to resist being out of her top 20 priorities so often.

I wonder if she sometimes thinks that maybe, just maybe, that at age ____ and twice divorced that a naive and virginal attitude doesn’t quite play out the way it did when she was 20.

MB was and is the nicest, sweetest, kindest woman you could ever want to meet. Part of the charm of our connection was that I was the piquant sauce. I am NOT nice, sweet and kind. In fact, I’m quite the bitch at times and then I’m a revolving door, card carrying, brass plated bastard the rest of the time. We balanced. My “naughtiness” delighted her as long as it was once-removed.

I also balanced her naivete because, as you must know by now, I’m a carnal and passionate man. There was a time when she was delighted by that as well. In the end, not enough.

We shared a spiritual sense that went far beyond religion and it often seemed that the only possible answer for our happiness together was that God had ordained it. We often seemed to love each other beyond all human reason. Oh, the loss. It still hurts after all this time to lose those feelings.

She complained that I’d not written enough about how she’d broken my heart and that it seemed to her that the more recent KW had taken care of that. MB, I never felt you broke my heart nor I yours. I was heartbroken beyond all words, it’s true, but I never really blamed you. Our parting almost broke me. I spun into a depression that was beyond anything else in my life. I wanted to die without you. Literally. No other woman — and there were more than one — was able to replace you nor even to distract me for long. I flopped around and longed for you for months. I woke up morning after morning yearning for you. I went to bed and dreamed of you, no matter who was next to me in the bed. I couldn’t live that way and I couldn’t or wouldn’t just die, although I prayed for that release. So, I’ve gone on. I’ve put together a life without you. There was no other reasonable choice.

And, now, neither you nor I can ever “go home” again.

Today’s entry is dedicated to the late lamented band, X, their album, Under a Big Black Sun, and the tune I name above. Thank you John Doe and Exene. The Webmaster took me to a concert of theirs at Plaza Court on NW 10th and Walker one time years ago and that band just about brought down the building. That’s another one I owe you, Dennis. … Thanks for the good times.

Will the real Don Juan please stand up?

About four pussys showed up at my house this morning. One is brunette but the others seem to be black and white or gray. The neighborhood slut I call “Tuxedo” due to her black with strategically placed white fur has a brood of monochromatic kittens that have decided my yard is the jungle God left for their hunting grounds. All of them regard me as an intruder. I refuse to feed them so as not to encourage them, but there are so many birds and squirrels in my yard that I’m not sure that’s any deterrent. Once, not long ago, I had a young woman over to the house when these felines were but small balls of fur and they had lined up on my bedroom windowsills. Even though a confirmed dog lover and allergic to cats, the girl went weak at the knees over how cute they were. Lovely memory of a woman I cared about who “got away.” Only the cats remain.

Waking Up With Someone New

I woke up with a woman this morning and it was our first time to sleep together. No. I mean really sleep, not what you are thinking, you dirty minded readers. My rule for “sleeping together” is that I won’t do that unless I have something to say in the morning besides “How do you take your coffee?”. Anyway, we did have coffee together during a lovely morning and we did have something to say to each other and it was VERY nice. “Sleeping together” is what it is and it can be quite lovely, of course, but what I like even better is the more long-term pleasure of having a woman in your life that you can wake up with and talk softly and lovingly with the next morning. There have been two wonderful women in my life in the past 10 years of my sobriety with whom that was true: we woke up in love and had coffee and long talks, often outside. I should have married them, I’ve often thought, but the chance to do that never really happened. One moved away and the other just flat dumped me. I still love them both. More than anything else, I miss their companionship. For both of them, it was true that we could do the stupid things one must do — grocery shop, for example — and have a good time together. Our senses of humor matched. God has blessed me with a few wonderful women and I would especially include my X wife, the mother of my wonderful children. I’m nostalgic this morning for some reason. As much as I care about the woman I woke up with this morning, our relationship is doomed, I think. She forthrightly admits that she’s both emotionally and physically unavailable to everyone, including me. I shan’t fight with her about it. No sense in it. You can’t talk or force someone to be in love with you, no matter how much you might wish it to be so. And, for me, no will always mean no. And, why try to make someone have sex with you if they don’t want to have sex? Would it be any good if they weren’t completely “into” it? I think not. And, the worse would be the guilt and recrimination and remorse the next morning if you succeeded. Who wants to wake up and have coffee with someone who hates themselves and what they’ve just done?

The aftermath

First, I’ve always thought that “aftermath” sounds like doing the subtraction in your checkbook immediately following Algebra class. That’s not what I mean now, though. The aftermath of waking up with a new woman in my bed today is that I stayed up very late on a “school night”, woke up late, spent extra time over coffee and taking her home and by the time I was headed to work, the day was half over and I felt like hammered shit from the short night’s sleep. My last X accused me of being a sex addict, a charge I vehemently denied, but there’s no doubt that “sex” (or near-sex, as in this case) is affecting my work and that’s a symptom of sexual addiction. This X really got into my head as you can see, and I’m still suffering months later from the guilt, shame and conflicting emotions I have left over from being flatly dumped in such a manner. Anyway, there’s no way I’ll be able to concentrate on discovery matters in a real estate case today, no matter how much I need the billing to keep my poor law practice afloat. Might as well blog.

Is there conflict ahead?

Recently, there was a woman in my life who, like the newest one, explicitly told me she is emotionally, romantically and physically unavailable to me. I spent weeks going into months ignoring and denying that reality. I loved her and wanted her and wished for it so much I was sure that I could change her mind. I went from smitten to hopeless to pathetic. Yes, pathetic. When you go on and on being not just hopeless but knowing it’s hopeless, it becomes pathetic. Finally, I realized what I was doing. Since I couldn’t “make” her feel the way I wanted her to feel about me, there was nothing left but to stop and change the dynamic. I had no other choice. Now, I’m unavailable to her, romantically, physically and emotionally. I stopped waking up wishing for her and I stopped making myself miserable over not getting what I would never have. Anyway, along the way, I asked for her to returns some items I’d loaned her over the time of our “relationship”, a word that must be in quotation marks because it isn’t a relationship if only one person feels “that way”. She picked THIS morning to return my stuff. Now, I’m wondering about the aftermath. Will I be faced by a woman who was not only unavailable, but is now pissed? You would think that if she didn’t want a relationship with me, it wouldn’t bother her to find out I was with another woman. However, it’s my experience that such logic simply doesn’t always work. At least not where women and the heart are concerned. We shall see.

Video clip

My friend the videographer, John H., has produced a short (10 second?) video of me having a smoke in front of a Braum’s sign at twilight. I’m going to try and place it on this page as soon as I can. DENNIS!!!!! Heads up!!!!!!