All Write, Already!

Eleven years ago I met a girl. She seemed everything I could ever want, but of course the feeling wasn't mutual or I wouldn't be writing this today, on this post.

The one time we had sex I felt a religious calm. This church I built for her that night through the rituals we performed, through the kindness and the passion I felt, she saw as something else but like an icon, her role for me was as receptacle of my devotion. In her mind, I was an admirer and something novel to fuck.

The third religious feeling I had with her happened when I was visiting her extended family that holiday. She introduced me as her friend, and we wandered around taking pictures in their small town. At some point we sat together at the table, looking at a photo album. I remember turning the pages with her and thinking there could be no more aware, no finer experience than this.

I hesitate to reproduce the first such experience with her. It was on our first date. She lived with her parents then, but they were out. We lounged about on their couch and I played with her long, thick quarter-greek hair. Something so perfect about how it smelled, felt, and the intimacy of touching her that way on our first date...

We saw each other for a few months only. She saw other people too. My life changed 180 degrees in those months. Finally I couldn't bear her lack of love anymore and I declared it was over for me. A year went by and we saw each other infrequently. I dated another woman, pathetically, and when that was over had a near miss with this girl again. I stopped myself from letting her use me this time, because I realized I still loved her.

A decade after that, I know that who I loved wasn't who she was, really, it was my experience of her that I loved and the icon I built myself. But I'm still a little afraid to see the icon in the flesh.