I am thinking of all those young men who, just before being shipped off to war, were ready to love and married the neighbor girl they grew up with or a sweetheart they’d met only a few weeks before. There was a plethora of pairs of crisp uniforms and white wedding gowns on church steps before storming Normandy or remote Pacific beaches. This readiness is not uncommon but instinctual. And I have wondered how much simple animal biology, the instinct of our species, contributes to the predicament of love. David Attenborough could narrate these forces of nature. I admit, this readiness is overly romanticized, but I latched onto its rules and trappings as eagerly as anyone desperate to discover happiness in another person. If this was an illusion, fine. So be it. I was bruised too black-and-blue from waiting for love to do anything but surrender.
Love arrived before desire. I loved you before I met you. I knew you before we spoke after that awkward get-to-know-you circle of the peculiar, divorced and depressed at the singles meeting in the basement of Mulberry Street Methodist Church. It looked more like a sad AA meeting than a support group for the lonely. There was silent smoking guy, too-serious bible-carrying guy and Al, the sweet, scruffy divorcee who stopped us at the door to gauge my intentions as we attempted to quietly ditch the meeting. In the circle I announced that I was an artist though I was working as a delivery boy for the pharmacy downtown. You grinned a little.
Your pastor convinced you to attend. I discovered the meeting place and time from a poster in the drugstore window. What the hell? Why not? I made you laugh more than once over cake and soft drinks. The white, too-sweet, frosted dessert seemed out of place. Stale doughnuts and bad coffee seemed more fitting. (At some point along the way, I made it a requirement to make you laugh at least once a day. This was a good routine during our years of marriage, kids – aging. Just the other day I got you laughing so hard you nearly peed your pants while hobbling cross-legged to the bathroom).
Though I had not quite distinguished love from desire, a few days later I was certain of you and certain of love after I first kissed you – you sitting in the white wicker chair in my ratty apartment. What were you thinking, all smiles who couldn’t or wouldn’t stop smiling – this guy with no kitchen sink, only one chair and a twenty-year-old Ford with questionable seat belts? But the Ford was a pretty baby blue. The same shade as my blue polyester polo shirt you found endearing. It was your smile, not the kiss that caught me.
But desire was an entirely different matter. Of course, there was passion; however, oh, I don’t know, there seems to be a difference between passion and desire. There is obsession in desire. When you first told the story, I imagined myself sitting in your Chemistry class one row over and one desk back. When I was in school, I wouldn’t be caught dead in Chemistry. I was the weird kid that hid in the art room making Cubist paintings of still-life, Nixon, and JFK. But I yearned to be there, somehow transported in time and place.
I cannot explain my voyeuristic infatuation. I suppose I was a budding, fetishistic pervert. However, my mania was a harmless, isolated, and temporary obsession. For you, it seemed to be about good fashion. A suit and tie would do it for you. Rock your world. You bought me a trendy ensemble, a stylish shirt, pleated trousers with cuffs and suspenders. Your desire was to dress me in your preferences. Humor was a priority too but ripped abs or a bit of stubble on a chiseled chin not so much.
Before school, before leaving your bedroom, wallpapered in bright yellow stripes and white daisies when you were nine, you scrawled a few key formulas on your thigh. Blue ball point pen glided across your skin. The plan was, as needed, to slide your skirt up along your leg and refresh your memory with blue hieroglyphs. Never mind that you chickened out at the last minute and did not use the prompts. The good girl. The principal’s daughter. Just knowing the formulas were there was a comfort and was enough. There was something exciting in the prospect of cheating, though – the chance of getting caught. In my fantasy, you did look at your leg. You surreptitiously inched your hem up over your knee until your crime was exposed. I stole glances across the aisle – the teacher unaware that I was failing my test while you were unaware I ogled you cheating on your test. I wasn’t sure which was more thrilling, your thigh or the transgression.
And I imagined I was your scribe. Not a tattoo artist. As this would have been 1977, few girls brandished tattoos, tattoos being largely limited to anchors on rough, weathered sailors. But I would draw more than formulas. I would draw you – your portrait, your eyes, your mouth, or you a reclining Venus again and again across your back, thighs, belly, breast. I would draw your ears twenty times or give you extra fingers and toes if you wanted it so. I would promote you to general by drawing elaborate epaulettes on your shoulders. I would draw synopses of our first days together: our walk to the abandoned chapel outside Gambier; dinner at the Thai place on Main Street where the plum wine was thick and sweet and potent; grocery shopping after midnight; and that avocado salad on your rickety card table where we were so nervous we could hardly eat – both blindly confident of love and passion or desire or maybe both were sure to follow.
David Sapp, writer and artist, is a Pushcart nominee. His work appears widely in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. His publications include chapbooks Close to Home and Two Buddha, a novel, Flying Over Erie, and a book of poems and drawings titled, Drawing Nirvana.
