Old Flames and the Intimacy of Divulging Them

Today I told my boyfriend about that brief but intense indiscretion I had with the only lesbian I've ever dated. I say "indiscretion" not because the relationship was untoward, but because I think, going into it, we both of us knew better than to indulge the fire that roared up inside us as we bumped into one another, happenstance by utter happenstance, at three different coffee shops on three consecutive days. The first bump (and the only literal one) held that incongruous palpability that spins the momentous out of an absolute nothing: our fingers brushing as we each grabbed at the same overpriced latte, the barista having called out, "Heddy" in a vocal garble that I mistook for "Hettie." We laughed and registered affinity over the shared experience of bearing an unusual name, and some shiver of smoky entrancement passed through each of us before she rightfully claimed the cup and strode off with a single backwards glance -- through eyes narrowed with interest, above a nimble, effervescent smile. The second bump elaborated on the first, with blinks of pleasant surprise and an enchanted smatter of conversational dalliance. The third made one or the other of us say the hand of Fate must be at work, whereupon a thick-throated and graceless proposition carried us both to her place for one of those afternoons that hangs in your memory the rest of your life.

None of those details passed between me and my fellow this morning, though, as my revelation came while we chatted our way merrily through the Act before its tempests stole too much of our breath for discussion. I can't recall just what he asked me, but my answer was, "Well of course I've been with a woman before I met you or any of our polys." And as we whispered and surged together, I went on to describe her as an absolute god-slayer with a strap-on -- which achieved the desired and combined effect of both tickling and enflaming him.

The intricacies of our passions spun and evolved themselves nicely over the next half-hour or so, interwoven with morsels of anecdote and disclosure. He learned of the affair's brevity, its hot and purposeful monogamy, and the very peculiar ending of it wherein we neither of us fell out of love, yet both recognized it was not the love meant to carry us out of youth and across the decades. She could sense that I needed something more before my tongue found those words, and I could sense the slow mouldering into disappointment that she would experience should years go by and faithfulness diminish me. Having known from the start how unlikely was this thing's endurance, we could part in a golden sweetness unsullied by more than the faintest astringent tinge.

These disseminations of something gorgeous and fervid and faceted with perversity from my days of yore elevated today's wanton concupiscence, lofted us to one of those rarefied cusps in which knowing and feeling and the deliverance of ecstasy twine like threads of silk in sheets of palatial divinity.

To have loved well and wildly, yet not achieved completion, provides the ultimate exaltation of that love which makes us wholly fulfilled. That I had her, loved her, knew there was more, and found it, cannot be surpassed as an aphrodisiac. 

If, somewhere out there, you are reading this, Heddy, know that I have told stories on you -- of your spritely verve and your prowess, of that place in my soul you will always hold and the simmer that shall never abandon my loins when I think of you. I have told of your heart, too pure to be shared with more than one, and your driving desire that so many times threw me spiraling up into the vaults of heaven. You have armed me with the utensils of grandiose juxtaposition, with the advantage of having stood upon one pinnacle, such that my true and ultimate summit could be instantly known by the comparison. Have you found your own paradise of happiness to match mine? I can't credit that you should not, knowing you as I did.

And if indeed you found that perfect one, something tells me she gasped as loud and long when you spoke of me in the throes as my man did when I enlightened him this morning. Should we meet again in some fateful dawn's serendipitous coffee shop, I hope she's there and won't mind that I kiss you. I know you'll roll your eyes after, but what truer thanks could I give?