Tag Archives: alcir de souza

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Here I Am…………

Trust.  What a word…. encompassing so much.  I have always
tried to Trust… people, intuition, feelings…..  it is something that
comes naturally to me, idiot that I am….and that precisely
is how I got myself into this conflagration…. the Fire in Rio…
a Fire of the Heart.

I come, hat, heart and lingerie in hand, sure of myself and the feelings that were put on ice for the year we were apart.
I was the Keeper of Love, but I have such bizarre assurance of
what I know and feel, that comes somehow from within…..

I go to Rio, I hold to that Feel that is US… Us… and oh my
what a feeling, a knowing, a fire that could blaze through all of our visions, and onward to a future that has no boundaries.

Have you ever been with someone who you Know you can do
Anything with?  I mean, the two of you are such a nuclear fission,
fusion, crashing of dreams and raw energies…  and somehow in
your heart you just know it is fate and it was agreed upon so long ago, that there was no way this prior agreement
cannot be fulfilled.

So Here I was, after nearly a year of waiting and holding and keeping close to him and the agreement… to return to Rio, be together, find a way to co-create our life, and learn just who
WE Are together…
For when two blend into one, a new Entity is created…

So it’s Morning, and our NewYears’Eve has turned to a dawn
of Reality, neither of us had dreamed of or imagined.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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Back but Not …

This blog started as a running commentary on Dating sites.
Then it went in a direction that was not planned, yet one
that was in the card catalogue…
You know… that thing that you know some day you will write about………Someday.

And then that Someday became a train that I hitched a ride on
for quite a while….

Time was,  it was Time to get off that train… for a while at least.

Perspective.   That is what matters in life.  And perspective
depends on your locale, no matter the Bardot, the Time Zone,
the Chakrah….

So here I am, listening to Brasilian Jazz for the first time
in a long time…
I have avoided it… I did not want to go back to it….
go Back to it, to the emotions that the music lead me to. 
For many years, I used Brasilian music of all sorts to
take me back to that magical place that I had attained with
this person who had come into my life. 
And now, for years, I have pushed all of it away….

It’s called Survival.  It’s called Healing…
It’s also called something … oh,
and Right Now as I write, Jobim has come on Pandora, the
station that will be my slave and play whatever mode I choose…
And like I said, I am allowing Brasil to re-enter my reality,
because… although it represents Him… it also represents
the culture that I fell in love with many years ago, and
opened such beauty and rhythms and sweet language sounds to me.

Please…. I am a girl from the sixties, and I loved those days
when Samba entered our culture, and became a part of Movies that
are Dated by the Samba notes that are played as Party background.
I mean, check out Peter Sellers, and an early film… “The Party”…
which, if you haven’t Seen it… oh you Must!
It’s one of his Best, and Samba and those times just envelope
the film. It was a heady, sweet and naïve time, before Reality
struck. I am so glad I got to be there… But…
I am a girl of the times, and all those notes, those feels
go straight to my soul and to my Netherparts as well…

So now Jobim … and his brilliance, his iconic purity…
reminds me that Brasil is more… so much More than Alcir and
all he happened to bring to me….. I fell in Love with Brasil,
and was lucky, privileged enough to really get a taste of a
culture that mesmerized me for so, so long.

So I guess I am saying a few things… I still love Brasil. 
I am still in love with the Music that falling in love with a
Brasilian took me to…. and now I seek to, on one note,
Separate one from the other, and on another level, Allow me
to feel some positivity towards finishing my story about
my love affair with Brasil, and with this crazy Brasilian
who really in all honesty, fucked me over big time…
whilst bringing what I wanted, which was a true real visceral
experience of uniting with this culture.

And yes, still, I feel there are things that need to be
confronted, completed, shared, and yes, even enjoyed,
before this tale is over.

OH… and ps… I am now Listening to DEAD MAN WALKING
soundtrack, and yes, You Alcir know what that means…

 

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…into Rio, the old city…

One of the more wonderful things to do, at least from
my point of view, was to go on the ferry and into the
mainland city, the old city that has held such fascination
for so many millenia.
Rio was the destination for the rich and famous, Hollywood,
and the glamorous.  It was also the place to run away to, for
its vastness made it possible to hide forever, from whatever
or whomever you were running.

Traveling through, it is such an unimaginable combination
of centuries, styles and cultures…
My camera’s eye was enthralled with the contrasts and combos,
the most incomprehensible next door neighbors created by
circumstance and availability.
I share some photos, because Words do not suffice.

Rio just goes on and on.  The sidewalks are made of broken
marble from older buildings from the past…puzzled together
to create artful walkways, each street with its own pattern.

The beaches themselves, lined with deco lighting and the
eternal sidewalk strolls, enabled by parks and grassy spreads,
and that white white sand, going on for miles…..
Copacabana…. Ipanema…. who does not feel a little thrill,
at the sound of these almost mythical places…
Nothing creates sand like that, but a million years…
This I know from Hawaiian times.

There, as the sea bed’s volcanic activity keeps on spewing, the
land mass moves over it, traveling NorthWest, and one by one
the islands were formed in order.
This is a beautiful example of geological creation of land mass
that is a clock, a window on the timing of movements
and how it all works.

Kauai is the oldest, and thus, those immaculate white sand
beaches that are indicative of long time coming…muito tempo…

The Big Island, at the other end of the chain, is relatively new,
and mostly you see black sand beaches, and lots of lava rock,
while the volcanic activity is still fresh…. the irridescent lava beds
lying like moon landscapes out before you…as each forming island
straddles the upwelling energies.
Actually off the south east end, there is yet another island forming
under the ocean, while the islands beyond Kauai on the far northwest
end have already sunk, only coral atolls marking their perimeters,
the memory of islands eons ago.

Thus… what I am trying to say, to express, is the Ancient
Quality of this so Ancient a Port…Bay…Islands…of Rio de Janeiro.
This place has basically been there forever… forming, rounding,
sheltering, protecting, like a huge womb, even in its shape…
and being the nursery for the sea for more eons than we
can even conceive.

Port of a million years, Born of a million years…. yes.
James Taylor got it right…. he got the Magic of the place.

And so did I…. and it helps to see a new country with a Native…
Obrigada……!
Ate amanha meu amor………. amanha….

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…a watershed…

Friday, sometime early March 2005

Last nite was a watershed of story, as he poured the scotch
and poured his heart.
It started after he came home, after going out to get smoke, and
coming back two and a half hours later.  He goes to the favellas
to score, and although I worry about that, he tells me not to worry,
they know him, and he can take care of himself.  That I believe.

He’d run into friends, drank, coked, come home and looked into
her eyes, searching for anger.
She could not hide anything from him.  He always saw,  so this
time she truly said no, not anger, just adjusting to frequency.
It’s every 2 or 3 days…

“No… not every 2 or 3 days… no……. oh…………….yes….
I guess you’re so damned smart.
Just don’t be like the other ones, please.  Just understand me.
I will never lie to you, I will always be true to you, always,
I swear.  Can you handle me babe?”

She looked long into his eyes.  “I Think so…”

This night she desperately wished for a recorder. The things he told
her, the way they rolled from his tongue…how could she ever capture
a tenth of them…?

She told him her main concern with his drinking…
“Your drinking is your business…how it affects me is my business.
I’m concerned with your health, that’s what worries me.”

“When I die, they oughta cut out a few organs…burn the rest please…
but take some of me and study, because I am not a normal person.

“I have drunk and snorted and shot, and been shot, and I live.
I’m not normal.
I’m not going to live long, babe, and I’m not going to change.
I can stop, I have stopped if there is a reason.

“But I don’t wanna spend my life sober.  I’ve seen too much.
No, you’ll see me dead.
Just don’t bury me.  Burn me, throw me in the ocean.
A Viking burial would be nice.  But otherwise just burn me, please. ”
Water filled her eyes…..

“I’m not afraid to die.  I never have been .  You know what scares
me…the only thing?.  I’ve never told anyone this.
What scares me is dying without being called a man.
To be worthy of being called a man, that is the one thing.
Not to die one of the masses….. oh….”

“In the Legion, they had a name they called me…..”
(I know it, but I’m not sharing it right now, as I’m not
sure he’d be OK with that).
“Oh, I’m good…I never miss.  Never.  One shot to the head.
I took out a squad of 40.  I wait…I watch…watch for days,
I know their routine, I know how many and where.  Pow Pow…
I could take out 5 in about 14 seconds.  I was the Best.

“Once they found me, they chased me for 4 days in the desert…
140 degrees day, -35 at night.  I covered myself for some shade.
I drank my own piss.
“They called out my special name, “It’s ___we gotta get him!”,
and they chased me … a bunch of them…
It was 35 miles to the sea, Once I got there, there was a beeper
and I could be found.  But I had lost mine, and no one
knew where I was….”
Obviously he escaped and was found, but I never heard how.

As a child, he was always in trouble, always being punished,
and the parents seemed to enjoy it, and from his stories,
they were quite creative.

They laughed at him, and called him Tatubola… little Armadillo…
The parents had a new horse whip and were trying it out on him.
There were other family there, and they all laughed as his mother
whipped him, and he rolled into a ball, rolled all over the ground
and down the hill.
The others said the parents must know what they are doing,
they’re the parents.  Little Armadillo, rolled up in a ball.

“My father decided the belt wasn’t good enough.  So he turned the
buckle on me.  A man 6’2”, 190#…do you think he needed to use a
buckle on a child?  What a coward.  But I never cried.  Never.
I thought of what Tom would do (Sawyer), he wouldn’t cry.
No, it was not me who should cry.  It was them, they were the
ones who were not human, they should cry.

“Once, when my mother left him, in order to get her back, he tried
to impress her by taking me on the back of his bicycle, for a ride to
show what a good father, a good man he was.
He put me behind him, and we rode.

“My ankles rubbed against the wheels, rubbed them raw and bleeding.
And when he saw, he told me how stupid I was, and he beat me.
I’d ruined his beautiful fantasy picture.”

Turns out he was ADHD.  I know it.  Total Right brain.
Got in trouble in school every day.  He read voraciously, and
everything at school seemed stupid, he already knew it.
Typical of ADD brains, unusually bright and intelligent,
easily distracted, able to focus intensely, and on their own.

He read all the classics early on, filled his head with the heroes
of so many times and places.  All of them, the great books, he read.
History, Geography, but not math, not numbers.

“If you got a woman laughing, you’re gonna get some pussy… ”
he continued.
(She remembered the big swedish nurse who assisted in her last home
birth, the most perfect birth.  Smile Carol, big smile, she’d say.
An open smile means an open pussy…. see?  it was true!)

“You always made me laugh, you’re good at that,”  she purred…
“So you must have gotten a lot of pussy…”
“Oh Good Lord, you have no idea!”
He shook his head and grinned.

“You’re clean.  Your eyes are clean.
I want to rebuild myself from what’s inside you.
I planted something in you, back then.
I planted it, and it grew inside you, and 17 years later,
you come and find me.
Because you never forgot me, and I never forgot you.

“When I saw you, I saw your goodness.  I saw you’re clean.
I was not a nice person at that time.  But with you, I gave my best.
It was out of time, and I saw another way.  I drove 400 miles..
….do you know how many times?  Just to see you.
It was apart from my life.”

She had no idea of this.  All she knew was he was diving at the pier.
So it turns out he was driving from Tahoe each time?

He and his Tahoe girlfriend fought about her.  She had called that
day, when he’d been gone for so long, took that chance, and the
woman answered.
Later, the woman asked him, and he told her…
yes, I’ve met someone, and this is why I drive.

He told her his friend Mark was a good man, a good friend,
and he lost him as a friend forever, because he hit that woman in
this fight…”knocked her lights out”…and he knew he was wrong,
that was the only time he did that.
She asked him why he was untrue to her.
“She was not a good fuck.  She had become like a sister.
I left soon after I saw you”

“You know, they are offering me a job…. I can’t believe it…
$80,000 and I said no.  I couldn’t do it… I felt like a whore.
The Legion keeps asking me to come back, come back, we could
live in France, you would be my wife, we would live well.
I would be maybe a Sargent Chief.
And I would teach people how to kill.
But no, I can’t do it.  I said no, I want something else.”

“You wanna know the two saddest things?
A soldier without a war, and
and a Man without a job…
I know….. I’m both.”

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…his reply…

“December 7, 2004
Carol
Is trully an delightfuly you; i do remember you and yor esplendor
that did caught me, was so happy that we come to enconter
each other again, even with 14000 miles in betwen.
But it is so good to read from you and returning to the days wen
we were (souds like Barbara Streisand… i am gueting old and senile)
i am in fact very happy extremely happy.
By the way   …did i spoke as i write; sounding like a mexican or a parrot
with pronunciation troubles.
Enough laffs, i am thinking right now about those days and i feel like
finding out about you and your life. What have you being douing with
yourself, married ? mother ? alone?(hope) and everithing else from
this time when we grown apart but not forgoten.
                      
I am alone and got my self a seven years old daughter Maria Vitoria
whom i love and actualy live for, and i am still fighting my wind mills
and grouing stronger and grumpier.
I am now so happy that i want to dream that life is giving me a
returning perspective.
                      
Send me you phone number and i will call you .want to hear your voice
and also email me a photo of you !
Al my best from the best time of my days !
Kisses
Alcir de Souza”
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…finally a letter to him …

“December 7, 2004
Hello my dear darling crazy brasilian……
I have no idea why I only just now found your email……I have waited and searched every day, and finally decided that I should just give up.
Then, this morning, I was going over my hundreds of emails
(I sell on ebay), and THERE YOU WERE…..
First of all, let me say with all sincerity and passion that I am so glad just to know that you are alive.  Many times I have wondered, and yet
somehow I have believed that you were.
I also was afraid that you were in Desert Storm, and up there in the north, fighting the Republican Guard.  …..I guess I was right.
And yet, somehow you survived, and to read (sort of, the translations are GHASTLY), your writings has been the second thing that I am so grateful for.  To get a gleaning of what your life has been like…..
I guess I can only imagine.
I want to hear ALL of it……
Yes sweetheart, it is me.  OK, so you want proof?  What, you think
someone else is fucking with your mind?  OK….You came to my house with a Mensa brat named Steven, and you were both drunk.
You’d met at the bar….you were diving, or hoping to get a diving position at Point Arena.  It was nine o’clock, and Steven was supposed
to have cooked dinner, and you walked in with a frozen chicken.
You bowed with your hands in prayer position, and I later figured out it was because I wore a kimono.
You walked into my kitchen, and exclaimed…..
“what ees thees woooman doing with thees peecture on her wall???
I have grown up loookin at thees picture……what ees thees wooman
doing with thees theeeng???……..”
“Oh, you’re Brazilian?” …………
“Yes, what deed you theenk, I was a stupid Mexican?”………..
More? You want more?
You always left something at my house, and had to come back
to get it.
Your watch, your wallet, your sunglasses………I told you it was
because you wanted to come back…….
Oh, and you were going to vote for Bill the Cat and Opus for President………..
Remember the hot tub night?  oh my, so hot……..we were something.
Oh ya…….what car? At first you didn’t have one, I think, because you
got rides from your friend, and rode your bike (how cute was that?)
to my house.
Later, you arrived with a big fat Thunderbird…….and washed it in my yard, while I watched, and played Sade.
When you called me from Rio, you said
“I love you, and I always did…….
…and I would not want you to think something different”……….
and you kept saying  “I’ve never forgotten”……….finally I asked why…
..and your reply was one of the most poetic things anyone has ever
said to me……

“It is not often that a man can find peace”.

OK, your turn.  My heart is beating fast, and I smile to you, my
beautiful man……..
Love and kisses to you too.  I can’t wait for you to write back……
………….Carol

ps……yes, it is you.  No one has those eyes but you.”

 

 

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…the man i knew…

… and Here he was, his picture sent to me nearly Twenty Years after
I had last seen him.
How I wished at the time that it was clearer, so I could look once more
into those big dark eyes, and see who he had become…

 

 

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…a few weeks of bliss…

Over the next few weeks, he would call every two or three days.  I liked that.  He wasn’t oppressive and demanding, nor was he showing insecurities, which I hate…. he left me space.  And he didn’t leave me hanging during these times… it was rather a perfect start.

And I might add, he never failed to deliver in that interpersonal realm, definitely making up a thousand times for that first funny “bad impression of Brasilians” … I had thought he was a bit boyish, and he was in ways… but believe me when I say he was one of the most wonderful and most Present lovers I’ve ever experienced.   And his skin was electric…  He told me that divers are the cleanest, because of all the salt water, and how many times they rinse off each day.  But it was more than that.  The energy coming off of him in those times was in big wide swaths, like he was on fire from the very center of his soul.

The phone rang.

“Hello..?”

“Heellooo…”  deep voice… I know that voice…….“So…… how Are you?”

“Oh… the wind is making me Restless and Bored …”

“Reeelly?  Can I come over an take advantage of that?”

(soft snickers on both ends…)

“oh I suppose…”

“gooooood.  I’ll be there…”

…..and he’d hop on his bicycle and peddle the short half mile along the ridge road to my house.   He was camping at a friend’s house just up the road.

How cute, I thought.  This manly man, this worldly cultured man, hoping on a bicycle to come visit me.  He was quite winsome.

Once I looked out to see him surfing the top of his buddy’s white van as it drove in.  Surfing it all along the bumpy and unkempt little road from the street to my front door, past the little pond, past the cabin where my son lived, and up the drive to be delivered at my door…. Like fresh milk, or the daily news or the most delicious meal, cooked to perfection and just for me.

Our times alone were pure magic.  Years later, he would tell me he was mesmerized.  Great word, mesmerized.  It comes from a magician, or hypnotist or something,  named Mesmer, I’m pretty sure….

And I… I was swept away.  He pleased my eye so, this artist was enchanted by beauty, intrigued by his wit, and searching for the truth of just who this being could be.

He loved Opus and Bill the Cat.  He said he was voting for Opus for President.  He would sit reading the paper, and mumble to himself about the news from home.

“Stupid fucking Brasilians” he would curse.  “ they deserve everything they get”.   He was furious, the way they dealt with the rainforest, the Indigenous tribes, the natural resources of that most gorgeous country.

He loved “Monthy Pyton”, and I would laugh and gently correct him.  He always had a hard time with that difference, the T and the Th.  But it was endearing, and sometimes I’d tease him, calling out “Lucy….. I’m Home!….”.

Then came a time where I hadn’t seen or heard from him in days, which was unusual.  I had his number in Tahoe, and one night with great trepidation, I dialed the number.

A woman answered … the one he called “the woman who lives in my house”…

“Is Alcir there?”

She called him to the phone.

“Oh, you’ve made a woman here very unhappy” he scolded.

“Oh I’m so sorry.  I shouldn’t have called.”

“No no, it’s alright.  I’m just going to be here for a while…”

Short and sweet, uncomfortable and strange… I hung up.

I had known he had someone in Tahoe.  Not much else.  I justified everything by the notion that he couldn’t be That happy there, if what was going on here was going on…

I remember the second or third time we were together, when we came back down to earth, and he sat up abruptly, and said “Oh noooo, I cannt Dooo theeees.  I leeeve weeth someone. “

“I know”,  I replied.  “Are you in love with her?”

“I don know….…I don know” he trailed off.

“Well, you’re here now” and I shrugged.  He looked long and hard at me.

And then he dressed and left to dive.

And right around that same time, early on, and I’m not counting that first time when he snuck into my bed like the bandido he was, …. As was our way, we went into another reality, our world where there was no time, no ground, no division between us.  It was truly mystical… and then he sat up quickly.

“Oh Nooo”….. he shook his head, his hands like they were holding it on.

“I deeed not know eet would bee like theees…” his voice soft and a bit lost, his head slowly moving from side to side.

“I did” I replied. “that’s why I kept you away for that week”

“Reeeely?”

“Yes….”    For from the first, I knew that once I stepped off that cliff, it would never be the same for me.

When he came to retrieve his things once more, and it was funny, for he always seemed to leave something to come back for….I walked into my studio and as I began to ascend the ladder, I asked how he was doing…

“Oh much better now” he grinned, looking up, and as I glanced back, I understood the wicked pleasure in his smile.

Once when we were making love, and he was above me, staring into my eyes as he so often did, his body stroking mine in every way possible, words came from his lips in a soft dark voice…

“Oh, yooo’re a Gooooood Wooooman………. What am I going to doooo weeth you?”

”You’ll think of something…” I whispered.

I loved my house.  It was my hippie haven, with little rooms here and there, places to sit outside, decks and landings.  Handmade, pieced together, I didn’t care.  I truly loved it.  It was a sculpture that took form over many years with many owners, and it resonnated with my lifestyle.  There came a time, as often did in my renter’s life, that the owner wanted, needed to sell.   It had been on the market for many months, but nothing had really taken shape.  Now the owner took charge, and as it turned out, took charge of my Life.  There was one time that I Really hated my status as a single self employed mother, and wished there was a Man behind me when I spoke with the owner man guy.

His situation was desperate I guess, and so much so that he and his family came out from Colorado and asked me to leave while they Lived there (yes!…can you believe it?) and proceeded to sell it themselves.  It was Terrible.

My girls and my animals and I all had to camp around during that week, I couldn’t get any work done in my studio, and I was Sure he wouldn’t sell it…….. but he did.  It was devastating.  He and his family really never acknowledged what they put me through, and after that, I had a month to move out.

Rentals were hard to find, especially for a single woman with children and animals, and self employed to top it off.  I was part timing at St Orres, a glamorous inn and restaurant on a hill of Hwy 1.  with panoramic ocean views and the best food… but still, I lived precariously.

To add even more stress, it was Renaissance Faire time, and right now I have no idea how I managed to accomplish it all.  The Faire means Three Months of weekends, building a booth, studying Renaissance lingo and costumes…they kept changing the rules every year…. and Making Stuff to Sell.  It tires me just remembering …  but somehow I found a Wonderful, but very different house, and the owner was a woman…. a single woman!  Yeah!… and she decided she’d let me rent it.  I remember arriving at my faire booth and calling out to my faire partner….”I got it!  I got my house!”  and we did a happy dance.

And What a house.  I called it my Glam House.  Somehow I knew I wouldn’t be there a long time, but I decided I would enjoy it while I could.

Get this:  Five Levels.  Two master bedrooms with bath.  Three smaller bedrooms… and they left me a Huge couch that wrapped around one corner of the level with windows and a big screen TV… big for then anyway.  The entire house was wall to wall carpets… Shelves for books, window views, Two Acres which had a lot of woods, and even a large …no Super large aluminum shed/workshop thing that could have eventually been rented out to someone as well.  The kitchen was super, and the lower deck… there were several… had a hot tub that could easily handle a party of twelve.   Oh yes, and an attached single car garage to use as a studio.  All for $600 a month… unbelievable, No?  …..this was 1986.

I was sad to leave my little boat house, that had cradled and nourished and protected me for three years, and the last day crept quickly near.  Then it was the last night.  I recall a thought blurting out from my brain, erupting without hindrance… oh if only I had someone here to share my last night with.  If only He was here.  But it seemed too much to ask.

He’d been gone for several weeks, and I can’t remember if it was because of the urchin season… they had breaks that they had to abide by… or his business in Tahoe, which I never really understood… something about a snow cleaning business….but anyway, he was gone.

My girls and I were in the far end, the bedroom with bath that had been my oldest daughters room, before she left for college.  We were watching TV, I was on the floor enveloped in a bean bag chair, the same sucking me in to the netherlands of the floor, sinking me down, cradling me in soft surrender….and very mellow from eats and wine…

A knock came…

Piney went to the door, and then rushed back to me.

“Mom! Mom!! Oh my god mom…. You’ll never guess who’s here!  Get up, Get up!”  and I remember groaning and slowly rolling off that beanbag world, wishing I could just stay there forever, I was so tired.

I literally crawled to the doorway, with a clear view to the entry way.  And who stood there, hands on hips, in his bright green BARBADOS SWIM TEAM sweatshirt, Varnet sunglasses and a big fat grin…

I swear, I was awake and up and over to him, and I began punching his  shoulder, yelling…

“I don’t know whether to kiss you or kill you”, …..and then falling into his arms.

It was always like that.  The joy always overcame the frustrating and unpredictable side of him that drove me mad.

He walked to the open door, hung off the railing and called to his diving buddy in the van….

“See?  She’s happy to see me!  Jest looook at dat smile…” and drew me close.  We were both grinning from ear to ear…

The next day, knowing I was moving, he left to dive, and said he’d be back to help.  And he was.  Along with several friends with trucks and hands, we managed to cart out almost everything of mine, and drop it into the next house.

When he saw the new house, he took a deep breath.

“You do VooDoo?  How deeed you fine this house?   You dooo voodoo for meee…. I wan a meeelion doelars… eeets worth ten pearcent, an a month in Montecarlo”

“OK…!  I can do some visualizations…”

“It’s a good thing you showed up when you did…. you wouldn’t have known where I was!” I chided…

“Naaaaa…. I’d have found you” he scoffed, and it pleased me to no end, the way his confidence created confidence.

Long time later, when I reminded him of his offer, he laughed out loud and told me…

“Ha! Ten Pearcent?  No way!!  I might as well just maaaarry you…”

The next couple days, I settled in, and he came over to help get that hot tub started.  Oh, he couldn’t wait.  He walked out onto the deck, which had to be 5 feet off the ground, took hold of top of the over 3 feet tall railing, and in one perfect movement, went over it, landing on the ground below… like a cat.  He looked up briefly, just to make sure I had been watching, then proceeded to check everything, reset the motor, and get it going.

And oh my, did we enjoy that hot tub.  It was simply amazing, under the stars, slow swims across, melting together in the middle of nothing but us, nothing but our breath, our bodies…..and our hearts.