--THE ROOT OF ALL MY ACCIDENTS IS STUCK BETWEEN MY EYE

           

                                                              Face Book

I miss you sometimes.  I’m sorry, I can’t help it.  Is this a bad idea???

            His note on the social network site couldn’t have come at a better time, but of course it tore my heart to shreds all over again.

            Two days later we were in the Sheraton downtown, retracing all the olds sins, drunk with pleasure and Chianti.  After twelve years nothing was odd, just familiar and natural, the whole riding-the-bike thing true enough.  Still a clandestine urgency lurked about, providing a dangerous moodiness impossible to ignore.

            He continually asked me if I was okay about this.

            I kept my eyes open the entire time we kissed, even as I climaxed.  His face writhed and twisted against the fulfillment of so much desire.  He said he wanted to scream, which I took as a ploy since he could easily stab me in a room with walls this thick and no one would hear my cries.   

            He showed me pictures of his kids and none of his wife.  David, the boy, had his beat-up boxer nose and devilish smirk.  The girl looked like no one.

            “I can’t get enough of you,” he said, and it was true because while coming during a surprise second round he said, “I love you.”  His face was buried in a pillow, thereby muffling his voice, and so he might have actually said, “I dug you,” but I have always had a sturdy imagination.  

            “I can’t believe I found you again after all this time,” he whispered into the valley formed between the taut tendons of my neck.

            He wanted me again and I let him.  This time he skipped the condom, same as he had all those years ago.  As he bore into me with his ape-like brutality, pawing and curling and panting, I remembered the cold clay stillness of the clinic that day and how I’d asked what it was, what it had been, and when the lady there said it was a bad idea to know the sex I said who was she to decide? 

                                                                        ***

            After he’s gone I light a cigarette even though this is a no-smoking room (aren’t they all anymore?)  I watch plumes rush to the ceiling like frightened genies.  I watch how they flatten out becoming an upside down rug against the crystal spackling.  I’ve been fighting back a grin since he sent me that electronic message-- as if this had all been his idea, as if I hadn’t known where he was or precisely what he’d been doing all these years.

            Don’t think I haven’t thought this through.  I never make the same mistake twice.  I have photographs of my own, an entire scrapbook of our imaginary son who looks a lot like a certain someone.

 Okay, so now I will smile.  After all, if he tries to end it, I’m prepared this time.