Past Loves

(Photo: Self-Portrait with a past-lovers’ camera)

When I open the door for her it doesn’t matter that it’s been half a decade or more, my heart swells and tries to leap out of my mouth.

I love her. I love her face, and her smile, and the way the lines on her face have deepened over the years. I love her in a way that makes me feel 19 again, fresh and a little bit reckless.

We were in the same circles back then, friends of friends. I’d heard she’d been flirting with my boyfriend and I was ready to hate her, but then she got a job working at the shitty restaurant where I waited tables. It was like in Wayne’s World when he sees Casandra and Dreamweaver starts playing and everything is slow-mo. I’d never met a woman so smart and quick-witted, so beautiful and self-assured. She tuned into me like a radio. That was almost 25 years ago and when she came in my front door yesterday I felt floored by her in the very same way.

Robin and I had an intense and deep relationship. We bonded over feeling seen, water energy plus water energy, infinite fluidity. When you’re both people-pleasing hypochondriacs there’s a relief in over-thinking together, covering all angles. When you’re both queer, switchy femmes who boys can’t seem to satisfy there’s a thrilling magic to fucking and knowing you can take all the pleasure you need. When you both intellectualize everything emotional because it’s how you learned how to cope with your alcoholic father there’s a mutual understanding. We spoke the same language. Nobody understood like Robin. Nobody knew me like she did. We looked at the world from the same perspective any time we stood together. (How comforting.)

We dated for a short time. We were a cute couple; the curvy tanned bombshell and her snarky dark-haired sidekick. It was ruined by a stupid boy. I regret that I let that happen. We were so young, and it was before Ellen was invented, before gay marriage was even close to being legalized. There were no lesbians we could look to, no awareness about fertility clinics and queer futures, no understanding that this crazy thing we had together was even an option. We both worked hard to stay connected over the years as life took us different places; husbands, children, degrees, and diagnoses. Highs and lows, Robin was always there when I needed her.

The last time I saw her she was going through a tough time and she turned to me, as we buckled her handful of babies into their car seats, and said “could you imagine if we’d just stayed together and did this life even better?”

I had imagined. Many times. In a parallel world we were pioneers, we were astronauts, a groundbreaking lesbian power couple with a gaggle of kids and a string of successes. Ahead of our time and thriving. Instead we held each other and cried in her minivan, in the rubble of our current lives. Wishing together, for a moment.

When she showed up yesterday the years between now and then disappeared, like they always do. I made her tea and she sat on my couch and I wondered right away if giving her a foot rub would be against the rules. Her rules, or her husband’s I suppose.

We don’t talk much about him. I wonder what he thinks about me. Does he know that we were lovers or am I just an “old friend”? Does he resent me? Does he know she’s here right now? When he calls she picks up but she doesn’t mention it. I’m quiet. He asks a stupid question, she rolls her eyes at me as she answers and I gently touch the arch of her foot, which she has stretched across the couch, almost on my lap. Is she doing it on purpose?

I wonder, for the millionth time in our quarter century of this very nervous gay dance; does she want me to make a move, or is she relaxed because she trusts that I will not? I want her to feel comfortable more than I want to push any agenda of my own. I want to be a soft place for her to land until we die. I don’t want anything to ruin that.

She won’t let me go when we hug goodbye. Twice I release her and she just holds steady. The third time it happens I giggle. “No,” she mumbles into the crook of my neck, her arms wrapped around me. “I’m sorry but I’m not letting you go,” she says. I pull her towards me a little tighter, I don’t need to be told twice. I hold her and breathe her in, my hand on the small of her back as the familiar scent of her shampoo does things to my brain.

She’s going to be around a lot, she tells me. She’ll be coming by, she promises. I won’t hold my breath. You gotta take that kind of love as it comes.