Totally got my help desk ticket number today and the very nice help desk man said no one else had reported my problem which totally makes me a special snowflake, right? So I was going around singing "She's Got a Ticket" by Tracy Chapman unless I was singing "Love Will Keep Us Together", which is the song I sing when I do passports for families or married couples and put a sticky note on them asking the State Department to keep their applications together.
Unless love doesn't exist. In that 1970's porno Emmanuelle, her heart is broken and she is told by some guy, her husband, I think, that love does not exist. I was pretty horrified by that, but I thought it was probably true at the time and have pretty much believed it every since.
I'd fall in love on a regular basis, or get crushes, rather and excoriate myself for it over the years.
Yeah, she's hot. But she's straight and married. Just stop it already. So I walked around with blinders on. Don't look, you can't have it. I didn't want a woman who looked like me. I didn't always know the word for it, but what I wanted was a femme and I have been captivated by them my whole life.
So one breezes into my life in 2007. It's because of work, so it's just another proximity crush and sometimes she came around when she didn't particularly have any real reason to be there and I realized one time that I had contentedly gazed into her cleavage the whole time she was there and hoped she hadn't noticed. I was always happy to see her and I was afraid she knew it and was either revolted by it or maybe happy to take advantage of it if it made her work life easier.
One day she called and opened with "Have I told you how much I love you?"
My heart is a combination lock and she found the first number.
Click.
I believed she was teasing me, probably because of the cleavage-gazing and tried to dismiss my feelings. She's only teasing. She had a husband and children and she was a damn Bible thumping straight woman. So stop it already.
A few days later, I became privy to information that the husband might be going away. She could be free. She could be mine.
Click.
I was in love. Shit. Stop it already.
I only saw her at work and I had no pretext to see her anywhere else. I had to face reality, I had another crush that would pass in time, probably replaced by the next crush. Stop it already.
Her divorce was going to be final in the summer of 2008, she told me so herself. She had to stay in town for four more years until her youngest child was done with school. I was thrilled with that knowledge. But then she got a job somewhere else, so I didn't see her anymore. Stop it.
I was closing down on a Saturday and a voice called my name through the dutch door. I thought it was someone else but when I opened it, there she was. I took her money for the after hours transaction and made a note so I could put the money in on Monday.
Before I closed the door, she said it.
"I miss you so much."
I think I said something lame like "I'll see you around." But I am afraid the pain and confusion showed through on my face but I don't know what she meant and I didn't ask and I didn't know what to think and I definitely didn't do what I really wanted to do which is take her into my arms and kiss her really hard. But I was at work and that's the kind of thing that can get you fired and I still liked my job, mostly, back then.
On that following Monday, I put the transaction in and put the receipt in the bottom of my drawer. And there it stayed, my most shameful and embarrassing secret.
"There is no love, as true as the love that dies untold."
There is no love.
I told myself that this meant I needed to get out and meet people and I did. I couldn't deny my needs and I discovered what a femme was and understood better what their power was and was pleasantly surprised to find there were women who were attracted to me although they were often in other states or even other countries. So I bought plane tickets and crossed state lines and mostly disappointed them when I told them there was no such thing as love.
I saw her one time in a community theatre production and thought perhaps I was getting better because I was just as interested in the other women in the show, so perhaps her power was finally waning. And I learned she had gotten remarried. Shit.
A few months ago, I had a dream about her and in this dream she wasn't attractive any more and I wasn't in love, so I was finally free! Hooray!
Then I went to another show. I went on the last night and I got a seat front row, on the end. I could see she was going to be in it, but so what. I was not in love any more. It would be fine.
When she first came out, the stage was dark. She sat down on a chair on the edge of the stage, just a few feet away from me. Even in the dark, I could see she still looked great. And I again became just a pathetic old dyke coveting some guy's wife.
She called me at work the next week, to discuss an issue with a possible customer of hers or maybe mine and she was worried I might not know who she was, since she had remarried. I told her I knew her new name from the show.
I didn't tell her how I had stalked her on Facebook and how my heart was twisted and broken beyond repair and how I envied her totally awesome husband.
Life went on and the receipt stayed in the bottom of the drawer along with my shameful and embarrassing secret and my summer romance went totally sideways because my heart is not just three sizes too small but totally missing, carried around in the purse of a woman who cares nothing for me or DOES SHE?!! Did she see me sitting there in the dark, a few feet away, drinking her in? Did she really need to call me that following week?
A few days ago I fished the receipt out of my drawer and laminated it. I carry it around in my wallet, in my left hip pocket. It's a picture that only I can see, of my most shameful and embarrassing secret, of a beautiful woman standing behind a dutch door, telling me she missed me. A picture of a butch sitting in the dark, a few feet away from the most beautiful woman in the world. The butch drinks her in and is lost forever.
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