Taking it to the next level.

I have always enjoyed jokes about people hearing voices and what the voices say.
--
The other day, NDN comes over to say hi and she is wearing a great T-shirt. It says,
I hear voices
And they don’t like you!

I immediately thought of this scenario:
There is a couple sitting in a café. She is breaking up with the guy and she says: “Honestly, it not you, it’s me.” Then she hits her head with the palm of her hand. “Actually, it’s the voices I hear. And they don’t like you!”
--
The other day we were visiting WG’s Aunt Obie. She said the doctor was a little concerned because her heart murmur was a little louder and he wanted to run some tests. She said didn’t even know she had a heart murmur.
“And you thought you were starting to hear voices!” I said. Aunt Obie had a good laugh over that one.

Chasing something?

If I lay here, if I just lay here.
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
Snow Patrol

I like the song a lot; I can understand the feeling. Last week, this song woke me three different times. Not a good song to wake up to. For after I turned the alarm off, I rolled over and snuggled next to my wife. Could I just lie there? Let the world spin outside our door? It can wait. It’s so much better just lie there with my head next to hers, feel her warmth.
But of course I can’t. So I give her a little kiss on the cheek and say, “Good morning honey. It’s time to get up.”
She turns and looks at me through half opened eyes and smiles at me. A soft warm hug is shared, the world is still far away.

But the lines of the song haunt me on the dog walk. For I am not fully awake and my mind makes odd connections. One of those odd connections is to something an old friend of mine asked me almost two years ago. We were chatting on the phone and out of the blue she asked me-
“If I had asked you to marry me, would you have said yes?”
During the next two seconds, I had to jump back to a time long ago. I was what? Maybe nineteen? Twenty? How did I really feel about her?
“Yes, I would have.”
I don’t remember the next thing she said and the conversation shifted to something else.

But I felt a certain disquiet from her question, for it’s not something I ever thought about. When a relationship ends, it ends. You don’t sit and wonder about ‘might have been’, unless…

For you can endlessly wonder what would have happened if you asked the shy girl out? If you went left, not right? If she offered you a cup of coffee, instead of the glass of wine? All those times you made a choice, or a choice was made for you.

I haven’t thought much about what if’s, for my life has been good. And it continues to be good. All the choices I have made have lead me here, lying next to WG each morning, wishing the world would stay away for just a few more minutes, so I could enjoy just us.

The disquiet comes from the thought that my friend doesn’t might not feel the same as I, when she is lying next to her husband. I hope not, for I would like to think, hope, that she is as happy as I am.

And it would bother me immensely if I knew she was wondering if perhaps she should have asked me.

Don’t ask, I won’t tell

The other night, I dreamt I was staying at…, well let us just say the house of a certain female. And in this dream, in the middle of the night, she crawled into my bed; naked and glorious!
(I know that’s redundant. All women, when naked, are glorious. But I digress.)
Warm, and wonderful, I remember her pretty face. The warmth of her soft, smooth skin; the feel of her ample br...in my hands.
(okay, maybe not quite as ample in real life, but this is a dream.)

I was thinking about the dream, as I walked the dog this morning. This is one of those things that you just don’t tell a person. Especially her. For I am certain that if she knew I had a dream where we…, well she would probably spend the next few hours trying to scrub off the imaginary taint of where I might have touched her.

What is most amusing is that she was the subject of a dream. For in real life, it would never happen. I am just not her type. But that’s okay. It’s better that way. We know who we are. We know and respect each other’s personal boundaries, know which lines we will never cross. And is because of them, we can be friends. Friends without all that sex stuff getting in the way.

Which means we can be friends for a long time.

Darkness Never Falls

It can be fun to take little phrases, combine them is such a way, that they are twisted into something quite unexpected.

Take my friends I call my Night Creatures. I call them that, for they work by night on the graveyard shift.
Take also the phrase they have used when I hesitate to help them; ‘You know you can’t resist me!’
--
It was early evening, as I walked through the park to meet them. The hot tropical sun had just gone down and the shadows were coming out to play. As I watched the shadows grow I realized; darkness never falls. It slowly pools around the trees and shrubs, filling the low-lying areas. It fills the gaps between things and slowly obscures the ground. Soon the area along the path is hard to see, even if the sky still has a faint glow. The stars begin to come out as the land around slips into the night.
And then I see them, coming down the path. Smiles on their faces as they see me. Happy faces in the darkness. Hungry to see me, desiring my company. Their diaphanous gowns shroud their subtle curves and shapes. All dressed up to go someplace special. They were mysterious, when I asked them where they were taking me.

They seemed a little different, as they got closer, almost gliding along the path. Their smiles were a little different too. Subtle changes that I barely noticed.
Silently, they flowed closer; until they stood before me. My gaze swept over them and was caught by the small one’s eyes. Dark eyes, so much darker than I ever notice before. The black void sucked me in until all I could see was her eyes. Hungry for something. I tried to pull my gaze away, look at anything else. “You cannot resist me.” She said as she smiled. I couldn’t focus on her bright white smile, I only felt it. Felt the hunger emanating from her, waves of desire washed over me, augmented by the hunger from the other two.
They moved close to me and I felt their hands on me. One wrapped her arms around my waist and the other two put an arm around me.
“You cannot resist us.” She said as one hand slid up to my neck. She pulled my head down to her and I felt her lips on my neck. Strange, her lips felt cold.

The alarm slowly penetrated my stupor and my eyes resisted opening. Bright sunlight streamed through the hotel window and hurt my eyes. I crawled out of the bed and tried to stand. I wondered what I had drunk the night before; what caused me to feel so weak.
I stumbled to the bathroom and made a pot of coffee. While it brewed, I climbed into the shower. The hot water felt good but made me too relaxed. It made it cooler and that seemed to help me wake up.
I still felt weak, when I emerged from the shower. I poured myself some coffee, hoping it would wake me up.
Just as I was about to shave, I noticed two red welts on the inside of my arm. I looked at myself in the mirror and saw that there were more welts on my other arm and my leg.
‘Damn!’ I thought. ‘Bedbugs!’ After all, what else could cause the bites on my skin.

I struggled to pack and then went down to the restaurant to have a late breakfast. I was feeling starved and ate much more then I should. Then it was back to my room and pack my last few things.
The rest of the day was a blur and hard to remember. I nodded off on the cab ride and again in the terminal. I was so glad to get onboard the airplane and sink into the oversized seat in business class. As I lay in my seat and sleep began to overtake me, I remembered something from the night before.

I was looking in her eyes, lost in their black void. I heard her say, “He will be mine.”
“We want him too.” Was their answer.
“He can only belong to one and I am the strongest.” Their silence was their assent.
She pulled her gown off one shoulder, exposing the strangely pale skin above her breast. With her other hand, she drew a sharp fingernail across her skin, cutting a slit in her skin. As the bright red blood flowed out of the wound, she grabbed my head and pulled me to her chest. I felt her blood on my lips, tasted the cool saltiness.
“Drink!” She commanded.
I drank, though I tried not to.
“Now,” she said, “you will be flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood.”

And darkness took me.

Two Scenarios

Odd event at Radio Shack
I was standing in line at the store and I noticed the young woman in front of me. She kept looking at someone/something behind me and to the left. It just seemed like she was nervous, maybe doing something she wasn’t supposed to. She was maybe late teens, early 20’s; 5’3”, Asian, black hair.
She paid cash for her GoPhone, one of those pre-paid phones.
She got her change from the two twenties and left. I paid for my battery and left.

As I was about to start my truck, I saw her come out of the store, followed by an older white guy. He didn’t come out with her, but after her. As if he did not want to be seen as ‘with her’.
He was a little grey haired, jeans and tee shirt. But he was too old looking to be with her and he didn’t look like her dad. He looked like a blue collar worker. She walked up to a white truck parked in front of me, it had the logo of an engineering firm on the door. He unlocked the door and she got in. Then he walked to the driver side and got in.
The whole thing just struck me as odd. Like somehow the two of them hooked up and he was buying her the phone. Like a ‘sugar daddy’. She gets a phone, he gets sex.
I think if he was the dad or a relative, then he would have been at the cash register with her; would have walked out with her.

Now maybe I am reading too much into this, but it seemed odd.

Car shopping
Two weeks later, my twenty-six year old niece called me up and asks me if I would help her shop for a car. Sure.
We stopped at a dealership where I know the sales manager(aka Hunky. Hey, Wonder-Girl and her friends named him that, not me!). Just as I am introducing Niece to Hunky, Hunky’s wife, Coconut-Girl walks in. I make the introductions, then Coconut-Girl leaves.
My Niece ended up buying a nice used car from Hunky and I think we were treated pretty well. (I hate dealing with car buying, hate it, hate it.)
I was careful explaining who my Niece was, for I did not want people to think she was my ‘Niece’ and I the ‘Uncle’.

A week later, Wonder-Girl walks into her semi-monthly girls party. Coconut-girl walks right up to her and says, “So, who is Warty’s cute young girlfriend.”
They both laughed.
--
I think about the two scenarios and despite the possible similarities, I still get a bad vibe about the young lady in Radio Shack. Something there was not right.

Happy VD

Little Shrimp
Willow
Adventure Girl
HSGF
Filet
Skinner
Daughter-Twin
Pip
Danger Girl
(she whom I dare not name)

Just wanted to wish you all a Happy Valentine's day and let you know I am thinking of you.