Violeta Noir

There are suddenly too many creatures wandering around my freshly waxed forest.

Okay.

Freshly might be generous.

It’s been a couple of weeks.

Still.

There seems to be an unusual amount of playmates wandering around lately.

Pint Sized Mechanic, however, seems to be dawdling.

This is particularly amusing considering the last time I saw him, I teased him about making me wait so long that by the time he finally appeared, I was entirely too eager for him.

Apparently he took my enthusiasm as evidence of scarcity.

Cute.

He told me he is a one woman man.

I did not tell him I was a one man woman.

I merely said, “That makes sense.”

Those are not the same sentence.

I did not correct whatever assumption bloomed afterward because I wasn’t asked a question.

And now he says good morning.

He checks in.

He has wandered onto another one of my social pages.

What he has not done is secure another playdate.

I also did not anticipate leaving our last encounter with a pulled hip flexor.

There was a moment when Pint Sized Mechanic was drilling me so hard I could feel my leg protesting, like it was considering abandoning the rest of my body altogether.

He was deep.

He was big.

I noticed the warning.

I did not care.

This turned out to be poor orthopedic judgment.

For several days, sitting too long meant standing up like somebody’s eighty seven year old auntie and taking a few careful steps while my body reconsidered every decision that had brought us here.

My body has recovered faster than Pint Sized Mechanic’s sense of urgency.

Still, he seems perfectly content.

I suspect he believes himself to be my only lover.

I have not disturbed him.

Sometimes it is kinder to let a man enjoy his imagination.

Besides, I have been occupied.

Wounded Boy has been taking up an increasingly suspicious amount of my time.

Sunday morning.

Monday after school.

Tuesday after school.

Tomorrow, a date.

He knew about my injured hip.

He did not know its provenance.

Wounded Boy believes I pulled my hip flexor sleeping.

I told him I got tangled in my sheets, overextended my leg and woke up injured.

The Archivist would like the record to reflect that a bed was, in fact, involved.

The sheets simply had an accomplice.

I didn’t tell Wounded Boy that part.

There is a reason for this.

One of his three masks used to conduct what I affectionately call the Inquisition.

Rapid fire questions.

One after another.

He wanted answers immediately, preferably before I had even decided whether the question deserved one.

I would simply stop answering.

Once, after an especially enthusiastic round of questioning, he finally yelled at me to tell him the truth.

So naturally, I summoned the finest courtroom drama performance available to me.

“You can’t handle the truth!”

Then I tickled him.

The Inquisition was adjourned.

He still laughs about that.

So do I.

I don’t think he realizes how honest I was being.

Wounded Boy can’t handle the truth.

Not all of it.

He says he accepts me.

I think he believes that.

But our greatest ruptures have happened when I’ve been honest.

When the woman standing in front of him becomes incompatible with the woman living inside his imagination.

So I learned.

The Archivist edits.

She omits.

Occasionally, she provides an alternate explanation involving fitted sheets.

Wounded Boy lives partly in fantasy.

And I am one of his favorite ones.

Sometimes he tells me he still dreams about getting me pregnant.

Sometimes he wishes aloud that he were my husband instead of someone else’s.

That mine was the home he returned to.

That some other version of our lives exists where the choices were different and somehow we ended up belonging to one another in all the conventional ways we never have.

I don’t argue with him anymore.

I don’t explain why I don’t particularly want the life he is imagining.

I don’t ask what exactly he intends to do about the wife, the house, the family or any of the other inconvenient pieces reality insists on placing around his fantasy.

I simply tell him:

“Next lifetime.”

Sometimes, in the very same breath, I remind him that I believe this is my last one.

He laughs.

Or ignores the contradiction.

Perhaps that is us in miniature.

Wounded Boy dreams.

The Archivist lets him.

I have learned that not every fantasy needs to be dragged underneath fluorescent lighting and questioned until it confesses to being impossible.

Some things are beautiful precisely because nobody intends to build them.

He can imagine being my husband.

He can imagine coming home to me.

He can imagine children that will never exist and a life I have never asked him to give me.

And I can kiss him and say:

Next lifetime.

Knowing perfectly well I have no intention of returning.

Perhaps that is cruel.

Perhaps it is tender.

Perhaps it is simply the language lovers develop when reality has already established the borders of the country they inhabit.

Because the truth is that I don’t want to be Wounded Boy’s wife.

I don’t want his life.

I want Wounded Boy.

There is a difference.

And lover is the place where I can have exactly that.

The man without requiring the life attached to him.

The love without pretending it needs to become a ladder.

The fantasy without mistaking it for an architectural plan.

So when he dreams aloud, I don’t wake him.

I merely refuse to climb into the dream with him.

Next lifetime, Wounded Boy.

Next lifetime.

There just won’t be one.

And perhaps that is why I told him about the sheets.

A partner would need the truth.

Not merely the beautiful parts.

Not the edited version.

Not the Archivist’s carefully selected pages.

Me.

And I would need to trust that telling him the truth would not repeatedly threaten the relationship itself.

I don’t.

That is one of the many reasons Wounded Boy will remain exactly where I have placed him.

Lover.

Perhaps always.

That isn’t a punishment.

It isn’t a demotion.

I love Wounded Boy.

All three of his masks.

I have met each of them.

I know which one kisses me.

Which one fights me.

Which one runs.

I know the one who becomes sharp when frightened. The one who curls into me. The one who makes me furious. The one who makes me laugh. The one who looks at me like I am the only thing in the room.

They are all him.

I am no longer waiting for one mask to defeat the others so I can decide which one is real.

They are all real.

I accept him as he is.

Acceptance is not the same thing as suitability.

And love is not a promotion.

That distinction became particularly clear this week when Wounded Boy encountered the injury allegedly inflicted upon me by an aggressive set of sheets.

He accommodated me.

Slowly.

Carefully.

He made love to me like there was nowhere else he needed to be.

His hands wandered through my hair.

He looked into my eyes.

He smiled that ridiculous smile.

He told me how much he loved me.

And I let him.

I didn’t study him while he loved me.

I didn’t search his face for contradiction.

I didn’t measure his tenderness against his marriage, his family, our history or whatever future he keeps insisting he is moving toward.

I didn’t ask the moment to explain itself.

He loved me.

I loved him.

For those few hours, that was enough.

There is something deliciously absurd about being handled with extraordinary tenderness by one lover while he remains blissfully unaware that another lover is responsible for the reason tenderness was required.

I saw no compelling reason to amend the record.

Some truths belong in the Archives.

Which brings me to Chiron.

There is another Stag wandering around my forest now.

This one reads.

Not skims.

Not scrolls looking for something salacious.

Reads.

He is younger than I am, though his eyes don’t look it.

There is something ancient sitting behind them.

A lonely sadness.

Not necessarily a wound.

The Archivist has learned not to confuse intuition with evidence.

I do not know this man’s story yet.

Perhaps nothing wounded him at all.

But something in those eyes reminded me of the centaur who could heal everyone except himself.

So the name came.

Chiron.

And Chiron reads.

That may prove considerably more dangerous than the men who merely want to play with me.

He wandered into my Archives and began asking questions about Wounded Boy.

What was the story there?

If we had been lovers for all these years, why had we never become more?

I gave him the obvious answer first.

Wounded Boy is married.

There is a newborn now.

Chiron observed that it didn’t exactly seem as though Wounded Boy wanted to leave.

I agreed.

Then he said something that followed me home.

“You don’t seem like just an outlet.”

No.

I don’t.

So I explained.

I didn’t like Wounded Boy’s conflict resolution.

He wanted a child.

I did not want the life attached to that desire.

Eventually we settled into lover, and once that frame is established long enough, I think it becomes extraordinarily difficult to leave.

Especially when you’re good at it.

There are rules here.

Anticipation.

Separation.

Reunion.

He has his home.

I have mine.

He comes to me because he wants me.

Not because the electric bill is due.

Not because somebody needs groceries.

Not because there is laundry waiting.

Not because I need him to solve some mundane problem simply because he happens to be the man attached to my household.

I don’t need Wounded Boy to be useful to me.

In a real world sense, he really isn’t.

And I rather enjoy that.

I don’t want his life.

I don’t envy his life.

I don’t look toward his household imagining myself occupying somebody else’s chair.

In fact, I have actively pushed him toward his wife.

Toward his family.

Toward trying again.

Toward not dismantling his home because of me.

And yet lately Wounded Boy keeps telling me he is moving toward me.

Maybe he is.

I can certainly see more of him.

But Chiron’s question made me realize that everyone seems to assume movement must have a destination.

Why were we never more than lovers?

More.

There is that word again.

People have a peculiar habit of treating lover as an unfinished relationship.

A waiting room.

A lesser position occupied until somebody becomes brave enough, healed enough, divorced enough or committed enough to make the relationship real.

I have never believed that.

I love my lovers.

I have said it over and over again.

Love does not make me want to collect them.

It does not automatically make me want their laundry mixed with mine.

It does not make me want their bills, their schedules, their obligations, their domestic labor or every unremarkable Tuesday evening for the rest of my life.

Love makes me love them.

That’s all.

Wounded Boy isn’t waiting in some lesser category until he qualifies for promotion.

Perhaps we have not spent all these years failing to become partners.

Perhaps we have been extraordinarily successful at being lovers.

Chiron asked a question.

The Archivist supplied an answer.

Whether he understands it remains to be seen.

He gets Sunday.

But Chiron isn’t the only new creature in the forest.

There is another Stag arriving Saturday.

This one comes bearing liquor.

He wants me perched on his lap while I tell him stories of my various adventures, which feels less like a date and more like a private audience with an unusually inappropriate Latin Santa Claus.

But Santa doesn’t quite capture him.

There is liquor.

Indulgence.

Storytelling.

Pleasure.

A little mischief.

Dionysus.

Yes.

Dionysus will do.

The Amazonian Ebony Queen will be joining us, which somehow makes the entire arrangement feel less like a date and more like the opening scene of a mythology nobody responsible should have allowed me to write.

Saturday belongs to Dionysus.

Sunday belongs to Chiron.

And then there is Monday.

A tall blond drink of water has appeared.

He hasn’t earned mythology yet.

For now, he is simply tall.

Blond.

And apparently thirsty.

Monday begins with Wounded Boy.

Making love.

Iced coffee.

The beach.

Time.

Then later, the blond gets his opportunity to become interesting.

I am aware of how this sounds.

I am also not particularly troubled by it.

And somewhere in all this I noticed something else.

Chiron is a veteran.

So is Wounded Boy.

So is Pint Sized Mechanic.

Three soldiers have somehow wandered into my unusually populated forest, and each carries himself entirely differently.

I know the wounds of one intimately.

One has recently given me one of my own.

And the third I named Chiron because there was something in his eyes that looked wounded before I knew enough about him to call it anything at all.

Perhaps that means something.

Perhaps it means absolutely nothing.

The Archivist is trying very hard these days not to confuse a beautiful coincidence with prophecy.

Still.

Three soldiers.

One forest.

That feels worth writing in the margins.

Meanwhile, Pint Sized Mechanic is somewhere preparing another good morning text while apparently believing himself to be an only child.

I could correct him.

But again.

He never asked.

He told me he was a one woman man.

I said that made sense.

Perhaps one day he will discover the importance of follow up questions.

Until then, my calendar continues without his input.

Tomorrow, Wounded Boy.

Saturday, Dionysus and the Amazonian Ebony Queen.

Sunday, Chiron and those ancient eyes.

Monday, Wounded Boy gets the daylight, the tenderness, the iced coffee and the beach.

Then the tall blond drink of water gets the evening.

And somewhere among all these men, I remain exactly where I have always been.

Mine.

I can love Wounded Boy without becoming his wife.

I can love my lovers without turning love into ownership.

I can accept a man completely while understanding precisely how close he is allowed to stand.

I can let Wounded Boy dream about another lifetime without surrendering this one.

Maybe that’s the thing everybody keeps misunderstanding.

Love is not a ladder.

There is no prize waiting at the top.

There are only relationships and the shapes we choose to give them.

Wounded Boy has his.

Pint Sized Mechanic has his.

The others haven’t been around long enough to discover theirs.

And the Archivist?

She has an unusual amount of playmates.

And a hip flexor that is finally beginning to forgive her.