Blog Notes: I used to tap into the energy of the stream to write my heart. Lately I have found it difficult and complicated to put my heart in my posts. It's nice to entertain or enlighten, but I am really on the stream to share my heart. I have nearly polished the Gypsy story out of existance and I want to finish it.

So not being a great teacher or someone that has evolved enough in society to really tell other people how to feel or how to live.....I am attempting to return to my roots...smaltzy poetry and the people that I love...my intuition..my story...my heart...my words.

The following is a repost of one of the first stories (with some changes) that I wrote on the stream. I will go where it takes me like my old friend Diesel suggested to me almost 2 years ago I will "Read what I want ....Write what I want...and try to reveal my heart here..."

All the witnesses have died or moved away....and I have changed my heart a hundred times since I lived this.. ..

DANIEL

When I say his name I still remember the energy and the intellect. I can still bring his face to me. Old passions die hard. He was kinetic. He was a blonde, with blue eyes, and older (weren't they all back then). He was smart and intense. He was a tall rangy Yankee. When I met him I had never heard the expression "Bust my chops" before. I did not know what I wanted to do with my life. I was in my early 20's and it was an exciting time. I had a job that gave me enough latitude to work with other alcoholics. My avocation and my heart belonged to them. I was studying metaphysics with some friends and mentors. I had been saved from certain death (alcoholism) and I believed all things were possible.

I really hated this guy on sight. I had always liked guys with a little meat on their bones and he was almost skinny. I was drawn to construction workers and men who were physical. Dan was a manager for the local phone company. His career was on the upswing. He had been transferred from up North to run a new division. He seemed too smart to me. He seemed a little haunted and a lot driven. He was a Sagitarian. I was a Leo. And after all he was a "Yankee" and I was a Texan. Our worlds did not blend until they crashed together.

I really liked men (back then) I thought I could control. Hindsight is 20-20. I didn't want to have to think in relationships. I changed men about as often as I changed my moods. I believed it was because being in charge was important to me. Still compulsive about sex I was really a user of men. The last refuge of the committment phobic is the ability not to care.

To make a long story short he told his story in a group of drunks. Bending over to lean on the podium in a faded room   he shared his life. I couldn't remember a word he said later, I just knew I had seen him for the first time.  I found his eyes for the first time. We were the only two people in that room and I was never the same.

After the meeting he sought me out. We talked for two hours while he braced himself against a door frame. It looked innocent enough. He told me about his wife, that he had married young. She was unhappy and wanted to move back to home. He described his grandmother, who raised him. She had practically achieved sainthood and was still alive. He talked about his daughter and his great love for her. He talked about being a Union official, and how they were trying to silence him with a promotion. He talked about being a drunk, that had a way out.

Later he would tell me I reminded him of his grandmother and I took it as a compliment. Like all married men looking for another woman, he was unhappily married. Like all married men he had a lot of regrets. Like most married men he used his daughter as an excuse for for staying where he was.

At first we just made reasons to see each other. We talked and laughed and hung out. There was no sex. I thought there were lines I would not cross. Eventually, my justifications were carefully in place, I was a single woman. Any morality fences would be broken on his end, not mine.

I talked to my sponsor, she warned me against this impulse driven relationship. "I know you'll do what you want, anyway." I figured it was because she was a Catholic. I talked to my spiritual mentor she claimed Sagitarian men were often unfaithful, and we needed to wait till we caught up with each other in the next life. I went to a tarot reader. "He's not for you." I was warned three times, so I couldn't ever say I didn't know.

I wasn't an upstream swimmer, and the undertow was tugging at me. I cut off my relationships with other men. I deep cleaned my apartment. There were more excuses to see each other. He was teaching me about the phone business. I got a new job just blocks from where he worked. We met every day in the park for lunch. We professed love for each other long before we slept together. When we slept together the world shifted and it didn't shift back until he was gone. On Thanksgiving, we stared at each other over someone else's turkey. I didn't think then about his wife or his daughter.

I left the old men and the poker game to go out with him after meetings. Some of them raised their eyebrows. My old men would make comments. It was just like in the movies. I had come to believe that we had other lifetimes together. I had come to hope (like most women in affairs with married men) that he would leave his wife. I never asked him to, but I hoped.

The affair lasted two years. My soul suffered two lifetimes. We were a weekend plus lunch couple. I had him for some part of every holiday, but I couldn't take him home to my parents. Sometimes he stayed the night. He told his wife he was volunteering with alcoholics. We 12 stepped artist Tim together. I had a used rubber in my pocket the whole time. He fixed up my car. He started working out and bought a motorcycle. He talked about how he couldn't stand to be around his wife. She cussed him out in her native tongue and was paralyzed with depression. He bought her things. A car, a diamond bracelet, a new house. He got me a motorcycle helmet and a cowboy hat. I was happy with my trinkets. She really wanted him.

Looking back there were three things that ended the relationship. First I learned that his wife laid out his clothes for him every morning. Second, he set a date to leave his family for me. He was going to tell her he was leaving when she returned from home from visiting her Mama. And third I met her.......

It was a Sunday morning. She had been home to visit her family and had asked him to show her his group after he picked her up at the airport. Just hours before he had left my bed. She was tall and exotic looking. She had a beautiful accent and warm brown eyes. She had long flowing hair and a shy smile. She wasn't what I had imagined. She grabbed my arm like I was a long lost friend. I wasn't sure if she knew it was me, but she knew it was someone. "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer" ran through my head.

We talked for a while. Dan tried to join in. He was fidgety and jumpy. She smiled sadly.."I think I will go home soon for good. We all have to go somewhere when our lives change. My daughter should be back East." I felt no animosity from her. Maybe she didn't really know or maybe she was giving it one last shot in the dark. She seemed tired not desperate.I knew as we talked in the old kitchen at my group, that I owed her an amends. It was over for her, but I was through too. She never mentioned her marriage or that her life was falling apart. She talked about her daughter and being Puerto Rican in Texas. She was gracious and shy and gentle.

Sometimes when you feel guilty you are. Dan called me from his house. They had been talking and were going to work out the details of a separation. He hadn't mentioned any other woman. My heart lurched. "Wait" I begged him. "If you want out OK. Don't leave her for me." He was dumbstruck. I got mean. "How could I ever trust you when I see what you've done to her." Suddenly I was her advocate. "You stay with Bianca, it's where you belong. I'm not the type of woman to lay your clothes out in the morning."

What we did to her.... We saw each other a few more times, but it was over when she grabbed my arm. I knew as we talked in the old kitchen at my home group, that I owed her an amends. I had tried to pay my debt by sending him home for good. I hoped that somehow the two of us had been working on our karma. I hope we didn't create a new karmic debt to be faced in the future. He stopped by one day to let me know that he had requested a transfer to another state. He couldn't be in the same town with me it hurt too much. I gave him the motorcycle helmet and told him to give it to his wife.

The odds are that Dan went on to other women, but I never had another married man. He came back into town after a few weeks. He brought me roses and wanted to talk about us. I wouldn't go back to his hotel with him and I wouldn't take him home with me.

There are no morals here, just like there were no morals back then. I regret that I hurt someone, but I don't regret loving him. On November nights when the weather has not quiet changed, I remember his smile and his long hands. I remember being pulled through a tunnel into his life. I can forgive us. We are riding together on the motorcycle and there is no turning back.