She was not one of the great loves of my life, but she was

Redstone

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Sat Jul-24-10 12:40 PM
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She was not one of the great loves of my life, but she was

Edited on Sat Jul-24-10 01:17 PM by Redstone

definitely one of the most recurrent ones, as we intersected now and again - actually quite frequently - through the latter half of the 1970s; which is not to diminish the passion sparked by each encounter and re-encounter. Not at all.

My Debbie.

I think of her today, as I remember how we met: Me sitting down at the table in the bar where she sat with her friends, all strangers to me, I inviting myself to that table because the bar was crowded and there was an open chair, and her remarking almost immediately that she was an artist, and that I had the most graceful hands she'd ever seen, and would I allow her to paint a portrait of my hands, some day? (Beats the hell out of "What's your sign?" as a pickup line, doesn't it, especially given that this was back in the inexpressibly callow days of the 1970s.)

I was a classical and flamenco guitarist then, so of course any praise of my pampered hands worked a charm.

How many other times had I sat in a workman's bar, drinking a Rock and a shot of Jack, only to end up having to punch the shit out of a stranger of a steelworker with my hand that he'd noticed and criticized, the right hand with the beautifully-manicured and polished fingernails (the homegrown fingerpicks) - not that the ignorant fuck would take the time to notice that the nails of my LEFT hand were persecuted beyond existence...

But those are nuances. And nuances that are beside the point as well, historical filler though they may provide. And Debbie, I'll mention even though it's not germane to that point either, was one of those women of southern Italian heritage who, although she may not have been a Playboy-class beauty, possessed that smoky sexuality (I'm not going to cheapen that quality by diluting it to the term 'sensuality') that simply would NOT allow itself to be resisted.

At least not by me.

I think of Debbie today (Did I refer to her as 'my' Debbie above? Forgive me for that arrogance, Deb; I know you were never 'mine' any more than you were anyone's other than your own) as I look at my hands, those once-agents of my identity, now long and irretrievably lost to arthritis and overuse. I've not been able to use those hands to coax the sounds from a guitar; those sounds that would bring me to something as close to tears as anything ever could, those sounds that would open a woman's heart to the feelings that would be the same from a man's heart, though he'd not show them in public (unless he were Spanish) for well over ten years now.

Those hands are no longer so elegant that they attract the notice of an artistic woman. These days, they attract only the notice of joint-replacement specialists, and perhaps the odd stranger who might note the bone spurs.

Deb, I'm sorry. I apologize that I have not been able to maintain the hands that brought us together (and the ones, I hope, that you remember bringing you so much pleasure) to the standard that you would have expected that I should have done.

But you weren't close to perfect yourself, kiddo. Were you?

None of that matters now.

All that matters today is this: I look at my hands, and I think of you, Debbie. Go with God.

Redstone