IT WASN'T SHORT & IT WASN'T SWEET

It was early morning. I was still feeling the effects on a night of heavy drinking. Feeling more affectionate than amorous, I reached over to embrace her, but she wasn't there. For the record, she hasn't been their for more than two years. In fact, I haven't seen her in more than two years. She is living in Dallas and I have remained on the border in South Texas. Only our daughter, who is in college, provides me with updates, which are always circumspect. If she asks, tell your mother the many favors I have done for you to make your stay in school more pleasant. She won't ask my daughter coolly responds.

From the beginning many years ago we were madly in love both physically and intellectually. She was stunning, her pulchritude only matched by her brains. She was outgoing and articulate. As a nurse, she had earned the reputation that every doctor wanted her at his side during a difficult surgery. I was at the college teaching world literature while trying to escape my anonymity as a writer. Fortunately, I wasn't seeking fame and fortune. Attaining some recognition, however, wasn't out of the question.

We lived comfortably in those days. We ate and drank well and shared several vacations that took us throughout the United States, Mexico and Canada. She was Hispanic. Both her parents had been born in Mexico and she spoke perfect Spanish. I had studied Spanish for a half century, much of my knowledge derived from reading the great South American writers. I could carry my own. Spanish plays such a pivotal part in my life that a person has to be bilingual to appreciate me. Much of me can solely be expressed in my second language, particularly anything nuanced. 

We were happy. We both found each other sexually pleasing, but time, causing us to become increasingly bored with each other's body, took its toll. To the best of my knowledge I was the initial culprit when I strayed, but she had had a robust and lustful past and once told me that after the first time she had intercourse with a new partner, he bored her. She often repeated that she had a fantasy about sleeping with two men at once and that one of her teenage dreams had been to go to Hollywood as an actress and bed all the leading men. She had an independent spirit and I knew enough not to bet the house on her.

I suppose we sowed a degree of doubt in each other, but our latent libidos kept the fire burning. As wild as her single days may have been, she was an amateur to me. Quantity prevailed against quality. Once I was in the chute, I didn't care if she were pretty or ugly. Add alcohol and I was impervious to a figure or a face. My only requisite was that she be female.

When she was pregnant with Cassandra, I became impatient and thus commenced the beginning of the end. Once a person takes this path, there is no returning. An addiction usurped me. I became so sloppy that a year later she became infected with an STD and the genie was out of the bottle. More accurately, she was out on the market. As a faithful wife, she had discovered that her investment had yielded no dividends. Our descent into degradation rivaled a plane falling back to earth and culminating in a huge explosion.

There were episodes of wild anger. I argued that I had not been attracted to any of those women and I was the victim of a male's instincts. These acts were unemotional and they meant nothing to me while she had to feel an attraction for her lovers that was a betrayal to the sacredness of our relationship. She countered that unlike me, who could take a fat pig to the back of my car or to a hotel room, she had higher standards and wouldn't crawl under the sheets with anyone.

Needless to say, we finally divorced. However, the ardor we felt for each other precipitated occasional rendezvous. After the consummation of these trysts, we would begin to fire accusations against each other even though we hadn't live together for a decade. These were not pleasant confrontations.

Our final showdown came after a fancy dinner at an exclusive restaurant. Regardless of our present circumstances, she was significantly younger than me and with great pride I inevitably held my head a little higher with her at my side. We had also imbibed more than our share of wine. Over the years, after too much alcohol, we had become mean drunks when we were simmering with anger that we could control while sober.

We arrived at my apartment, climbed the stairs and retired to the apartment for the obligatory fuck. Besides the firewater that would make the Indians crazy, I don't know the reason we both succumbed to a rage. I called her every savage name in the book. She started throwing punches which I easily evaded from my boxing career or if she landed a glancing blow, I would laugh at her. Then we turned to pots and pans and plates and silverware as we turned my front room into a war zone with the walls showing the effects of the missiles we were hurling at each other.

She spotted my laptop on the dining room table. I had both a blog and a Facebook account. Besides covering the local political scene, I would pen stories in which she could easily recognize herself as one of the main characters. Her colleagues would remark about these references, which drove her batty because no woman wants to be portrayed as the biggest whore in a small town or any other city for that matter. She grabbed the laptop, rushed to the sink and stuck it under a running faucet. 

She had set herself in such a position that I couldn't grab the laptop. She had the inside position on me, the same position that a rebounder will position himself against a defender in order to grab the loose ball. I pulled and pulled at her underarms until I was finally able to seize the laptop from under her, but the damage had been done. Exhausted by the fierce struggle, we plopped down on chairs. 

I recognized that we had reached the end of the road. My lips were pressed together and a cold hate emanated from her eyes. I had never seen that stare before. More frightening, I could spot the deep bruises around her arm pits where I had been pulling at her to release my laptop. I don't think she noticed them until the next day. If she had, she could have called the police and I would have been immediately escorted to jail even thought I was innocent of any premeditated violence. 

Believe it or not, we returned to my room and fucked again. That's how sick we were, but at the same time there remained a small affection for each other. It was our form of apologizing. It occurred to me that while two negatives can make a positive, between two decent individuals, two positives can make a negative.

I have never loved a woman more than her. I loved her too much. She invades by dreams two or three times a week, often in the company of another man. She must be visiting a curandero who is bewitching me. I don't know if she is seeing someone else, but with her libidinous nature I would be shocked if she weren't. We haven't seen each other since that fateful night so I can only deduce that an attractive, healthy woman must be damn horny.

As for me a man has to eat, drink and screw. I'm getting up in age now and more and more I'm going with the flow because we really have no other option. I just spent the last week with my daughter as she prepares to start her senior year at UT. We didn't want to ruin our precious time together by bringing up her mother. I may never again see that beautiful face that inspired me to put a pair of tattoos on my arms where no other woman's name appears. If she were to have any doubts, no one would make me erase them.

Some bonds do last forever.