of driving away.
They told me Michelle was too young for me and that there was no way she would have anything to do with me once school started. They said she was already gaining popularity with the other Grade Niners in town and as soon as classes began, she would learn what a nobody I truly was.
I remember telling them to take a flying leap, but as I tried to go to sleep that night, I kept hearing their voices in my head. Soon I began to agree with their assessment of the situation - if only on the issue of our age difference.
By the next morning’s light, I had absurdly decided that further “dates” with Michelle were out of the question. What she thought of me in the days and weeks following that decision I can only imagine, as we never did talk about it once school started again. What her father thought of me though, I’m sure was much worse.
All this soul searching made me turn my van around and drive past Michelle’s house. Today she would be in her late 20’s and I would be a very faint footnote in her memory. Of course, three years difference in age is significant when you’re in high school, as you have to deal with peer pressure. However, once you’ve flown your parents’ coop and trotted off to college or university, age suddenly seems irrelevant. Or so I thought.
My current problem was that Linda was in her own right a woman. She was educated, independent, self sufficient, and even divorced, all by the time most of her former girlfriends were still struggling to graduate with a college or university degree. But she was still nine years my junior and for some reason that bothered me on some unconscious level.
A short time later, I crawled into my bed at the motor inn and realized that a small part of me was still that easily intimidated seventeen year old.
“You’re pathetic,” I chided myself.
I tried to shake the feeling I was somehow doing something wrong or untoward when it came to Linda. I even recalled a song that went, How can something so right, feel so wrong? Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember if the singer was talking about forbidden love or robbing a convenience store.
I finally came to the conclusion that Linda and I were both adults and we both understood the inherent pitfalls of one night stands (although I doubt she ever had a partner so whacked out on cocaine they tried to hang themselves from a chandelier using red shoestring liquorice). But I could be wrong.
The fact remained that although I was genuinely attracted to Linda, being back in Delta somehow raised the stakes for us. As bizarre as it may sound, deep down I had the nagging feeling I was inadvertently cheating on Maria. That I should have waited to see what transpired during my dinner at Doogie’s before going out with Linda.
As per usual, I was lost when it came to making love work for me, instead of against me. I couldn’t do it with Maria. I couldn’t do it with my wife. And I certainly couldn’t do it with a string of other women after my divorce.
Drifting off to sleep only one thought continued to race through my troubled mind: You’re pathetic.
And I was.
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