my careless contagion

I have a fantasy. I’ve never done it with any woman. I know we talked about it once. I lost my nerve. Maybe because it seems so impossible.  It seems like such a simple request. It’s not kinky. It’s not even sexual. But, it has to do with everything. And with absolutely nothing. Does that make sense?  I want it to be you. I want you to be the one. Will you fulfill my wonton fantasy, my virulent desire? I longed for this. For years. Never has it seemed possible. Even now, I wonder.  No, perhaps you will laugh. Or, perhaps you won’t. My heart hangs in the balance. I decide that, even if you do laugh, you may understand enough to say yes. How can I ask? How can I explain? Maybe I will just try and see if you go along, ask as if it was a normal request. Or not say anything at all. Just do it and expect you to comply. But what if you say no?  If it was something kinky, you would say yes. If it was something that pushed the envelope, you wouldn’t bat an eye. Why am ...

Thinking about this space where I spent so much time and expended so much mental and emotional energy, I can't help but liken it to something. I wrote an awful lot about a girl here. I was quite taken with her. I fell in love with her, and that love burst forth on these pages, year after year. I am still in love with her, though I know her differently now.  I wrote, not knowing whether she ever saw a word. I believed she did, and that's why I continued to write for so many years. This was my message in a bottle.  With a message in a bottle, we're never sure if it reaches its intended destination, if the one person in the world we want to read it actually does. I never knew. Did she ever feel those things I felt for her? Did she know how much I truly loved her? Did she read once or a hundred times or not at all? Did it make any difference what I said or didn't say? The hours I spent crafting my words, did it change anything? Did it make her bad days more tolerable? Were ...

What if? Those are two of the most powerful words in the English language when put together. I held onto the above photo in case my "what if" came true. What if she did come back? She never did, of course, as this blog bears witness. But it got me thinking about the power of wishful thinking and what all of that means.  Wishing and hoping take place in the imagination, which is an often misunderstood and neglected part of brain. It's a beautiful place and sometimes a horrible place. It's whatever we want. We control it. Our will directs what we wish and hope for. It doesn't have to bear any resemblance to reality. And it has a power we do not fully understand. I believe everything human beings do begins right there in our imagination. Without it, we aren't human. We're robots or cattle or something. But even cattle probably imagine eating grass before they do it. Hey, how about some grass? What if I eat it? It would taste good. Let's do that. Let's...

If you read here any length of time, you may have noticed a name keeps popping up: Liz Turner. She's a model. I don't know much about her, but since when has that stopped me from writing nice things about a woman? Okay, I do know a little bit. Follow along?  Suffice to say, I'm clueless about women. Okay, I'm more than clueless. I'm a little soft in the head, perhaps. Okay, I'm retarded. What, I can't use that word? How about you pretend you didn't read it? I'm retarded, after all. I can't help it. Anyway, men like me don't get the girl. Or, I'm realizing, any girl .  I'm just a dolt, I guess. I used to read Archie comics when I was a kid. Archie had a hard time deciding which girl to be with: Betty or Veronica. If only we could all be so conflicted. Honestly, I always thought Betty was the better choice, even though she was kind of, um, dim. She was more down to earth and was probably more fun than snooty, rich Veronica. By the way, ...

The capital of Nebraska is Lincoln. Here is the capitol building in Lincoln. And neither capital or capitol is capitalized . How fun! English is only slightly infuriating. Lincoln, Nebraska. It's the state's capital. It's the home of Cornhusker sports teams. Nebraska has no professional sports teams, so the Cornhuskers are it. It's safe to say Nebraska is sports-obsessed. If you care about sports, it's a great place to live. To me, growing up a three-hour drive away, Lincoln was a great place to visit.  My dad was in the National Guards, starting in South Dakota (Hot Springs and Rapid City) and ending in Nebraska (Lincoln). National Guard duty entails a few weeks' commitment in the summer as well as every other weekend during the year. I often went with my father on the weekends and spent that time tooling around Lincoln, often by myself. It was more exciting than time spent in a town of about 4,000 (Broken Bow), needless to say. Sometimes too excitin...

Walter Mitty is a character created by James Thurber. But he could be any of us. He could be me.  The world was originally introduced to Walter Mitty in the short story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty , then later on in book form. Thurber loosely based the character on his friend Walter Mithoff we're told. What makes Walter interesting is not his actual life, but, rather, the life he lives in his head. As an introvert, I can identify with the character. If I said half the shit my head wanted to say, I would be the most polarizing character ever. But at least I wouldn't live a boring life.  Daydreaming is a great way to leave your humdrum life. At least for a little while. Eventually, you have to go back to the grind. I think I've spent the majority of the last two years living the daydream life, which isn't really living. It's hard when you want something so much yet can't have it. If you could imagine it to life, you would. If you don't have the tool...

Happy Now by Zedd and Elley Duhe seems a pertinent song right now. Today was the day the woman I'm in love in told me she does not, indeed, read my blog and has not for a while. This was my singular connection to her. I guess it's just as well. The theme of this new year seems to be "back to reality." I had hoped she would read my words and they would touch her heart. While this blog has been filled with all sorts of pain and all sorts of questions and all sorts of strivings, the posts about her kept me coming back to sit in this chair and look out this window and imagine a day no matter how far off that was happier. And I loved to think about her and write about her. As all men in love with their muse are wont to do.   Today that reality I thought I was living turned into a joke. An unreality. A fantasy. The words of this song, especially when she says, "There's nothing left to say. So I shut my mouth," seem literally written for me at this momen...

How Do I Love Thee? by Elizabeth Barrett Browning is a poem my mother would often recite to me when I was a boy. The line she would repeat was, "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach when feeling out of sight." She may have been paraphrasing it because I remember it a little bit different than that. It could be that my childish mind remembered it differently, too.  I think of that first line today, only slightly different. When I think of the girl I love and the man she has had in her life for the last 22 years, I think of that line, "Let me count the ways." Let me count the ways I've been bested, one-upped, beaten, however you want to say it, by this man.  First, let me say I know what I am. I know who I am. I'm aware of myself. I'm not trying to cut myself down. I'm only being realistic.  So, let me count the ways.  The way they met. His confidence and aggres...