This is a love story. Although, not in the conventional sense because I have never been a conventional kinda woman.
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National Organization of Women formed during my teen years. Gloria Steinem went undercover as a Playboy Bunny and Billy Jean King had beaten down the sexual stigma in sports.
I pursued my equality as well. I viewed marriage as the death of my freedom because I saw it in the maternal members of my family. I was not going to follow in their footsteps.
I have been a waitress, a pizza cook, college student, respiratory therapist, sergeant in the army, laundry worker, chambermaid, bartender and secretary. In short, everything BUT a wife and mother.
I have always been an avid reader, and it is books that seduced me into wanting to be a writer. Not just any writer, but create stories in the likeness of Jong or Vonnegut - but I got a late start and I just don't have the talent. So I'll have to check my ego at the door and write in the likeness of me.
I have lived the life I've wanted, working hard to earn my own living, solving my own problems, and satisfying my own desires. Selfish and hedonistic, yes, but I would have neither been a good partner nor a good mother. This is how I arrived alone at my age.
I fell in love, once, at the delayed age of 39 only because I was taught how. He died 5 years later and left a huge void for the first time in my life. Those 5 years are worth telling but not now. This is the story of the years after his death. About getting on with life. If you want a happily-ever-after ending, you're going to be disappointed, because it's bittersweet. -
We are friends. Friends before Red died. Friends because Red's childhood buddy introduced us. Our paths crossed from time to time and I absolutely adore him because he never ceases to make me laugh out loud. (Very good medicine for a depressive).
Primal attraction. I can not intellectualize nor wish it away, no matter what. Not even if the object of my affection is happily married and my only chance to be with him is in a few stolen moments. I have only one thought, I want him.