Chinese Proverb

That’s the thing with Chinese Proverbs. There either inscrutable or so dead on that it is uncanny. Take for instance, this one: Wise men fish in the same stream. Seems like good advice, doesn’t it? But it is contradicted by this one: Fools fish in the same bucket. There is one that for me was dead on. But I didn’t know it then: Be careful for what you pray, you just might get it.

I had been dating Sam for over a year. Samantha was doubly Sam. First, it was her name shortened. Second, and I liked this one, because it made me think that her parents had a sense of humor, which otherwise I hadn’t detected. Maybe they had a sense of humor when she was born, but somehow had lost it over the years what with the drunken arguments and short of money fights. Her parents had named her Samantha Ann McDaniels. So, her initials were…well, you get the picture. I liked the word play. I have always liked word play and I thought I was quite good at it. In fact, I thought that I was quite good at a lot of things, but words, speaking and writing; this was my forte. I would always take a course with a term paper or papers to write over an examination course. This had stood me in good stead during my college career. And why change a winning strategy.

We had just gotten pinned. It was the rage and the custom of our time. When a fraternity boy, like me, met and fell in love with a beautiful and intelligent college girl, he gave her his fraternity pin to wear. It was getting engaged to be engaged.

Our relationship had been getting better and better and we had reached the time when making love made all the sense in the world. We were in my single room. I was lucky enough and had money enough to have my own room which was a true luxury in the fraternity and in the college in general. But even though I was a junior and not usually in line for such an exalted honor, I had been rush chairman as a sophomore and I was a good one. I had managed to bring many girls to our rush parties, which meant that our parties had been a huge smash hit. Girls attract guys, and when you have lots of guys, you can find the best brothers. So, as a gesture of gratitude and I guess as a bribe to do it again, I had a single room.

Sam was a bright girl, both in intelligence and disposition. She smoothed out my darkening moods which seemed to come more and more frequently now.

Her brownish blond hair was set off by her green eyes, which in the dark now I could hardly see, but could easily imagine. Although she had small breasts, I had learned that somehow this didn’t matter as much as I had thought that it might. A great lover is a great lover. She was a great lover for she loved my soul, mind, and body completely. I thought I couldn’t love her more, although I was to learn that I could have loved her more and should have loved her a great deal more. But that was much later…

We lay there in the night, the two of us. We talked of far oft lands, and poems by Keats, music by Moody Blues, and our lives to be. I talked of how I was going to work in a bank near her hometown so I could let her finish her last year of college after I graduated.  I kidded her, as I had done before, by reminding her that if we married, she would not have to change her monogram. She laughed. She shot back that we were both Scots, both Mac’s, so we shared a love of highland wool, as she pulled the blanket up around her neck, revealing her pubis in all its naked glory.

I held her against the night and loved her deep within my soul. I guess I was, like all men in all times, huddling with her, thinking that I was protecting her from the night and the creatures that lurked around our campfire, but just out of our sight. In reality, she was really holding me together to face another day of life’s vicissitudes.

It was later. We had just made love again. I thought to myself that things could not get any better. I wanted this moment to last forever. I could spend eternity here and now in my bed with her beside me and all would be perfect. 

It was dark; then it was completely light.  Bright in fact. Too bright.  Way Too Bright.  I opened my eyes. I was almost blinded. I was in bed and naked. That part was still the same. But everything else was different. I was home. I was in my childhood bed. I was next to a woman I had never seen before. And judging from the look in her eyes, she had never seen me before, or if she had, she had never seen me like this.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Who the hell do you think I am?”

“Who are you?” I asked again, a little more insistently.

“Ellen.”

“Ellen, who?” I inquired politely.

“What the hell? Don’t you play games with me. I just told you that I loved you and I asked you if you loved me too. It’s been three years, three years tonight, that we have been together. Who the hell am I? Who the hell do you think you are? You won’t get away with this mister!”

I took this in. I’m in bed. I’m in my home. I’m not in college. I am with a woman whom I have never seen before and she thinks that were at the point in our relationship when I should be asking her to marry me. Where’s Sam?

“Well, are you going to answer me?” She looked right into my eyes, probing, insistent, yea, demanding.

“I…I…I don’t know how to answer you…” I stammered and then my voice trailed off.

“You don’t know how to answer me?! My father was right. God, how I wished he wasn’t. You look like a little boy right now. I have wasted my life on you. You are despicable. You don’t love me, do you?”

I started to say that I didn’t know if I loved her, because I didn’t even know her. Somehow, that truthful answer just didn’t seem like it was going to appease her. I just sat there silently hiding my nakedness with my hands.

“What’s this crap? You can’t answer me.” She hesitated a moment and then continued: “You don’t want to answer me, that it isn’t it?” She suddenly got self-conscious of her nakedness and gathered the sheets around her covering up what were really exquisite, full figured breasts, which had I been in a better frame of mind, I would have admired and examined with more interest.

I started to have a pounding headache. I braced my head in hands. The light was too much for my eyes and I closed them. Sometime later, I turned over thinking I really had to say something to this lovely girl whom I didn’t know, but I just wasn’t sure what to say, when my hand cupped her breast. It was small. I was with Sam. She startled awake.

“Are you ok? How’s your headache?” Sam asked tenderly.

All right then, I’m ok, I thought. This all had to have been some kind of strange dream. Maybe I was drinking too much. Funny how reality explodes our theories, sometimes it happens after a long time. Not this time; it was quick.

“What was all that hysteria about you never wanting to lose me, that I should never leave you, that we had to get married, that you have found out you love me more than life itself, yeah, yeah, yeah!” Sam smiled at me, but I could see the concern in her eyes. Perhaps she was reflecting the panic in my eyes. What hysteria? What never leaving me? What had I said and when had I said it?

“You had a look of sheer pain in your eyes. You were simply crazed. Then the headache. I guess that’s it, wasn’t it?”

I nodded. I had no words. The wordsmith had no words.

*****

Five years later, I was working in a bank, but not near her hometown, rather it was near my parents’ home. My Dad had had a series of heart attacks. I came home after college to help care for him and after he died, I stayed on to help Mom.

Sam had faded into the night with another guy she had met at work. I had been devastated. I had been more than devastated. I had lost everything. Two years, I lay in the grips and depths of a dark depression. I really couldn’t relate to a woman and so I had a succession of them. I was damaged, hurting, and not really healing.

I had met a girl named Ellen through a mutual acquaintance and we dated. I never connected Ellen with anyone I had known before.  The sex was good, the company was good, we shared a lot of common interests, and for a long time that was enough for both of us. I don’t know when she got serious, but I didn’t. I ignored the issue and my dismissal of the topic made it simmer beneath the surface. I just wasn’t ready to change the status quo. Why should I?

But always, just below my consciousness, my mind thought of Sam. I wondered what went wrong. What had I said or not said that had derailed our whole lives, our romance? I prayed that she would call, that she would write, that she would tell a mutual friend to contact me and end the isolation, bridge the chasm. No call came, no letter was delivered, and no mutual friend spoke her name. I thought of ever more and more convoluted ways that I could get back in touch with her.  She was on the west coast; I was on the east coast. Could the twain meet again? I prayed they would. I prayed that I wanted just five minutes with her. I knew that I could win her with my words. I was cock-sure that my words would win lady fair. Lord, please give me just five minutes with her, just five minutes, Lord, is all I ask.

I think Ellen knew and forgave me my prayer. In my abject desperation, she saw a chance that I would ultimately grow so despondent that I would turn to her, and although we had this bargain that our relationship would never grow into love and marriage, she wanted that and I was too blind to see it.

So, after our usual date routine of going to a movie, we returned to my home. My mother wintered in Florida and I watched the house for her, always with the understanding that someday I would get my own apartment.

Ellen took off her clothes and stretched across my bed. Her breasts were full; her legs long and lean giving her that height which rivaled my own. She was a magnificent woman.

She liked to have the lights on as bright as possible for she liked to see my enjoyment of her body. Of course, that suited me simply fine for I could see her nakedness. Like most men, I like to see the beauty of the naked form of a woman. There is nothing more exciting in this world.

I was looking at her, but for some reason the light was too strong this night. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the sensation as our bodies reached their climaxes.

I slept for a few minutes. I opened my eyes and it was dark. What has she done? I thought.

I reached out to stroke her side and her breast.  Small. “Sam?”

“Yes, dear?” came the lazy, sleepy answer.

Oh my God! Can it be? Is this truly happening? Has my prayer come true?

I began. I stammered. I coughed. I choked. I gasped. Then, all the words came pouring out in a torrent. All my practicing of what I would say went out the window. “I love you. Don’t ever leave me. You must marry me. I need you. You are life to me. I must have you. You are everything to me. You are the world. I can’t live without you. You must marry me. Don’t marry that other guy. I know you love him, but marry me. I will do anything for you.”

“What the hell are you talking about? I have never cheated on you! How dare you think I ever would!”

Whoops. The wrong words had come out.

“No. Sam.  Listen. You will meet someone. Love him and then come back to me.”

“Are you crazy? Are you giving me permission to have an affair? Do you want to have an affair? Is that what you want? What the hell is going on?”

The wrong words again. Wordsmith, yeah, right!

“Sam. Darling. I beg you. I implore you…”

“Beg me? Implore me? For what? To do what?”

I started to have a pounding headache. I braced my head in hands. Oh, God, no! My prayer… I closed my eyes. A few moments later, I turned back to her because I really had to say something to her so she would understand just how much I really loved her. I opened my eyes and the bright light nearly killed me. 

“What the hell?” I yelled.

Ellen looked at me as if I were a maniac. “What the hell, yourself?”

“What do you mean?” I truly was completely perplexed.

“Not more than two minutes ago, I told you I loved you and then you started acting like you were a little boy who had no idea of what the hell I was talking about. You even tried to pretend that you didn’t even know who I was. The nerve of you. Now, you are pretending to have migraine. Get over it. A woman tells you she loves you and you go all to pieces. Dad was right. You are a selfish bastard. I have wasted enough time on you. Get a life!”

She got up, dressed, and left. She wouldn’t return my calls or answer me letters.  I never saw Ellen again.

So, the five minutes for which I had so earnestly prayed had come and gone. I had gotten exactly what I prayed for.