The Lady or the Lion?

Doors open, doors close. Some are engulfed in flames.

Choices abound and in the dilemma of making the right one, we often miss out on opportunities that come but once in a lifetime.

Harry was pissed off.

He almost slammed his hammer against the wall, but knew how futile that would be. For after all, it was he who would be repairing the damage.

“When you live in a world of fools, it is a chore just to stay alive,” he mumbled to himself.

For some reason, old Bee Gee tunes kept blasting out of the jukebox in his head.

His will to stay alive had ebbed to an all time low and the questions layered within the folds of the song, “How Deep is Your Love?” kept wiggling their way to the surface.

His fear and increasing anxiety had become overwhelming.

Harry had thought he was happy.

At least that was the story he told himself and for the most part it was true.

He had many of the things in life that made people happy.

He had a loving mother who doted on him. Even though she made a point of telling some “Harry’s not perfect you know!”, she secretly believed he was. Truth be told, Harry himself thought he was almost perfect. Or more accurately, slightly more perfect than a lot of the ‘idiots’ who seemed to surround him.

He was not blind to his shortcomings, but was intelligent enough to know that in the scheme of life, his shortcomings would be the prize in the crackerjack box for many.

He had a trade which had taken him through life with the gathering of ‘things’ that represented, for most, security.

He had a beautiful daughter and grandchildren who brought him much joy.

He’d had a marriage that in the beginning, had brought him some degree of happiness. Sadly, as the years passed, this relationship left him feeling more and more empty. In the end, his presence was bound only by the desire to have his beloved child leave home to marry from the security of a life with the presence of both a mother and a father.

And though it was so in appearances, the reality had left its mark on Harry’s heart and a kind of bleak sadness marked the days of his life.

In many ways his life had been blessed.

He had a mother who deeply loved him and his younger brother.

His father, a rather cruel alcoholic, fell somewhat short of the mark.

He was a hard man to be around. The best times with him were when he was away from home. In a strange manner he loved both his sons and in many ways molded the man Harry was to become.

His mother was not hard to be around. Though she also fell somewhat short of a mark, she did her best to protect Harry from his father. 

Her final act of love for her sons was to end her marriage which had become increasingly more destructive for Harry.

To a very large degree she did influence the man Harry became.

Harry’s younger brother was one of his greatest prizes in life. From the time he was born, he became one of his best friends and a constant companion.

Together, they stood united against all the enemies that seemed to surround them. They had each other’s back and few dared to even entertain the idea of slipping in for a quick jab.

They were famous for carefully plotting a course of revenge that would leave no traces to draw attention backwards to them.

They were indeed the “Dynamic Duo’ and the only fights they really had were the playful sparring matches over who was Batman and who was Robin.

As a boy, Harry loved playing with toy cars. His passion for things that moved fast grew as he matured and his skilled hands came to know the magic of energy inherent in an engine.

His talent led him to the race track and back alleys where men secreted themselves into the world of cars and other things that went fast and hard.

His favourite place was under the hood of a racecar, where with eyes closed, he would caress, stroke and bring new life to a coughing motor.

His talent for calibration became well known and he was sought by many.

The years passed and with them, much of Harry’s happiness. He rolled with the punches as best as he could, but eventually the daily grind demanded a toll which left its mark on his heart.

The two brothers moved back into their mother’s home after the breakup of their marriages. Though she was delighted to have both her boys back under her wing, some part of her knew things were not well. Harry’s unhappiness was hard to miss. She did her best to help him overcome his trials but mostly succeeded only in making things worse. Her overprotection seemed to provide a cocoon within which Harry could escape from the many troubles he was convinced plagued him. She thrived on their closeness that in many ways held disturbing elements.

The one light that shone on his horizon was a retirement dream he and his brother shared. 

Harry bought an old house next to his mother and began a project that would, in part, fund the dream they shared to follow the race car circuit.

His brother, an avid biker worked on his Harley in their mother’s garage while Harry began the extensive renovations to an old house that was to provide a future income.

Between the two of them, they began the arduous task of building a new life. 

Harry’s house became the place where he began to work through the pain of his many small life disappointments. Each one, on its own, had been of relatively minor consequence. However, when these disappointments were totalled , they became much larger than the sum of their parts.

Harry’s bitterness and resentment deepened into an angry questioning of “ why so much had to be taken from him.”

With time, each of the brothers came to be excited by the future they steadily built towards.

There seemed to be no clouds on the horizon of their dreams and for once Harry believed that his desires were unfolding as the universe would have them unfold.

No one imagined that Harry’s brother carried within his heart the seeds of destruction to these cherished dreams. No one knew that he housed an enemy that would break free and destroy the brain and body of a vibrant passionate man who lived life fully and drove fast and furious.

And so the unimaginable, the unthinkable, the unbearable happened.

Harry, who had been working in his house, had returned to the garage where his brother worked on his bike.

Harry kept his larger tools in the garage and would travel between the two locations as he measured and fitted the piece of art that was taking shape beneath his hands.

He never expected to open the door to find his brother lying on the concrete floor.

He knew not, nor could even begin to comprehend the misery that was about to unfold.

The days that followed brought much pain.

Harry and his family walked through them in a glazed stupor, sustained only by the knowledge that they must take action that to some would appear cold and analytical.

In reality these days provided a container allowing them to make decisions that would bring an end to the life of someone they all adored.

They began a deathwatch which would take from them a much loved son, brother, uncle, friend.

Thus began Harry’s descent into a kind of purgatory that felt more like hell. His love for his mother, his daughter and grandchildren became the only reasons for which he chose to carry on with life.

Harry knew in his heart that he must go on. He knew this act would insure, in some small, but important way, the legacy of his brother’s life.

It became enough to sustain Harry...barely.

The prospect of years ahead held little joy for him. His days had dwindled down to a routine that made him feel many years older than the vibrant man he knew himself to be.

The sun had left his life and the black clouds that stretched as far as the horizon, coloured his world a dull gray.

His brother's death was the last wave in a series of many that Harry simply wasn’t able to rise above. He went down for the count.

              XOXOXOXOXOXOXOX

Then from across the abyss of time fell a gift that at first glance might have seemed a curse.

A great Gin made her appearance in Harry’s life. 

This magical creature took the form of a woman. She was a woman of rather substantial size and as well as being a Gin of Arabic legend, she was also a shapeshifter. Her body had been badly beaten and neglected over the years and yet with a large degree of grace and dignity she floated like a swan across water.

The Gin lived across the street from Harry. Her second floor apartment gave her an excellent view as she watched him every day while he went about the business of working on his house.

Something about him caught her eye. As she watched him travel back and forth, tools in hand she pondered, “ what an odd looking duck”. 

She was mostly puzzled about what he was up to as he walked between his mothers house and the project house he was crafting.

She began parking her car in front of his house and eventually came to meet him. They shared stories, she, mostly listening closely to his tales of woe.

As she got to know him a little better, she realized that he was not at all what she had imagined him to be.

She’d always been attracted to men who seemed 'nice' and ended up being anything but. Usually these men were either outrageously alcoholic, self-centered or narcissistic. Most often they were all three at the same time. In the unhappiness of her poor choices she had become increasingly more mistrustful of her ability to pick a mate. This lack of trust in her ability to choose wisely had jaded her heart to a place of resignation and a deep sadness convinced her that she was destined to spend what years she had left, alone.

She longed for something more. What that was, she wasn’t quite sure. With no uncertainty, she knew she never wanted what she’d had in the past. The pain of those memories had kept her free for more than two decades.

So it was with great surprise that she began to feel an attraction to Harry. That place inside that had been asleep for over 20 years had begun to awaken.

As time progressed, so did Gin’s desires.

Harry may or may not have consciously laid out the little traps that eventually snared her attention, but the Leo in Gin turned her eye in the direction of prey and she began to stalk.

The first time she actually noticed him as a ‘man’ was when he reached out to flick a mosquito from her neck. His touch was like a spark that shocked her further into a blossoming awakening.

She began to dream.

She remembered a poem from her children’s favourite book, Jelly Belly.

“Little Miss Dimble

Lived in a thimble,

Slept in a measuring spoon.

She met a mosquito,

She called him “My sweeto”

And married him under the moon."

Over the ensuing months her desires increased, her hunting became more evident and her ability to hide her intentions less controllable.

So came the day she left a short note in Harry’s mailbox. It contained a simple query, “Was Harry interested in pursuing a deeper relationship?”

She made no demands, nor placed any deadline for an answer and yet Harry knew that this phenomenal woman could easily turn her attention elsewhere. With great reluctance, he decided to decline her invitation. He chose to go to her in person. Her note had finally opened Pandora’s Box, and he knew he needed to be brave enough to talk to her face to face.

Gin listened to Harry's gentle explanation and sadly concluded that he simply wasn’t in the same place she was and began in her heart to find ways to move on.

She knew that she must learn to control the impulses that overtook her when in his presence and was already calculating how to go about doing that.

Her heart, though bruised, was not broken and she truly wished only the best for Harry. She knew that her life would go on and that her happiness did not depend upon a romantic relationship with Harry.

As they said their goodbyes, she rather firmly pushed him out her apartment door. As he walked away she heard what he believed her not to be able to hear. What he may not have understood was that the acoustics were so perfect, so precisely aligned, that what he whispered bounced back to Gin with absolute clarity.

Though he left out the “I”, his quiet “love you Ginny”, was enough of a declaration to hold a reserve in Gin’s heart. She hesitantly decided to give him more time.

Meanwhile Harry arrived home shaking. He stood in his house, hammer in hand. 

He felt trapped by indecision, pummeled still from grief and mostly gripped by an overpowering fear which convinced him that things he loved and dreams that meant life to him, would be taken away.

He knew Ginny to be an enigma within an enigma, he with a heart full of love and compassion, and he knew he didn’t want to lose her.

Harry had begun to see that her body, though startling to many, was actually a chassis that with the skills inherent in his hands, could be sculpted into a work of art. He knew that she would provide him much pleasure.

He knew Gin possessed the heart of an engine that ran on pure octane and would take him around the circuit till in exhaustion he crossed a finish line that left every other car on the track in the dust.

What he wanted most was just to touch his lips to hers. To taste lips that promised kisses of pure sugar. He longed to be held in arms that would relax and soothe every part of him that ached.

He knew that the soft solace of her ample body would gently wash away the pain that had gripped him for as long as he could remember.

He wanted nothing more than to walk back to her apartment, knock on her door and pull her into his arms and convince her he’d been a fool not to pursue her offer.

The fear that gripped his heart was so intense he could hardly breathe. His indecision and regret for declining Gin’s invitation left him unable to think clearly.

Harry had arrived at a pivotal point. He stood at this turning place, hammer in hand.

His choices were clear as crystal.

Before him were two doors. 

Behind one, a ferocious, angry lion who would devour him in minutes.

Behind the other, a beautiful woman with whom he could mate for the rest of the days that remained to him on this planet.

 He sought his inner guide, reached out his hand and opened a door.

And so dear reader, I leave you with this question.

What came out the opened door? The Lion or the lady?