A Long Time Ago…
I dreamt about an old love last night. I can’t imagine why. It wasn’t even a relationship, just a passing fling for him. I was just twenty-one, he was a good eight or nine years older than I, established in his career, his life. A life I was never going to be a part of. He was a man of medicine, a surgical resident.
He beckoned me out of my office one day, out of the blue, he had gotten one of the other girls in the office to get my attention. I had never seen him before, but apparently he had been watching me. I’ve always been extremely obtuse about those thing, still am. He asked me a ridiculous question, directions to another department, one that I was sure he had just came from. I was immediately captured by his eyes. They were brown, but a smiling brown and he looked right into me. I was so young and immediately smitten.
I was a tall, skinny drink of water back in those days, long dark hair, fair-skinned, freckled, crooked nose, hazel eyes, flat-chested and couldn’t imagine why this man would take an interest in me. I drank it up, I wasn’t familiar with this kind of attention. I would walk the hallways clutching files or something to my chest, eyes down, lost in my head most times. I worked as secretary in a hospital, where there was a distinct pecking order. Non-medical didn’t interact with medical. It was just an unwritten rule. I was naive, blinded by his gaze, his attention, foolish.
He knew where I lived and knocked on my door one evening and I was his for the next couple of months. I knew after that first night that I meant nothing to him, but I craved closeness, tenderness even if it wasn’t real. For that short time, I was pretty. I never told anyone about him. People assumed but I never confirmed or discussed. He never said good-bye, just moved on.
It was thirty years ago, I wonder what made me dream of him last night.
