I probably offered a dumb look, trying to not reveal my opinion.
In my perverseness I thought, "He's done the dirty and is pulling a politician's trick: dodge and rephrase."
His temper had risen as he preached the Pauline philosophy of love: agape, not eros. The energy he displayed in protest set me up. He had not pulled my mind out of the XXX zone. I took note, without saying anything, that he had not specifically denied an affair with his Miss Patc. He had given me a moralistic sermon, not a denial or a confession.
In expressing his feelings for a married woman and his ideals of love, he seemed to have the perspective and manner of someone with memories of a house down the road that he'd never entered. He remembered the place and still had the need to be invited in.
His expression of a noble idealism about commitment and sexual relatedness did provoke my cynicism. But that sense did not resonate in me as strongly as did his memories of a love unrequited. That touched me at a deep place, a tender chamber of my soul.
That awareness evoked a small epiphany in me. I knew that mode of expression, that way of being he was describing: returning to a past and to longings of long ago that had never been exorcised. I was beckoned by memories to places of long ago where I'd not been invited in.
Memories of a most vital part of one's past, when remembered in the present, are both distant and immediate. They are intangible but still present. The former place and one's need to be at home there is beyond touch, yet closer than breath. This awareness took me away for a blink of the eyes length of time from the present and Mr. Jones to my own past, to another time.
***
As I held her tenderly in my embrace she held me back, her arms under my arms and her soft hands open on my shoulders. I felt that our caress was an unspoken celebration of contentment and security. We both were home-warm, secure, and joyful. I lifted my head from her neck and we each looked into the other's soul, our eyes moist and joyous. My spirit soared and I experienced an ease and happiness unfamiliar and unimagined. The softness and warmth of her being, our joining, was a treasure beyond tally.
My nose nuzzled behind her ear and I gently, tenderly kissed and nibbled her warm neck. Her smell was an elixir of salty sweat, sweet Camay soap, Breck shampoo, and a citrus grove; lemon? The touch of her magic, responsive freckled skin and the tickle of her hair excited me more than I'd imagined possible. A powerful awareness of how I'd hoped for this reality, had yearned for it until it was an abiding absence, filled my consciousness. In this imagining she cuddled back, her spirit joined with mine. I had a profound feeling of peacefulness, of being contentedly at home. Such was my reverie of something that had never happened. The feelings were conjured from my need for them, not by remembrance. We are lucky if we get what we need, not necessarily what we want. Yet some unfilled needs and some losses leave sad spaces in the soul that are revered…precious and eternal.