Flashback

So he called me yesterday. I was at work, and things were a bit crazy. My phone rang and I picked it up absentmindedly, mumbled my name and "how can I help you?" and...

There was a brief pause.

"Well, hi!" returned the male voice and I almost dropped the phone. He does this, my old college beau. He calls me randomly and I just never know when it is coming. He is married to a psycho woman and every few months or so she goes ballistic on the poor man and he calls me to remininisce and seek comfort.

"Remember when we took long walks together and talked about anything and everything?"

... yes, I remember. Golden times, those.

He'd come to my dorm in the wee hours of the morning and toss pebbles at my window. This usually resulted in waking up my roommate who would come over, shake me and say in a scornful voice, "HE is here. Would you please tell him to stop doing that!!" And as I would waken, I would laugh at her as I pulled on jeans and a shirt and reassure her I would tell him. And I told him, alright. He just never cared to listen.

He is sort of stuck in the past when this happens. He forgets the bad parts of our relationship. He looks over the part where I ended things because it was just.. not.. going .. to work. Instead he remembers those long walks on a summer eve, hands interlocked, kisses exchanged, and promises made.

"You ever think what it would have been like if we'd stuck it out? If we'd not been such kids, and made it work?"

... yes. What would it be like to be married to him? He is so different in almost every way, from my spouse. He is barely taller than I -- my spouse towers above me. He is thin, wirey. My spouse is more lean and muscular. He is Italian -- rather dark, swarthy. My spouse is not. He is sarcastic, cynical... not always very nice. My spouse doesn't have a mean bone in his body. His political views are diametrically opposed to my own. We have little in common, when it all comes down to it.

He is even rich! My spouse teaches. 'nuff said.

Perhaps money doesn't buy happiness after all, because after all, he is unhappily married to psychowoman. My spouse says he is happy, and I do try to keep him that way..

Funny -- his wife went to the same college and she hates me, although we never met. She refers to me as that 'bitch slut' (how creative)which is ironic as I never slept with her man. My spouse and he also do not care for each other. If I even mention his name to my spouse, his jaw clenches, the muscle twitches in his cheek.

Even after 20 years...

and then the clincher:

"Do you think we will ever be together?"

This always makes me uncomfortable. Where his relationship is unhappy, mine is not. I have told him that. I have told him that his son, who is 11, has more of a chance hooking up with my youngest, who is 10 -- than we have of being together. That would be the biggest irony of them all -- sort of a "Romeo and Juliet" situation. Thing is - it could happen. They both have a good chance of attending our alma mater some day and it only stands to reason that they could meet up...

Anyway. He will email me probably next week to let me know that psychowoman has backed off and things are ok again. A few months will go by til he needs to talk to me again -- it is just the way things are.