While I was in Austin I confess I wanted to see an Old Flame—a boy, now a man in his forties, who was the brother of my high-school boyfriend’s best friend.
Did you get that? It’s a bit incestuous, I know. High-school relationships often are. He was a senior when I was a freshman in our small-town high school, and he was one of four or five guys in that class that any girl—all the girls—would have gone out with. He was (is) blonde, not too tall, and he wore faded 501’s that hung loose on his hips. I don’t know what it was about him—I generally don’t dig blondes, and I always thought his younger brother was better looking. But his brother was also sort of a jackass, and also my boyfriend’s best friend, and thus off-limits under just about any circumstances, despite my extremely loose moral code regarding such matters at the time.
It wasn’t a purely physical attraction. I had in a speech and debate class, and we sat across from each other. Although I don’t recall specifically what we ever talked about, I recall his face across the table from me. I remember feeling young and cute and funny. I flirted. He laughed.
I don’t think we started hooking up until after he graduated, but when we did—oh my. Even now there are moments with him that I can recall a bit too vividly. About a year ago he emailed me out of the blue, wanting to reconnect, wanting maybe to get together sometime in his city or mine, and it was both surprising and good to hear from him. And during our email exchanges I realized that he was really smart, which was odd because I didn’t remember that about him. I like to think now his intelligence must have been the reason I was always so attracted to him, although I was somewhat distracted from appreciating his intellect at the time, you know, because we didn’t spend that much time talking.
I told my husband about the emails, of course. I told him about it in order to diffuse it a bit, to make him a part of it and ward off any inappropriate fantasies. And I didn’t pursue meeting up with Old Flame, even when I planned this trip to Texas. I told him I was coming, and he called a number of times trying to find out when we might get together, but I avoided his phone calls and when I did talk to him, I delayed making real plans. I’m not sure why. Maybe I liked the imagined rendezvous more than the awkward prospect of an actual meeting. Maybe I just couldn’t find a babysitter.
So I waited until the last minute and then called him up and invited him to Stew’s birthday party. Safety in numbers, you know. I told him to bring his wife and kids if he wanted, or to stop by after work and have a beer with me before he went home. He declined, politely, of course, and we left it for another time. The irony that I could’ve gotten away for lunch or coffee if Rod had been here to watch the kids wasn’t lost on me.
And so I didn’t get to see him, and I’m disappointed about it. It’s anti-climactic. When we first talked on the phone about a year ago he said, “I’m not going to mention to K____ (my high-school ex and his brother’s best friend) that I talked to you, okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
They’re all still in Texas, and they all still hang out together. He said some version of it again, a few minutes later—something like “Yeah, well, I’m not going to mention that we talked. I don’t want to piss him off.” I ignored it the second time, but the third time he said it, I finally said, “Are you trying to tell me that I shouldn’t tell him, either? Because I haven’t talked to him in two or three years—and it’s been almost 20 years since we were even involved. Besides that, we’re all married now, with families. Why on earth would he even care that you talked to me?”
“Oh, Stace,” he said, and I could imagine him shaking his head at my naiveté. “People don’t change that much. All that stuff is still there, you know, just like when we were kids. Just like it was 17 years ago.”
I’m such a vixen, I thought. Did they squabble over me or something?
But what stuck with me was, “It’s all still there.” Because that’s why I wanted to see him, right?
Now, don’t get me wrong. My husband’s charms are many and I have no desire to trade them for the charms of another. Even if the old flame still burns, I hardly need a candle when I’ve spent the last 10 years building a rock fireplace with a man who loves me more than I deserve. But still. I haven’t chased or been chased in over ten years, and I might like to remember a bit of that spark I felt as a girl, who liked a boy and wondered what might happen. I might like to kiss my teenage lover chastely on the cheek and then sit across a table from him, and feel the thrill of temptation.
But I didn’t, and I won’t. At least until Rod’s around to watch the kids.
