Max: An Unemployed Confession of Love

The rain came in today. It eventually gave way to the sun.

'Her brains they rattle and her bones they shake. Whoah, she's an angel from the Innerlake. Thundercrack, baby's back.....My heart's wood, she's a carpenter. She's an angel in the night, what she does is alright. Dance with me partner, 'til the dawn...' Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, 1973.

'I never felt magic crazy as this. I never saw moons knew the meaning of the sea. I never held emotion in the plam of my hand. Or felt sweet breezes in the top of the tree. But now you're here. Brighten my northern sky....' Nick Drake, 1970.

I was thinking of Simone today. We met 11 years ago. I haven't seen her or heard from her in at least 8 years. Yet, she remains a part of me.

It was a typical Montreal night and my friends and I were out celebrating a birthday. This night had a different feel to it from the start. It was as if the kinetic energy of all North America connected all kindred souls. I did not know what I was in for later that night. We were free and we may as well been running to nowhere. After we left the restaurant, we went walking the streets of hip Mtl. smoking cigars and having a laugh. At one point, our Tuscan romantic boyhood pal Massimo, spotted three girls up ahead and he swore to stop them. He did and the rest was history.

Everything seemed that much more pronounced that night. The city's architechture was more crisp in its art, the streets more alive, as the backdrop of the black sky littered with majestic stars, allowed for me to notice her brilliant green eyes that locked into mine. She didn't say much but she struck me as a classy and confident dame. Right there she was my baby. The seven of us walked for hours but only 5 were talking. Simone and I, stunned by the occurrence, were trying to figure out what was happening. We stayed together until 5am.

Her friends were from Calgary and she was from Vancouver. They were all studying French in Quebec City. I was more than willing to let things go, but my buddy, sharp and quick as ever, knew that I was tined by her. Even though we hadn't talked all that much, he sensed it. I'm not surprised, as we have known each other for over 30 years. It turns out her friends thought the same. At their genuine request and subsequent insistence, we (5 of us this time) met the next day. I resolved to be my normal self (as I am sure she did also). It did not happen. It took us a while to work through the fantastic energy and sparks that confused us. Like the night before, there was a quiet sensuality about her that encapsulated me. She kept me in a vortex of romantic perplexity.

After two days, they had to head back to Quebec. Our spirits danced around us but our lips, the representatives of flesh, had not met yet. Our eyes were forever locked in magnificent tightness but other body parts were yet to join in. Oddly enough, that was fine by me. And by her. There was something bigger at work. Before she left, she gave me her telephone coordinates in Quebec. This was done more out of respect and courtesy as deep down we did not think this was going to go any further. Really, how could it? I can just picture our parents asking us to be realistic. To drop the Bohemian act. It was going to be just one of the moments in our lives not to be pursued. End of that. The ghosts of pragmatism were whispering into our ears to let it go.....but we didn't. Something forced us to try. I kissed her with great honor. It was a bold but dignified kiss. Our intuitive conservative splendor, mixed in with sexy coy postering, served us well.

Once again, our best friends insisted we meet again. They saw in us something of great marvel. We ended up spending a couple of more days together and this time we were closer. It was slow but deliberate in a natural and organic way. It's as if we felt that there was no other way. The rest of the week, we spoke on the phone and I even surprised her with another drive up the night before she was leaving. She met me with her sweet smile that was more significant to me than ever. She, on her part, had just finished imagining to herself what it would be like if I came to see her one last time. No sooner than she dropped the dream I rang her dorm room. Crazy moon we must have wondered.

The night she left, Massimo and I were in a park two hours away. I told him that I had to see her before she left. I asked him if he wanted to drive with me to Quebec (my third time and his second in 5 days). She was not taking flight for another few hours so it was a feasible endeavour. Like any good buddy, he agreed. He knew what this meant to me. At the time, Mass and I were a couple of eclectic kids who played games by our rules. But Simone, in one giant eagle-like swoop, changed this that summer. With her friends already gone, we got her before she left and drove her to the airport. Massimo gave us a few minutes. We held each other in perpetuity. I distinctly recall the puzzling and mysterious Mona Lisa smile of an elderly lady. She was saying, without verbalizing, that our moment was like ether. Public displays of affection are not my strong points. To myself everything stays. Not on this night. She left. My knees crumpled and my heart tightened. Was this the end?

Massimo said all the right things. I didn't say a word until I wondered out loud what was going on. Was this real? Dang it, she was not even my typical type! Far from it. Yet....yet....

A year later we went to visit Simone in Vancouver. During that time we wrote a lot and sent each pictures. We would speak on the phone often and would call each other after a night out on the town. Like two displaced tramps we could do nothing else but. I would even be filled with jealousy whenever she mentioned, however innocently, another man.

Her brother, after a brotherly observation, also immediately understood our bond. Nonetheless, she was distant from me on that trip. She never had to tell me but I knew she was afraid. She did not want to get close and then get hurt. I responded by suggesting we take a page out of the book of corny cliches and live for that moment. In one of the most uncharasteristic moments in my life that has never been repeated (and likely never will be), I asked her to dance in a public square while Sinatra's 'I've got you under my skin' played. My buddy later told me that this cheesey Hollywood scene was the coolest thing he had ever seen. People were all asking about who we were as they stood smiling. They all knew this was a genuine thing they were witnessing. It was like something right out of a Springsteen love story.

When I returned home I asked her with all the reverence of a medieval knight, once we would hang up the phone, to count to 30 and play a tape I left her. The first song was Van Morrison's 'Tupelo Honey' (the greatest love ballad in rock history). I counted to 30 and together we listened to the pureness time had accorded us.

A year after that, she went to Toronto to visit her cousins. I went to meet her. We had always wanted to go for a dinner and a movie like a normal couple. In Toronto, we had our chance and we took it. I'll never forget dinner that night. Overlooking the metropolis, I saw something in her that was so beautiful I still can't construct a sentence with the proper words. I kept contemplating her eyes, lips and face. It was so intense that, literally, my action was measured in nano-seconds. She sensed this and let me marvel. I did not need to ask if she was caught with same ardour. Our state of consciousness was invincible that wondrous night.

Later, after two years, we made love. Strangely and remarkably, I sensed that our souls were watching from afar. Something was askew. Not in a disturbing way. It just felt, for the first time, we needed an alignment. Maybe we were so excited it made us nervous. The moment was cherished and real but it was as if our spirits were momentarily disconnected. Our subconscience logic, perhaps (?), was not as optmisitc as our hearts. Now that I look back, it doesn't surprise me that it was this way. We were perfectly balanced and we simply got caught off guard in some way. It's still, above all, something to remember with fondness.

I drove her to a gas station the next day where her cousin was going to meet her. On the way there I asked her if we were in love. She did not answer. At the station, we held each other. I whispered to her that I didn't want to let her go again. She whispered back that she loved me. I never saw Simone again after that beautiful May morning.

I wrote to her after that but she never wrote back. One of my last letters I wrote her that I was involved in a serious relationship. I'm not sure why I did it. I just felt like I needed to tell her. It was also only fair to my girlfriend. Not that she ever knew.

I think about her quite a bit. 11 years later, I still feel her majestic aura. Her image is forever tatooed in my imagination....as this is what she is now. But she was and is a real imagined person in my mind. A person, that for 3 years I loved like I loved no other. She was mine. I wonder if she thinks about me as I do of her. In my heart, I can only hope that she does. Perhaps one day? Is this foolhardy? One can only give thanks for having met her. Hope she is doing well. Sinatra and Morrison beckon.