Forever Three

How It Was

Chapter 1

How It Was

People may think there’s nothing worse than to have never loved another, but I don’t buy that for a minute. The way I see it, it’s impossible to miss what you never had. You might long for it, but you can’t miss it. No sir, what I’ve been through has to be far worse. You see, for many years I’ve lived with the soul-tormenting misfortune of loving two women at the same time.

Oh, I would imagine some people might say, ‘What’s your problem? If you love two women simply go with the one you love most.’ But that’s a lot easier said than done. There is no way of calculating or measuring the deepest of all human emotions. No way of comparing their strength. You can’t simply say that on a scale of one to ten the love you feel is an eight, a nine, or a perfect ten. Nor can you stand it on a bathroom scale and weigh it. It’s just not that easy. Love is a lot like fingerprints – no two are ever the same. Believe me I’m not just talking the talk. I know what I’m talking about. I’ve walked the walk.

The first of my two loves was the fireworks and rockets type, and to this day it’s gilded with golden memories of our youth. The second came to me a bit later in life, and since day one it has had a far more subtle feel. But don’t get the wrong idea. That love’s subtlety certainly doesn’t in any way detract from its intensity. Until the day I draw my very last breath she will take up just as much room in my heart as my first love. Again, none of it has been easy. Loving two women has been an emotional hell.  

The first woman to homestead in my heart was in all reality just a girl when we met. It happened on a cold spring night back in 1967, at a dance at Saint Agnes Girls High School in Queens, New York. After some troublemaker started a fight on the dance floor, I was dragged into the principal’s office by two burly chaperones. Obediently I sat on a metal folding chair as the two men and the school’s head nun discussed my fate on the other side of the room. Still buzzed up from the beer I’d drunk earlier with my friends, I was giving serious thought to making a run for it. But I didn’t. There was no time for that. I had only been sitting there for a minute or two when I saw something out of the corner of my bleary eye. It was a movement, just beyond the open doorway beside me.

Slowly I turned my head to see what it was, and that was it. I was absolutely stunned. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at, or I should say marveling at. Just a few feet away from me, out in the hallway, was the prettiest young thing to ever grace my eyes. She stood there motionless with her long black hair framing her face like a Louvre masterpiece. And her sleek dark eyes were trained directly on mine. As we looked at each other for a short moment, I felt as if fate was introducing us. I was mesmerized.

Then she moved. Ever so slowly raising an index finger to the front of her lips, she pursed them as if to say ‘Shhhh’ then strode into that office looking like the queen of Queens.

As if she owned the place, she marched right up to the principal’s desk and told her and my accusers something I couldn’t discern. After that the four of them deliberated my fate but I still couldn’t make out a word of what they were saying. Then finally the girl from heaven did an about face, narrowed her eyes at me as if angry, and tramped across the linoleum floor to where I sat.

In a voice every bit as perturbed as the look on her face, she demanded, “Come on! We’re going home.” I’d find out later that she had bailed me out by telling my judge and jury I was her brother. She also told them she’d seen the other boy start the fight.

After leaving the office we were just a few steps down the hallway when we introduced ourselves in low voices so as not to be heard. Right then and there our names were branded on each other’s heart. An irreversible marriage had been consummated. No, there were no flowers, certificates, ceremonies or anything legally binding. But none of that mattered. What was relevant was that we would love each other forever.