I remember when I first saw Patricia. She was standing on a mound of dirt, one of many on an abandoned lot owned by the University of Connecticut in the Fall of 1989. She looked at me from that distant hill and had the look of “how do I get to you?” I walked out from the “House of Couch” or what was left of that moniker at the time, past broken down strewn couches on the front of our college house ( four hippies and one art fag and her miserable schizophrenic boyfriend.) (I had friends who knew actors who had previously occupied the house and filled it with couches everywhere. Oh where did Gema and Craig go? It is a very sad parting.) I know her from another life and I know I loved her in that life. Everytime I had seen her those precious winsome and intense days of 1989, my soul careened. Images and scenes a thousand in a blink always haunted me, the universe running a gag reel of my life with her. I met her on the hill and took her by the hand and brought her back to the house. It was a love call. We chatted, had tea and chatted some more. I really do love her, and sometimes she is there in my dreams. But in this life I would not taste her. I would see her later a few times at her own communal house and she would always be under the watchful eye of her man John. He was a nice guy, a bit slow though and clearly possessive as whenever we veered to close to intimacy he would step up and physically hug her or some other act of possession to let it be known to the other male animals in the room that she was his. I understood the dynamic, what I didn’t understand was the hypocrisy, OR that the deception was the truth, which I just mentioned as equaling fraud and belief in my last entry. I understand now. Sometimes I look for her online, curiosity? –but also the yearning which never goes away. Of course that yearning is only for the place-time and never the timeless. Now it is looking back because it is looking forward. When it hurts more to be without someone than to to be with them, then you know you are in love. I am certain that is a song somewhere many times over. A drunken cowboy song.

Rachael I had known for years and always called her “Brown” even though that wasn’t her last name. There was always that breathless excitement with her, and talking on the phone was just electric nevermind in person. Huge flaming red hair with a large personality to match. Years passed before I saw her again between my own marriages. She called me back immediately and there we were having dinner and spending time together while I was staying with my gay friend John. A few weeks later I moved to Hartford and she came the July 4th weekend, but something was different. Obviously she had a beau she was involved with and yet there we were laying beside each other in bed. We only kissed. I had a short stint at work on Saturday morning and when I returned later that morning she said she wanted me to take her to her parents place. We packed her luggage and i drove her down to the shore. She kissed me one last time on the back porch. If ever it felt like a dream that was the time. I later discovered she married the guy whose name was XXXXXbrown.

I am a time traveler