come on down to the Mermaid Cafe

There are a million different types of mistakes to be made. Mistakes of a dire nature, crimes of passion or planned thought, unprotected sex, words spoken that should have been kept in, or trying to be popular because someone said you should. Don’t forget maxing out the credit card as soon as you get it, or taking out a payday loan that you know is bad business, but it seemed better than defaulting on your car loan, that ended up repossessed anyway. Opening that second bottle of wine when, really, one is more than enough.

Don’t forget mistakes in love...but are they mistakes? Are loves loved and lost mistakes, road bumps, or just what it takes to make the real one, the right one, take?

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Tanya was the air I breathed, the blood in my veins, the … well you get the idea, she was all the clichés. From our first tipsy admission of attraction and sneaking that first kiss in a dingy college bar bathroom to morning’s afterglow.

We did it all the right way. Falling like a love poem into the ocean, or some other overdone mixed-metaphor that doesn’t quite work. We did it all wrong. Over time we loved. We lusted. We cheated. We cried. We talked. We did it all. Not necessarily in that order, and in only the way people finding newness at twenty-one can manage. All those hormones and freedom. Graduation right around the corner. The big scary adult world ahead of us. It was a love unique in my life, a love unique in the world, it was a love doomed and poorly timed.

In the end she was all wrong for me in the most vital of ways, she was still so very closeted, refusing to hold hands in Greenwich Village, blocks from Stonewall, in 1996. A time and place where our safety was fairly certain. Nevermind telling her family. She was the golden girl and refused to break their stereotypes of her.

She called me when I moved across the state; We tried to make it last, make it a future. She called with a man in her bed, lonely and missing me. She called me out on things I said and words I didn’t. She wanted forever but refused to admit to me now. She threw my weaknesses back at me one night as dark gave in to the never ending battle with daylight. She hurt me with my own words. She’s a therapist, she knew what she was doing. She knew the power of manipulation. She knew the power of words over sticks and stones.

I moved without a forwarding address.