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| Once you’ve crossed it, that’s it..? |
I’ve had, let’s see, three live-in partners predating the man I’m now married to. I never intended to «save myself» (what a ludicrous notion) until I met «the one», as I never truly believed there was a «one».
I’ve never regretted not being a virgin at marriage, and based on my extrapolated data pertaining to the relationship between «number of former partners» and «overall bedroom skills», I’m positively pleased that my now husband had also (supposedly) seen naked ladies elsewhere well before we met.
I also believe any partner you take when over 30 should be housebroken. You’re way too old at that point to start explaining to people how to squeeze the toothpaste in a manner lending itself to successful housesharing.
But as I was looking back at my oldest Flickr photos, which predate and cover my previous live-in partner, whom was in his way lovely for all his faults, I felt a kind of sadness still.
Not for my lack of virginal stamina in bed. But for all those other things I will not get to do «first» with my husband.
For instance, I love travelling. But my husband will never be the first man with which I kiss on the Brooklyn Bridge, or in whose arms I see my first Pacific sunset (they are amazing, even captured with the Sony compact I had back then).
I saw the Pacific with other men even before the one in these photos I’m looking at. Somehow it didn’t bother me when I was there with my ex. It bothers me now because I’m committed to this man I’m with, I really think we’re for life.
And those past moments were beautiful not because of the person I was with, but because some places in the world are just special. You just don’t realise that when you’re there the first time, you think it’s the person who’s magic, but it’s a potion of time, place, atmoshpere as well, of course, as mutual emotion. And now that I know this, I can’t un-know it.
I’m sure some people feel this way about sex. However, I don’t. Sex is so different with every person. So much so that I’ve never understood how anyone can say the wrong name, or even think of someone else, in bed, even during the most mediocre and detatched of sessions. Each person smells, moves, sounds, tastes, feels different.
But the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset will with always sound and smell like the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset. I don’t know it for sure, but I am worried that this sound, sight, place, will always carry a faint echo of something that was.
I’m not alone in this. He’ll never get to share with me his first experience of careless Greek island hopping, Thai food from a street stand in Bangkok, or seeing the Egyptian pyramids. I don’t know if he mourns that fact. In a way, he’s more pragmatic than me about most things.
I’m not saying it’s not worth it. I’m glad we met now, I’m not sure the girl on Brooklyn Bridge and the guy from the Greek islands would have meshed as well as we have being our present selves. And of course, life is a sum of all your previous moments added up. Change one thing, and we might never have met at all.
But part of me still wishes I’d never driven down Highway One, listening to the Cure, holding someone else’s hand.
I heard you can never cross the same bridge twice. But I prefer the original expression: You can never step in the same river twice. Like life, the waters of a river are always moving, the exact situation never presents itself twice. Perhaps there is hope yet for that first kiss on Brooklyn Bridge.