sweet regret

One day I may write a book!
Our beautiful story should be shared
It is too amazing to slip away through time
But I am not a writer
I would put limits on our glory
And confine it to reality
I would rather leave it
For the moon and the stars to define
For us to marvel in
For flowers to sing it
And cats to dance it
I will leave it for
The mountains to scream
And all the children to hear
I will leave it to you, my dear

--Vera Borofski, Dec. 7, 1990



Fifteen years ago, I lost my virginity.

The girl I lost my virginity to was also a virgin. It was our shared first.

But...

At the time, she thought I was experienced.

I lied.

I lied about a lot of things to that girl. I lied about my feelings for ex-girlfriend, Amy Coates. I lied about times when I was unhappy, pretending to be fine. I lied about stupid, petty things.

I was something of a pathological liar.

I have few regrets, and even then the ones I harbor are not that serious. I don't stay awake at night wishing that these matters had been different.

But, nonetheless, they are regrets.

Personally, I think people should have a few regrets here and there, and I am instantly suspicious of anyone who says they have no regrets at all. It's like men who say they never masturbate, or women who say that size doesn't matter. Nowadays, I feel like telling these people "Come on, you don't have to lie to kick it."

Why are regrets such a negative thing in the collective unconscious? Has there ever been a sweet regret?

I say, yes there has.


*/*


The last time I spoke with Vera Borofski was around the end of the Twentieth Century. I was in New York City, hanging out and enjoying the sights. I talked to her cousin, who supplied me with her phone number. I called her up and we made a date to meet at the corner of 33rd & 3rd in Manhattan.

I hadn't seen her in the five or six years since we all graduated from high school. She went on to college up north, and although I was up in those areas and ran into her friends often, I never heard from her or saw her.

Then I heard she was in the Big Apple. I took a cab to meet her. I made conversation with the cabbie.

"How long you been driving?'

"Ten years. Never had an accident."

"Awesome. Glad to hear it." I sighed in relief.

As he dropped me off at the corner, I exited from the taxi facing traffic. I blindly opened the door and before I knew it I had taken off the passenger side rear view mirror on a passing Lexus!

I freaked out and tried to run, but then I realized that my gear was still in the cab. I walked back slowly and faced the music reluctantly.

Two cops showed up, trying to calm down the livid Lexus driver. The cabbie was adamant that it was not his fault, that he had actually tried to tell me to exit curbside but that I had moved too quickly. I corroborated his story, confessing to my absent-minded crime. I shook my head, wondering why these things happen to me.

Luckily, no one on the scene had to pay out anything. As a cab fare, I was not liable nor was I under any obligation. The taxi company would pay for any damages, and the driver would not be penalized.

As the chaos reigned, I saw Vera walking down the street, looking for me amid the confusion. I ducked down behind the taxi and let her pass-- after all this time I didn't want her first vision of me to be associated with cops and inner-city traffic mayhem.

I caught up with her at a cafe she suggested, and she looked great. She told me I looked great. We talked, we filled in the blanks, we reflected on people and events and ideas and the passage of time...

I apologized to her for being such a liar when we were together. She told me I didn't need to apologize for anything. I told her that there was one last thing I had to come clean about:

"I was a virgin."

Silence. Was she mad? Sad? Did she even care?

Finally, after a long pause, she said, "You know, if you had told me that up front I probably would have slept with you earlier, instead of making you wait six months."

"I know. I am sorry. It's been on my mind for a long time. I was stupid and insecure."

I went back with her to her place, to see where she was living. She showed me pictures of her latest flame, and told me about the poetry she'd been writing and the places she'd traveled.

When we parted ways and said 'goodbye', I felt like things were sorted out between us. But I still felt awful for having been such a phony with her when we were dating.

Vera is the reason why I am brutally honest today. She was the best girl in the world, and because I was a neurotic mess of a person I screwed up an opportunity to be with someone who really did care for me, to the point of breaking.

I know that I haven't always been 100% honest in the 15 years since she and I dated, but I also know that I have strived constantly to be up front and candid and unafraid of people's reactions to the truth.

I learned a huge lesson when Vera and I ended our 10-month-long relationship. I learned that I would rather be honest and alone than to be a liar in someone's arms.


*/*


I met Vera after Amy Coates and I had gone through yet another tiresome round of make-up-break-up games.

Vera was the anti-Amy: sweet and loyal, affectionate, caring, concerned, and receptive. She actually listened to the things I said, and she didn't make snide remarks or try to downplay my ambitions.

Vera was enamored of my writing, and after we first met I discovered that she was aspiring to be a writer herself. She asked me to read her poems, and at first I was averse because I was afraid they were going to be painfully terrible.

No, they weren't terrible at all... They lacked polish, sure, but there was some meat on these bones. I told Vera that the best thing for her to do was to write constantly. Practice makes perfect. And reading-- finding books and authors to digest was instrumental in developing a taste for words.

Vera took to it like no one else I have ever seen. She was eager to learn, to critique, to be critiqued. If I was a Master, then she was my best student. If a portion of our relationship could be seen as a tutelage, then Vera was the teacher's pet, the ace pupil, the quick study.

I wrote a poem to her once, comparing our writing partnership to a baby-- our baby. I will always remember this line that I penned:


I hope our baby
has eyes like yours
and pain like mine
for her own to define


Vera was my first complete relationship with a girl. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end-- not a long, drawn-out struggle over who is in control, or a sycophantic one-sided bond that bled us dry...

Before meeting Vera, I was on my way to becoming a full-time misogynist. Women were trouble, or troubled, and indifferent to my personal issues. I didn't understand them at all. I still don't, but at least I have an idea of what to expect.

Vera was the first girl I ever spoke to about my father and the curse he brought down upon our family. She responded by sharing with me some of her deepest, darkest secrets. She thought I would freak out and run, but instead I embraced her.

She was damaged, just like me. We could heal each other.

She remade me into a person who smiled, who could pull the hair away from his face for one second and look you in the eye when you spoke. I walked taller, I had an extraordinary bounce in my step, and I was feeling good.

Things were great. I didn't even mind being made to wait half a year before we had sex, because she was such a great person to be around.

But I kept lying, about little things and big things.

Why did I lie?

Because I thought she wouldn't like me unless I presented myself a certain way. I thought she would get sick of me and go off somewhere else.

It's absurd to think of it now, but at the time I honestly thought she would ditch me for someone else if I was anything less than what I tried to be.

Then the day came, when she and I would consummate our love.

I remember that it was incredible and intimate and passionate. I also remember that I kept trying to pretend like I had been there before, like it was nothing to me. Inside, I was ecstatic and thrilled beyond belief, but on the outside I tried to project a tougher veneer.

That is the biggest regret I have concerning Vera: the one time when I was allowed to be vulnerable and innocent and free was marred by my insistence on believing in a fiction I composed in my mind.

There will never be another time like that again. I will never get another chance to lose my virginity properly. It was the most important moment of my young life, and I faked my way through it.


*/*


Amy Coates saw the change in me, and it made her feel stupid for treating me so badly. So she went out of her way to try and include me in her life again.

The fact is, she couldn't stand that I had found happiness with someone else. And I was a fool for believing that Amy was finally interested in me. If Vera hadn't done such a drastic makeover on me, Amy would not have gone so far out of her way to try and catch my attention.

Of course, I'm the one who is at fault. I'm the one who kissed Amy one night, and I'm the one who listened when Amy said not to tell Vera.

This was the one lie I could not tolerate. Fibbing about my sex habits and events in my life was one thing, but trying to pretend that I didn't kiss Amy was destroying me from the inside out.

When I finally told Vera the truth, she was understandably upset. She knew all along that Amy was treacherous, and that I was weak enough to fall back into that trap. But the fact that I actually did it devastated her. And even though she forgave me-- fuckin' A, she forgave me, even after the fact --it depleted our shared trust and signaled the beginning of the end for us.

It's a sad story, and a common one: boy meets girl, girl fixes boy's hair and clothes and cleans him up and makes him smile, boy turns around and shits all over girl because he thinks he's the reason why the girls are after him now...

Like I said, I learned a huge lesson there. I learned the hard way that you can't go wrong being honest with people.

But I didn't learn just one lesson-- I learned a slew of them.

I learned that while some women are never satisfied with anything, there are others who are patient and kind and loving.

I learned to take better care of myself. Vera was always concerned about my addictive personality. Back then, I didn't do drugs at all, but I didn't take my allergy to alcohol seriously either. I was also into cutting my arms and chest, and had voiced suicidal wishes on occasion. I'm sure she would not approve of my drug use, smoking and drinking, but now I have an understanding as to why I do these things to myself-- I realize that it's part of my restlessness, and that I get a cheap thrill from a slight case of self-destructiveness.

As long as I don't overdo it I'll be fine.

I learned to be myself, that there were people out there who were more my speed, and that trying to run with "hip" circles or be accepted by snobs and elitists was a waste of my time.

I learned that sex is better when there are no secrets being buried.

I learned that I wasn't an ugly freak or a weirdo. I was attractive, and people liked me for who I was and not what I tried to be.

So while there are regrets, there is a sweet twist to them. Things may not have worked out the way I wanted them to, but the one thing I DO NOT REGRET AT ALL is meeting Vera Borofski.


*/*


I talked to Vera the other day on the phone. The last time we spoke was that fateful day in New York City.

She got married last August. And now she is pregnant with her first child-- a boy.

It was amazing to hear her voice. I thought about how she is actually going to have a real, flesh-and-blood baby and not some imaginary concept that I devised for her.

I know she will be the best mother in the world. She will love that boy until he can't take it anymore. She will dote on him but she will also teach him right from wrong.

Hopefully, she will teach him how to be a writer or a poet.

And most of all, I hope she teaches him to be upright and noble... and honest.