Shouldn’t be looking

She’s cute.

She’s 5’2″. Probably late thirties to early forties. Thick, wavy blonde with a hint of red, cut to shoulders. I have no idea about how to identify a hair-style, but whatever it is it looks great on her. Slender build, but strong with a modest figure. Today, she’s wearing a red polo shirt tucked into jeans that hold to her hips and the rest without giving too much away. When she stood up and leaned away from me on one leg to grab for a disk from behind her chair in an office crowded with books and data, I practically lost consciousness.

I came by to pick up a digital video clip of a news segment. It reports on the WMD exercise her office coordinated two weeks ago. An exercise I was photographer for, the circumstance under which we met. I will put the video with the stills I snapped, plus the images others shot, and burn the whole kit-n-kaboodle to DVD along with her official review of the exercise — when she completes it next Friday.

My holiday began Thursday afternoon when I took Friday as vacation. This morning I mowed my lawn. This afternoon I ran several errands, including some for work, and this one now. I’m dressed in denim shorts and a tropical print shirt, untucked. A few days of scruff covers my face, and my sunglasses are parked on the top of my head. My coworkers said I look like I just came back from Bermuda. I feel like I look like I just negotiated an arms deal.

I was excited to see her, for all the dumb reasons that I could possibly have — have always have — but, now I just feel way outclassed. In over my head. And more.

Crowded onto the front row of one of her stuffed shelves are framed photos of her and her two daughters, one in her teens and one not far from them. The wallpaper on her computer monitor shows the girls tandem on horseback. Its her horse, boarded at a ranch just outside of town.

What do I have to compete with a horse? In possessions OR charm?

The horse explains her freckles as sunspots from too many tans and burns. It explains the fine detail etched around her intelligent eyes.

She smiles. I wonder if she knows the tug she has on me? Has she found that string that I followed to her office, the one tied around her little finger? Tied around her excellent waist? Around her personable intellect? Does she invite many people back to her office at 4:00pm on a Friday? Or did she make the opportunity just for us to meet again? Who tied that string to whom?

Do I really want to know?

I leave her office, having a copy of the video on my flash-drive, and having been humbled by a horse and my own lame efforts at small talk, and I ask myself — what AM I thinking?!

There are already too many women in my world whom I like, whom I find attractive. I don’t need to add another one to my list. Adding her would take time, and I might end up just like I am with Road. Road is taller, brunette, and as casually passionate about her two daughters of similar age. They play softball instead of ride horseback, but I already know I can’t compete.

I don’t compete. Meaning, I’ve been in this line with Road for four years now, and nothing is so constant as the precise distance I am from her. I cannot find a way in. I cannot seem to find a way out.

It hurts. Hurts being stuck in this limbo. I don’t have the energy to bleed off another litre of this pain for another woman with whom I have nothing in common. I can’t even say what about her attracts me – well, her physical attraction, that I can identify – but beyond that, I can’t tell if I am resonating with something unique to her, or if its the simple similarity to someone with whom I’ve already committed so much energy.

So what do I really want?

I’ve been looking for so long now, I have forgotten what I’m looking for. I think I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. But honestly, would I know it if I had? Would I recognize it? Or have I already had it, in so many other places and times… and let it go again and again?

Maybe I shouldn’t be looking.