Chapter 1

“We that are true lovers
run into strange capers.”
-Touchstone, “As You Like It”
William Shakespeare

The phone call took me completely by surprise. I was working in the bedroom I had converted into an office when my personal line rang. I almost never got calls, and when I did, more often than not it was a wrong number.

Lifting the receiver, I kept one eye on the computer screen in front of me and mumbled, “Hello...?”

“Brad?”

In an instant, the computer screen was forgotten, and I was thrust back more than a dozen years, to a time and place far away from San Diego, to a time when my life was full of promise and wonder and love. That’s the way it’s always been with Celeste; just the sound of her voice can bring the memories back with a rush, filling my head and crowding my thoughts.

Celeste, as the saying goes, is the one true love of my life. For me it had been instant. The first time I’d laid eyes on her, I knew she was the woman I wanted to marry. Full of life and happiness and joy and wonder, she gave off her beauty in waves. Watching her walk across a room was a treat in and of itself. Like I said, for me, it had been instant.

For her ... it hadn’t been. The stark, naked truth of the matter was that Celeste was just not attracted to me. I wasn’t handsome enough, sexy enough, masculine enough ... whatever it is that attracts women to men, I just wasn’t ... enough. We became wonderfully close friends, and I fell quietly, desperately in love with her. Maybe not so quietly, though. It became apparent to Celeste what my feelings for her were, and she told me as gently as possible that she just didn’t ... couldn’t ... feel the same way about me. She took the emotional responsibility off her shoulders and thrust it squarely onto mine. It became obvious that I was once again in control of my life, that Celeste wanted nothing to do with me in ... that way.

When we lived in the same city (Baltimore), and I saw her every day, life was indeed hard for me. Because of our closeness as friends, I got a view of her life that I would have probably been better off not having. Boyfriends came and went, none of them in my eyes good enough for my sweet Celeste. Slowly, a picture of who she was and what she wanted emerged to my startled, love-struck eyes. To this day, I still love her, but Celeste was, and is ... a bitch. There is no other way to put it, no nice euphemisms to use. She is demanding, controlling, and completely unreasonable in the expectations she holds for the men in her life.

She wants the man in her life to have a good body. Yet, she complains when the man spends time in the gym to keep that body in shape for her. She claims that she wants the man to put her at the center of his life, and when they do, she bitches that they are smothering her. She wants him to be successful, yet gives them grief when the hours required at the office cut into time that would otherwise be spent with her.

I never wanted to delve into the underlying psychological reasons Celeste was this way. I just held the knowledge that if she had given me the chance she had given so many other, lesser (in my view, anyway) men, that she would have found what she was looking for. But I never got that chance; Celeste wouldn’t consider a relationship with me in that way. I was not her type. I didn’t turn her on. I was not a man in her eyes.