|
I'm still learning -- slow learner in this respect, it seems -- how to turn that from a misse dopportunity to at least a longer hello.
One of the most beautiful women I have ever seen in my life, to date (a Tejana...absolutely stunning), came into my life when I was riding from a Greyhound San Antonio during some vagabonding around the USA. We hit it off right away even though I couldn't believe such a beautiful woman was even talking to me...I was instantly smitten, and not just because of her looks. When she got off at her stop (she used the 'hound just to shuttle to a fair in Boerne, TX) she asked if I wanted to come with her or go on toward my destination, San Diego (it wasn't at all like it sounds, really, but I had a young woman there waiting for me to stay with her). I had the bus driver out of the bus asking if I wanted my backpack out of the luggage compartment and the whole busload of people was watching us, apparently having the general idea of what was going on -- the scene seemed to last for ages and was one of the most cinematically-true episodes I've yet experienced...a cliché straight out of a movie, complete with a bus driver who was smiling and happy that he seemed to be witnessing such feelings but then began urging me to make a decision because the bus had to get back on the road. At the time I was very conscious of how movie-like it was, and the tension was electric. I'll never forget it. I decided to stay on the bus. I wish I hadn't. I am pretty sure I wish I hadn't. :-(
When I got back to my home country, about a year later, I still had her first and foremost on my mind. If she told me her name I forgot it in the haze of love-at-first-sight I'd felt. I called her "San Antonio Rose." One day I flicked through one of the souvenir tourist booklets I brought back home with me and I saw the name of the bar she worked at (she was a student, but worked at a bar on the River Walk in San Antonio) so I wrote to them, addressing the letter to the "young woman who rode me on a Greyhound bus to Boerne" complete with the date...inside I described her and myself and asked anyone who thought they recognized her to get the letter to her. I figured that was it.
Then, one day not too much later, I got a letter from her. She was no longer working at the bar but one of her old coworkers got her my letter and passed it on, thinking I was probably just some weirdo stalker. We communicated by mail and got to know each other and when I came back to the US, for what turned out to be forever (excepting periods of months and years overseas), it was as much to see her as for anything else. I hightailed it to central Texas and met her. Met her family, an old Texas (Mexican heritage) family with a ranch south of San Antonio...it was just incredible. Unforgettable, and not just because of her. I rode horses, ate molé for breakfast, drank Big Red, watched them and their rodeo friends do rope tricks and horse stunts, sat under live oaks, photographed a gopher hunt, rode bareback (as in no saddle, I hasten to add) behind a gay cowboy named Jake, and went with her all over the Hill Country and thereabouts (she drove like a Grand Prix driver and wore her seatbelt under her ribs because her breasts were too generous for the proper position to be comfortable -- she was a pretty wild Texas woman).
But when she was sending unequivocal signals of lasting and deep desire and, indeed, outright soul-mate-type love in the sense up to and including matrimony, I failed to respond. As usual. Dammit. I can remember, clearly, two pivotal moments when tiem stood still and when I should have kissed her...even now I can feel that tension, and I can identify the very spots outside the capitol in Austin and outside the dance hall in Gruene where I squandered my opportunities. When I did later express my interest in return, it was too late. There was a window I missed. Not the first time (it happened exactly the same way with that girl in San Diego, for example) and not the last time that'd happen. We parted friends and eventually I lost contact. I communicated with her parents a couple of times, and even sent them all wedding invitations when I got hitched, but I have no idea where she is now. Now and then I find myself seeing if she pops up on Google, just out of curiosity, but there're a lot of Hispanic Tejanas out there with her last name and she may well have taken someone else's name at some point (last I heard, many years ago, she was with some rich Brazilian dude, I think) -- if I really wanted to find her, I could probably just contact her parents. I'm afraid, though, partly because she was a pretty wild woman back in her 20s (she'd had some close calls with drug lords and so on, among other scrapes, and what little she said about this Brazilian hinted that he was into illegal stuff) and I am afraid that she might have ended up coming to an early end...I sure hope not, but the thought's occurred to me.
But I always wondered, even after our relationship was downgraded to 'just friends,' what might have been had I stayed off the bus. I wondered it when my marriage turned sour, and I've just generally wondered it now and then. What path would my life have taken?
To paraphrase Apocalypse Now: "never get off the bus. Absolutely goddamn right. Unless you were going all the way."
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
