Old Boyfriends

I was working on my novel today and got distracted. This is nothing new. It's my modus operandi. I often listen to YouTube clips while writing. Stuff from the 60's and 70's usually. Or 80's New Wave and punk. The years before I turned thirty. Everything recorded after that lost a bit of charm. I surfed through solo John Lennon and Paul McCartney, circa '73, early Elvis Costello and vintage Otis Redding. Then I decided to indulge myself and watch a few musicians I've known personally. This can be a dangerous exercise, depending on the quality of the video. There's the garage band rocker who was a fellow actor in the ensemble cast of Hamlet. A long-haired folkie covering James Taylor and Cat Stevens in some coffeehouse. A wired performance artist heavily influenced by David Byrne. Eventually, I took a peek at the oldest in a long line of old boyfriends who's in an active, in demand quartet. Their music is a kitchen sink of styles and the man in question plays lead guitar. I send a link to my sister, sigh and return to the page.

Like a faded, frayed pair of jeans that feels like a second skin, old boyfriends are unavoidable. They don't often show up in Real Life, but they exist forever in the imagination. They co-authored the romance novel you can't put down. They turned you on to music you hadn't thought to listen to, or to Boone's Farm or recreational drugs. They turned you on. Joni Mitchell sang, "songs are like tattoos," and with her history she should know: old boyfriends are indelible graffiti. Whether or not they dumped you or you dumped them, their epilogues occupy an inordinate number of pages in your journals. Admit it: you still have traces of them, tucked into books, mementos buried under bad poetry you wrote your freshman year in college. You have pictures where you are eternally eighteen or twenty-three. An arm flung around your shoulder, the knowing glance, a kiss snapped by someone's Instamatic. Yeah, we're talking pre-digital days.

The best part about old flames is that the fire is out. That painful longing is over, the obsessive-compulsive disorder of the heart has healed. Sure, you still have the photo albums, but the prints have aged so much they stick to the backing under plastic. They're cardboard cut-outs who no longer haunt your every move or dictate your wardrobe choices. Now you have a longtime companion called a husband. Unlike most ex-boyfriends he's seen you with unwashed hair and the stomach flu. You wear a shabby pair of sweatpants and the same shirt three days in a row, around the house where the two of you live. If he doesn't return your phone calls you don't lose sleep. You have a normal appetite and can snarf down half a dozen cookies in front of him. You don't attach deep significance to every offhand remark he makes. He's seen your crow's feet multiply and has watched you give birth.

There are times when I'd like to take a lover. Board a jet and fly abroad to meet some clandestine suitor in Paris. Sometimes old boyfriends look promising during Facebook chats and in those quickly deleted emails. But invariably, like the hubby, they're twenty pounds heavier and/or have gone bald. I count my blessings--mine looks reasonably close to the original version. The trick with former flings is to use their staying power to your advantage. Like I said, I was working on my novel today...