I'm about to become a morsel in the banquet of love!

[SamIam]

I should have known that my escapades in the Senior Cowboy on-line dating site would not go either un-noticed or unpunished by the gods! I should have been satisfied to get out with merely a humerous story and paid attention to my intuition which warned me that while I might have survived my first encounter with FaceBook, going there twice was inviting bad juju to leap out at me at any moment.

Today the juju struck. It not only lept - it jumped, hopped, sprang, skipped, capered, and pranced.

My motives were pure as the driven snow. I clicked onto FB merely because I wanted to send a PLATONIC male friend a cute video I had managed to capture him on.

While I was deep in FB's inner corridors, I happened to think of Jarah, a young woman I remember fondly and haven't been in touch with for years. I figured that since the entire population of the US is on FB, she would be, too. Alas, I entered her name and didn't find her. I wondered if she'd been abducted by aliens. Hmmmmm...

I glanced through the list of people with her same last name. Then I saw it - the name Glen E. accompanied by an all too familiar smiling face. Glen is Jarah's father and incidentally the man I had a passionate, completely doomed affair with 7 or 8 years ago. I had actually thought he was dead. Still skeptical that he really existed, I thoughtlessly sent him an IM, asking if he was "my" Glen.

He was online and replied immediently, letting me know how he had given up ever finding out where I was, and he was delighted to be in touch at last and that he loved me as much as ever.

Seeing as how the last time I saw Glen, he climbed into another woman's car and drove away with her forever (or 7 years, anyhow), I regarded this last statement in the nature of a warning.

Still, I let him wheedle my phone number out of me. He called earlier this evening and we talked and talked. It was like old times - like we'd never been apart. Any other of my ex's - sure there would be a hint of the old magic there with a couple of them, mere curiosity with most, and a slammed phone with at least one.

But Glen is my weakness. I can remember every rotten thing he ever did and invent excuses for him. We were going to get married, so I quit my job to home school Jarah. Glen became the sole wage earner and he made good money which he showered on me and Jarah. I loved them both, and Jarah and I were good friends. Glen and I planned to marry in January and honey moon in the Baja. The Chris Isaack CD - Baja California - which came out around then had all "our" songs.

Glen and I had nearly identical tastes in music, the same irreverent attitudes, we laughed together and wrote poems and stories together which we were always handing back and forth. When Glen would glance up and see that I had entered the room, he would smile a smile that made the corners of his eyes wrinkle and me go weak in the knees.

Then Glen came home from work one Friday evening - it was Halloween. I'll never forget that day.

The old furnace in the house had gone out, and Jarah and I were bundled up in sweators, waiting all day for Glen to return and fix that furnace. Instead, Glen walked into the living room, stopped and looked me in the eye and said, "I just can't do this anymore," turned and walked out. Forever. I was left with no money, no job, no heat, no Jarah (she had to go back to her real Mom), and no Glen. Never been so devastated in all my days.

There's more stuff too, but you get the gist. Anyhow, life went on and I survived. Now Glen wants to come visit me here in Cortez - at the moment, he's doing some work for his bro in Arizona. He also told me that he might be able to give me a car (if I had all the cars people have been talking about giving me lately, I could open my own used car lot!)

I have zero expectations of Glen at this point. But I'm strongly tempted to let him come up for a visit. It will probably take me the rest of the year after he leaves to recover.

Any thoughts? Sorry this was so long.