Body Count

I found another dead boyfriend today.

What does it mean that all of my serious boyfriends except one I can’t find on the internet and the two I married are dead? Is that happenstance or was there some extraordinary hand of fate that kept me from casting my lot with a potentially early dier?

This most recent dead boyfriend was a doozy. He had a stare so piercing, eyes so blue, that I have to cover up the print-out I made of his obituary that is currently laying just to my left on my desk under a registration form for a women’s horse-riding camp. His photo is just too intense. A perfect representation of his square New Hampshire face and his aviator glasses and beard and his hair, parted in the middle like Jesus.

Later, I will put him in the drawer.

I was wild about this guy for a long, difficult time and then he ditched me for a former Miss Utah.

Every now and then he would reappear from out of state, attend a conference in our city or whatnot, and ask to see me, I think just to see if he was still irresistible. He was and he wasn’t. He was still handsome though, but he had no sense of humor and couldn’t stand children.

On one of his visits, I invited him to go for a river cruise. My husband and I owned a small boat then and we liked fashioning little dinner outings along the river. Mr. Square Face met us at the dock dressed in a crisp white shirt and pressed blue jeans. He stared at me so intently, so unreasonably, that my husband quickly and deftly picked up the vibe. What he said next made me love him as the moon loves the earth.

“Get in, [Mr. Square Face], you’ll like boating with me. I don’t know what I’m doing, and I panic easily.”

Thank you, extraordinary hand of fate. I owe you everything.

Anyway, so it goes. Another one bites the dust.