Love in Hindsight

Lust was thick in the air when my eyes locked with yours that first day. Your eyes, two pools of glistening honey, made the perfect vessel for mine to melt deep into and never escape. You stepped into my world on a blisteringly hot day in July of 1969, and I knew I would never be the same. The Santa Monica street fair happened the first week of July every year since ’61, and I'd been every year. The festival line three square blocks with booths overflowing with a unique character operating only the shadiest carnival games. Street food venues littered in between the games and rickety amusement rides that had seen every inch of the country. It was the carnival of the year. You see, the street fair wasn’t a carnival for families, but it was a place for people of every shape, style, and spirit. Where once there was a wholesome weekend activity for families, no stood streets flooded with partially nude twenty-somethings and lovers taking solace in the bushes for privacy. Love was evolving for everyone in the '60s. It was given and received freely; there were no rules, no boundaries, and especially for me, no limitations. The fair was a place to explore, to dive into what love meant to you, without being judged.

I was just a month and a half past twenty-eight that summer. I thought I’d seen everything there was to see and felt everything I thought was possible to feel. I knew fully who I was, where I was going in life. I was invincible. That is until I saw your long, toned legs step from around the admissions tent what seemed like an impossible distance before the rest of you. Your legs dripped down from the tightest pair of cut-off denim shorts that rode so low on your hips I had nothing left to entice my imagination. Denim hugged your curves in a way so criminal I was ready to turn myself in. My eyes dared to venture higher to your bare torso, gifted to the world by a Renaissance Sculptor at the pinnacle of his talent. The peaks and valleys sitting above the button on your tattered Levi’s stole the breath from my lungs. Each mound of muscle glistened more than the last as I made my way higher. A trail of hair followed behind my gaze from the lowest part of your pelvic bone, around both of your sweat-dripping nipples, to your carved upper-chest where it fanned out, covering the perfect amount of real estate. Your skin was the most nuanced olive tone in creation, and the coarse black hair covering your chest shined in the sunlight, wet from sweat, that I had no doubt would have a pleasant salty taste that I'd never be able to get enough of to satisfy my hunger. The nape of your neck dripped sweat like a waterfall that I craved to bathe in freely. Your jaw was a sharp contrast to the hills of muscle that led to it. Full, plump lips the color of bubblegum, a nose straight as cupid’s arrow with a thick plane of hair tucked underneath, and those eyes that made me see stars all had me at a dead, jaw-dropping stop. Your boots pummeled toward me. I could hear louder and louder with each step until I boomed back into consciousness.

You had noticed my nervous system completely shut down as you walked my way, and I felt it jolt back to life when you stopped in front of me, smirking because you knew exactly why I was unable to move my limbs. I can’t help but think you wanted to add fuel to the fire by approaching me, making contact with your calloused fingertips to the lower, hairiest part of my abdomen. The jolt from your fingertips left an infinite surge of electricity coursing through my body, igniting my brain and motor functions. The fog cleared from in front of my eyes, revealing yours, staring into the inner-most part of my being.

“Like what you see, handsome?” Your lips turned up at their corners, and your nostrils flared slightly. You knew I not only liked but couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Without my answer for confirmation, you grabbed my trembling wrist, pulled me close enough to see every individual hair on your face, and whispered, "come with me."

You stole me so quickly that I forgot my shirt lying on the ground beneath the palm tree I used to take asylum from the heat. You began running, your strong hand wrapped around my wrist. I knew nothing about you. No name, no nothing, but you created a storm in my system that I couldn’t calm. I would've run to the ends of the earth with you at that moment. That rip in my timeline, a moment that stands still in my head, running on repeat in slow-motion, is the moment I knew I loved you.