It has occurred to me that I had first met my wife Catherine online roughly twenty-five years ago this May. It was my first thought when I woke this morning to find her sleeping beside me, and drew her into my arms so that I could kiss her shoulder and savor her warmth. She is still gorgeous to me, and that is not merely because when I look at her I also see the ghosts of all the women she had ever been.
It had been such a little thing that started it, too: She had written something intriguing about the power of the human imagination, and I wanted to know what else she had to say. Before I knew it, and despite myself, I had come to crave her presence in my life.
And I still crave her: her laughter, her eyes on me, the soft warmth of her whispering in my ear, and her arms around me. Especially her arms around me; I’m sure she stole them from the Venus de Milo. If AC/DC had been an American band, “You Shook Me All Night Long” might have been about someone like her, with the singer bragging about getting knocked out by Australian thighs. “Touch Too Much” definitely is.
Vaguely bawdy jokes rooted in emotional truth aside, the stress of her regard is a burden worth shouldering; it’s made me a better man for having done so.
If I am not yet a genuinely good man, don’t blame her. I only ever wanted to be good for her; the rest of the world could go hang. As she puts it, I’m basically an alley cat that lets her pet me, but bristles if anybody else tries it. She can tie a ribbon with a bow around my neck and call me “Mr. Kitty”, but if anybody else attempted such liberties with me I’d leave them scarred. Sometimes I call her “Kitty Mistress”.