An Odd Kind of Romance.

I was in a cafe today and jotted down the outline of this as I sipped on my cappuccino. I often get the writing urge in cafes when I'm by myself, hence I carry this wee blank journal in my bag.

I noticed D long before I actually met him. He was on the periphery of my life, as it were. He was, as my mother would have it, a ladies' man. We've all known them. He was attractive - a Liam Neeson look-alike from the North of Ireland, the "wrong side". A few years younger than I. 

The type of man I have always avoided, but would get snared in by the odd one. Men like that would view me as a challenge, my girlfriends would point out. I tended to believe them. D was a player. Big time. He went through my outer circle of female friends like a dose. 

I watched all this like it was a B movie. Some films you want to turn off but remain riveted. It's so damn awful and so predictable. He dropped women like flies. Their broken hearts kicked to the curb as he moved on to the next victim. I was in my latish fifties, he in his earlyish fifties when in a gentlemanly fashion he asked me to partake of coffee with him. I looked around me, thinking it was someone else he was talking with but no, it was the mere me he was addressing. 

Of course, I was intrigued. He was handsome, well-spoken, a gentleman but I had absolutely no intention of ever being a notch on his belt. 

What followed was two years of the most unusual relationship I have ever had. It turned out he was a secret writer. We began exchanging our writing for discussion and critiquing every week. He had a penchant for these 24/7 seedy old coffee shops, as had I. We would sometimes meet at one of these at 2 or 3 in the morning, fresh writing gripped in our hands and talk and talk. Often inventing lives for those around us. At times, we went for long walks on Toronto's boardwalk in the dead of night, talking, talking. A few times he made a light attempt to hold my hand but I would surreptitiously move it away. We spoke of everything and nothing, sometimes in our native Irish language. Or sing some ancient sean nos old tune with Lake Ontario murmuring in the background. 

We went to parties together, and when asked if we were a couple we each responded with laughter and moved on somewhere else with the conversation. We discussed prior relationships with others and drilled down on the mistakes made, the disappointments, the breakups. He had been married 3 times. All of short duration. He also shared the darknesses in his life, for the first time ever he had spoken of them. 

We made dinner for each other and found little restaurants off the beaten track. I bought little doodads for his cats; he bought treats for my dog. 

I was deeply attracted to him, and I know he felt the same about me. But I knew crossing the line would break my heart and cost me his friendship and respect. And trust me, it was one of the most difficult challenges in my life not to roll into the hay with him. 

Around the end of the two years, over dinner at a Thai place one night, he told me he had re-united with an old girlfriend now that her marriage had broken up. I asked him how this affected our friendship, and he said if he was seeing her, he felt it would be an act of betrayal to see me also. 

I was puzzled and he noticed and reached across the table and held my hands in both of his.

"You're the woman I've been the most intimate with in my whole life."

Our friendship held but not like before. I moved to Newfoundland and he would text and email me and send me prints of his artwork, a new talent of his. One he sent me was of a painting he made of one of my photos. 

He got lung cancer a while back. He linked it to the chemicals he worked with as he had never been a smoker. He also mentioned he had been celibate for a while and viewed it as a miracle and jokingly told me he should now be known as Father D--. 

He died in August, around the time of our birthdays (we shared the date). It took me a while to process it. And today was the day, in the cafe, when I felt the urge to jot down my notes of this strange but beautiful friendship of trust and sharing.

A once-in-a-lifetime kind of connection. I will never forget him. I should add I have no regrets. I would have missed out on something rare and unusual if I had given in to temptation. 

And I hold dear what he said to me at our last intimate dinner.