2 comments/ 22562 views/ 5 favorites There Was Just Something About Mary By: SuperHeroRalph This is a Earth Day contest story. Please vote. * Forty years later, Anthony still remembers an Earth Day, rebound love affair he had in 1970 with an older woman. Mary was older than Anthony by ten years. Not such a long time, especially when growing older and becoming more mature with the experiences that comes with age, but in his case and at his age, especially with his lack of emotional maturity and childlike social irresponsibility, ten years for him was a period that spanned a lifetime of emotional development. Although they had been together for three years, too wrapped up in his own good time to unravel her secrets, he didn't have a clue who she was. No doubt, as transparent as the water he surfed in, she knew, of course, what he was all about and that was okay with her. She wasn't looking for romance, just a lover for sex. Even though Anthony was 26-years-old when he met her, compared to Mary, he was just an immature child, more interested in the surf, the sand, the sea, and the sun than in love, commitment, relationships, and marriage. Before meeting Mary, when he wasn't in the water surfing, he was having sex on the beach, getting high, and dancing to the music of the day. Back then, the only thing that could get him out of the water was sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. Before meeting Mary, his longest love relationship lasted just a summer, when her parents packed the car to return home to Ohio or Idaho or Kansas or wherever else they came from to vacation on Cape Cod. Looking for love, while on vacation, the women he picked up settled for sex, before returning to school to finish their education, after being schooled by Anthony. Before meeting Mary, the only one he loved was himself. Yet, the aftereffects of a chance meeting that lasted his lifetime changed all of that, when he met Mary. An idyllic lifestyle, the epitome of a carefree beach bum, he had been living his life this way, since he decided to travel rather than go to college. A draft dodger, had he stayed home, he'd be in Viet Nam right now or in a body bag being shipped home. Rather see him dead than to dishonor them and their country, proud Americans, his parents disowned him, when he ran away from his educational responsibility and his military duty to roam the country, but he didn't care. He was finally free to live his life how he wanted to live it. Wandering the coastal areas of the continental United States, his dream was to one day make a pilgrimage to Hawaii to surf that perfect wave. "Cool, man. That was so awesome, Dude. Did you see that wave? I hung ten. Cowabunga! Woohoo!" Able to give Mary what she temporarily needed to comfort her body and soothe her troubled mind, he was incapable of giving her the maturity she required to keep her long-term. He was happy and he thought that she was, too. Only, too wrapped up in his own good time, insensitive to her needs, selfish with his, and oblivious to her underlying grief, he didn't have the life experience enough to read her. Obviously, she didn't have the connection enough with him to share what she was feeling, whenever she was feeling it. Other than to share in his good time, unable to share her true emotions with him, she perceived him as just a boy and, no doubt, he was just her toy. Tit for tat, what comes around goes around. She used him in the way he's used so many women for sex over the years and cast them aside for the love of riding a good wave. With her emotions deadened to save herself, she had no one helping her to analyze and explain her feelings for her to understand and to cope with what she was going through. Once he finally knew what it was she was experiencing, it was too late. She kept too many secrets locked away to open her heart to love him. Besides, even if she could get over her emotional trauma and repair her damaged heart, when she awakened from her mental instability, Anthony wouldn't be the one she'd want. Faithful and loyal to Raymond, her dead husband, not in body but in emotion, he was the only man she ever loved. Anthony was nothing more than a diversion to occupy her from remembering Raymond. Too late then, it wouldn't be until after her death, when reading her journal, that he found the key to unlock her mysteries and open her heart. Before he was even out of high school, she had already lived another life. Before he had matured enough to save her, she was already dead. Whenever he thought she was happy, she'd start crying. On those days, he knew she was sad, she'd suddenly be laughing. After a while, baffled by her emotions and troubled by her mood swings, not emotionally equipped to understand them and/or to cope with them, he never knew what to expect from her. One day up with her head in the clouds and wanting to go play on the beach and swim in the ocean, the next day she was so far down with her head buried in a sand dune that she couldn't even get out of bed to get dressed. She hated the summer and he loved the summer. Despite their seasonal differences, somehow, they collided at a time, when she needed him the most and when he was looking for something he never knew he was searching to find. She needed comfort and he sought love. Unfortunately, a struggle to connect, unless they were naked and sweating in bed, his immaturity separated them more than their chronological age. Impossible to bridge the vast differences between them with only laughter and good times, even though his heart was wide open to accept her for who she was, she had nothing left for her to love him. Just as he was elated and happy, she was defeated and sad. Already a widow, when he met her, they lived off her husband's military pension and life insurance settlement. Just as he was younger than her by ten years, her husband was older than her by ten years. Had Anthony been a student of psychology and of human behavior, instead of a man of the sand, the surf, the sun, and the sea, he may have found it curious how twenty years spanned her two lovers, men who were totally different and lived lifetimes apart. He a draft dodger, her husband was a decorated, career soldier. Yet, it was more than ribbons and medals that differentiated the two men. Had he had the insight to understand, he may have read a clue, why she needed a man ten years older before and a man ten years younger now. Riding high off the back of a wave, he was a surfer dude and a beach bum wanting a good time. With his mind closed to those around him and his eyes always cast to the sea, while looking to the horizon for that advancing white crest and that perilous sea adventure, he lived for today. Not living life for the future, he lived for the now. In the way that she was stuck living in the past with a broken heart and not even thinking about tomorrow, she lived in the moment, too. For two people, so different in philosophy and ideology, they were a perfect match for a moment in time and a period that lasted three, somewhat, happy and sexually satisfying years. With both waiting for different things and anticipating opposite outcomes, he constantly wanted and watched for the perfect wave and she waited, while wanting to die. Her deceased husband was a Special Forces soldier, an officer, who was accustomed to giving orders and taking them. Burdened by commitment, filled with responsibility, and dogged with determined duty, he was weighed down with an impossible task. Just as he was doomed by his destiny, she was, too. "Wake up, Anthony! It's Earth Day," she said stretching, smiling, and waking up energized with the dawn of the new day. When she wasn't sad, she excited him with the joy she had for life, a resigned happiness that hid her sadness and disguised her depression. Had he known her before to experience the real pleasure she had for life, as a happily married woman and as a wife wanting and waiting to have children, she never would have looked at him twice. Coming together at the right time and in the right place, not only did he never meet anyone like her but also he never imagined that someone like her existed or would ever want to be with someone like him. A casualty of love, misreading her in the way she used him, probably not caring, even if he suspected, he was blinded by her beauty. Not seeing the suffering sadness that surrounded her being and followed her, as if a dark shadow, he saw otherwise. As if she were a fallen angel, who lost her way, a black cloud darkened her aura and hung her head heavy. Instead, able to fool him, he saw that she was so full of happiness with the zest she had for life that it was contagious. A frilly facade she pulled over her depression to make it through her day, as if wearing a sexy party gown over her widow's, black dress, she excited him in the way no other woman had. "Earth Day?" He loved her so much that she could have said it was Star Day, Moon Day, or Heaven day, instead of Earth Day, it wouldn't have mattered what day she said it was to him. Even three years later, it was whatever day she said it was and that was okay with him to be so controlled by her emotions, so long as she was there with him in his life and he was there with her in her bed. Lost in her eyes, warmed by her smile, excited with her body, and comforted by her soul, her words didn't register with him, just the false aura and the forced spirit that she displayed did. He was happy just to be with her. His life was hers to do whatever she wanted to do and whenever she wanted to do it. After being with her for a while, not remembering if it was Monday or Tuesday, with one happy day bleeding in the next, so long as he was there with her, even when she was down in a deep funk, he didn't care. Unable to understand, if she stayed in bed all day, he'd stay in bed with her, too, while holding her, until the sadness she had left her and until she felt well enough to get up and function. A time before anti-depressant drugs were widely prescribed, she was sad when he met her, but she's seen better days now with him in her life. The depressant drugs she took with the pills she popped and with the alcohol she drank didn't help her mood swings either but exaggerated them, especially when coming down from them. If only he knew how to reach her, they could have been happier longer and maybe he could have saved her from the inevitable. Only, he was ill equipped and unprepared to help anyone but himself and, even then, he struggled to find his own way. He wondered if she loved him. He couldn't tell. Sometimes he felt that she did, but other times she looked at him with contempt, anger, and hatred. When she looked at him that way, she made him feel that he had invaded her life and was trespassing on her feelings by tugging at her heart that locked away emotions that she couldn't reveal. Most times, she'd sit on the sofa mindlessly watching television or staring off and not talking to him. On those days he couldn't reach her, on those days she went quiet, he went surfing without her and she went for a walk without him. With actions speaking louder than words, even when she said she loved him, it was just words without any real emotion. Her eyes that had once been brightened by summer's love, no longer sparkled as if shiny stars. Now blown out by the winds of winter, her eyes had gone dark with death, and sometimes appeared as if they were two black holes that reflected nothing back but sadness. Always he said the words first and she'd echo his sentiment, sometimes with just one word, "Ditto." After a while, the distance she kept from him with the emotional walls she hid herself behind eventually made him question if she was even capable of loving him or anyone. Only, he tried not to dwell on the bad, especially when her mood suddenly turned for the good. Besides, fearing her answer, afraid to ask and to know what had happened to her, he wondered, while imagining all sorts of scenarios from being raped and abused to being beaten and tortured. Was she always like this, so up and so down? Is there something wrong with her? Is she mentally ill? Or is she just moody and sad? Not equipped to understand, he even read her Virgo horoscope for clues to her moodiness. Always, he wondered, how can there be anything wrong with someone so beautiful to the eyes and perfect to the touch? Taking the bad times with the good, he feared delving too deeply in her psyche and personal business for fear of scaring her away and ruining whatever he thought it was they had. He'd die if she no longer wanted him. Even though it hurt him to think it, he suspected she still loved her husband, a dead man. How could he compete with that? He couldn't. After a while, even though it hurt him to believe it, he suspected he was just her boy toy there for her sexual pleasure and erotic adventure, while helping her to heal and enabling her to get through another day and a bad time in her life. It was obvious to him now that she used him more in the end for sex than he ever did in the beginning for money. Serving him right for all the women that he used just for the sake of uncomplicated and uncommitted sex, she used him more than he had ever used any woman before. He felt a real connection, but did she? He didn't know. Been there and done that, she had already happily lived her life with someone else before him and, obviously too painful, she didn't like talking about her past with him. As if she wore an armor, his words bounced off her as if she was made of rubber, touching her surface but never touching her soul. Even though he looked and tried his best to read her, she stopped him from opening her book at the cover and he was unable to turn another page, but for the only one she showed him. Her sadness spawned an emptiness in him and, at a time when he should have felt happiness to be in love with her, too often, he felt sadness. Yet, if he was just a hard body to make her feel something other than sadness, then that was okay with him, for now, so long as he could share her bed and make love to her, even if he must pretend that she loved him, too. Never wanting to give up on her, maybe, after a while, she'd fall in love with him in the way that he fell in love with her. "Yes, today is Earth Day, Anthony. Isn't the world glorious?" She smiled at him. "I feel better today. After being so sad yesterday, I'm so happy today." She looked out the bedroom window that faced the ocean to watch the sunrise. "What's Earth Day, Mary?" Thinking about hitting the beach to go surfing, never opening a newspaper or watching the news, he didn't have a clue. "Besides being the day we met, today is Earth day, silly," she said jumping on the bed to give him a kiss and a tickle. "This is the third anniversary of Earth Day and of our being together." He loved her, when she was like this, fun and funny, and when he was there to share in her joy for everything and her excitement for everyone. Maybe because he thought she needed him more then, he loved her even more when she was sad and vulnerable, and when he was there to hold her and to help her through the sadness she was suddenly feeling. Only, as a surprise, he had already made reservations at her favorite restaurant. All through last summer and into the fall, he had worked really hard collecting seashells to make necklaces, bracelets, and earrings to sell to the tourists on the beach to buy her Christmas gifts and, whatever was leftover, months later, he'd use that to treat her to a dinner, his special anniversary surprise for her. She supported him and paid for everything else. Surprising her by buying her dinner was the least he could do. Still mesmerized by her, he said the words, Earth Day, repeating them as if he was in a trance. Hypnotized by her beauty and responding, as if Earth Day was her keywords that she uttered to control him, it didn't matter what she said, whatever she said controlled him. He loved her voice. He loved her soul. He loved her spirit. He loved her heart. He loved her. He was in love with her and he'd never forget the first time meeting her. Tall, blonde, and beautiful, she was thirty-six-years-old, when they met three years ago, but because of her healthy skin and great genes, in the way that Christie Brinkley still looks today, at 57-years-old, she looked so much younger. Thinking they were the same age, he was barely twenty-six-years-old, but because the sun that tanned his skin wrinkled it, as if worn leather, he looked much older. Walking down along the beach, hidden from the road by the sand dunes and the tall grasses that softly swayed in the cool, early morning breeze, as if slow dancing to a silent spring melody, they met on a Cape Cod beach at a time when the world unraveled with Viet Nam, Kent State, President Nixon, and the breakup of the Beatles. Looking for something sickening sweet, when experiencing the sour bitterness of life alone, after the death of her beloved husband, she latched onto him, as if he were sticky, salt water taffy and he clung onto her, in the way that seaweed wrapped around his body and clung to his skin. Outwardly, to those who didn't know them, she was his sexy, sugar Mama and he was her hard bodied, stud of a man. That pretense worked for them for a time, taking from one what the other so needed, for him her financial support and for her his sexual comfort, that is, until, almost immediately, Anthony fell in love with her. In the summer of '69, she received official notification that her husband, Major Raymond C. Anderson, was killed in Viet Nam, even though, unofficially, he was killed in Cambodia. The United States military wasn't supposed to be in Laos and Cambodia and they couldn't acknowledge his presence there. He was there to return those missing men taken from Viet Nam, held prisoner in Cambodia and Laos, and put through unspeakable horrors of torture, pain, and suffering. Nearly ten years before the movie The Deer Hunter, Major Anderson could have attested to the accuracy of that movie had he lived to see it. Accompanied by a staff sergeant, his commanding officer, Colonel Miller, and his best friend, Major Martin, they were the ones who notified her in person of her loss. After numbing herself with Valium through the funeral and the formal military burial service at the cemetery, the beach is where she came to be alone with her thoughts. She could only go there in the early morning hours, right at sunrise, before the swarm of families returned daily for the adventure and enjoyment of their spring through fall vacation at the Cape. The summer was the worst. A prisoner to the summer season, as her late husband had been a prisoner of war, officially not even a war, but a conflict, as soon as the swell of the crowd made the beach impossible to walk and for her to be alone with her thoughts, she stayed indoors. Sequestered alone in her cottage, cooking her emotions in a black recipe of funk mixed with negative thoughts and sprinkled with tears in a stew of depression, she was the only one with the cure. When the summer crowd gave way to the cooler weather, the hot sun baked her mind with anger, misery, and lunacy. "The summer was my favorite season before, but after Ray died, I hate summers at the beach now," was what she wrote in her journal. "I can't imagine how he must have suffered before he died. They won't tell me. They'll never tell me. It's classified they said. Too crowded with the screams of the people, the noise attacks my head, as if it's his screams and not their screams. I imagine them torturing him to death and I hate it. When I close my eyes, I can feel his pain. The hordes of loud people that decorate my beach with their pollution make me feel so claustrophobic that I want to run down the beach naked screaming and pushing everyone from my path. Instead, now accustomed to going out on those off times, when few are about, still the grieving widow, I keep to myself. There Was Just Something About Mary So long as there isn't lightning, wearing my rain hat and sneakers, I love walking the beach in the rain with my hands tucked deep in my jacket pockets and my shoulders braced against the wet chill of the wind. Feeling the cool rainwater spraying my face, the salty mist makes me feel something at a time when I feel nothing but heartache. I was numb with grief and for the sake of saving myself from the pain, I stopped feeling anything at all. It was then that I imagined I could see Ray's face in the grey clouds and every time it rained, I looked forward to going outside to walk the beach, so that I could see him and be with him again. My big, strong man protecting me before, he's my Heavenly Angel watching over me now. I know he's waiting for me to join him and one day, soon, I will." With a ray of insight, Anthony read her journal with a pang of jealousy. He wished she felt the love for him that she obviously still felt for Ray. Now the one grieving his loss, the only comfort he found was reading all that she had written in how she felt about someone else. A way for him to still hear her voice, he continued reading and read the same pages nearly every night. "Living here year round, I more enjoy the fall, winter, and spring, than I do the summer," she wrote. "The ocean is angrier then and that anger dwarfs mine and somehow makes me feel better and calmer. Making me feel small and my problems miniscule, watching a raging ocean thrashing against the rocks, before racing on the shore to hiss at the beach, gives me peace. With the realization that the ocean is angrier than me, by the manifestation of a tidal wave, is when I'm able to transfer my anger to the ocean. I feel more relaxed watching the white capped waves, when they crash on shore and withdraw. The receding water removes all of my angst away with it to make me feel part of something bigger and more powerful than me." Still in shock, before she met Anthony, she walked the beach every day alone reading her last letter from her dead husband. She clung to that one piece of paper in the way she clung to her hope that it was all just a tragic mistake and an error of paperwork, while hoping he'd walk through her cottage door, one day. She cherished his last words written, as if that was the only thing she had left of him. Actually, other than the memory of him, as far as she was concerned, which is what she wrote in her diary, a journal that Anthony found too late to save her, the letter was the last physical thing she had that was his and that was touched by him. Now, Anthony reads her journal, in the way she read her husband's letter, as if her writings are the only thing he has left of her and, other than the memory of her and her ashes, they are. Tragically, in the way that her dead husband haunted her, forty years later, she still haunts him. "By reading his words received in his last letter over and again, it makes me believe that this is all just a bad nightmare," she wrote. "Hearing his voice in my head, I feel as if he's still with me. I feel as if he'll walk through that door and return to me and return my life the way it was, before he left and before he died. Killed in action. What action was worth the death of him?" Worried about his safety, after having a dream that was more a premonition, she had written to him to be careful. He wrote back promising to come home. He lied. A few weeks later, before his letter even reached her, he was already dead. Receiving the letter, after the fact, was a jolting reminder, an unforgivable insensitivity paid upon her by the uncaring United States military that was indirectly or directly responsible for the death of her husband. Making her live through the pain of his death again, by receiving his letter, after he was already dead and buried, nonetheless, no doubt, she was glad she had his words written on that tear stained paper to read over and again in the course of her grief stricken days. It gave her comfort to know that he touched the same paper that she was now holding. Nearly a year after the death of her husband, she met Anthony on Earth Day, the first Earth Day, March 21, 1970, an easy date for her to remember, since she was always sensitive to the ecology and to the preservation of the planet before. Only unable to find real joy in anything anymore, even in the beauty of nature, she celebrated the anniversary of their first meeting with feigned passion and Earth's holiday with an empty joy. Despite her inability to move beyond her grief, Anthony remembered their first meeting, as if it was yesterday. He watched her approaching with her head down, while reading a paper. Nearly ten years, after Dobie Gillis with Tuesday Weld as, Thalia Menninger, and Inger Stevens played The Farmer's Daughter, and nearly ten years, before the movie 10, Mary was the original ten. She was his movie star and he saw himself as her leading man. Paling in comparison to her, Mary was so much better in every way than Tuesday Weld, Inger Stevens, or Bo Derek. If they were all here now and if he was told he could pick just one, he'd still chose Mary. He didn't know what it was about her, but there was just something about Mary. Where Bo Derek was just a child in the movie 10, an actress portraying a character in the movie, Mary was a real woman. Every time he said her name, he couldn't help but think of Donna Reed, when she played Mary Hatch, before she became Mary Bailey, Jimmy Stewart's wife, as Mrs. George Bailey, in It's A Wonderful Life. Every moment that he was with her, the parallel he drew from that movie was, indeed, that this was his wonderful life with her. Just as he couldn't imagine his life without her, he couldn't imagine his life being any better than it was with her by his side. In the beginning, before he fell in love with her, every time they walked the beach holding hands, every time he kissed her, and every time he made love to her, he imagined he was making love to Donna Reed. Only, masked by lighting, makeup, and a celebrity status that is never as real as the person in life, his Mary was so much better looking than Donna Reed and than that make believe Mary character in that movie. Truth be told, too good to be true, if he had questioned it, he'd never imagined that someone like Mary would want someone like him. A year later, when they watched the movie, Summer of '42, he told her that they should have cast her in that role, as Dorothy, instead of Jennifer O'Neill. They laughed about it, after they saw the movie. She told him that she loved how he thought she was so beautiful, the most beautiful woman in the world, even more beautiful than Katherine Ross in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and even more beautiful than how Katherine Ross looked in The Graduate. For sure, Mary had it all over Ali McGraw in Love Story. With Mary in his life, this was his love story. Only, an emotional wreck then, she needed that kind constant reassurance that he gave her and the attention that he paid her to temporarily soothe her pain and forget her sadness. With her sanity gone and the reality of her emotions severed, her beauty was all that she had left. When he thought about it later, something that took him too long to realize, she always needed his reassurance, his love, his attentiveness, and his affection, as well as his hard body. In hindsight, he realized that he was just there to help her heal, but he willingly accepted that role to be there and to do that for her. With her wings broken, no longer able to fly and soar as high as she did, she was a beautiful butterfly, before her husband died. Now, grounded in a world of sand, seaweed, saltwater, and crabs, she was numb to the joy that he felt for her. "Able to look at all of those things together before, sand, seaweed, saltwater, and crabs, and see the beauty in them, now, missing the natural occurrence, I can't help but look at them individually and individually they are all ugly. Now, none of them hold the beauty that I saw in them before. The sand appears darker and courser, the seaweed is a disgusting nuisance, the saltwater acridly bitter, and the crabs are always angry and biting," is what she wrote in her journal. "Even though there is now an Earth Day, a day to pay homage to the planet, the beauty of it all is gone from me, forever." Not knowing her before, unable to see through her sadness and grief, unable to see herself for who she truly was, a beautiful woman inside and out, Anthony read what she wrote in her journal. "I never considered myself beautiful before, but Ray made me feel that way. He made me feel special. Now with Ray gone, surrounded by ugliness, I only perceive myself as being ugly, too. All that I saw as beautiful before is not so pretty now." From reading her journal, Anthony surmised that unable to see a future without Ray, she was too mired down by her angst and depression to see beyond her past and beyond her grief to enjoy today with renewed hope for tomorrow and for a future with him. Remembering back to when he first saw her, mesmerized by her beauty, he couldn't move. Even seeing her from a distance, walking with the glow of the rising sun to her back, a light that highlighted her form with a Heavenly glow, as if her image was an aura, he was awestruck. Looking in the sun, as she walked closer, as if she had just descended from Heaven and was wearing wings and a halo, she was not only his real life mirage but also his real life Angel. As if she magically appeared, as she walked closer, he was already spellbound by the vision of her. He rubbed his eyes to see if she was real or imagined. Bedazzled by her beauty, he was a non-functioning idiot and he no longer had control of his senses. His body, his mind, and his soul instantly belonged to her, if only she'd have him. Yet, instantly, summing her up, as if she just was another fleeting wave, he knew someone like her would never be attracted to someone like him. He needed to delay her. He needed to stop her. He needed to say something, anything to get her attention, before she passed him by and was gone from him forever. "What are you reading?" Her reply would prove to him if she was imagined or real and interested. Unable to think quickly enough of anything else to say to delay her enough for her to notice him, fearing that she'd pass him by and be gone as quickly as she had arrived, had he not spoken, said something, said anything to interrupt her deep thought and intercept her, they never would have met otherwise. He felt compelled to ask her what she was reading, when she nearly walked into him. An empty beach with no one on it but them and they nearly collided, as if they were two cars driving in opposite directions through a wide expanse of desolate desert. As if this was their destiny, they were fated to meet and become lovers. When she looked up, looked right through him and didn't respond, he asked her another question. "Why are you crying?" When he asked her that, as if awakening her, she crumpled the paper she held in her hand with purpose, as if destroying whoever or whatever was written upon it with anger. As if squeezing the life out of her heart with her pain, crumpling it, she squeezed the paper in a tightfisted ball, before tossing it in the ocean and allowing the receding tide to carry it away. At first, floating atop of the water, before a wave overwhelmed it, saturated with salt water, as if that were her tears, and sank it, forever to be gone, she stopped to watch the wad of paper disappear with the tide and with her sadness. Once the paper was gone from her, as if the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders, she was a different person. An unexplained transformation, no longer Mrs. Raymond Anderson, she was now just Mary. Preoccupied with her thoughts and looking through him before, as if he didn't exist, she looked at him now and smiled. Taking him all in, as if he was the medicine she needed, her look of joy and her smile made him feel special and he returned her happiness with his smile. When they met three years ago, a surfer there for the summer waiting to catch the next wave, he was tall, lean, and had the sinewy muscularity of an Olympic swimmer. He had curly, blonde hair that competed with the shine of the sun and the brightest blue eyes that she needed to forget the haunting image of her husband's dark, brown eyes. As if he were David and she were an Angel sculpted by Michelangelo's hand, he was just as beautiful as she was and they made for a beautiful couple. "Crying? I'm not crying," she said wiping the tears from her eyes, sniffing back her misery, and pushing back her fallen golden hair, before forcing another smile and laughing. She was even more beautiful, when she smiled and laughed. "Those are just tears of joy. I'm just so damn happy that my life has begun anew and with you in it," she said giving him a big smile that made him smile, too. It was an unusually hot March day, weather more reserved for mid-June, only, the warmth he felt came more from her than the sun. This weather, a prelude of what they could expect this summer, the crowds would be here soon, along with the noise that made her want to kill herself. Out of the blue, as if they had been intimate forever, she took a step forward and draped her arms around his neck. With her body so close to his that he couldn't slide a piece of paper between them, he rested his hands on her shapely bikini clad hips, while imagining that he was inside of her and making love to her. The loving sensation of her soft fingers on the back of his neck was better than any massage he's ever had. Then, when she removed her arms from his neck to cup his face in her hands, he had goose bumps by her touch and by his anticipation of what was to happen next. She looked deeply in his blue eyes with a look that melted his heart. Then, she closed her eyes and kissed him. She parted his lips with her tongue and kissed him so deeply that he forgot about the hot sun, the warm sand, the cool surf, and surfing that perfect wave. It was a magical kiss, a mystical kiss, and a miraculous kiss that turned him from a boy to a man. He returned her kiss with as much passion, but his passion was no match for hers. She was possessed. As if she was Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, and he was Neptune, the God of the Sea, he was powerless against her ardor. Wide-eyed agog, he looked at her dazed, and as senseless as he was, when he first saw her approaching him. Her passion for him heated him more than the hot sun that warmed his body and heated the sand that burned his feet. Then, as if hypnotized by her kiss, he closed his eyes, returned her kiss, and reveled in her passion, while quickly building his. Moving him with her kiss, she turned the tables on him. As if he was Lana Turner being kissed by John Garfield in the car, in the Postman Always Rings Twice, as if he was Deborah Kerr being kissed by Burt Lancaster on the beach, in From Here To Eternity, as if he was Audrey Hepburn being kissed by George Peppard in the rain, in Breakfast at Tiffany's, and as if he was Lauren Bacall or Ingrid Bergman being kissed by Humphrey Bogart, in The Big Sleep or Casablanca, never had he been kissed like that before or since. Never had he known such passion and such pleasure from just a kiss. It was just a kiss, but what a kiss it was. Never had he felt such desire for anyone, as he felt for her now. If it was described on paper, it was just a kiss. Yet, when her lips touched his for that first kiss, it was no ordinary kiss. A surge of current, as if being plugged into a wall outlet, a spark, then fire, as if striking a match to burn kindling before erupting into a blaze, by the mere touch of their lips, the kiss made him feel something even greater than his love of surfing. As if they were one person connected by the mere touch of their lips, the kiss transgressed their ten year difference in age to one of no consequence. It was a kiss that closed the gap from death to life and that returned her from the brink of suicide, until she later decided that she was better off dead. It was a kiss that a widow would give a man that had awakened her from mourning and had given her hope for a second chance at love. Yet, what widow would taint the memory of her dead and beloved husband with the likes of him? It was a kiss that a virgin would give a man she had selected to marry. Only, few virgins would pick him to marry, a penniless beach bum riding the waves and living his life in the ocean, because he was unable to make anything of himself on dry land. Since the beginning of time, it was a kiss that those in love write poems and songs about, when describing such a kiss. This was no ordinary kiss. As if she was an Angel, it was a Heavenly kiss and he was the one so chosen to be the recipient of her kiss. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't he be the one that so moved her with his kiss? Never did he think that a woman could kiss him in such a way. Until she kissed him, never would he believe that he could be so moved by just one kiss. In all the women that kissed him, he's never been kissed by a woman, until she kissed him. He had always thought it was the woman and not the man who'd be weak kneed, but he swooned with her kiss. She blanked his mind. Heating his desire more than the sun heated his body, her kiss made him dizzy with lust for her and he thought he'd faint straightaway. After experiencing her kiss, after savoring her lips and feeling her tongue probe his mouth, if he died now, he'd be happy. Yet, now that he felt her passion, now that he kissed her lips, he didn't want to die. Not now, not yet, he wanted to experience so much more of her. If he died now, he'd be cheated out of knowing all of her. How could she kiss him like that? Why did she kiss him like that? It was more than just a kiss. Her kiss not just excited him, it electrified him. For the first time in his life he was alive and living life large. Her kiss made him want to be a better man, her man. Only and unfortunately, she was still sleep walking around in a daze. High on valium, alcohol, and a selection of colorful pills, she wasn't in her right mind, when she met him and kissed him. He was sincere, but she wasn't. Nonetheless, with her needing for comfort and him needing for love, they were both needy. Before her kiss, the vast ocean loomed large to him. Now, after her kiss, the ocean was inconsequential and meaningless compared to the anticipated love of her. All consuming, surfing loomed so big in his life before, but now she blossomed larger. No longer a surfer boy free to roam a beach, he was now a man eager to accept the responsibility of caring for and loving her, a woman that he didn't even know her name. In all the fantasies he's had alone in his bedroom with his hand firmly around his cock, while stroking to the beat, the sight, and the star studded pageantry of every pop singer, movie star, and celebrity, he now knew what it felt like to really be kissed and to truly feel the love of a beautiful, albeit older woman. Not shy in telling him what she wanted and so needed, when she reached down and felt his cock through his bathing suit, he quivered, as if she was a man and he was a woman being groped for the first time. Leaving her hand there, while waiting for him to catch up, she waited for his lust to swell with her passion, while kissing him. Then, when he pulsated his passion against her palm and she reached her hand inside and took hold of his cock, she took control of him. Never has any woman been so aggressive in her desire for him. Never has any woman touched him in such a way. Lost in her kisses, he melted, when she fondled his cock. The way to a man's heart is not through his stomach. His penis was his direct connection to his heart and brain. The lust he felt before, immediately turned to love now. There Was Just Something About Mary Treading new ground, never having been intimate with an older woman, no woman has ever voluntarily felt his cock without him having to move her hand there first. Always the one to cop a cheap feel, hoping to continue past first base on his way to second base, while running around the bases, heading for home, and hoping to score, she was already way ahead of him. Then, with no one else on the beach but them, when she fell to her knees, pulled down his bathing trunks, stroked his cock, and looked up at him, before taking his engorged prick in her mouth, he thought he'd die. An in the park, grand slam homerun, not caring what the score and who was winning the game, she was suddenly his whole ballgame. Contently excited to watch her suck him, he was her number one fan watching her play her game her way. Afraid to touch her for fear of startling her and stopping her, he watched her suck him, as if they were long time lovers. Finally, when he was feeling the swell of sexual emotion catch up and move beyond his passion, in tune with the sound of the ocean, he stepped away, pulled up his bathing suit, and lifted her up to him. Forsaking a blowjob, wanting more than just sex and fearing that he'd be cheated out of love, he didn't want to cum. Not now and not yet. He wanted to experience more. He wanted to experience all of her. He pulled her to him and they kissed again, this time, even more passionately than their first kiss. She had moved him now to where he needed to be to satisfy her. He reached behind her to cup and squeezed her bikini clad ass. Then, aroused with the clumsy passion of a boy of only twenty-six-years-old with a mature woman of the world, who had already experienced the love and the passion of a real man, he felt her breast through her bikini top, while she fingered his cock through his bathing suit and continued kissing him. Still the only ones on the beach, it wouldn't have mattered if there were thousands of people, for a fleeting moment, they were lost within one another. Love at first sight, never had he seen anyone as beautiful and so sexually provocative. After they exchanged pleasantries and told one another their names, when she told him she was old enough to be his aunt or his much older sister, he didn't care. Instead, wanting to be instantly mature, removing his mind of foolish thoughts, such as surfing, and refusing to say chronological references that revealed his age, he tried to act older. They walked the entire length of the beach, talking while walking, before she took him to her cabin and fucked him senseless, as if she was a stray dog and he was her bitch. Then, she made love to him, as if they had been intimate since forever, instead of this being their first time. He gave her what she needed with his cock and she gave him what he wanted with her body, beauty, and mouth. That was the first day they met and now three years later, they were still going at it two dogs in heat for two different reasons. Filled with testosterone, he was ready, willing, and able to give her sexual pleasure, whenever she wanted it. Filled with sadness and grief for a love lost, the only time she didn't feel pain is when she felt pleasure. Temporarily, they were a perfect match. "Happy anniversary, Mary." "Happy Earth Day, Anthony." He looked at her, as if she was a movie star and she could have been had she not married her handsome and dashing Army major and had she not lost her mind, when he died. There with his men, deep in the Cambodian jungle and in charge of his small renegade detachment of Special Forces on a CIA mission to find and return MIA's, and kill anyone trying to stop them, he died how he needed to die and she survived the only way she knew how to survive. She gave up her dreams for him and, now that he's dead, her life was over, too. The bullet that killed him, mortally wounded her. As in life and in death, his with physical and mental torture and hers by grief stricken insanity, both their deaths were slow, agonizing ones. When prettier starlets half her age with bigger breasts, thicker hair, and perfect teeth are routinely rejected, with her career already over before it even began, she was past her prime. What chance did she have now, other than to take a younger lover and numb herself with drugs and alcohol, in the way her husband took her and immersed himself in the jungle with his men in camouflage? Maybe he knew he was going to die in the jungle that day, just as she knew she'd die on the beach one day soon, too. Just as her husband was in Cambodia with his men, she was on Cape Cod with some, young man. It was obvious by what she wrote in her journal that she didn't care who she was with, so long as he could make her forget and make her feel something, other than sadness and suffering sorrow. "I don't want to be alone. I can't be alone. I refuse to be alone, not for another minute," she wrote. "When alone, the sounds of silence are deafening. I need someone, anyone, talking to me, grabbing at me, groping me, and fucking me. I need the affection, the attention, the adulation, and the diversion. What better lover to have than an Adonis of a beach bum? I need a warm, hard body and there he was standing in front of me, as if sent from Heaven for the occasion of my intimacy, sexual pleasure, and comfort. He was sent to help me forget and to feel without having to think and to fuck and suck without having to have conversation," is what she wrote in her journal. Only, all that she tried so hard to forget and couldn't, forty years later, as tortured as she was then, Anthony still remembered her now. In the way she mourned her husband, he still mourned the loss of her. Still tortured by the love of a dead woman, as she was tortured by the love of a dead man, his divided feelings that he still held for Mary wasn't fair to his wife and his family. Only, he never told his wife about Mary. He couldn't without revealing the love he still had for her. Sparing her the hurt, he couldn't tell her about Mary for fear she'd be mad, jealous, and just wouldn't understand. Never able to actually put his finger on it, other than the usual attributes of her being blonde and beautiful, there was just something about Mary that he was unable to forget. Raymond had already been gone from her for eleven months, when he died. Foolishly, she was eagerly celebrating his return and now that he's dead her life is over. So strong, so powerful, and so all encompassing, she never thought he'd be killed. She figured he'd return home safely and they'd finally be together forever living life in their dream cottage that was a stone's throw from the ocean. He promised he'd return and he always kept his promises. Conflicted by the love of his woman and torn in his sworn duty of never leaving anyone behind, he reclaimed his men, prisoners of war, but he made the ultimate sacrifice and paid the final price. Trading one for the other, he left her behind, instead. Never lying to her before, now that he's dead, he's such a liar now. They were supposed to have children. Only, he asked her to wait, until he did this one last mission and retired from service, as a Lieutenant Colonel. She wished she had not listened to him and not waited. She'd have something more to live for, if she had his child, a handsome boy named Raymond, Jr. or a beautiful girl named Rayleen. Now, temporarily injected with Anthony's enthusiasm and the spirit of this young man, together, they'd make a new life for however long it lasted. Refusing to die with her husband, yet, as if a fragile, albeit beautiful butterfly emerging from a cocoon, she was temporarily born again. Even with Anthony in her life, a sad excuse for Raymond, she still sometimes teetered on the precipice of death with one foot over the side. Even though she was now with Anthony, she still loved and yearned for Raymond. So long as she was still alive, he was, too. Anthony was just a boy. Raymond was a man. Refusing to allow herself the pain and to grieve the loss of her husband, she hid her sorrow in sex, laughter, drugs, and alcohol, until the surge of her misery exploded her sorrow in such a suffering sadness that no drug, no alcohol, and no hard, beautiful boy of a man could ease her pain and lessen her misery. "Earth Day is the day that we pause to think of the planet, silly," she said with a smile and another tickle. "Okay," he said. "To be honest, I never thought much about the planet, just the sea, the surf, the sand, and the sun. Actually, in that regard, I guess I do think a lot about the planet," he said with a laugh. When she was his world, the only world he knew and wanted to know, he looked at her with eyes filled with love that had no room for the Earth or for Earth Day. Not wanting to share her with anyone or anything, he was suddenly jealous of the joy, albeit feigned joy, she showed for the Earth and had for Earth Day. "Here," she said. "It's in today's newspaper. Today is Earth Day. The third Earth Day. Today is the day that inspires awareness and when we all pause to appreciate the Earth's natural environment, while all striving to protect and preserve it." Only, she had false pretenses. Just as Earth Day didn't matter to him, Earth Day didn't matter to her either. Earth Day then didn't nearly hold the same meaning 40 years ago, as it does today. All he knew was that he was happy and she was sometimes sad. Instead of mourning the loss of her husband and getting on with her life, it was obvious to him that she couldn't. Unable to admit it, deep down inside, he knew she was using him for sex and using him to forget whatever it was she needed to forget. He hoped that when she healed, once she awakened from her grief and misery that she'd see him and want him in the way she had loved her husband. When she awakened from her denial, he wanted to be there for her. Only, she never awakened. Just as he never got over her, she never got over her grief for the love of another man. He didn't know how much she still loved the major, not then, and not right away. Slowly, as if pulling teeth, never really confronting it, and talking about it without much emotion, she gradually shared the intimate details of her prior life to him much later. Even then, he wouldn't discover all the details of her life, until he read her journal. He didn't know that without him in her life, she would have died of grief with the death of her husband. Helping her to survive, he was her temporary world, just as he hoped she'd be his permanent one. Yet, when the newness of him wore off, when even a drunken or drug induced high couldn't help make her forget and deliver her from the low place she was in, gone from his bed, she was dead already. Last night was the last time they made love. She knew it, no doubt, and he could feel it. This time was different. Their kisses were longer, the hugs were tighter, and their embraces were more desperate. He knew there was something up but she wasn't talking. She seldom talked to him about such things anyway. He rolled over to her and touched her, felt her, and groped her, before tugging at her nightgown. In one quick pull it was off and she was naked. He touched her, as if touching her for the first time. The warmth and the softness of her skin excited him in a way he's never been excited by any other woman before. Even though she was already wet, she was always somewhere else, some place she went to be with Raymond, no doubt. Even though she was there physically, she was never there mentally. Able to feel the distance she kept, she was even more distant this time and, even though he refused to believe it, somehow, he knew this would be their last time together. Definitely, in the way she looked through him and looked away from him, always avoiding eye contact, she seemed more distant than usual. In the way she touched him was ethereal. Nonetheless, as if possessed by her soon to be ghostly spirit, hoping to reach her and bring her back to life, before it was too late, he attacked her with such passion as he hasn't had since the first time they made love. He gave her an orgasm with his fingers, another with his mouth, and a final one with his cock. Each time he gave her orgasmic pleasure, just before kissing her, he looked at her to see if she was feeling more than the physical pleasure of him that he gave her. Only able to reach her sexually and at the surface, he tried his best to touch her deeper. It was his hope to inject her with more than just his cum. He wanted to inject her with his love and with the passion that he not only had for her but that he had for life. He needed her to love him, but he suspected that she didn't and she couldn't. He wanted a baby, but she wouldn't. Not now and not with him. When her husband's eyes closed for the last time, her time for babies and diapers had long since past. When he saw her familiar sadness in her eyes return, it was as if a curtain fell across a stage that told the audience the show was over. Even after all the sexual pleasure he had given her, withdrawing even deeper this time, he saw that she was hopelessly lost within herself. He didn't have to have a college education to know that their relationship was doomed and now tragically and painfully over. "Blow me," he said. "Suck my cock. I need to cum in your mouth." In a final moment of selfish pleasure for himself, somehow he knew this would be his last blowjob from her and as if she had already gone to Heaven, to Hell, or to wherever she was going, he wanted her to take something of his with her for the journey, if even only his sperm. "Suck it! Suck me, Mary," he said pulling her hair with one hand, while pushing her head forward with the other, all the while impaling her mouth deeper and humping her face harder. He was hoping she'd feel something, even if it was only pain. Only, she showed nothing because, obviously, she felt nothing. Besides, he couldn't hurt her. He loved her. After he exploded all that he had to give in her mouth and she swallowed, he lifted her up to him. They kissed for the last time. Then, while holding one another and spooning later, they slept like that through the night, with him unable to let her go to wherever it was she needed to be. That next morning, on the third anniversary and on their third Earth Day that they were together, when he was in the bathroom taking a shower, she was swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills. She was gone from the cottage and from him in the early morning to watch the sunrise, she said. He knew the day was coming, but he didn't figure that day would be today, not after last night, when he gave her such sexual pleasure and not after this morning, when she had so much joy in watching the sunrise, but sadly for the last time. Besides, today was Earth Day, their third anniversary and he had made reservations at her favorite restaurant. Even though he thought she was happy, she was sad. He could never understand her moods. Not so unusual, as she was an early riser and loved walking the beach alone to be with her thoughts. After a while, when she didn't return, he went out looking for her. As if she was in bed sleeping, curled up in a fetal position, and as if cold from the cool chill of the morning, he found her dead on the beach, up behind the sand dunes, holding a photo of her deceased husband handsomely resplendent in his medal covered uniform. She left Anthony a note that he didn't see, until he returned to the cottage later that night. Her wish was to be cremated with her ashes scattered every Earth Day. Even though what she did in killing herself was a selfish act of desperation, even though she never reciprocated the love he had for her, he still loved her enough to honor her wishes. Besides, honoring her wish was his way to never forget her. He lied when told his wife that the ashes was of his best friend who drowned in a surfing accident. Every Earth Day, Anthony celebrated her death by driving to Cape Cod and scattering some of her ashes in front of the cottage where they lived and made love. Forty years later, even though he's married with children and living in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, a long way from the ocean he so loved, he still thinks about her, and just as she did with Raymond, he still wonders what could have been with Mary. From the first day that he met her, there was just something about Mary. * Please don't forget to vote, make a comment, and/or add me and this story to your favorite lists. Thank you for reading my story.