PUNKUS EVERYWHERE

PUNKUS EVERYWHERE

My friends think I’m crazy. Especially when I talk about my first serious love—Punkus! Punkus disappeared from my life about twenty-five years ago, but I still bug my friends about her—about the memories I have of her—about my hope of meeting her again someday soon. I tell them I still see Punkus…not in a banal, ghostly way—but in a real, tangible way. I often see her, not as I remembered her, but as how she must have looked as she aged—always beautiful, always desirable, yet always unattainable.

“Look at that woman sitting at the table in the corner,” I would say. “Doesn’t she remind you of Punkus?”

“Not in the least, she’s too fat.”

“But the eyebrows, Sam, aren’t those the eyebrows of Punkus?”

“You’re crazy.”

And so it would go through the years. Piece by familiar piece…characteristics I would recognize of Punkus in other women. Sometimes I would open a magazine, as I did a few moments ago, and there would be Punkus’s eyes staring at me from the page. Or walking along a street, I would catch a snatch of conversation coming from Punkus’s lips—only to discover the speaker was a stranger.

“Why do you torture yourself so,” my friends ask. “The longer you don’t hear from her, the less chances there are that she’s disappeared from your life forever!”

“But that’s the whole point!” I argue. “ As long as I can find some glimmer of recognizable feature of Punkus—however insignificant…however diaphanous—she will always be near.”

And who’s to know. As long as Punkus is everywhere—she’ll never be nowhere!

OLGA THE TEMPTRESS

OLGA, THE TEMPTRESS

You would have figured that after three strikes I would have learned my lesson and stopped playing games with my latest heartthrob, Olga. She was known in the neighborhood as “Olga the Flirt.” My ex-girlfriend called her a “skanky ho”! But I was drawn to Olga like a honeybee is drawn to a yellow rose. Had I known Olga was keeping a scorecard on our affair, I would have been more careful. But I kept running off at the mouth about how much I loved her and what I was willing to do to make her happy, that before I knew what hit me, Olga had amassed ten charges against me and called it quits!

In a final message to me she accused me of being a “pubescent teen,” an “antagonistic jerk,” of being “less than tactful,” of offering her an “indecent proposal,” suggesting that she was a “gold digger,” of showing “animosity,” and ending up with the statement that she was liking me “less and less.”

Needless to say these charges were completely unfounded for just a few days prior she was charming me with compliments such as I had a “brilliant mind, an open heart, and words that touch my heart.” That same day she said, “Of course,” to accepting my offer of “unconditional love.” “I love you so much,” she whispered, “for always taking the time to think about me.” She recently described me as “witty, intelligent, and caring.” Tell me, how could I misinterpret such sentiments as, “you are so special to me,” and “I love you so much.” Are those the words of a flirt? I think not!

What am I to do now? Am I to believe the words she spoke last week or the words she spoke yesterday? Either way, my love for Olga is true, and I will continue to love and adore her. Until I know for sure, I won’t conclude this story with THE END.