Maggie
Maggie S. My husband once described her in writing as his "Canadian rose". She has taken up so much mental time and space in my head, that I'm wondering if it wouldn't be worth it to try to get her out of my system and into my blog.Maggie was my husband's student before we ever met - in the mid 90's. He was in his twenties - she was almost 40. She was a divorced single mother of two from Canada. He thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen - with (what he describes as) "the most narrow waist" he'd ever seen on a woman. After the class ended, she bought him a gift, and he called to thank her. Apparently, one thing led to another which culminated in passionate kisses one day in the campus library. And that led to passionate encounters and sexual exploration beyond his most vivid imagination. Their relationship lasted for quite some time.
I know some of this because of what Michael told me about her when we first got together. He couldn't stop talking about her. It was as if she were still just around the corner. There was a longing in his heart that only we women know. It had been years since their breakup, but they still talked on the phone and e-mailed. They still told each other "I love you".
I know more about their relationship from what I read. I knew that Michael kept journals - no, more like photo albums - of all of his correspondence with every woman ever dated and computer journal printouts of his writing during these times. They were explicit, and detailed things like kisses, touches, feelings, and sexual encounters. I learned about these binders of material once early in our relationship during a visit to see my husband when he told be about Karen. I'm not sure, but I think Karen was one of the first women my husband explored his sexuality with in college - and maybe the first white woman he fell in love with. When I was up visiting him, he got out this album to show me a picture of Karen - (deep breath as I write) - to show me how much he thought she looked like me! I was horrified and embarrassed - and deeply hurt. (Though I should have been flattered - she was stunning.) And I was confused. I loved this man so much - why would he do that to me? Worse - why on earth had he held on to these things and catalogued them (dated and in sheet-protectors) in logical order, perfectly preserved?
Come to find out, he had done the same with his relationship with Maggie. Maggie had her own binders (yes, multiple binders) devoted soley to her. Her binders had a prominent place on the bookshelf in his office. This meant that he had to move from apartment to apartment - and from Florida to Ohio - and move those fucking binders with him every place he went, unpack them, and place them in a prominent position on his bookshelves.
Over the course of numerous trips to visit Michael, and long days when he would work on campus while I stayed at his apartment, I took the time to read through these binders of memories. (He took little time away from his precious work to be with me even when I visited for a few days all the way from Georgia). In Karen's binder, there was the Christmas card she gave him when after they became intimate. This was back to his undergraduate days - he was now a professor. This was a long time to save these things. Maggie's binders were much thicker and difficult to read through, but I figured I might learn something about Michael's fear of relationships, or about what he liked and didn't like - because he certainly wasn't revealing those things to me.
Maggie's binder contained all sorts of memories. There were Maggie's journal entried where she wrote about the development of her relationship with Michael. And then there were all of Michael's journal entries detailing his developing feeling for Maggie. Every card or letter she sent was perfectly preserved in sheet protectors. There were letters her children had sent to Michael and even little drawings they had made for him. There were love letters and informational letters. There were poems, and talk about visits and things they did together. With these binders, you could re-trace every step of their relationship on a day-to-day basis. The descriptions were so rich you could see what transpired between them. I remember Maggie's detailed description of how he unbuttoned her blouse and delicately touched her breast for the first time. I remember her writing about how pleasantly surprised she was to see how well endowed he was physically when she saw him naked for the first time. I read her journals entries she shared with him describing how he smelled and tasted, and how he moved with her sexually. I read details about how she brought him to orgasm for the first time, and how he was able to bring her to orgasm time and time again. I found a picture of her, and she was very pretty. The picture was taken of the two of them in Michael's parent's home in Mississippi - a place he wouldn't allow me to visit with him until we'd been together almost a year. She was very petite with pretty hair and eyes and perfect skin. She was thin, and...visually perfect. I could see why he found her irresistible.
He kept the journals the entire time we were together. When we broke up for 6 months in the middle of our relationship, he immediately emailed her and told her how much he missed her and that he loved her. He left a printout of the email on the floor beside the sofa - it wasn't hard to miss one day months later when I was up for a visit. You'd have thought he'd at least try to put those things away to protect my feelings, of not hide his personal thoughts about her.
Later, when I asked him for names and addresses of who he wanted to send an invitation to our wedding to, I was cut to the core to see that he had put her name and address on the list. Couldn't you see her at our wedding? MY wedding? What a slap in the face.
A month after we got married, I was up visiting my new husband at his place in Ohio. He was at work and I jumped on his computer to check my e-mail. I noticed a file on the desktop labeled "stories". I decided to read them. One of them broke my heart. He wrote about driving down to Georgia from Ohio to marry me, and not knowing why he was going through with it. He wrote about stopping at a gas station, and seeing a woman - and feeling a sense of panick because he thought it was Maggie. He said he thought that if he found out that was her, and that she was available and living in the states - that he could not have gone through with marrying me. He talked about how much he missed, and still loved, his "Canadian rose". When he saw that it wasn't her, he drove on and went through with marrying me. This was not a fictional account. When I asked my husband, he admitted it was true, but that he was "freaked out" about getting married. He had written it shortly after returning to Ohio from our "honeymoon" if you could call it that.
Back when Michael and I decided to get married, I told him how uncomfortable I was with these binders of his past (he kept these binders as well as electronic copies of everything - because, God forbid he loose them). He never got rid of them. After we got married and he moved to Lexington (a year ago now) I discovered that he had packed these up and moved them with him. Now they were in OUR HOME. I was deeply disturbed. I begged him (well, probably ordered him) to get rid of them. He said he needed to "go through them" first. He claimed he was keeping them for "books or journal articles to write someday". The truth was he couldn't part with them.
As things stand now, I live with Maggie in my head far too often. I know about my husband's fantasies for older women - I've seen the videos he used to buy and watch. And I know he can't talk about these fantasies because of my reactions to them.
I'm not Maggie. She'd be 50 years old by now - I'm 34. She's petite and thin - I'm tall by some standards, busty, curvy, and "thick" as some have described me (in a good way). I don't write as well as she did. I don't turn on my husband like she did. Over the 3 plus years we have been together, my husband has never sent me a card, and has written me 1 love letter which caused him unbelievable anxiety. Whatever happened between Maggie and Michael, this much is true: in his heart, he loves her and will always be married to her. She was his one true love - the one that taught him about love and sex and family. He was willing to become a stepfather to her two children - but now, at age 34, doesn't even want to have any of his own. Nothing will ever compare to Maggie.
I hope Maggie S. (now Maggie N.) knows how much she is loved and admired and cherished. I've never met her, but wish in some way I could. I bet she's simply amazing, and I bet I'd like her a lot. Anyone that could excite my husband must be something else - because he's never been able to tell me he wants me, and I'm the one he ended up marrying.
posted by No Longer In Crisis @ 6/22/2005 01:22:00 PM
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