This is sort of based on a conversation I had with my partner a few nights ago.

What started it was my finding a file on the computer I’d forgotten I’d had. A newspaper article, an obituary, for a woman who I love who died in 2006. I write love because it never was in the past tense and she’s still important to me for many reasons.

That evening my partner and I were talking about her and her house a thousand miles away, a 1940s Spanish colonial style with an interior walkway/hall with floor to ceiling windows looking out onto the garden. We have plants from that garden growing here.

We were talking and I was going on about how there’s a catalog of graphic triggers for me – women’s fashion, like bold patterns or the colors red and black, or simple things like lipstick. Back in the ‘70s she was the only woman I was close to who wore lipstick. This woman’s costume when dressing up included crimson lipstick to go along with a crisp white blouse, long black skirt, boots, and a Spanish-style black hat. She was beautiful. When I come across 1940s photos of Slim Keith, there are some which are spot on with my memories of this woman.

And then my mind took a lurch and I started to talk about another woman. She was the friend of a third woman who had been the victim of a grisly rape and murder in the 1980s. The other woman had been a witness for the prosecution. We were friends then lovers in the ‘70s and are friends now.

Anyway, I was in the library of the small town my partner and I lived in back then, almost 30 years ago. I was browsing through the library’s new books and while I don’t normally read true crime there was a book which caught my attention. It turned out to be about the murder and trial and amongst the photos was one of this other woman I knew. I hadn’t realized how hot she was or how beautiful until I saw that photo and I told my partner this. How I hadn’t realized. My partner knows the woman and smiled. Yes, she’s beautiful and hot.

And then I told my partner how I hadn’t realized how beautiful she was/is until about 1980. And then I’m having to explain myself. How when we first met I felt like I was enfolded in her. I wasn’t an observer. I’d had no time to go through the process of discriminating and objectifying.

What I’m writing isn’t going to say anything important, except there are people who are important to me for various reasons and everything’s fuzy because even back then there were so many interlocking strands and digressions. It’s even more so now. I touch the leaves of the daughters of the plant she gave us, the first woman, and I remember her house and the crimson lipstick.

I remember her saying to me, “You like pretty girls, don’t you?” And giving that special smile.

The second woman, she had her lips tattooed so her lipstick is permanent.