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                              The Journal
 Alex Glemzu Normal Alex Glemzu 2 249 2002-05-20T03:17:00Z
2002-05-20T03:17:00Z 2 908 5177 Gateway 43 10 6357 9.2720 
The Journal
 
 
 
By 

 
 
Rapier
 
 
 
Prologue
 
 
 
            “Honey,” I told the beautiful woman next to me as I sat
down, “I want to show you something.”
 
            I held in my arms an old leather bound journal that I had
kept since I was a young man of fourteen.  The eight years that I have
used the journal had taken its toll on the book.  The light tan
covering itself told a story of its passage through time and the number
of times that it had been shown to others.  A dark brown stain on the
back of the book that had occurred six years ago when a cup of coffee
had been spilled and a splash of it had landed on the cover.  A blue
stains from the time that an artist friend of mine had accidentally
splattered a few drops onto the book, which I had cleaned off carefully
soon afterwards.  The binding was speckled with a few watermarks that
had occurred when I had been caught in a downpour three years ago.
 
The book held a story, one which I had gone through a great many
changes and feelings about the events that took place.  A great many
emotions were a part of the book I held.  Most were good memories; some
of the memories were brought on by the worst in me.  The story had many
things that had shaped my life.
 
“What is that?”  The woman cradled in my arms asked.  “How come I’ve
never seen it before?”
 
I had a confession to make it about my life and it was one that could
alter her perceptions of me in either way.  Looking in her face, I
found what I needed.  I knew that I needed to tell her the truth before
our relationship could progress any further.
 
I placed the book into her lap, answering her question as I did. 
“Love, I want you to understand something about me and this is going to
answer a lot about me.”  She turned to look at me with her blue-green
eyes flashing seductively in the firelight.  She smiled at me because I
was opening a new door in our relationship.
 
“You know how I’ve never told you about my previous relationships.”
 
“You don’t have to tell me.  I don’t care about your sex life before
me.”  She interrupted quickly.
 
I put my finger over her mouth quieting her with a compassionate look
in my eyes.  “I want to tell you, love.”  I told her.  “You need to
know and this book will help me explain it.”
 
“It was given to me as a gift for my fourteenth birthday and I’ve used
it since that day as a chronicle of the women that I have loved and
slept with.  I wrote down what I felt should be written down about
them, like their name, where we met, her favorite food, and a
description of the best time that I had with her.  I would then give
this journal to the woman and ask her to answer five questions that I
felt were most important.”  I looked down at my lover’s lip, seeing it
quivering slightly at what I had said, and I said to her with as much
reassurance as I could.  “I’m not asking you to write in this book.  I
want to share this with you because you need to know if we are to go
further.  You are more special to me that I don’t want to you to write
in this journal.  You are the person that I’ve been seeking for my
entire life and I want to keep you for the rest of my life.  I need to
tell you this because I want you to know everything about me and that
includes the good and the bad, which is covered in this journal.”
 
Her lip stopped quivering as she started to try and speak again but I
beat her to punch, saying, “As I was saying before, I asked them all
the same five questions that I thought would be the most important
questions that could be given.  The questions were simple and I asked
them all to answer these questions within a paragraph, or less, for
each answer.  How you do feel about your parents?  Why did you give me
a chance?  What was favorite moment that we shared?  What is your
favorite food?  And the final question, if you could tell the woman
that I was going to marry something, what would it be?”
 
“This book carries their answers to each of those questions and with
them I can explain to you everything about each one of them.  That is
the purpose of this journal.  I started it for myself but this journal
became something more.  It grew beyond me as most good things do.  This
journal is something more than a trophy that I would show to the guys
and tell stories.  I am the only man to ever read this journal.  It’s
not a trophy that a guy shares with other guys.  It’s a point of pride
now.  There are over fifty women that have written in this book and
each one of them has given this book a pearl of wisdom that has
transformed this book into a string of pearls.  I see this book as a
piece of beauty.”
 
My lover took the book in her hands and looked it in a light, a light
that had view it for the past seven years.  I took her hands in mine
and I opened the book to the first entry.  We looked upon the image
young girl, no more than fifteen years old, which had been drawn upon
the page with care.  I had drawn that image with a simple use of lines
that gave her picture a quality of youth and innocence, traits that she
had given me.
 
Her face was in classic heart shape that I had look like she had posed
for the picture, though I had drawn it nearly a day after I had seen
her.  Her head was resting on her right hand with her eyes looking at
something slightly above her.  Her hair was cut short to just above her
shoulder with her bangs falling over her forehead and covering the top
of her eyes.  She had a smile on her face that was human, not perfect,
which made it real.  One of her front teeth was uneven from a chip that
had happened years before that had smoothed over.  She was beautiful in
flaws the way only a girl turning into a woman could be.  She had her
youthful naïveté that hadn’t been corrupted as all youths had gone
through.
 
            “Love, this was the woman that took my virginity just as I
took hers.  Her name was Jennifer Craig, she was a cousin of mine
though marriage.”  I admitted to her without a hint of remorse or
pride, just a statement of fact.  “We were teenagers, we were two
walking hormones that just happened to come together at the right
time.  It was only a one-night stand for both of us since we understood
that our families would have problems with us getting involved with
each other, though I did ask her to write in this journal a few days
afterwards to begin it properly.”
 
