She had curly blonde hair, piercing green eyes, a killer body, and she looked maybe fifteen years younger than I knew she had to be, given the presence of her fifteen-year-old son in the room. She was one of those rare women who has such a presence that I find it a challenge to maintain basic decorum, to uphold my end of a conversation, with her in the room, let alone with her in the conversation.
“Would you read my palm?” I asked her?
I’m hyper-rational. I don’t believe in claptrap like palm reading. But this woman is a professional palm-reader – she makes a living doing it. And the thought of spending some significant chunk of time with my hand resting in hers, our bodies close, our eyes gazing at one another, was enormously compelling. So I wanted my palm read, dammit.
“You should be prepared,” she warned me. “It can be really intense. We’ll need about forty-five minutes to ourselves, and we’ll do it away from others. I don’t want others hearing what we’re saying, because this is a highly personal interaction.”
It was sounding better and better.
We went to a private room and sat, my hand resting in hers. Just as I’d imagined, she looked deeply into my eyes. She looked at my hand. She caressed it, softly, firmly. This was about as good as sex, as far as I was concerned, and we hadn’t even started.
I’ll cut to the chase here, without giving you my palm reading. This woman told me things about myself that no one other than I knew. She told me things that only my wife and I knew. She told me obscure truths about my past, secretive facts about my current existence, and made improbable predictions. As she went on, I was totally seduced. Not just by her ethereal beauty, but by the sense that this woman was somehow inside of me, that she had access to me in a way I didn’t imagine I could grant access. The most disturbing thing she said was this: “You are about to embark on a second secret life.”
Now here’s the thing. It’s a true statement that I had just at that time finished my first secret life. It was, in part, her accuracy in detailing the contours and characteristics of that first secret life that so impressed me. So her prediction of a second one was haunting, particularly given how painful my emergence from the first had been. I didn’t want to lead a secret life – I was resolved never to do that again. This couldn’t possibly be right.
I walked out and called T. “I don’t believe in palm-reading,” I complained. “But she totally read my palm.”
“No she didn’t,” corrected T. “She read your mind.”
Fast forward two years….
My wife and I are occasional “swingers,” occasional “polyamorists.” We fuck people other than one another, and to great effect. This is a secret from all but a very few of our closest friends. I have a blog – one that I’m finding enormously rewarding to build. My “girfriend,” if it’s possible for a married guy to have a married girlfriend, has just started her blog. In short… I have a secret life.
I still don’t believe in palmistry, but god DAMN….