The Day We Met

It was still only 5AM and the seagulls calling to each other in the first light of the morning reminded me to look outside to see what kind of day it was shaping up to be. It was bright and clear blue already, the perfect one I decided for meeting my darling at last and also a brilliant day for the beach. My heart caught in my throat, as I realized I had not even touched his face with my own bare fingers, or tasted his kisses or his skin, or danced with his eyes across a crowded room and yet in just a few short hours all of these experiences were about to happen. At least four new senses were waiting to be explored with him. Touch, smell, taste and sight. I knew though. I just knew that I loved him and that he was ‘the one’. I wondered what I would do if he did not feel the same way about me? Oh God, what if this knowingness about him was all wrong? What if it was all just my overactive pineal gland foreseeing the perfect romance like a teenage schoolgirl does when she begins falling in love with love for the first time? But this was not the first time for me. I was fifty years old. I was practically a grandmother with my daughter Emma carrying her first child already.

I crushed my thoughts, snatching at the sheets and ripped them off the mattress in one huge tug. It was high time to cool my head off under the shower and so, as I lathered up the shampoo, I could not help but feel a wave of sheer excitement rise and wash over me with electric intensity. I was feeling so alive in my bare skin that I let out a thrilling “whooo hooo”, drying myself off and taking care to cover every inch of my body with moisturizer and layering it as well with Chanel No 5, my favourite perfume. I wanted to smell delicious. It was all for him you know, and it was definitely all for me too.

What would he really look like I wondered? Which photograph captured his true likeness? He seemed to look different in every single snap, just like my photos seemed to capture a different aspect of myself in the same way. Not one of them looked like me at all really. Mark’s photos reminded me of something deeper and more mysterious though, which I did not quite know how to put my finger on exactly and yet the images were intrinsically familiar to me. When I looked at his photos, I would have flashbacks. It was like gazing into an old, old memory, of my own faded world of sepia in an ancient photograph album of another lifetime. Who were the ghosts rising out of parchment paper like a waft of fine sandalwood incense I wondered? Where did the Egyptian paraffin candle wax come from that melted the seals to my heart and to my soul, leaving me hypnotized into a trance devoid of all other lovers and memories? I was stuck in a fog totally captivated by his images and seeing him in the flesh would soon tell me why.

I put on my favourite little black dress adding a little chic with a nineteen fifties style cream jacket which swung at the bottom like something Audrey Hepburn would have worn in the old movie ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’, except at least four sizes smaller. When I had finished applying my makeup, I sat for a while just gazing into the mirror and imagined what the swish of black seamed nylon stockings brushing against each other would really sound like on me, and how they would feel against my bare skin under my little black dress. I would love to have had the guts to meet him all dressed up in them with suspenders and the six inch killer black heels as well, but I realized that it would probably be all too much greeting him like that for the first time, just to pick him up at the airport. Besides, I did not even own a pair of real nylon stockings from the 1950s anyway. It was just a fantasy.

I threw back my head and laughed, catching a brief reflection of it in the mirror and recognized a piece of uncut diamond shining through my eyes untouched by any man before and certainly never seen in myself until now. I wanted Mark to touch that part of me there as well. Was this the reflection of the famous Medusa with twisting slithering snakes crawling in her hair? To me, she would be the most frightening woman of all my wildest dreams and to every man as well I think, yet I wanted to share her with him and not just show him the lovely, positive, happy Claire that everyone else knew outside of my bedroom.

I was rather afraid that this darker shade of me would try to consume Mark and decided to try and tone down my energy of pure sex with him somehow, so I threw on some black leggings under my dress and a pair of flat ballet shoes to make the overall first impression less formal and more casual. I thought my demeanour was already intense enough to frighten him away and so was my face covered in all of this makeup, which defied my mother’s last request to be plain and unattractive.

Then I remembered his voice. To me it felt as familiar to me as a waft of velvet soap, carrying me far back in time to one of my earliest memories when I was a baby in Melbourne, having a bath in the laundry trough, which was as yellow as the colour of English buttercups. I would splash about and have to hold my breath at the same time, so that the soapy water didn’t go up my nose. The sound of Mark’s voice took me back to that place, before I had any knowledge of something sinister going on in the darkness. There was something so pure and innocent about my love for Mark and something so damned primal and erotic about it as well. So this was lust and this was love entwined at last. “How utterly so divine”, I whispered to the lady in the mirror. “Bring it on Medusa”!

Better pop on the jangle bangles and make this raven hair dead straight I suppose. Time to throw the dishes in the dishwasher, change the sheets, and have one last walk through the place to check everything looks good, smells good, is good. Better plump the cushions on the couch up again and light more incense before I’m off. Yes the flowers look beautiful on the piano, or would they look better on the dining table? No matter. The candles are ready, champers is chilling. Another squirt of Chanel and two layers of lipstick, plus another sweep of mascara over the lashes will do it. Cool! Time to go. Oh my God. I was so nervous and so excited all at the same time.

I took off and into the day down to Coolangatta airport three quarters of an hour’s drive away in my rusty old light blue Corona, rather wishing it was a black 911 Porsche with the wind wafting through my hair instead. Shut up ego, I screamed in my head. I don’t need you anymore! I don’t need to impress him and I don’t want to either. It’s ok now. I am really being my true self at last. Just fuck off ok?

I watched the people spilling out of the gangway and into the arrival area at the airport with my heart jumping madly like a pony. The information screen had told me that his plane had landed five minutes earlier and he would be amongst the next batch of passengers walking through at any moment now. I placed myself far enough away to get a really good look at him, as he came through the entrance, giving myself time to prepare for the surprise of seeing his face and then to quickly contain my nerves somehow before saying hello. I knew this was it. There was no turning back, not that I wanted to for a second mind you.

More people started to come through now. Their bodies swarmed around me like busy bees droning for honey and my eyes darted everywhere searching the empty faces for him, but there were only blank unfamiliar expressions, whilst their shoulders bumped into me accidentally amidst the buzz. I could not recognise anything of the feeling of him anywhere at all. Maybe he had missed the plane? Maybe he wasn’t coming? But he had texted me and rung me at the airport to say that he had parked and was on his way to check in. Maybe he had changed his mind? I started to bite the insides of my bottom lip and my eyes returned to the gangway again. People were dribbling out now and I searched each face for even a tiny spark of recognition from someone. Anyone, but they were just ordinary people not matching my feelings or my anxiety in the slightest possible way.

And then my heart stopped. Oh please God, please make that gorgeous man him coming out of those doors right now. Make him please be ‘the one’? He was tall, devastatingly handsome, wearing a nice suit and a devilish grin and was slowly walking straight towards me. My chest started to burst inside the walls of my heart, as if a thunderstorm was looming there. I started to walk slowly towards him too. Then faster and faster as the warm rush of blood rose to my cheeks and then flashed down into my stomach in a bolt of lightning. I hurried faster towards him now, as another rush of blood gushed into my groin in a hot tropical throb of rain. My head was spinning. Oh God this was it. Could this really be him? His curls were tousled down over his forehead, as he paced towards me, whilst more locks of hair bounced up and down across those strong broad shoulders with each step approaching closer to me. I glanced behind me to see if he was making his entrance towards someone else, but the beautiful woman I braced myself to see and envied so much was nowhere in sight, instead those electric blue eyes were melting into mine as if they were pieces of decadent Belgian chocolate. It must be him. He was so gorgeous! Oh thank you God. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

He paused in his path about ten paces away from me and my fear was just an old demon exorcised by his eyes and his smile and his beautiful carriage. Something sizzled about him, his energy, his soul, crackling, burning into mine in an invisible embrace. I ran to him, reaching up on tip toes and threw my arms around his neck and his were enfolding me as well, as if our bodies were made for each other, holding each other dissolving and softening into oneness. I caught his aroma, breathing him in for the first time, tasting his skin, as my lips brushed his neck and covered me in goose bumps and happiness, as if we had known each other for eternity and been ripped apart forever and ever until now. He was heaven. I knew I’d been right about him all along. He was ‘the one’ and it was mutual in that very first moment I know, because that oneness told me so.

“Hello”, we both said simultaneously smiling to the brim of happiness, so that I did not think there was room for any more to be contained inside. It was overflowing now from both of us and people were staring, but I couldn’t care less, the only face my eyes embraced was his. It was obvious to me now, why his photographs had triggered so many visions and memories of my past. He was every man that I had ever loved or had wanted to love. I had fallen for each one of them, recognising an aspect of Mark’s being and he was the epitome of them all put together.

“Oh Mark you are so gorgeous”.

Our hands slid together as if they had been choreographed to soaring violins, exactly sculpted to entwine perfectly.

Mysteriously, Sleeping Beauty awoke from within and I thought it strange how I never knew that she was even there before. I was too overawed for words and nothing more was said. We just beamed at each other, filling up and overflowing on the reality that our souls had already known the truth before our bodies could ever imagine the depth of intensity of the secret flame we shared.

Another conversation had started going on between us without words now, whilst our senses deliciously began discerning everything about each other that neither of us had spoken about. We made our way to the baggage area smiling and squeezing each other’s hands, tripping high on the cloud of euphoria and being vaguely aware of many other staring eyes around us, in fact everyone around was watching us, captivated by that electricity invisibly buzzing and sparking between us. Strange how the unspoken is more potent than a three dimensional conversation and how some of us still mistrust the silent language that we are all so familiar with, yet find so unbelievably naïve to take seriously.

Taken from our book... Twin Flames Kiss: A Twin Flames Love Story