What a Shirtless Man Can Do to Me

Yesterday morning before I left for work at the spa, I rang my neighbors' door to see if they would care to have Rasputin for the day, since Aaron was also working Saturday. It was a little before 9, and the husband answered the door shirtless, in sweat pants, and with rumpled hair. He's good-looking, good guy who is trim, intelligent, and has a sense of humor. After he said yes and we exchanged some pleasantries, I went off to work with a tear in my eye.

It's not my neighbor per se. Sure, he's a great guy, but it's more the overwhelming sadness that I felt seeing him standing there, knowing it's been more than 10 years since I loved a man who really seemed to love me, that it's been that long since I woke up to a man's bare chest. And even more than that, I thought that I'll never have that again in my life. That's really hard to take. That because of my diabetes or my kidney disease or the dialysis or the heart surgery, I'll keep being rejected or not even considered. And of course, once I have the transplant, I'll have so many scars on my body that I'll look like a hacked piece of meat.

As I was doing my first massage of the day, I thought, Once I get the kidney transplant, I'll be free of the dialysis tubing. Then I can get a bunch of tatooes, maybe intersecting vines that connect and cover the bypass scar down my chest, the scar from the vein they took from my right thigh, and the huge gash that comes along with a kidney transplant (for the recipient, not the donor). That made me feel much better. I thought there still might be a chance at love in this lifetime.

Later that day, however, I remembered: With a compromised immune system from taking the immune-suppressant drugs that prevent organ rejection, I will not be able to have tatooes. The possibility of infection from the needles is too great.

So I guess there will always be a reason for a man to reject me. The best I can do is do a much better job of avoiding the countless prompts that might remind me of my aloneness--love songs, couples holding hands or kissing, people talking about nice things their significant other does, groups in which I'm the only single person, any references to or images of sex, and, of course, bare-chested men.