Twice: Fantasies of Past Loves and Closure

By Karen S. Camara

My name is Ruby and the birthstone Ruby is in part associated with love, passion, and determination. True or not, this proved to be prophetic for me, especially in my later years when I successfully accomplished a very unusual life mission.
To explain, I had four love relationships during the course of my life, all very different in age, personality, and typical of New York City, background. Their only commonality was all were intelligent and that was my initial attraction to each.
Carlos was a teenage friend I dated but with no “chemistry” between us, he never became a lover. Daniel was next and my true soulmate. However, I left him after four years of growing up together since neither of us knew how to handle his drug problem. Larry, a former high school teacher, was during my troubled times with Daniel but our brief relationship ended after I met and married Bruce, my husband for decades. Bruce and I married too young and love soon became frustration due to our basic incompatibility. With an extremely busy life and financial constraints, I no longer believed in “true love” and accepted the status quo as the path of least resistance.
When Bruce died unexpectedly, I reflected on my entire life and romantic past, including the feelings due to my age and life experience at the time. Yet each decade redefines one’s psychology and historical perspectives. Soon after, I wanted to try to find my two previous and significant lovers, to discover what we really had together as well as to see where life had taken them. This would be closure for me.
Now retired, with a wealth of time and financially security, I had the freedom for this exploration. I had always been adventurous and a risk taker. And despite being older, my traitorous body was still the sepulcher of my eternally youthful mind. And so, now I was eager to continue my life journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Oct 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9781480883062

Karen S. Camara

Karen S. Camara is a native New Yorker, born in Manhattan. After attending P.S. 41, Hunter College Junior High School, and The Bronx High School of Science, her higher education included The City College of New York, Pennsylvania State University, and Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science. Following a first career mainstreaming low-income science students, she had a second as a software developer. This is her third book as she continues her life-long passion for writing.

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Copyright © 2019 Karen S. Camara.

Cover design by Karen S. Camara.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-8305-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-8307-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-8306-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019913877

Archway Publishing rev. date: 10/17/2019

Contents

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my soulmate, Michael. We met when I was fifteen and he was sixteen. We spent four years together, forty-five years apart, and then reunited, married, and continued our lives together until his death in 2006. Michael always validated and supported who I was and wanted to be. As a result, he significantly shaped my life, both while he was living but even now after his death.

Chapter 1

M y name is Ruby. I do not know why my parents chose that name but once I was older, I was curious enough to look up its meaning on the internet. However, the name merely meant red and symbolized the color of fire and blood. Next I continued with the characteristics associated with the gemstone and found many meanings. For me, the negative ones included danger, war, and power. Yet the positive ones included love, passion, and determination. So, although I would never know my parents’ rationale for choosing my name, the positive associations proved to be prophetic, especially in my later years when I successfully accomplished a very unusual life mission.

To explain, I had four relationships during the course of my life, with each man providing very different perspective of love. Specifically, the four were as dissimilar from each other as any men could be. They were different ages, personalities, histories, and, as typical of New York City, different ethnic and religious backgrounds. Their only commonality was all were intelligent and that had been my initial attraction to each.

Carlos was the first. I met him in my early teens through friends but with no chemistry between us, he remained a friend instead of becoming a lover. Daniel was the second and my true soulmate. However, I left him after four years of our growing up together since he had a problem with drugs neither of us knew how to handle. Larry was a former high school teacher during my make up and break up times with Daniel but that brief relationship ended after I met and married Bruce, my husband for more than four decades by the time he died. Bruce and I married too young and over time love became frustration due to our basic incompatibility. Yet we never divorced. With a very busy life and financial constraints, I no longer believed in true love and defaulted to the status quo as the path of least resistance.

After Bruce’s death, I reflected on my life and all my past relationships. I already knew each was influenced by my age and life experience at the time but over the years these perceptions had naturally changed. Each decade redefines one’s psychology and I was no exception, with my past and potential future resulting in my present psychological context. Moreover, despite family and friends, growing old and dying is ultimately a singular journey.

As I reflected on my life. I started wanting to try to find my two past lovers. And if they were still alive, I wanted to see where life had taken them and explore the past. In short, this would be closure for me. And given my age, I was aware of my shorter future and began to feel an urgency for this quest.

Now retired and with a wealth of time as well as being financially secure, I had complete freedom for this exploration. I had always been adventurous and a risk taker and these traits would support my quest. I might not have the energy of my youth but my traitorous body was still the sepulcher of my eternally youthful mind.

And so, right after Bruce’s death, I reflected on my life in the comfort of my Manhattan apartment, while looking out at the Hudson River in an emotional cocoon. The sun streaming through my windows was a warmth exceeding the physical. But soon after, I became restless and wanted to continue my life journey.

Chapter 2

I am a native New Yorker but did not have a conventional or happy childhood. My family was pathological and I was the scapegoat to distract from my parents’ problems. I silently dreamt about getting an education and a good job, and then moving away from home. However, that is another story. As a child, I coped by keeping as quiet as possible at home and even feigning sleep at times. As I grew older, I added to my survival skills by spending as much time as possible in the street.

In New York City, different ethnic groups immigrating to the United States have always tended to fill specific job niches. At the time I was growing up, there was a large migration from Puerto Rico with many men becoming supers of apartment buildings and women becoming seamstresses in the garment district.

These two disparate factors, my family situation and the Puerto Rican migration to the mainland, converged into my life in a positive way. As I focused more and more on being in the street, I became best friends with two Puerto Rican girls who were the daughters of supers in two of the three adjacent buildings on the block where we lived.

If I had a normal family, I might not have befriended these girls due to the prejudice against Puerto Ricans at the time. Loving parents might have advised against Puerto Rican friends and a loved child might have respected her parents’ wishes. In contrast, my mother was negative about everything related to me, so her comments about my choice of friends had no impact. Instead, I had made two good friends and was delighted. Moreover, their warm loving families welcomed me into their homes.

From the beginning, I saw my friends daily and our relationship grew over the years. And by the time we were young teens, I had also met their friend Carlos. He lived in the Bronx, but I would see him whenever he visited my friends. My two friends and I were the same age but Carlos was three years older. I soon learned they had known Carlos for a long time and the three were like siblings. So, it was no surprise to discover Carlos had never dated either of my friends.

Carlos and I hit it off right away. And since he was three years older, he had that magic carpet we all dreamt about, a car. Carlos soon asked me out, to go to Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx. This was my first date but I had no romantic notions since I had known Carlos awhile. And being adventurous by nature, I thought it would be exciting to see a new part of the city, far away from the small concrete square in Manhattan defining my universe. In those days and especially in Puerto Rican culture, males and females were not typically friends, so a relationship was supposed to develop romantically or end. However, for the moment I ignored that possibility.

It was a sunny Saturday morning when Carlos picked me up. Then we drove along what for me was mysteriously interconnecting highways until we finally reached a street bordering Pelham Bay Park, stretching out in the distance as far as the eye could see. I already knew Carlos loved photography, so he naturally had his camera with him. After locking up the car, I followed Carlos’ lead as we headed into the park. Accustomed to only concrete under my feet, I stumbled behind him on the uneven ground. The park may have been familiar territory to Carlos but it was like a foreign country to me.

Next, we walked together across a grassy field and finally reached a stand of trees. Sunlight painted stripes on us from the sun and the shadows cast by the trees. Carlos stopped and told me to pose between two of the trees, stepped back, and took a photo of me. After approaching me, he stopped and kissed me lightly. Then we started walking again. Whether it was this new strange place or being so far removed from my life experience, everything seemed okay, including that first kiss.

We continued walking, in a winding path to circumvent the trees. The grass had turned to underbrush, crunching loudly with every step we took. As we continued, there was more shadow than light and it seemed to create a more intimate mood. I started feeling everything was moving along too quickly and was relieved when our path finally led us back into the open sunlight.

We were now alongside a stream and I felt I had a choice to continue with Carlos or break the mood. I chose the latter since this was the first time we had been alone together and was unsure how I felt about him. I wanted to process the day before we possibly met again, so I told Carlos I had to go and we turned back to the car. After Carlos brought me back home, I tried to understand this new experience and my feelings about Carlos but did not come to any conclusions.

However, I did say yes when Carlos asked me out again. We had a few dates afterwards and I was comfortable things did not get more physically complicated. I was already deciding I would not allow more physically than I felt emotionally and I was supported by the cultural norms of the time. In short, I did not feel any pressure and Carlos did not pressure me.

Soon it was the beginning of summer and Carlos wanted to take me to Orchid Beach in the Bronx. Once more, he was expanding my universe. We had a lovely afternoon but as it started to grow dark, it was time to leave. And by the time we returned to Manhattan it was completely dark, with the privacy of the car creating an atmosphere of intimacy. Now our casual kissing escalated and Carlos said he loved me. I knew I enjoyed being with Carlos but also knew I did not love him, so I said nothing in return. Instead, I thanked him for the day, turned away, and stepped out of the car to go into my building.

At the time, I did not understand why I felt the way I did. In retrospect, I think I already sensed a significant difference between us. I wanted to go to college and have a profession that was my passion. In contrast, Carlos wanted the shortest path to financial security. Later on, I heard the expression that some people live to work while others work to live. I realized I was in the former category while Carlos was in the latter and that was the main reason for our lack of rapport.

Yet I enjoyed having male friends who were not necessarily potential lovers. For example, I was more interested in making things or fixing things like cars. I even liked photography as Carlos did. Even when young, I was never ecstatic about the innuendos of makeup nor did I like gossiping about other girls. Yet what I was learning from my relationship with Carlos was that my penchant for male friends who were not lovers might not be realistic. Although atypical for the times, since my best friends were Puerto Rican, dating someone Puerto Rican was never an issue with me. If I loved him, I would have kept on seeing him regardless of what anyone thought, including my parents.

So, that was my last date with Carlos. Since we had never been intimate, neither of us seemed too uncomfortable seeing each other casually whenever Carlos visited my girlfriends. I know he must have been hurt at first when he asked me out again and I said no but I also knew it would be wrong to continue seeing him after he told me he loved me. Later on, he started dating a Puerto Rican girl. I did not know her but was glad he was moving on. Time and distance proved to be the buffer we needed to remain friends. So, in the following years, I still saw Carlos once in a while whenever it involved my girlfriends. One example was a surprise fiftieth birthday party his wife threw for him, decades after we first met. And so, without any guilt or awkwardness over our past, we continued our relationship if only superficially. However, this was unlike the other men in my life who followed, first as friends and then as lovers.

Chapter 3

I n contrast to my mediocre public school, I went to a special junior high school where I made giant intellectual and cultural leaps. However, my childhood friends went to different junior high schools, so I was on my own. In coming from a dysfunctional home, the students in my all-girls school all seemed very different, measuring up to some unknown standard, as well as being happy and confident. As part of my abusive mother’s treatment, I did not have nice clothes and, in contrast to what I considered my pretty classmates’ perfect figures, I was short and a bit overweight. So, I thought I was ugly. As a consequence, I did not find a way to fit in and make friends and this was underscored by always being reluctantly chosen last for a team in gym.

With the passage of time, I did become good friends with another loner, who had a passion for crafts like me. However, I also hungered for a loving connection with adults and reached out to two teachers as surrogate mothers. The first was my seventh grade English teacher, who gave me the lifetime gift