In my later 20s it became clear to me that the real loss of innocence is when you actually do the heartbreaking. Power is being exercised and maybe misused and you're not the innocent party anymore. This is where emotional callouses are really developed. I mean, you can have your heart broken a few times and still be plenty wet behind the ears. Soaking. In fact, retained innocence is likely why you're still getting your heart broken. As far as romance goes, my stepfather was always trying to drill a certain amount of worldliness into me when I was a young man. He might as well have been yelling, "Lose that stupid-ass innocence and wise up, moron!" Most likely he'd punctuate all of that with a "Jesus H. Christ!"
It took me a while, but I eventually wised up, and this was followed by years of guilty shenanigans, reckless romancing, nuptials, fatherhood, grinding through a failing marriage and then divorce. Then came the rebounding and rancid ruminating. Loss of innocence and innodollars and my innocredit rating was horrible, too. Emotional pockets were waaaaay empty. Or "wicked empty," as we'd say back home.
If we're very, very lucky, though, we find innocence again. I did.
This is how I found it—and I can be very specific here. I met Katie on Friday, May 16th 2008 at The Subiaco Hotel. My imagination was nabbed like never before. Label me superficial, but, yes, beauty and style caught my eye. My buddies kept telling me to go over and talk with her or I'd freak her out with all the staring. Must've been that sleek, black hair cut across the brow and that gorgeous coat with the faux fur collar that did it. Maybe the way she really listened to her friends and smiled. There were a lot of things, actually, but I didn't feel I could approach her until I saw that she was kind enough to help a struggling waiter clear off a table. Lust at first sight was then spiced with fondness; that's a potent combo.
All of this is just a quick background to the specific moment. Bear with me. So, I introduced myself, we hung out that evening and I spoke with, texted and emailed her in the week leading up to our first date the following Saturday. I had my kids that night and she came over to my place in Fremantle after I put them to bed. We shared a bottle of red on my back porch, had the obligatory deep and meaningful and, according to Katie, I gave no indication that I was genuinely interested. We moved the conversation inside eventually.
The moment: after talking for a few minutes in my kitchen, Katie leapt up into my arms. I mean she jumped up onto me and latched on with her legs and arms. Wow. Talk about gutsy! My sister Meg would have to agree with me that the "chumpiness potential" is frickin' huge there. Honestly, Katie's move was a very real leap of faith.
That leap went against everything that I had read or heard about in the popular press, in books like The Game or shows like Sex and the City. Here was a woman who had plenty of options and attention—in fact, the night after we met she had a date—yet she was so open, free and generous with her spirit (which is probably why she had the attention and dates to begin with). There was nothing calculated. And Katie wasn't a jump-into-the-arms kind of woman. She just went with the moment, and that allowed me to be open and free with my better self.
Innocence found.
Meeting and sharing my life with Katie has been an enormous blessing. I could go on and on about how Katie is so good to me, but that's not the really wonderful thing. I mean, when I was younger I'd spent time with partners who were, initially, pretty nice to me. There were even times when it seemed like the person was especially nice to me despite having problems with or little time for others. I thought, "Wow, I must be a really wonderful person." Eventually, though, things would turn and the special treatment I'd been receiving disappeared. I'm no martyr and I can be awfully reactive, so things would run a predicatable course.
Here's the thing, though: Katie is kind to everyone. To put it plainly, she's simply kind. Her being kind to me isn't a case of her knowing which side her bread is buttered on (not that I can afford lots of butter). She's good to her mother, stepfather, sister and friends. It sounds like she's always been a wonderful coworker and colleague. It's a running joke now, but when I look at pictures of her as a child or teenager, she's almost always beaming at the person she's standing with and her expression says, "I just love my Dad/nanna/stepsister/best friend/next-door neighbor!" Katie will also tell a stranger how beautiful a dress looks on her. The woman is as generous with compliments as she is with good deeds and warmth.
Here we need to make the distinction between kind and nice. A good synonym for nice is "unoffensive." I say that because it's just become too much of a cliche to say "nice = boring." Nice can indeed be boring, but that's not always the case, and the term certainly indicates someone who does not offend. Now, my Katie might be offensive to some, because her capacity for swearing can make this former sailor blush. She used to smoke and could drink pretty well, too. As a high school student she was a habitual truant. I guess what I'm trying to say is that she doesn't have a sterling track record of bland niceness. This flawed fellow can relate to that. When it comes to affairs of the heart, I tell anyone who will listen that they're enormously lucky if they have a partner who is kind, makes them hot and is easy to talk with. Anything else is gravy. If you have someone in your life with whom you can be your unarmored self, you've got dessert, too. But it takes so much courage to lay down one's arms, drop the guile, and fly in the face of the prevailing wisdom.
My arms, though, will always be there to catch you, Katie.
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