Memorial Day weekend, my kids were with their dad, John, and because of the holiday, I had the house to myself for an extra day.  In years past, I've done the traditional Memorial Day shin-digs, the barbeques, the picnics and whatnot.  This year, I thought I'd do something a little different, yet no less traditional.

I would have an ex-sex booty call*.

My ex-boyfriend, Jon**, split with his post-TM girlfriend several months earlier, and resumed talking to me as a result. I didn't, and don't, want to get back together with him. But I've also been in the midst of a dating life which includes many emails and "smiles" garnered from men in other countries. Specifically Algeria, India and Croatia. So the booty call with the ex, while completely clichéd, is not a bad way to go in my situation***.

Mind you, neither of us said "sex" or "booty call," but we are also the pair who had fantastic, other-worldly chemistry when we were together. This is probably why we also fought all the time. Or, it could be because of his rabid Republicanism.

Anyway, you get the picture.

Jon was my first boyfriend after my separation and during my divorce.  I had been married for 9, going on 10, years so I suppose that it came as no surprise to anyone that I chose someone who might be able to understand what it felt like to have one's life upended.  What did surprise them was that I chose someone who wore that understanding day-to-day.  Five years before I met Jon, he was in a motorcycle accident. 

Spring of 2000, in the early morning, Jon hit a guardrail while driving home.  He was going 60 mph, and his right leg was shorn at the knee.  His right arm was, for all intents and purposes, taken off as well, left hanging by a few tendons.  He lost the pinkie and ring finger on his right hand as well.  I don't think they were ever recovered.

He was found moments later, an ambulance was called.  Once the EMTs arrived,they declared him dead.  My understanding is that they put him in the am bulance and continued working on him, but thought he was a lost cause at that point.

Somewhere between the accident site and the hospital, they found a pulse.

Jon had lost a tremendous amount of blood, and so at the hospital, one of the first things the ER doctors did was pump him full of 30 units.  A side effect of losing this much blood, though, is the body's inability to take the new blood in.  His body swelled, his organs crushed from the pressure inside.  The doctors cut slits in his arms, and the pressure was so great, that it split the tissue deep, damaging muscle and nerve.  This, though, was the least of their worries.  He had a closed head injury and was barely responsive. 

During surgeries, doctors reattached his leg and arm.  His leg, though, was too damaged, and a few days later, it had to be reamputated at the knee.  Several days after that, the tissue between the knee and the hip began to die, and his parents made the decision to amputate at the hip.  The arm was saved--with titanium rods and many surgeries.

Jon was in a coma for 5 months, and was in some kind of hospital setting for something like a year.  He had permanent and severe nerve damage to his right arm, and moderate nerve damage to his left arm.  He had some residual memory loss, which resulted in a fogginess that was apparent here and there. 

He had been in the Navy, and so was outfitted with a sleek prosthetic leg, something that looked like it could have come out of a Terminator movie.

The year after we broke up, he called to give me the news:  his right arm, which dozens and dozens of people had worked to save, had a tumor, a rare cancer that, while it didn't threaten his life, meant he had to have another amputation.

Lest you think Jon was doom and gloom, I should tell you that the Things nicknamed him "Eight-Finger Jon," a name he loved.  The name was, I suppose, to counter confusion as their dad is named John, and also because Jon was missing those two fingers on his right hand.  Of course, he was also missing his entire right leg, but somehow, the rhythm of "Eight-Finger Jon," the relative quirkiness of it, insured that moniker stuck whilst "One-Legged Jon" never did. Also, because the kids deemed the latter "mean," and Thing One even went so far as to say it was "cruel."

Jon was the type of guy who lived for nicknames like these, the kind of guy who once, when we had waited 45 minutes for a table at a chic restaurant, held his damaged hand in front of the hostess and said "Look! She's so hungry, she ate my fingers!"   He was the kind of guy who made me once push him down a 3-story slide at a park, and then when his leg broke (yes, the prosthetic one) he had the good grace and humor to laugh.  We had some wonderful months.

Jon also talked about his motorcycle accident, limb-loss, and 5 months in a coma as some kind of mythic narrative, which in a way, I guess it was.   I admired that in him, the ability to cobble together some kind of life after such considerable loss.  I hoped I'd be able to make a decent go at the same.  Jon was a graduate student in a decent seminary, studying to be a chaplain.  He wanted to work for the VA.  It wasn't until much later that I understood this was both an altruistic and selfish goal.  If he succeeded, and carried on a successful life, it meant that all that struggle and pain and grief would have meant something.  I admired that belief, too, even admire it now, seeing its faults.

So, months ago, when Jon called, I decided to invite him over for dinner.  I like having him over.  He's a good guest, always brings a bottle of wine or some small offering, always helps with dishes.  When we were dating, I'd often cook complicated meals--pork chops stuffed with apples and gorgonzola, Dominican chicken and rice, risottos and pork tenderloins.  I did it as a way to play the part of the happy homemaker, as a way to assuage some deep guilt I had for leaving my marriage.  Jon always thought I did as an audition.

Memorial Day, I cooked again, but I made simpler fare.  Steak. Salad.  Homemade vinaigrette. Nothing stuffed into game or deglazed or braised. We sat at the table and ate. Talked. He saw my reusable grocery bags and made some purposely argumentative comment about them, and before I knew it, he was claiming that global warming wasn't "true" or some such. "The Earth is just going through a 'warming period,'" he said.

"Bullshit."

"I'm serious. They had these scientists on Fox..."

"If you don't stop, I'm not going to sleep with you." I smiled when I said it, to lessen the threat a little.

"These scientists say that the Earth goes through a warming trend..."

"I'm not kidding."

He changed the subject. A prudent move, I think.

After dinner, we got into his car and drove around town a bit. It was an inky night, the clouds in the sky colored like some dark, rich velvet, and we drove to the top of Skinner's Butte to look out over the city. Teenagers go to the butte to make out or drink, or both, but we just sat in his car. I watched the lights down Willamette Street tick green, then red.

We came home then, parked in my driveway.  We moved through the dim house without turning on any lights.  In the bedroom, I unbuttoned Jon's shirt, more out of necessity than desire.  I undid his pants.  And then I began removing his limbs.  His leg was held in place by a system of belts and buckles, his hip resting in a thick, heavy bucket-shaped brace.  I loosened one buckle, then the other. 

I remembered, then, all the necessary care it took to undress him, the ritual of it.  The attention to detail.  The smell of plastic and cotton and sweat--something that was both familiar and sad.  Then I remembered one night, years ago now, when Jon came over.  We were maybe 3 months into dating and he hadn't stayed over on a night when the kids were there yet.  That night, the kids were all asleep, and he planned on leaving early, but still, we worried that one of them would wake up and come into my bedroom.  There was no lock on any of the rooms, and so, under pressure, I came up with an ingenious idea:  we'd use his leg.

Once it was off, I propped it between the door and my heavy oak dresser.  We joked about it being the most expensive lock ever made--the leg is all futuristic and mechanical and cost $300,000 and change--and went to sleep.

Four hours later, Thing Three woke up and, simpering in that early morning kid way, tried to come get into bed with Mama. Only she couldn't. Because there was a prosthetic leg blocking it.

I was awake as soon as I heard her, but Jon's giant arm (the good one) was across my chest, pinning me down, so I couldn't get up quickly. And then, as if in slow-motion, I watched as Thing Three pushed the door with all her might. This caused the knee to bend a little, show a little give, before it held fast. That knee was designed to prevent its wearer from falling, and it wasn't about to give in to the likes of a 4-year old.

Thing Three pushed harder. The knee bent a little more. I tried to get out of bed. The door opened an inch, just enough for Thing Three to make eye contact with me and ascertain there was another person there as well. And then she screamed.

In my room, years from that night, I eased Jon out of the leg.  I sat next to him on the bed, undid the clasps around his shoulder.  I kissed his throat as I pulled off the second prosthetic.  I laid it on the floor, next to the leg,  and then I curled next to him.  

The morning after Memorial Day, I sat up and looked around my room.  The arm and leg looked ghostly and unnatural.  But I remembered when they wouldn't have--when a prosthetic on the floor was de rigueur. 

What does love look like?  I'm not sure, but I know what trying to get love looks like:  damage littering a bedroom, and two people smiling, regardless. 

*tm

*I feel strongly that there is nothing more apropos than me engaging in sexual congress on Memorial Day.  Make of that what you will.

**Yeah, the first guy I dated post-divorce had the same name as my husband.  Yeah, I realize this is Wrong. 

***Apparently, my "situation" is that I scream "Green Cards HERE!" Maybe I need to get new photos or something.