Angel is a little wild. I've accepted that about her. She's the most devoted, dedicated and complete woman I know but she's lived with a little, how should I say, zest for life, until we started getting serious a couple years ago. We met in Portland and started dating when I was still in school and she was working as a secretary downtown. She had just quit dancing at a pretty upscale strip club where she made enough money to do quite a bit of traveling and buy the kinds of clothes and lingerie that men dream about. Her Puerto Rican features; her coffee flavored skin and curves that seem to have come from the Earth Mother herself accented with blue eyes any sailor would mistake for ocean water... well, let's just say she literally turns heads wherever she goes.
We all go through stages in life. I don't know if calling the first twenty seven years of someone's life a "stage" is really correct, but in her case, I mean, sexually speaking, I guess I call it that because she's made a change. When she told her friends that she had fallen for me, they were kind of surprised since she had always said she would never fall in love with a man. Women, yes, she would have said back then, but never a man. They all figured this fascination with a guy in welding school would pass and she would get back to her normal self, regaling them with stories that would make Penthouse Letters proud on Monday mornings. But it didn't pass. Something about the energy between us, maybe combined with my kind of serious nature and the fact that I have never cheated on a partner when she had never been faithful, drew her to me. Her friends, when we finally met, looked at me with suspicion and a little bit of dread because the erotic stories stopped. But they all said she's never looked happier.
I've always told her that I don't care as much about who she was as much as who she is. She always looks relieved when I say that. We've done pretty well; we live in this small town in Oregon together. Just us, two cats and a dog. I'm a welder by profession. She works at the one decent diner in town, slinging coffee and hope for regulars and wanderers. People feel welcome around Angel. Maybe that's why, even working at a small diner, she makes some pretty good tips. Helps us pay the mortgage and even a special night out once in a while.
But sometimes, after a few long days at work or after hearing some of the stories the guys at work tell, I wonder. My dad always said that our choices make us who we are. I'm 37 now, old enough to know bullshit when I hear it, but that's not bullshit.
