I’m waiting on a storm. A storm named LingLing, to be exact. You gotta love typhoons… they’re always given such nifty Asian names. We here in Vancouver don’t call this just a “storm”, no, this is the much dreaded Pineapple Express. A lovely parting gift sent our way by the fabulous Hawaiian Islands. Days and days of rain, lots of flooding, oodles of soaked-through shoes and out-turned umbrellas. The nasty part’s going to be the sustained nasty south-easterly winds… winds from the same unusual direction and with potentially the same impact (hurricane strength) as the ones that devastated this city’s world-famous jewel, Stanley Park, last year… razing areas of that park with the same impact as clear-cut logging would’ve brought. Gonna be decades before that park’s all better.*

But that’s not what’s on my mind tonight. I was watching Grey’s Anatomy just now, with the long-awaited confrontation between Torres and Izzie after George finally came clean on cheating on his wife Torres with the hot Izzie. Ah, the drama of it all. Torres called her a “traitorous bitch” for breaking the bond of womanhood and betraying one of her own.

I found myself remembering back to when I was once the “other woman”. It was a long, long time ago now. More than a decade. I was young, probably 19, maybe 20.

The thing was, it was a guy I knew had a crush on me for a long while. A couple years, actually. We were friends, more or less. I was always seeing this poet writer guy off and on, occasionally dated during the “off” times, but nothing ever came about with this guy in question ‘cos I was always pretty abrupt towards him. He was never really my type, I thought. As time wore on, I started realizing he was pretty cute, but I still wasn’t interested. Now, though, he’s the type I secretly crave.

Back then, though, all us friends had a day at a beach. I was his ride (which turned out to be true in more ways than one) so we wound up chatting a lot. Next thing you know, there’s sunscreen, bare backs, and massages figuring into the picture. Now, I might be putty in a good masseuse’s hands, but I can give a hella-good massage myself, which is what pretty much caused the trouble in the first place. Then he had to one-up me, and that’s always a good/bad scenario. Then the thought of potentials a la him outweighed the benefits of sitting around for the probables that came with a day at the beach with ze usual suspects.

We high-tailed it back to his place, and that began the next couple of weeks of some pretty wild sexcapades, some of which have been “fictionalized” on here, but that I think I might’ve deep-sixed after realizing I felt uncomfortable sharing it, either way, you get no link. And I’m leaving it at that. What I will say, though, is that there was that great friendly banter peppered with excellent sex, and a lot of trust that comes from befriending someone for a couple years before you bone’em in the sack. So to speak.

Suffice to say the sex was hot. Better than I’d had at that point, and possibly still among some the best I’ve had.

And then… and then I found out he wasn’t single after all. Worse yet, he was seeing someone I was friends-ish with.

And then… and then I did something I’m wondering now if I’d do again today. I admitted it. I went to her and I told her he’d cheated on her, and that it was with me, and that I had ended it as soon as I found out. I don’t know whether they ever went out again. I know the friendship I had with her was over, and I can only suspect I busted his heart up a little at the time.

And, yeah, as honest as I am, as much integrity as I know I have, I have to wonder if I’d do the same today. Prrrrrobably not. The thing is, I’m older, I’m wiser, and I know really intense, hot, great sexuality doesn’t happen often, not like that. Not with someone really deserving of your trust. Except for the cheating-on-his-gal thing, of course, I found him highly trustworthy.

Now, I’m at the other end of things. I finally realize he liked me long before… long before he even met his girlfriend. I know what we had was intense and hot and fun and more than just sex. Yes, it was wrong. Yeah, there are things I’d take back in a heartbeat. But I don’t regret a minute of it.

I wonder now if something happened along those lines if I’d chalk it up unfortunate timing but a long time in the making. I do know one thing… I really, really regret going to her. I really regret not having spoken to him first and allowing him to at least say his piece. Now I’ll always have that wonderment.

But yeah. All I’m doing now tonight is wondering. Wondering. And waiting on a feisty bitch named LingLing.

The moral of the story? Make sure your regrets are about things you did, rather than didn’t do. I should’ve had that conversation with him, too, but I didn’t. Regretting things one could’ve easily avoided is even more regrettable than the lack of action.

Fortunately I don’t make a habit of wading through my regrets all that often, and, luckily, the list isn’t as long as one might suppose.

Well, time to batten down the hatches before I get a night-time visitor very much not of my choosing. Come out, come out, whereever you are, LingLing. Such a tease.

*Yes, I’ve secretly always thought it would be fun to be a meteorologist. What? I have a geek side.