Folk Boy and Lava Girl

available light

I will just have to face the fact that Willy Porter does not now and will probably never love me. Maybe it’s because he’s happily married; his wedding ring is his only adornment, and when the light isn’t coming back at me like daggers from the metal of his Guild acoustic, it glints off the ring. It says, “No.” It says, "Never."

It’s OK that Willy Porter won’t love me. It was probably even OK to have the fantasy that he would, one day, meet me on the street somewhere—in a place where I am not, of course, stalking him, no, because I’m at the acceptance stage now—and fall madly in love with me because he has decided that he does, in fact, like plump, aging women with lots of too-dark hair and random hot flashes.

Those kinds of fantasies, however, get us nowhere but trouble with our husbands. They wonder why our blouses aren’t cut this low when we’re going to dinner, just the two of us. They want to know why we linger too long near where he holds court after the show, why we call his name in our sleep.

Still, I didn’t come to this decision until sometime after the second set began, when Willy read the note I wrote for my husband, who forgot his glasses, which said, “Willy, ‘Cut the Rope,’ please? And ‘Trees Have Soul,’ too, pretty please?” He folded it neatly and tossed it behind him on the stage. He used it to talk about how much he likes Americans because he had gotten a note backstage telling him to pay attention to the left side of the room.

He played a song requested, in a note, by the left side of the room.

He did not play either of our songs.

And that’s when I decided that Willy was never going to love me, and I’m OK with that.

Really I am.