You sat in front of me in church and I used to drop my Bible so I could lean close to your neck and smell your hair.

Your hair smelled like happiness and family gatherings in the main room, laughing and drinking eggnog and showing home videos of our trip to the Poconos with the kids and the dog we took in because he was abused by his former owners and he was scratching at the back door when Doug JR. asked if we could keep him and we told him that we could.

You never once looked at me.

I know why.

 I was taller than you and browner than you and poorer than you and there wasn’t any magazines with anyone like me on the covers back then and my two front teeth were way too big and I was too smart and too heavy and too goofy and had too many pimples and wasn’t blonde and wasn’t skinny and wasn’t a cheerleader or a theatre major or fascinating in anyway.

I used to fantasize in slow motion over and over again about what it would be like to be Kelly McGillis in Top Gun and to tell you no. Turn you down in a crowded smoky bar bathroom.

You looked like him then.

And I wonder where you are now and who you are.

 I bet you have grey hair around your temples from stress -from all the stress of pretending to be whatever corporate mogul you pretend to be so that your wife can have nice plates and nice glasses on a dining room table where you and your two kids never eat. Two kids you never see. No dog. And I bet you’re tired and I bet you’re hungry for something more than everything American life has to offer. I’m sure you have the picket fence and the lovely church home where your donations are the biggest ones and so many happy, happy festivals for family at your summer home with a brittle beautiful skeleton of a front page TV show trophy wife.

And I hope your life is better than this.

I hope you drive a truck and wear flannel and sing karaoke in a bar off the freeway and have tattoos.

I hope on your vacations from driving you are sitting on a beach somewhere, strumming a guitar with your toes in the sea.

I hope you still look like Tom Cruise but just not as crazy around the eyes.

I hope I happen upon that beach someday and sit down next to you and get to lay my head on your shoulder.

And smell your hair.