Three Women

have always held women to be one of God's most charming creatures, and I do not speak from any narrow

mindedness; I've been examining this for a long time. It may sound a little like a cheap throw at women in general, but in spite of anything I can do, they have my side, and they have many sides, how many, only God knows.

How many times I have escaped and obliterated my tracks, and wanted to call this creature an 'it' and not a she, but in fear of God, I left it alone. But this brings to mind the three women I've never talked about, or wrote about in any of my writings, thus, this is their debut. I don't know why I haven't, perhaps on my way someplace east or west, north or south, I've missed them, a kind of blind spot you might say. And I mean no harm in this small brief.

Sharon, 1980 to 1986; Jean, 1986 to 1992; and Kikue, 1996 to 1999.

With all three I wore the fig-leaf suite. Somehow I was obliged to go with them for extended periods of time (combined, 19-years, take or give one or two). Had I allowed it to extend beyond those time periods I just mentioned, it would have introduced what? Death! Which is a pity, on some accounts.

On another note, before I get into the three women, it was my good fortune to find Rosa, in 1999, my present wife. This of course is the happiest period come-women period that is, of course, when I consider the others, admirable as they are or were, and I accept responsibility, some of the responsibility, for making them otherwise at times, and for demolishing the relationships, but frankly, I never derived much pleasure from them mentally, and so I cite them only to prove, there were other women; I was involved with some fairly important relationships. I will try to be as honest and bold as I can, that is for a novelist, saying something and that is saying much.

With all three I liked the plunge, and coolness of their beseeching ways. Sometimes I think God made women only for scenery, like hippos and whale watching. When I broke up with them, I really had no justification, but I chanced the danger of not breaking up. If not more than that, I have not missed anything, yet Sharon was the good part of Adam's rib. Jean, she nearly strangled me with her obsessiveness. And Kikue, at the last moment, was most uncomfortable. It was as if she had taken a viper pill, and here I was seven-thousand miles away in Tokyo, Japan.

Sharon was fire, fine and noble, educated; she couldn't save the sick buzzard, but she tried. And Jean, was often, too often the despondent lioness; I was advised by Denny one day, a friend, when in need, said, "All I've ever seen you two do is fight, and I've known you for two years." In essence, he was telling me, I was too close to the forest to see