Big Thumbs and Dirty Fingers

Big Thumbs. They draw me in, calling my name with their insistent whisper, drawing my attention and tickling my senses. They always have. They probably always will.
When I first started talking to him at work, it meant nothing. Harmless fun, a small innocent flirtation, something to make the day go by just a little bit faster. I would have probably have been ok if it weren’t for the thumbs. He had wide, flat thumbs, calloused and attached to a pair of strong hands. I’d find myself glancing at them in the middle of casual conversation, noticing them as he came out on the floor to fix a machine, thinking about them at home when he should have been the furthest thing from my mind.
Big thumbs have always signified something special to me. They represent the best kind of man. Strong, charming, experienced, full of confidence and manliness. I’m not saying that small thumbed men can’t fix things or be good in bed. In just seems that I’ve found these qualities to be exaggerated in the males with bigger thumbs.
The more I thought about the thumbs, the less casual I found our flirtation. I began to pursue him shamelessly. I’d make excuses to take the trash out, knowing he would offer to help. I would stay late to be alone in the building with him. I’d harmlessly mention the fact that I planned to go out that weekend, waiting for him to realize I was hoping he would invite himself along.
And then one day he did. It was August and we had been working together for about nine months by then. As the dock door rose and the heat tendrils began to lick their way into our air conditioned haven, the conversation took an abrupt shift to swimming. I mentioned the fact that I had never been to a beach. Being that we live in the midwest our beaches really consist of just lakes with a lot of sand carted in from regions unknown. He said he loved to swim, “Gee ain’t that crazy so do I!” I replied. And the stage was set.
For the first two years our relationship was entirely casual. And entirely secret. My cell phone would ring and the invitation for a drink was extended. Our casual fun evolved slowly, once a month became once a week, once a week turned into a three times a week ordeal. Eventually the whole have a drink routine fell away and it became what it really was – a relationship of convenience.
Being the sophisticated worldly female that I am I assumed that this arrangement would not produce any problems. After two years and countless conversations I knew this man pretty well. He would do anything to be loved. Say anything to make you feel like you were the one. Try anything to make himself all of your world. But I knew this. I went in knowing this.
I expected to hold him away. I was only after him for him thumbs after all. Yet, every time I wasn’t looking, he was sneaking his way into places I had never even thought to extend an invitation to. He’d make little comments and do certain things to make me feel like I was more important to him than I really was. He started calling me on the weekends instead of just during the week. Sometimes I would walk in his house to find that he had gone out of his way to do something special. I valiantly fought the little niggling thoughts of love that kept entering my head. And I ignored the fact that sometimes I actually say those three little words. I assured myself it was no problem. I mean I was only saying them under the influence of the big thumbs ministrations and no one can be held accountable for words uttered under those circumstances.
Then the situation started to get just a little more uncontrollable. My body betrayed my mind. My mind was calmly and rationally stating all the reasons this was not a good idea while my body oozing chemical love out of my pores at an alarming rate. His ring tone when he called started to make my entire body tingle, little bubbles of excitement bursting just under my skin. When he stopped to talk at work in front of the other girls my face would suddenly shine crimson, the blush on my cheeks screaming, “See look! I like him! I like him a lot!” He could look at me a certain way and watch in my eyes the level of intelligence descending lower and lower till the only awareness I had left was him.
I did my best to batten down the hatches and secure the fort I had built around my feelings. I’d make him stop in the middle of saying things I felt were better left unsaid. I quit talking to him a dozen different times, only to find the next week when he called I was already in my truck driving over before I realized I had broken my promise. One more time became a recurring conversation within my head, a never ending round and around that played almost continuously. I bribed myself, punished myself and almost gave up on myself. I pondered the advisability of attending some sort of rehab or support group. The way he made me feel was too addicting to stop.
Every night spent together let him in just a little bit more. I continued to tell myself that I had the power to stop. I wasn’t addicted. It was all for fun. I certainly wasn’t falling in love with him. This free for all fall I was experiencing was ok, because once I started to get out of control I could just pull the cord on my parachute and float gracefully down to safety. Sure it may take me a minute to catch my breath but in the long run I would land with both feet firmly on the ground.
Then he quit. Not me, but his job. And took off for a month long trip around the country on his Harley. With his cell phone turned off. A month without speaking seemed to do my senses some good. I reassessed situation and decided that it really did turn out all right. He had left and I was fine and everything was gonna be ok.
Then he came home we picked up right where we had left off. Two weeks later he told me he was moving to Denver. I live in Omaha.
You would think six hundred miles of interstate would do what my willpower hadn’t been able to. Those miles should have been like warning signs, with blinkers and exclamation points, every single solitary mile screaming “Stop! Turn around! Bad idea!”
We spent the week before the move together, talking and laughing. Thinking this would be one of our last chances to be together we held nothing back. As we lay together the night before he left he whispered, “I really don’t want this to end”. We decided six hundred miles seemed like a wonderful reason to take our relationship to the next level. What better time to change our relationship of convenience to one of love and trust?
I took that decision and grabbed it with the ferocity of a lion. I ran full speed ahead with no thought to the course. I wasn’t running to win the race. I was running with this for the sheer joy of being allowed on the track.
For the first time in the entire two years we knew each other I began to ask him questions. All the questions I had every wanted to ask but only had the courage to write on his skin with my fingertips after he had fallen asleep. His chest and arms were covered with nights of unanswered questions and that night they began to thicken and take form. They eased off his skin and took real shape, pointing their little letter fingers and demanding answers. I had always been afraid to ask him questions. My motto with him was, “Don’t ever ask a question that you don’t really want to know the answer to”.
I realized that the fall I kept expecting to glide my way out of was already done. There would be no floating to safety. I had already landed face down. And I was thinking that even the sheer force of hit was worth every second of what was about to come.
When he pulled out of the driveway the next morning with his truck and trailer loaded we were both crying. The man I had wanted all along was now mine. And mine was driving away.
This first year he was in Denver was great. We would meet halfway, we flew, and we rode the train. We both did everything we could to spend time together. Little conversations surfaced, teasing questions about marriage and moving. We never had serious conversations, the bravest I got was to throw out an occasional joke about a ring to watch for a response. I was the little five year old sitting on the dock watching her bobber to see if she would get a bite.
He was great as a boyfriend. This man that I loved I could finally show off. The simple act of going to the movies was intoxicating. We took Harley rides to the top of the mountains and went to romantic and fancy dinners. I met his mom and his dad and his brother. We cooked dinner together and laughed together. I found my spot, the perfect position to lay in to fall asleep, tucked in his left arm with my forehead resting in that curve along his shoulder.
I remember him being upset with me only one time. We were in the shower getting ready to go out in downtown Denver. We were laughing and joking around and I spit water on him. He spent the rest of the night not talking to me. As we sat in the Hard Rock café, him with his set jaw, neither of us speaking, I realized I had no idea what to do. Until the dinner arrived we perused the wall art, doing everything we could to avoid looking at each other. I tried everything I could to lighten the tension. I joked with him, asked him what was wrong, tried to get him to talk but nothing I did would break through the frost that had coated his eyes. I picked at my dinner and when we finally got home I was so sick to my stomach I spent an hour in the bathroom, hunched over the toilet, trying to rid my body of the hurt rolling around in my stomach. That was the only time I ever felt unsure of myself with him. The only time I questioned the strength of our bond.
Christmas came a month later and I was excited that he was spending a whole week at home. He called me drunk from his driveway in Denver the night he was supposed to be in Omaha. The conversation now eludes me, the feelings it produced do not. I can’t forget the immediate heat I felt encompassing my body as he talked about being apart and not coming to my house while he was home. I can’t remember the words he said but I remember the hurt that hit my like a hammer to the throat, taking my air and making me heart ache. I don’t recall how the conversation ended, but I remember spending the night huddled in my bed, eyes wide open, shaking. The fever of heartbreak had taken over my body.
He came home the next day and the awkwardness stood between us as he walked toward my door. I tried to duck around this bulky intrusion separating us, pretending like nothing had happened.
A month later we did make the decision to be free and see other people. Or he made the decision, in all honesty. It wasn’t what I wanted although I understood his reasoning. Unless we could be geographically closer to one another we were both going to be lonely. And I wasn’t in the position to pick up and move myself and my family. And he hadn’t asked.
In all the times we talked about me moving to Denver he never once had asked me to move. If he had, regardless of all other situations, I would have found a way to go. I was waiting the whole time for him to just say the words. I wanted a gesture. Some sort of sign that this is really what he wanted. But he couldn’t give it.
I took to calling him my non boyfriend. We still talked every night and saw each other whenever we could. He got all the benefits of being my boyfriend without any of the responsibilities. And visa versa. I also could have enjoyed the benefits. I told all my friends that it was perfect. I could do whatever I wanted yet still enjoy him whenever I wanted. Inside my heart was holding all the tears I wouldn’t allow myself to cry and I could feel the pressure building. His name on my heart seemed to be written with permanent ink, all the scrubbing and cleaning in the world couldn’t remove it. The only thing that could take away his permanent mark was time.
We were back to square one. Only this time I had already advanced in the game and knew what the prize was. It’s hard to play a pick up game when you know you’re capable of playing the in professionals league.
When we first started in with one another I used to find post it notes at work saying hi. The dry erase board in my office would have cute little messages. I’d get key chains from restaurants he enjoyed and sweet text messages and voicemails when I couldn’t get to the phone in time to talk.
He’s spent hundreds of dollars on Christmas and birthday presents. I got everything I could possibly want from tennis shoes to luggage to jewelry. Everything I could possibly want. But I never got anything that I really needed anymore.
If I could pick one memento from our relationship it wouldn’t be something expensive and wonderful. It wouldn’t be the pricey mirror he bought for my birthday that I spotted in the furniture store even though I love it. It wouldn’t be the carat worth of diamond earrings that never leave my ears even though they’re gorgeous. It wouldn’t be anything he bought and wrapped and gave to me.
If I could only take one thing I’d pick something that he has no clue means so much to me. I’d carry my dry erase board with me everywhere because after five years it still to this day reads, “you make me smile”. I’d take the envelope he mailed me where he wrote I love you and miss you on the inside cover and sprayed it with his cologne. I’d take the bubble gum wrapper I found on my desk at work one afternoon that said “Hi” in his big ugly scribbles.
It seems that all I really want from this man is something small. Something that requires no thought, no money, no time and no considerable effort. I want a gesture.
I’ve been spoiled by gestures. I’ve had wonderful boyfriends who’ve written me love notes and sent flowers and done all the romantic things I want. But there is one boy – and I say boy because we were in high school then – who I will never in all my life forget. This boy who made the most memorable gesture I will ever know. This boy, who was uptight and geeky and seemingly clueless won my heart one morning and probably didn’t even know that he did it.
I used to meet my high school boyfriend every morning before school so we could walk in together. One morning I was late and he went in without me. Since he was a year older than me he got out of class an hour earlier. Later that afternoon when I left school I found a heart traced in the dirt on the side of my truck. The sight of it literally stopped me in my tracks. I lived on a country road so my truck was always covered in dirt or mud and there – right in the middle of my drivers side door was a lopsided outline of a heart.
The dirt heart did more for me than if he had saved for months to buy me a gift. He had to have done it without thinking or planning. He didn’t know I was going to be late for school that morning and I know he had no idea the effect it would have on me. That one little thing made me believe wholly that he cared about me and thought about me even when I wasn’t right there. Seeing the heart made my day that afternoon. Remembering it and the way it made me feel can still make my day today.
My Denver non boyfriend has hurt me uncountable times. He has disregarded the importance of my birthday on three different occasions, he has not even the courtesy to act jealous when I talk about finding a new boyfriend and I have literally hidden from sight when there is someone around he doesn’t want to know about me.
Almost every man will do something to hurt even someone he loves at some time or another. Almost every woman is capable of inflicting the same pain. Sometimes pain can be dealt out with indifference, with the knowledge that they know they are going to hurt you and it doesn’t matter. Pain can also come from being overlooked, from an accident or from an unrealized slight that was never intended to be taken to heart.
I believe my Denver non boyfriend is more the latter. Yes, the things he does sometimes are hurtful but I don’t think he even knows. While his big thumbs may give him many great qualities they certainly don’t fix every wrong. He’s lazy in his love for me and too confident that I will never get his mark off my heart. When he does begin to realize that his name is starting to fade he instinctively whips out his sharpie marker and begins to retrace his letters, with flowers or the right words or whatever he can think of to restart my fall. He can deepen his mark at any time and he knows that. But eventually I think his marker may run out of ink, for I’ve found that lately while his actions have an instant impact on my feelings, in the long run they are fading much faster than they used to.
I’ve told him sometimes what I want. What I want him to do. And he still can’t do it. I’ll complain about never getting flowers. I’ll nag about the fact that he never tells me I look good. And then I wait. And wait. And wait.
It seems for now I am content to wait out my big thumbed non boyfriend. I still believe that I may win the battle one day. That one day he will realize what I want. He did finally ask me to move to Denver. Actually was able to open his mouth and move his tongue to form the words. Of course we had this conversation on our way to the airport in the truck, without looking at one another and have never to this day mentioned it again.
Maybe we are unsure of our love for one another. Maybe we aren’t ready for that kind of commitment. Maybe we both have other issues that have nothing to really do with one another. Maybe he is waiting for some life changing gesture from me. Maybe I shouldn’t expect someone to get their hands dirty to prove they love me. Maybe big thumbs don’t mean as much as I once thought they did.
Maybe the moral of the story is that I shouldn’t be out looking for a mate with big thumbs. Maybe I should be looking for the man who is wiping the dirt from his fingers.