The Way He Holds His Guitar

    I’m not sure when it first occurred to me that the way a man holds his guitar will be the way he will hold me, but this theory has proven itself to be relentlessly true.

    For as far back as I can remember, I have been drawn to men who pluck and pull and caress acoustic strings.  Watching them slide their fingers down the tightly wound nylon or steel has always set my heart father back in my ribs.  Seeing how they hold the polished wood close to their chests, flick beautiful melodies into existence with assured wrists, close their eyes when it starts to sound good; I could be around it for hours and promise myself to it immediately.

    Not being the type who has much faith in Romance, there are only a few things that can lull me into a fluttering girlish rush of eyelashes and sighs.  A man and his guitar are two such things.

    I’ve tried to shake it off.  Of course I have.  Musicians are the liquor to my AA meeting, the losing cards to my poker game, the party on my schoolnight.  Musicians have hardly ever done me right in the long run.  In the daytime.  Out in the open.  I’ve been forgotten too many times to count.

    But before they blink and I’m gone, they’ve held me like their guitars.
    And sometimes that’s enough.

    This one, though.
    He’s different.

    His shoulders are covered in tattoos.  Tattoos I imagine mean many different things and date back to a lot of different lifetimes.  I haven’t asked about all of them.  I’ve run my fingers over the embedded ink but I haven’t asked because there’s a lot to them. They’re intricate, over under on top of, faded and bold.  It wouldn’t be a simple conversation.  No I just got drunk one night and…no I was bored so…

    Watching him play his guitar, I am certain the ink on his skin runs deep.
    Watching him play his guitar, I am certain that he will remember me.

    This one.
    He’s different.

    He touches his instrument like others I’ve seen, holds the spruce or cedar neck in the same controlled-gentle way I’ve come to recognize, slides his hand along the frets with that familiar smooth certainty, but when it’s daytime or in the open he doesn’t forget that a woman is more than wood and strings and simple melodies.  He doesn’t forget that a woman is more than something to be played.

A Redheaded Writer