THE MAGNIFICENT ADVENTURES OF HEARTACHE with Francesco James

Before time and space held weedoms captive
Somewhere between once upon a then, and
not yet here,there wandered a lost and wretched soul
bereft from infancy, plucked from his mother's
breast and tossed into an orphanage where reality
wore no jock strap and morning's breath carried
the stench of blood.

His name is Francesco James.  A name he borrowed
in part from the painter Goya and James  the last remnants
once tattooed by his father into his baby-boy brain
and testimony will bear witness that neither his birth
nor his name bore him any glory.

Jimmy as most people called him had large almond
shaped eyes that closed to half mast and rarely did
he look straight into anyone's eyes; a hang over from
his childhood; fear of being noticed and ultimately
beaten.

At the age of six after an uncle came to claim Francesco
from the orphanage, James was left to a cousin's charge
who at nine years of age used Jimmy for her various
pleasures.  For Jimmy love wore two breasts over his
eyes and a smell of yesterday fish in his nostrils.

Beaten and used, forgotten and abandoned by the
father and mother he loved Jimmy foundered like a
rubber duck losing air in a vast stream of unloveable
people.

Italian and cute in an uncommonly pitiful way
James found people taking care of him in multifarious
moods and fashions: they gave him odd jobs, no one
was allowed to harm him (way after the fact...)women
swarmed him like bees over honey and money flowed to
him like the sea over the restless sandy shore.

Jimmy went to sea. He mated as cook for a crew
of researchers off the Antigua coast and later
went to college and received a degree in photography.
He saw images in dimensions where no one else dared
to go.

Married. Divorced. Over sexed and bummed out,
he turned to drugs and alcohol and  for sixteen
years wasted people, places and things to numb himself
from the abominations of his childhood.

On his 61st birthday, only three years without a
drink and not yet sober, he met the love and challenge
of his life.

Lucinda Scott wore her hair wild and free, blondly
blowing hither and yon.  She must have been a knock
out in her hey day because she still made heads turn
with her drop dead body and unique style of dress.
Her eyes were azure and when she looked at you it
seemed as though she could see right into your soul.

They first saw each other over two years while
attending AA meetings. Lucinda stayed to herself
most of the time and Jimmy was quiet and seemingly
docile.

Christmas eve and after two years, they finally
spoke to one another.  Francesco James was
frighteningly depressed, alone and wanting to die.
Lucinda, radiant, glowing and full of spirit spoke
first.

"So, what's on your Christmas list this year?" she
queried.

"Expectency," Jimmy responded.

"What are you expecting?"

"I don't know. I'm just expectent."

"Are you ok?" Lucinda pressed in looking deeply
into Jimmy's sad, discolored eyes.

"I'm depressed.  I've been depressed for a very long
time." Jimmy's voice was barely audible.

"Want to adopt me?" quipped Lu with a glint in her eye.

"Yeah. Sure. Why not!" retorted Jimmy.

That began their whirlwind date with destiny.

From AA sponsor, to friend, to lover to counselor
to mother, to past life traveler.

They belonged to the same soul group and whatever
he felt, she felt.  He'd always been looking for
a mother to replace the one who die when he was
just a toddler, someone to care for him, to soothe
his pain, to balm his bruises, to cradle and rock
him in the bosom of womanhood.

Lucinda was a psychic, a healer, a woman of the
world.  She knew their connection from many previous
lifetimes but couldn't impart this knowledge to one
so precariously holding on by his finger nails to the
outer reaches of reality.

Beyond effability, Lu idolized Francesco James.
She mothered him, she comforted him, she listened
to him, she counseled him, she petted and pampered
him but never violated his trust for her.  There
was an undeniable connection between them that
would take them to the far reaches of eternity
and to the depths of damnation.

Valentine's Day. Francesco bought pink roses;
a half dozen for Lucinda with a card that bore
not his signature nor any mark but the graphics
of two lovers enraputred in love's first sweet
kiss.

Lu had been teetering on the brink of madness ever
since at last re-encountering this being from other
times and worlds.  She knew she couldn't cope with
his narcissistic manners, his mood swings, his
psychic penetrations, his manipulations, the twists
and turns of a psychopathic mind in a bi-polar
depressed state of insanity.

Like heroine, white, wild, fluffy and full of
promise Jimmy followed suit.  Lucinda lost
her grasp of reality and became sucked up into
Jimmy's world of Jimmy, Jimmy and more Jimmy.

In three short months Lucinda lost the ability
to function without being obsessed by thoughts
of Jimmy. Every moment, every desire, every
feeling she couldn't separate hers from his.
Two identities overlaid into one parasitic
taurantuala hosting on her day and night.

Without any choice, being operated like a robot
Jimmy turned on Lucinda. Like a mad dog who feared
losing its bone, Jimmy lashed out and lacerated
every fibre of Lucinda's being.  An attempt, a
fox hole attempt to control her by tearing her
down while professing his love for her.

Pink roses were set into a small glass vase
and placed upon her altar where the Budddha
sat in full lotus position.

She prayed:  Oh great Master. Give me the desires
of my heart. Break these chains of distraction and
grant me peace.  Free my soul from this unholy union
that we each may be unbound by eons of lifetimes
in unhappy unions just like this one.

Three days later, Lucinda's car was packed.
She left a package at the photography gallery
for Francesco James.  In it, a rare photo he'd
taken, a cap, pink with CUTIE imprinted on it
and a picture he'd given her for Christmas.

With her foot to the pedal and not looking back
Lucinda headed for spiritual high ground.  No
goodbye's, no see ya laters, no nothing.  Just
survival, knowing deep within her soul that
they will meet again in another fantasy
in another dreamscape in another life time.