Essays

Gary Scott

February 15, 2017

Corresponding with the Woman Who Was Not My Wife

“It’s not necessary to imagine tear drop crystals or facets multiplying light, only nine ensconced bulbs and heavy-ass bent mental,” I wrote, going off, giving too many details, sharing how the dining room chandelier came crashing down at three in the morning. The light beast pounced upon the table in the dark, wide enough to have maimed every memory of plate, fork, or wrist. You told me you hallucinate when you orgasm, that you see IMAX landscapes, meadows with wind, whales diving, “your standard Windows 95 screensaver,” adding, because what’s light without a little bit of darkness, “and sometimes post-apocalyptic cityscapes.” Oh sure, we both casually and carefully mentioned our spouses; we both started sentences with we. When you ended our correspondence, I still had one thing to tell you, though. Just this: I learned that Alexander Graham Bell thought Ahoy should be the standard greeting when answering the telephone, that it was Edison who pushed for Hello. It made me think of Lionel Richie and Adele and how much better Jerry McGuire would have been if Zellweger had said, “You had me at Ahoy.”


Gary Scott is a stay-at-home dad and writer. He’s a graduate of Western Washington University and has
been published in the Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, Slice, Bellevue Literary Review, Brevity, and
elsewhere. He lives in Bellingham, Washington.

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