I got an email from Lori, titled "We did it!" There was just a link in the email. I knew it had to be the wedding pictures. I managed to catch her on IM a few months back, and she said she was getting married on Halloween at one of those Elvis churches in Las Vegas.

I shook my head and closed my mail reader. I really, really, didn't want to look at these pictures. I was crazy about Lori. It's hard to believe that we were only together that time for a few months. Damn, she was so beautiful. My type in every way: same avowed religious title, a face you couldn't resist kissing, a car AND a job, curves, sexually free, satisfied my fetishes, never demanding, could make me laugh. That relationship was so intense. I loved her. We traded rings. I still have her ring. It's silver, with black "+" symbols all around the outside.

The last time I saw her was at the big first night in Boston, Dec 31, 1999. After that, I didn't hear from her for over a month. No reply to my emails or voice mails. And that January depression started sinking in deep, which would periodically plague me for another few years. Finally, I catch her on IM. She mentions that she just got engaged.

It seems that her old boyfriend Butch, who's photo I know she still kept on her car's dashboard, had come back into her life. And despite the nasty break up they'd had in the past, she admitted that her feelings for him never quite went away. I was certainly hurt, but not angry. After all, if her heart belonged to another man, there wasn't much I could nor should do about it. But I'd like to think I should get SOME credit, or some deserved apology, by taking that whole in stride without unleashing anger on her.

Some time later that year, I get in touch with her again. She mentiones that her situation with Butch ended up in a disaster. "I thought he changed, and cleaned up his act, but he didn't." Some time later she met another man. A year or two later, they get engaged. And over IM last summer she said they were getting married. I jokingly suggested that I go to the wedding just to give the groom her ring that I still had, just like the Guns n' Roses "November Rain" video. She laughed. But in my mind, there was no doubt that this wedding was something I didn't want to attend.

No matter how much you rationalize the fact that we're "just friends", I can't say I feel exactly happy to get news of these things. With certain ex's of mine, I can and do accept that we've both moved on. I am friends in every sense of the word with some of my past girlfriends. The desire to hook up again as something there is not only not there, but would seem as foreign as hooking up with my sister. But with Lori, it's different. I'm sure it has everything to do with how our own relationship ended.

The next day I decided to look at the photos. This is just something I have to accept. So I took a look. Lori wasn't quite as beautiful as I remembered her, even when she sent an updated photo of herself last year. She was naturally curvy, but judging from the wedding pictures she'd certainly put on some considerable weight. This wasn't the reaction I'd been expecting since I got her email.

And I got to see this mysterious boyfriend-now-husband for the first time, that I'd kept hearing about. Rather James-Hetfield looking. Upon a second look, I must say that I really dug what he was wearing.

I'm glad to say that those threads were about the only thing I envied in those photographs.