The palm reader

...looked like he was a stock broker dressed down for the weekend. Polo shirt, khaki shorts, the I-know-I-am-a-man-so-I-can-wear-a-bracelet bracelet. And, after checking my date and time of birth (estimated in this case), he grabbed my hand and went at it. Four infatuations, the first one at sixteen.Some family history of heart disease, diabetes, and thyroid conditions. A bad, bad addiction to bread and butter, toast and butter, white food and fat. He said that if I could stop, my life would turn one eighty. Everything, even beyond health, would fall into place. He said I did not eat badly, just the wrong things at the wrong times. No drinking, no smoking, no drugs, ever. He saw that too.

I thought he was just reading this, less from my palm, but from my body. I was not swayed until he said my temper had moderated in the last twenty years, which is true. Even though I barely raised ever my voice to anyone, the things I hear and say inside are not shouted anymore. I can let it go. Except, Mark said, when there is an injustice or a misuse of power. My words can get me in trouble. They haven't yet, but I am always the bravest one at the conference table, saying what no one else is willing to say. I am not afraid of looking noncompliant anymore. I guard the unprotected; I am nuturing. He was shocked that I was not a teacher, until I told him that that is exactly what I am.

Before the reading, I spent time with B, a former student's mom. The lasting image I have of her is in a funeral home, just days after her husband was killed and she was severely injured in a car accident. The whole family was in the car, trapped, even M, who was in second grade, while they used the jaws of death to drag out this man, long dead, suspended by his seatbelt upside down in an upside down world. When I had thought of B, I saw her bruised, dressed in black, her skin pasty. Her eyes so lifeless. Absent. But at this party, she was big and ripe, a solid new wedding band on her finger. I did not need a palm reader to know that she was in the middle of her best life.

The palm reader went back to the four infatuations. Sixteen, twenty-four, thirtyish. He saw the relationship I had had that last for some years. From now on, that line will be the Carrie line on my hand. Faint, but there. Then he said, "But this one. This one is it. A soulmate, then after that, no one else. He will..." I stopped him and said, "She will - " And he said that he knew that, he just didn't ever out someone at a reading. He told me I did not start out gay,but that I became gay -- my response was a curious head tilt. That's not what I have ever wanted to believe, that someone can turn, like kool-aid shifting water to red. Then I said, "I did not know I was gay until I knew I was gay." He nodded, said, "Yeah, that's what I meant."

"This one," he drew and circled the deep line that runs down the center of my hand. "No one even close. No one after her. A bitchy Leo. Maybe a Virgo. Light hair. A rocking body." (His words, not mine). "Someone into yoga, purifying herself. Someone you will meet through work, or near work, or having to do with work." I thought of someone I know, someone I wished it might be. I tried to imagine her reading this, finding me sooner than she thinks she will be ready, and laying down with me, tracing her line on my hand. I was excited for the first time in a long time, wanting this person to see where she's been for so long, right in the middle of my

willing hand. But for now, my hands will do what they do, in an everyday way. Lift, and drive, and nurture. My hands will write and rest, chop and cook, plant and tend the seed. They will turn on the fan, turn over the page, wash away the day's dirt. My hands will do what all hands do until my fate comes to me, and then, once again, my hands will love.