Two-Timing Bint!

I’ve been caught! I have been, since 2013, a two-timer. It has been fun, exciting, though at times a little fraught. Timing is often an issue. What to wear, and where to wear it? And like most relationships there have been moments of despair, moments of regret but there has been, on the whole, great enjoyment. And strangely my heart has not been torn asunder by my dual lives. My loves are so very different it has been easy to compartmentalise their existence, to take the best of the both and conveniently walk away for a spell when too much has been asked of me by either. All in all a most selfish affair.

I thought the arrangement was long term. I thought I had it sorted. I thought I could have it all. I didn’t see the end coming and so have had the proverbial stuffing knocked out of me. I am dismayed. Discombobulated.

The decision to end this two-timing life has not been made final due, as so often is the case, to situations outside my control. I am in the hands of people over whom I have no clout. I suppose in a way I am being held to ransom. And yes, I am resentful. Though arguably I have little right to be.

As I consider the consequences of my actions, and the consequences of those who hold aloft the Sword of Damocles under which I now live, I find myself withdrawing from the one I believed would be the constant. The one who has held my heart for thirteen years.

I write not of people but of places.

Downtown Houston was, when I moved here in 2005, an area of promise but little else due in large part, according the then mayor, Bill White, to the tunnel system. Meandering 20 feet below the city they were started by Ross Sterling in the 1930s. Over the years the tunnels grew to cover 95 blocks. A warren of scurrying humans protected from Houston’s heat. And as they became more and more subterranean the hobos and the ne’er-do-wells took over the surface.

But by the early 2000’s a push was being made to bring office workers back into the light, to stop developers buying up and demolishing historic buildings, to revitalise what was once a vibrant city. To bring back those who had fled to the suburbs and who only dared enter Downtown for a night at the opera, the symphony, the ballet or the theatre – all of which are first class.

Walking the streets at the weekend in 2005 meant a quiet stroll with no chance of finding a coffee shop or a wine bar. Me, my husband and my dog were the pretty much the sole occupants. Then slowly, slowly people came and Downtown Houston became once again a dynamic, pulsating, cosmopolitan city. And I fell in love.

We bought a loft apartment, one not deemed worthy to show so we bought ‘as is’ and made it our own. We share the building with 13 other urban dwellers – a conglomeration of ages, ethnicities, and animals. We are all part of what has contributed to the resurgence of the city.

And now we are being told there is a very real chance our funky brick building with black terraces and a metal star on the roof (it used to be the Star Furniture warehouse) will be purchased under eminent domain laws. To make way for what is being touted as an answer to Houston’s flooding problems. The North Canal.

So, yes, I’m furious. I have been jolted, if no jilted. The place I have loved unconditionally is in danger of being demolished to a pile of rubble and dust to make way for a giant ditch. We are in essence being considered the scapegoats for the greed and, let’s use that currently much touted word, ‘collusion’ of property developers and officials who have built homes on flood plains and what were once rice paddies. There is a reason rice grew so well out west of the city. Wetlands will flood.

And so to preserve my heart I can feel myself withdrawing from the place in which I have lived longest in my entire life. A place that as old age approached would still be a viable option and from which, quite frankly, I could be removed in a box.

But I am lucky. I have another love. A newer love that tempted me to become that two-timer. A place so utterly different to Downtown Houston that I never felt the pull-me-push-me of loyalties. I will not though go easily into the arms of American’s Caribbean on a full-time basis. Despite the powers-that-be trying to moderate my behavior, which let’s be honest adds to the spice of life, I will remain a two-timing bint!