Keeping the Ticket

With the ticket in my hand, it felt like a diamond album. He had given it to me. Just right there with his medium brown hand into mine. I knew this was his only ticket and that he wouldn’t be able to go to Firefly. Just to grasp the ticket made me remember him forever. This was 2013. The festival would rise and swell with the rhythms and vibrations of the various bands and performers.

I felt the ticket. I held onto the ticket. That tiny sense of trading with me felt like the best. What did I trade him for the ticket? My promise that I would enjoy the festival. That I would know about the reality of the beauty of sonics pulsating from the speakers.

“Thank you.” That’s what I said to him. He took the ticket and placed it in my hand like some faith leader would place a wafer on the tongue of the faithful. I had offered him money and presents of platinum rings. He wanted none of it. He just wanted me to have a good time.

That simplicity, that sheer act of selfishness didn’t surprise me. He was not haughty, or boastful or brash. He was just egoistic. Quiet. He demonstrated that with the ticket. As he took on the role of the rogue defender of the castle of self-interest, he saw me as a top value and figured that I better deserved the single ticket that a future college student could afford. He had somehow stumbled upon the final ticket sold. It was sold to him and he thought of me. That’s not selflessness. That’s not unselfishness, that’s benevolence. It’s not mercy, it’s justice. We had been boyfriend and girlfriend for nearly twenty years going back to the first grade. Like fingers clasped together, we knew that we would entwine our bodies once we got old enough. But that’s not why he thought of me. I thought of myself because he thinks of himself first. The white paper with the black ink noting the time and place of the events truly invigorated me. I knew what it was like to be considered.

By taking the effort to be as selfish as possible, he showed that he cared about himself enough to think of me. In fact, I would’ve never accepted the ticket unless he was totally committed to himself.

When I looked into his brown eyes and stood just an inch shorter than his five foot eleven inch frame, my cerulean sky blue eyes peered not into his soul but something even more profound: reality.

He had intended to create a life for himself and I was in it. I appreciated the day he woke up next to me. He kissed me. Then he reached over and took the ticket out and handed it to me.

“It’s yours,” he announced. My eyes welled up. He knew how much I enjoyed the eclectic music acts that Firefly featured. I made a motion to remove my bra and panties. He raised his hand and shook it.

“No,” he asserted. “That’s not what this is about.”

I knew that he did this because he was completely full of himself. So full, that he championed the notion of ensuring that I was pleased. He knew that he lived in society and not on a desert island. He would have to trade with his fellow man (and me) to improve and perfect his own life.

The wings of ideas fluttered in my own mind. I knew this act would have severe repercussions. He took it upon himself to better get in touch with the greatness of truly loving the self. I’m selfish, too, but I think he may have had an edge on me. I kept the ticket and took a picture of it and framed it. He just wanted me to be enthralled by the blasts and the food and the overall idealism of the whole affair.

I had the time of my life. Seeing all those acts and entertaining myself provided a lifted weight to the doldrums of Delaware life. This excited me. I couldn’t thank him enough. I tried to start a big dinner.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m just making you a little something.”

“Looks pretty big to me.”

“Look. Fine. If you don’t want to eat, don’t,” I shrieked with rude intentions and completely overrun by whim and emotions. I stormed out of the kitchen. He just stood there with that sideways smile. His whole character spoke like a mythic beast who granted children passage instead of gobbling them up out of spite. He had no spite. The idea of a man being as thoughtful and caring as he was continues to inspire me.

Once I realized how selfish he was, I truly trusted him on a more serious level. Though we had known each other as children into adult lives, a bond remained between us that carried us over the years. We talked about marriage, kids. We wanted to be hitched by at least twenty-six and have children of our own by thirty. I’m thinking of all this as I hold the portrait of the ticket.

Not even the best, self-interested people can escape fate. I don’t mean that in a mystical sense. I am showing that sometimes, good people just get shorted in this life. The car careened at a fast clip. It hit his car head-on. It was amazing he survived and the doctors spent hours trying to heal his ailing brain. He had been comatose for nearly three months until, as his wife, I instructed the medical professionals to let him slip away….

Still, I hold onto the ticket. Just a little festival of music and merriment in Dover, Delaware that he knew I’d like, that’s what I will remember forever. No Christmas card or Valentine will ever compare to this one ticket. I’m glad to have known him and his son will be taught just how good his daddy was.