Shapely, Well-Oiled Shiva

As much as I try to make myself sound single, I do have a steady girlfriend in addition to my increasingly one-sided relationships to a couple old trucks. She's more of a wife. In fact, she's the only girl I've let spend the night in my bed in years. She used to lay next to me in my little coffin shaped rack in the bowels of the USS Connstellation. More than a time or two, she's seen her share of my tears and my drunken pawing.

We hooked up back in 1999 when she was brand new to the world. I decided that her name should be Monica, after a woman with whom many a trait is shared. Curvy, dark, sultry, Rosewood. It just made sense to me. I found good reason to keep this moniker to myself. For one, I always found men naming objects after women and women after objects to be a little creepy.

Monica defied any non-specific name. I could call her "the maroon one", but it would just seem like she's one of many in a collection and would never capture the deep port complexion. I could call her "the Fat Strat," but it has the same effect. My only option would have been to give her so much detail in her name, a littany of features, I would sound not like a lover of her, just a collector, a breed that will never show true love for their subjects, be it postage stamps or trophy wives.

The second reason I felt it necessary to keep her name to myself was the simple fact that my brother's girlfriend became his wife. She shared the beautiful three syllables with my girl. In my family, the name Monica became synonymous with my dark, rosewood sister-in-law. I don't think my brother would have liked knowing I had my dirty, concrete stained fingers running all over Monica. And it raised some fairly conflicting feelings in me towards the two Monicas.

Now, she just sits, often neglected, with her name being a secret silence between the two of us. Probably the way it should be. She's still pretty damn hot.