witchcraft.

i have a theory about this unlucky streak i've been suffering through for lo' these many years. you should probably know that i do believe in tarot cards and witches and ghosts and the like. i've seen a ghost, at the end of my bed in my cute little apartment on the intercoastal waterway in south carolina. so it's important to know that i do not discount these things.

my theory goes back a decade, if you can believe it. and it starts with the norwegian bachelor farmer.

the norwegian bachelor farmer (from here on out to be known as NBF)and i have been friends for a very long time, almost as long as lastenia and i have been friends. he is most certainly norwegian, and though he is no longer a bachelor, his parents do have a strawberry farm in norway. NBF and I became fast friends in college. we never dated, not even once, though it's true we did once, after way too many drinks, attempt to get busy. i say attempt because it ended in fits of laughter without much having been accomplished. it's a sure sign of our friendship that we met up the next day, as planned, for dinner at aunt jane's with never a second thought about what had (and hadn't) happened the night before.

but our friendship is a good one. in our undergrad days we liked parties and drink and dance. in our grad school days, we read the paper together on sunday mornings, and he is still the only person in the world who won't make fun of my coffee brewing skills. he is friends with my family, and he often, before moving back to norway, visited with them, and became, for all intents and purposes, a part of our family.

we're all a bit surprised that the NBF actually got married, settled down, recently had a beautiful baby boy with the only girl who could ever put up with him, the lovely Ivy. if you had known NBF in the day, you'd know he was a cad. he loved girls - every shape, every size, every ethnicity. you name it, he had it. as a best friend, i watched a great many conquests come and go, some happily and some not-so-happily.

so, yes, it's NBF that I blame for my current streak of bad luck (and by current, I mean this ill-fated in love bad luck streak that's been going on for 10 years now). around the time i was wrapping up my MFA and graduating, NBF was dating a girl from west africa named anita. he brought her to my graduation party. she refused to partake in the festivities and instead sat in a chair in aunt jane's living room and flipped through catalogs. any attempt at conversation - and we MFAers are a friendly lot, as is my family - was shot down with a wicked dark look before she turned her attention again to the magazines in front of her. i don't think she had a very good time. it turned out she and bjorn were in the process of breaking up, but they were still living together. and sleeping together. of course they were.

so when, a week later, bjorn helped packed up my apartment and loaded up a u-haul and drove said u-haul a thousand miles away on my behalf, anita was not happy -- despite the in-progress-break-up.

it's then, you see, that i'm convinced anita put a hex on me, bleeding me dry of any sort of happiness when it comes to love. because isn't it true that we always blame the other girl – even if the other girl turns out to not really be the other girl?

shortly after moving me to that little coastal South Carolina town post-graduate school, NBF and i sast on the tiny deck of my tiny apartment overlooking the intercoastal waterway. we were having drinks and trying to ignore the mosquitoes.

'i don't think anita is thrilled you're here,' i said.

'no,' NBF agreed, 'i really don't think she is, but i don't really care.'

'but she knows we aren't dating, right?'

'huh,' he said. 'well, i don't specifically think i ever told her we weren't dating, but it seems so obvious we aren't.'

'really?' i asked. 'helping a girl you're obviously close to – and her family – pack up her life and then drive her four states away and then staying with the girl for awhile makes it obvious you have no romantic entanglements with her how?'

'hmm,' said NBF. 'i didn't think of it that way. i mean, it's clear she isn't fond of you…'

'understatement.'

'but i wouldn't worry," NBF said. "what can she do to you? nothing's going on with us.'

'right.' i paused. 'well, she could put a hex on me,' i said quite seriously. hadn't he mentioned at some point that anita was into witchcraft? or hexes? or some such thing? i think so. i do.

'actually,' he said, as serious. 'that's kind of true. i wouldn't be surprised. i wouldn't put it past her. i mean, she wouldn't hex me because she loves me.'

so how does a girl de-hex herself of a hex that really shouldn't have been put on her in the first place?