Roadmap Part 7

CHAPTER 20 - DOING IT BACKWARDS

I spend the day at Kailulani Goya’s, lying on her plush white carpet, letting her languid black-and-white long hairs (Jack de Rippa and Top Model) lie on me while I watch her pack for the Bahamas. 

Lani sits on her suitcase, long tan legs dangling off her bed.  Surrounded by blow-ups from her print modeling days.  Twenty years later, she looks the same.

"I bought the ticket as a present for my friend Leila," Kaiulani explains.  "She was so good to me when I was in the hospital with the cancer.  I asked her where she'd vacation if she could go anywhere and she picked the Bahamas. Then, yesterday, the loon calls and starts screaming that I’m forcing her to take this trip..."

"So you're going?"

"I wasn't going to and then I thought, 'Fuck it!'  Hank just left me...my script just went into turnaround...I need a goddamn trip to the Bahamas!"

I take Lani for a farewell dinner to Il Fornaio in Pasadena’s Old Town.  Upscale, trendy. Over platters of pasta, Chianti flows as I tell her about Shane.

"I'm so confused...I don't know really what's going on with this guy."

"Who cares?" she shrugs. "You got laid! Carrie, I miss Hank so much. I swear to God, if he was here right now, I'd fuck him right here on this table.  And when I was done, I'd turn around and say to everyone, 'ISN'T THIS A GREAT GUY?'"

Customers snicker. Kaiulani bends over her platter for another forkful and mutters, "I don't care if he is married."

But is it possible...? I wonder. "Kaiulani, are we ‘karmically’ challenged?"

"You mean did we do something bad in a past life and have to figure out what it is so we can not do it in this lifetime? That’s bull."

"Okay. But then...what is it?"

"We’re sexually challenged. Like that old joke that if life was meant to be easy there’d be some instructions posted somewhere telling you where to go and what to do."

"But why is it that some people know what to do? "

Kaiulani smiles, "Oh. That’s Karma, baby. You and I, we got the beauty and the brains and the challenges. They got those Instructions. Where’s that waiter, I want another drink."

When I get home, there's a message in my Voice Mail from Shane telling me to call.  I do.

"I had a wonderful drive home," he says, "thinking about the woods and the full moon and the back seat of your car."  He wants to know how soon he can see me again.

I'm pleased and worried.  I know he's asking HOW SOON CAN WE DO IT AGAIN? As Kaiulani would say, "I was born at night, but not last night."

Faint memories of my pre-marital life are starting to kick in. The cycles of Singlehood fade in: Meet…Have great sex…Have more great sex…Somebody gets scared or bored. Somebody (usually the guy) ends it abruptly, painfully. I'm all too aware that Shane and I don't know each other.  What if our passion burns off our connection? 

Now I’m on the phone with him, barely able to chit-chat. He’s got one thing on mind:

"When can I see you again?"  I try to slow it down.

"Let me see...tomorrow I've got a dance class at seven-thirty"

"Where?"

"Silver Lake."

"I know that studio.  The one near Trader Joe's?"

"That's it."

"I live about a mile from there.  Why don't you drop by afterwards?"

"Okay.  But I'll probably need a shower." What am I saying?  Warning lights are flashing in my head. This is how you go slow? I haven't hung up and already my head is calculating what "afterwards" means.  It means after nine p.m., which means no movie, which means no dinner, which means BED AND SEX.  And at the rate we're going, no more talk.  Plus, I'm way too easy (as Tony and Edward would say)!

I change my tone, "Uh, wait.  I have to work the next day and it'll be so late.  How about the next day, Wednesday?  I've got Thursday off so I can stay up late."

"Sure.  Wednesday's fine."

Wednesday for fucking is fine.  I can't stand this.  I take the plunge, "Shane.  Can we do something?  Like a movie?"

"Yeah.  I guess," he says without enthusiasm.  "There's plenty to do in L.A."

"Is there a movie you want to see?"

"Natural Born Killers."

"Mmm...I'd rather see a comedy."

He sighs, "I guess I could get a paper."  As if a guy who works at The Tribune wouldn't have a clue where to get one.

"Is this too much trouble? You sound like-"

"No, no. This is my Letterman voice."

Oh.  I don't watch TV. Don't know Letterman. Am I being difficult?

"Never mind, Natural Born Killers is fine."

A lawyer requests my presence as a temp at the firm where Georgia works.  So I'm back making twenty-seven dollars an hour, wishing I was somewhere else.  When Georgia and I go to lunch, I pour out my erotic tale while she sits across from me in the open air of the Century City Mall looking clear eyed and wise.

"If you really care for this man, Carrie, go slow," she cautions.  "Look at his history. He was with a woman who was obviously wrong for him, but he wanted to live with her. And he sounds needy. You're just coming off of a marriage and not even divorced."

I sit there stammering, "Yes, but...yes, but...yes, but...we're so sexually compatible!"

She interrupts, "All the more reason to take time to get to know each other, to appreciate, to fall in love. Otherwise, I'll tell you what's going to happen..."

I don't want to hear it, but there's no stopping her.  I take a hefty bite into a fried chicken wing and try to act interested.  First thing she says is:

His imminent trip to Europe is a red flag.

"Let me tell you what happens when people start an affair before they go abroad.  It's all very intense, things progress at lightning speed, then they go to Europe and when they come back, their perspective has changed and they break up with the person who waited for them.  I've been there, trust me."

I defend against her bitterness:  "So you don’t you believe there are karmic connections."

"Oh hell no."

Then do you believe in thunderclap attraction, I want to ask, do you believe in love?

xx

Tuesday night dance class.  For eight years, I’ve shown up here two or three times a week, except during my two-year Ventura experiment.  Now it's a two-hour round trip from Topanga, but I love dance classes because no matter what's going on in your personal life, you always do plies and end with a choreographed routine.

Tonight my drop-dead beautiful teacher takes a look around and shouts, "Great!  All the funky people are here!"  Adding, "'Cause we're gonna pay homage to sleaze."

Hot blues riffs pour their sweet and sour spices over us, and we let our pelvises do the talking.  But the whole hour and a half, my thoughts pick away at a crazy-making daisy chain:

"See Shane...Don't see Shane...Do see him...Don't..."

I'm close to his place, wherever it is. The last time we talked—two nights ago—I'd asked, "What are you doing?"

"I'm making a ferny place," Planting ferns. Maybe I can just drop by and see the ferns and not take off my clothes.

Class is winding up. I’m doing stretches to cool down my warmed up body, I try to think the way Georgia would: Give yourself this present—go home. Make a boundary tonight. Give yourself the gift of self-respect. It'll make him want you even more.

Donning my maroon batiked wraparound skirt over sweaty leotards, on my way out, I pass a student bringing in...a birthday cake.  It's my teacher's birthday! I stay to sing "Happy Birthday," then down pink strawberry clouds of birthday cake and champagne.  My teacher, Noah, looks far younger than his forty-seven years.  He has an exuberant, straightforward manner that endears him to everyone.  For the first time ever, I hear Noah tell some of his life story:  how he skipped two grades, how he gave up Chemistry for Dance…and how the Chinese white mushroom tea is making his T-cell count go up.

Immune system trouble.  I don't ask what kind. 

"I like celebrating everybody’s birthday," one student confesses. “Except mine.”

"Oh, no!  Don't ever say that,” exhorts Noah.  "Live, Darling!  Live.  Until there's nothing left for them to take!"

I make the call from a phone booth.

He sounds surprised and—to my apprehension—subdued, "Sure, come over.  I'm just making some pasta and broccoli."

My underpants already wet, I get in my car and promptly get lost.  For an hour.  Another phone call to him from another phone booth sets me right.

“Look for the wooden fish that has the house number on it.”

He lives in the bottom apartment of a charming white duplex which is ensconced into a hill that overlooks the neighborhood known as Echo Park.  Entrance not visible from the street. To find his front door, I make my way down wooden stairs. Tendrils of overgrown spider plants and potted flowers brush my bare arms, as I step gingerly between them.  At the bottom is a roofed cement patio that holds a round table with a cat feeder on it and a couple of old cane chairs.

The door is open.  His back is to me as he washes dishes in his kitchen. Pasta and broccoli long gone. When he sees me, he greets me with lukewarm politeness. After being married for so long, it seems weird to me not to kiss or be affectionate. It's weird not to really know him.

I ask to see the "ferny place."

He takes me outside and shows me.  It's a rock garden that he's wedged along a narrow strip of earth between his place and his neighbors' house.  Horsetail ferns loom taller than my head, hanging over smaller ferns and various lush rainforest plants.  Bordered by small white boulders in embryonic shapes.

"It looks like Joshua Tree," I marvel.  One of my favorite places.  Boris and I used to visit Joshua Tree's desert three times a year.  Mystical, huge primordial rocks.

"I'm trying to make it look like Joshua Tree," he says. The connection is so satisfying there's no need to linger over it.  He leads me out from under the roofed area into a small yard and introduces me to his nearly fallow vegetable garden ("There's a squash coming up that doesn't know it's the wrong season...").  The garden is surrounded by a fence made of interlocked, twisting tree branches.   A stone path leads past the garden to low stone wall that he also built.  And beyond the wall, is a valley of pines and fruit trees, hiding the Tijuana-influenced "lower Echo Park" from view. 

Giving an illusion of country wilderness.

Back inside, he gives me the grand tour of all four rooms.  If I was going to imagine his home, this would be it.  There's a masculine coziness made of hardwood floors and rustic furniture.  Pictures of fishing landscapes—snow tipped mountains and rocky lakes—adorn the walls.  Cabinets house his collection of old bottles and humorous antique knickknacks like the box that boasts within an "X-RAY FLY WITH 6 FOOT LEADER".

Looking through his picture window in the living room, I can see only pines from that sloping acre behind his home. As if through a magnifying glass.

"It's like a fishing..."

"...cabin," he finishes my thought.  We could be on a lake.

In a corner of the living room, a sheet of redwood bark leans against the wall.  A few feet taller than me and twice as wide.  I run my hand along its shaggy, velvety surface.

"How'd you get this?"

"Years ago," he replies, "in a drug deal."

On a shelf sit two encyclopedia-size volumes entitled Trout I and Trout II.  A flyer on the wall warns:  "VISITORS MAY BE GORED BY BUFFALO."  At first I'm surprised to see the rooms devoid of personal theater mementos—where are the souvenirs of past shows or roles? But there are fading posters from European plays stretching across the ceiling over his bed.  And one of a ghostly, benign John Lennon, flashing a peace sign.

"Here's where I tie my flies," Shane remarks, sitting me down at a small wooden table covered with an array of micro-sized objects.  He sits in the other chair and opens tiny boxes to show me the feathery "flies" he's made with tweezers, colored wires and magnifying lens. (Later when I tell him, Tony will wisecrack, "Yeah, I hear the guys at Radio Shack make those in their spare time.")

"This one didn't turn out so good," Shane says as he thumbs through them. "These are my rejects."  Almost abruptly setting the box down, he stands and pulls me out of my chair to kiss me. It happens so suddenly, so purposefully, that I feel nothing except surprise. And some disappointment. So we'll screw. And that will be that. I'm feeling unpleasantly sel=conscious. I don't want to be the "comfort woman" in this scenario.

And yet, I still want very much to go to bed with him.

Early on, he notes.  "You came and came last night."

Last night was last night. Tonight I'm doing exactly what I'd vowed not to do.  Still, it's wonderful where he's touching me. But I have to stop to ask him to use a condom.  AIDS aside, the chances of my ovulation tonight are too good not to.  In bed, naked, he stretches over me with the charmingest grin, "Okay, okay, but first...just a little, you know, I won't come, but..."

"No."

"I can't come with a condom on."

"S-h-a-n-e," I sing. "You don't want me calling you up next month and saying, 'I have something to tell you,' do you?"  He jumps out for a condom.  When I was in my twenties, I couldn't even bring myself to say "condom".

Condom schmondom, we tear each other to pieces anyway.  Now his cock is sending shock waves through my body.  Now he takes a break by lying on me, panting hoarsely in my ear, driving me wild as he winds down a bit.

"I’d rather be fucking Shane, " I whisper. "A bumpersticker. "

"My feet are on fire," he whispers back.

"Another bumper sticker." 

We laugh.  I practice my kagels, sucking and pushing him with my vaginal walls.  He smiles, sighs, kisses me. We start again.  I slowly bring my knees up past my chest, feeling him penetrate deeper and deeper, until I turn over on my side, keeping hold of him as I roll, smiling into his smile, until he's giving it to me from behind.  Each stroke seems to shoot from my groin straight through to my heart.  My own heartbeats match the pounding, relentless rhythm until I'm trembling with sensation in every pore, opening, opening until I come and come...I can't catch my breath...shivering as if naked in freezing rain...without shelter, everything stripped away, nowhere to hide. Piercingly sweet-awful. Like the headache that hits you between your brows when the ice cream's too cold. Yet, the sense of gratitude is overwhelming.

"Are you crying?"

"No...yes..." I can't talk, too much emotion. Not sadness. Not joy either.  Certainly not love. Release.

“What is it?” We are lying side by side now.

Winding down, feeling my breathing ease, my sobs subside, "It's like...it's like having your skin peeled off."

He winces, "Ugh."

"Is that weird?"

"No, you've described it very well."

"Have you ever felt like that?"

"No." And then, "I'm not going to come tonight. Sometimes I don't if I masturbated in the morning." Again, the social grace.  No indication that the condom might be responsible.

Looking at him in the light of the dimmer he keeps by the bed (which he likes to control while I'm going down on him so he can enjoy the play of light and shadow), it occurs to me that I've never seen him in the daylight.  And this time won't be an exception.  I'll be going home.

"Edward's been on my case," I tell him. "He's uptight about us. He was a little nicer this morning. I thought maybe he talked to Suki and she calmed him down.  She seemed to be easy about my attraction to Shane.

Shane eyes the ceiling, "I called Suki and talked to her."

"Did you?  What'd she say?"

"She's worried because I just broke with Grace."

"Well?"  I'm leaning on my elbow, trying not to peer into that smooth, round face that looks so much like a comedy/tragedy mask tonight—without the comedy or the tragedy.  When he doesn’t answer, I note: “You seem reserved.  Is it because of what Suki said or because you’re Japanese?”

"Partly because of that and partly because I'm Japanese."

"So is it—is it—okay that I came over tonight?"

"Aw, gee, I dunno, you plan to spend a quiet evening at home and this woman calls...Of course it is!"

"I have to tell you I was nervous when you came to Topanga so late last Saturday.  I didn't know exactly why you were coming over."

"I wasn't really expecting anything. Whatever.  If we just take a walk in the moonlight, that's okay. If we wind up thrashing around in a car...well, that's okay, too."

I relax.  Sort of.

"You know," he continues, "I told Suki it seems like people are always looking for answers. Maybe there aren't any and we should stop looking.  Just live."

"Like the goose in the bottle," I’d been thinking that earlier on the freeway.

"What?"

"It's a Zen riddle.  There's a goose in a bottle.  How do you get the goose out without breaking the bottle or hurting the goose?"

"How?"

"You can't.  You can't put a goose in a bottle.  Only your mind can put it there and then try to get it out."

He chuckles, then says, "I don't get it."

"It means people create their own problems, like looking for answers where there aren't any."

"Right."

Still.  It feels strange to be in this half-light with this person I've shared so much of my sexually intimate self with and not be cuddling.  Intimacy takes time.  And I'm willing to wait.  As long as I think there's a chance.

"Shane," I plunge in, "do you think we'll ever get out of this bedroom...go out...see a movie...get to know each other?"

"Sure we will," he answers casually. "We're just doing it backwards."

Our clothes back on now, he says, "It's cold outside.  You want a jacket?"  I left mine in the car, but I simply say no.  He leads the way to the kitchen where he stops to fill a glass at the water cooler.  Then he turns and offers it to me first.  I can't get over the thoughtfulness in this gesture, after ten years of saying to my husband, "Can I have a sip?" 

Or maybe it was like this with Boris in the beginning.

Putting the glass to my lips, I look over the rim at all I can see of him—his crinkly, bemused eyes—as he smiles at me, the edge melting off his "reserve".  Outside, he slides his hand down my arm until it holds my hand as we walk to my car, giving me the lowdown on the neighborhood.

"The house with all the cactuses in front has a Jewish guy who talks and talks whenever you pass by and you just say, 'Uh huh, okay, oh, yeah?'  Wait.  Stop.  Look at this house, look at it.  How the hell did they get that giant pane of glass way up there?"

In front of my car, he kisses me.

"Don't masturbate in the morning," I tease.

"I'll save it all for you."

Driving home, I gnaw at Georgia's words like a mutt with a chop: "Go slow."

The next day, after work  I call my other USC ex-classmate.  Rosie O'Leary.  Rosie was a double major, Theater and Film.  Now she makes her living as a lunchtime stripper at a fancy club in Century City.  But what she really wants is to Make It Big.

"You want to know what I'm doing?" she asks when I call to say hi.  "Reading about Julia Roberts and crying."

"Why?"

"Because she's living my fucking life!"

Claiming to be eager for distraction, Rosie invites me over when I’m done with my own Century City work.  In her tiny Venice apartment on Abbot Kinney, I sit in the kitchen and watch pour ice cold Bombay gin into champagne glasses.

When I tell her what Georgia said, she cries out: "Go slow!  Did Romeo and Juliet go slow?"

 I drink deep of the gin. "Rosie, even if it ends in pain, at least I’ll have had passion."

"Let’s drink to Mame, " Rosie says, raising her glass. "Life is a banquet and most poor bastards are starving to death. "

Raising mine: "Until there's nothing left for them to take!"

When I get home, there's a message from Shane, "It's ten-fifteen, I'll be up past midnight so give me a call." I do. We talk briefly and then he asks, "Aren't you coming over?"

"It's ten-thirty," starting to feel a tad irritated with this routine. "I don't think so."

"I thought you were coming over."

Then I realize. The Wednesday night date. It's Wednesday.

"I thought we weren't going to do it because I came over last night instead.  I mean, you didn't mention anything about my coming over tonight when I left..."

"I must have spaced."

We make a date for Thursday. Night.

xx

When I arrive, I find him far less "reserved."  He is standing in front of his place waiting.  Is he smiling at my low-cut dress and "fuck-me" shoes?

"Movie starts in forty-five minutes," he says.  "Glendale."

Well, I guess he got a paper.

xx

We drive in his dust-covered 1980 Toyota with the broken taillight.  While he drives, he instructs me on how to get to and from his home using the freeways.

"If you're coming from the Valley, you can take the 101 or the 134 to the 2, exit Echo Park or take 5 and exit Glendale or...if you come from downtown..." As if he expects me to return again and again. He lights up, takes a toke, hands me a joint.

"You know the last time I smoked dope was on my wedding night?" I remark.  "We never smoked during the marriage."

"Maybe you'd still be together if you had."

In Glendale, we pull into the parking structure across from the theater, passing a black man with a white woman who are waiting at the curb.

"Interracial couple," Shane observes.

Getting out of the car in my little sexy dress, I start to feel awkward.  Even though I campaigned for this, I've never in my life been on a bona fide "date."  Having watched Tony hit and miss all summer, the significance of The Date (with all its artificial trappings) has me swimming on dry land. Oh well, if all else fails, there's bound to be the bedroom waiting at the end of the evening.  And I know how to do that.

Over the years, I've observed dating couples and noticed that men and women behave more stiffly on dates.  Shane and I are no exception.  Even though we've nuzzled each other's private parts, we're still not comfortable together.  The same tension that makes for explosive sex must get in the way of Spending Time Together.  And I want it both ways.

We get into the parking elevator, and stand behind two young Asian women in comely Spandex outfits.  Shane gives them the once-over (but not as overtly as Boris would have).

We arrive at the box office with ten minutes to spare.

"Enough time for a cigarette," Shane says, lighting up and we on a brick planter.

"Are you doing anything Saturday?" I venture.

"What'd you have in mind?"

"I have to go to Catalina to give script notes to a Ventura screenwriting student of mine who lives on a boat."  She had managed to find me somehow and sent me her just finished script and a check for $350 to give feedback.  She said she lives on an underdeveloped part of the island and her invitation said, "Bring your swimsuit." 

Shane says that sounds like fun.

xx

Natural Born Killers makes me truly sorry I didn't push for a comedy.  Lots of dumb violence and glorification of murder.  I can't tell if Shane likes it or hates it.  But if I were alone, I would have walked out by now.  When the lights come up, I find him stunned.  He takes a few deep breaths just to stand.  As we make our way to the lobby, he tries to put words together, "Somebody like me who sees that...it's awful, but still...There are people out there who'll see it and think it's fine to do that shit."

We step into the cold concrete world of the city, which seems even colder and crueler now, thanks to this movie.  "Feel like having a drink?" he asks.  Boy, do I.

"I know this great bar," I offer, "a block from here."  Already leading the way.  Where Boris and I used to go.  Almost every weekend, we'd walk these Glendale streets on our married couple strolls. 

Crossing my married ex-turf with another man, will I add to my memories or revive old ones?  And what if Shane hates this bar, finds it cheesy?

Hey, we need a drink.  Carrie’s Lab.

As we enter its bamboo ambience, Shane notes, "A Polynesian bar..."  In appreciation? Derision? I can't tell.  Does he mind that I'm taking him, a Japanese American...oh, fuck it.

We sit at the bar and to my relief, the bartender is immediately warm, humorous.  He offers us exotic, elaborate island drinks, then treats our Black Label orders as if we made exactly the right choice. The Scotch warms me and goes straight to my head.

Two men come in and sit a couple seats away from us.  They say they’ve just come from the Elton John concert. "It was fabulous," they rave.

A waitress hears them and comes over, "I saw it last night.  It was weird.  He came out, lifted the piano lid and then left the stage.  They say he was sick."

"Well, he doesn't stand on his hands and play anymore."

Shane leans in to me and says in that low baritone, "He's old.  And he's gay."  He lights up.  I boldly take a cigarette from his pack.  In this dimly lit Pacific Island setting, his eyes gleam like black volcanic stones. Somehow our talk lands on American ignorance.     

"I played a Chinese guy on America's Ten Most Wanted.  They figured nobody'd know the difference.  Because they didn't know the difference."

"I know that's crazy," I agreed, uncertain of the truth in what I was about to say.  "After years of living in California and knowing so many Asians, I can usually spot differences in their facial structures."

"They want to lump us all together.  The truth is Japanese have as little in common with Chinese as Chinese have with Koreans.  We're all separate."

He covers the pack with his hand and pulls it toward him, "One left, that's mine", then questions the bartender.  How long has this place been around?  Do they serve authentic Polynesian food?  He says he'll be back and orders another Scotch.  How about me?  Another one?  I can't.  I'm drunk.  No dinner.

"No dinner? You didn't eat?" 

And I've all but stopped sleeping, too, but I don't tell him that.  In the night air, crossing the street, he puts his hand lightly on my back and says suggestively, "I'll give you something to eat when we get home."

As we walk past the closed shops, he points at an antique display, "Wow, look at that..." I pull him to me and kiss him.

All the rest is bullshit.

xx

Going up the elevator of the parking structure, heading for the fourth level, I grab him again, my head whirling from the booze and the vertical motion of the elevator while outside these glass walls, the city plunges past us.  Does he mind that I'm so aggressive?  He presses against me as if it's all he can think of, too.  It all feels so sexy. So unmarried. 

Driving back, he explains again, "If you're coming from Glendale..." You come off of the freeway and directly into Elysian Park—one of the most poetic parks in the city. I lean back in my seat and look up at the towering silhouettes of the date palms that line the wide curved street of the park—taking in the delicate grassy scents that are drifting into the open windows. At a long stop light, Shane reaches out and runs his hand between my breasts.  I lean back, luxuriating in his touch, in my own longing.

Our eyes meet. To be in bed...

"Your skin is as silky and soft as a redwood tree."  He's lying back, letting me run my hands over his chest, being silent. Listening to me.

"Where's your scar?" I ask suddenly.  In the car that first night, he'd told me that he'd torn his Achilles tendon playing basketball last year ("I took a step back and that was it, it just snapped."). He says a friend shot a video of him rock climbing at Joshua Tree with the cast on.

Shane lifts his bare leg and holds it up for me, bent in the air.  First I slide my hands lightly over his ankle, tracing the scar's crooked seam, caressing it, kissing it, licking it, smoothing it over with my breasts.  Quietly he watches.

"Are your feet clean?" I ask.  Kind of, he says.  I don't care, I suck his toes anyway, then work my way back up his leg, coming around to the inside of his thighs.

Twisting and moaning, "You like that, don't you?"

"Mmmhmmm..."

He raises his head, looks at me: "Did you want to do this even before we met?"

What is he talking about? I look up, "Shane, I didn't know you before we met."

He throws his head back, comically rolling his eyes up at the ceiling, "Oh, God, I'm sorry!  I mean did you want to do this on July twenty-second at eight-thirty p.m.?"  When he made his first entrance on stage; the first time I saw him. Yes, yes, I did, I laugh. Of course I did. Pulling him up, I ask him to sit on the bed with his back against the wall so I can ride him. Squatting on my heels, I let him enter me and pump it through me the way they say Polynesian women do.

"You like it all ways, don't you?" he says, his admiration warming me.  Sex for me has never felt so recreational...or fun.

On my knees again, my back to him, we're doing it doggy style when he suddenly pulls out, "Have you ever been fucked from behind. In there?"

"No."

"Do you want to?"

The very idea. Nobody's ever asked. And I've never met anybody I wanted to act out this fantasy with. Until now.

"Have you ever done it?" I ask.

"Once.  Years ago."

One thing I'm clear about:  I don't want pain, I want pleasure.  I know if it's not right, this man will stop if I ask him to. I also know that I'm so turned on, he could fuck me in the ear and I'd come.

"Okay."

What to use for grease? A few "Last Tango" jokes pass between us while we rule out butter and petroleum jelly.  He goes to the bathroom and comes out with a bottle of Trader Joe's body lotion, reading the ingredients, "Aloe Vera...Safflower oil...What do you think?"

"This is what they make it for, don't they?"

At first it does hurt, sharp pain close to the opening.  He doesn't dive deeply, but pulls out each time I ask. Gradually, teasingly, he slides in finally all the way and his cock fills me just the way I'd hoped it would.

I recall a friend of mine telling me that she and her boyfriend once did this.  "Afterwards we felt so dirty," she told me. And there is definitely that. The feeling of sex gone askew.  Heat pushing against my brain, obliterating everything, each thrust shoving me closer to the edge of sanity until I'm hanging there, out of control, at the mercy of the his pounding cock.  So close, so close...I play with myself and scream as I come, the way you have to scream on roller coasters when they drop you...to release that build up of pressure.

Shane is pounding away faster, more urgently, nowhere near done and -_ damn—I have to go to the bathroom.

"Hurry up," I warn.  "Before I pee all over this bed."

He half-laughs, half-groans, "No...no...don't do that."

"I'm going to, I'm not kidding!"

He comes, pressing his hot chest against my back, welding himself to me.  But I'm out from under in a flash, running to the bathroom.

I return with a comfortable empty bladder and stretch out next to him, "That was incredible. No wonder gay men do it. "I've never screamed like that in my life."

"Really?"

Never.

The red digital numbers of his tiny travel clock on the bed stand read "1:15".

"It's so late..."

"You can crash here, if you want."

Gee, thanks.

Not the warmest invitation I ever had.  Still, I take it.  I put on the plaid cotton shirt he took off. Lying next to him in the dark, trying to calm my body into sleep, I hear my stomach growl.  "Empty stomach, sorry."

In a flash, he's out and back with a glass of peach juice.  Once again, the speed of his consideration amazes me.  This man may be reserved and tough to read sometimes, but in my book, this man is a prince.

Trying to go to sleep in his narrow divan that was built for one causes me some anxiety at first because of his previous comment that one of Grace's major selling points was that her tiny Korean body could fit so nicely next to his in his bed.  I may be short, but I'm twice her size.

I close my eyes and open them again when his beep-beep-beep digital alarm goes off six hours later. Shane goes first.

In the kitchen, I find him dressed in a suit—slicing neat wedges into two craters of cantaloupe. His office look reminds me of a joke he made in Topanga: "I like to freak out Caucasians by getting dressed up, standing in front of skyscrapers and saying, 'How much this building?  I buy it.'"

I ask, "What can I do?"

"You can put a spoonful of coffee and a spoonful of cocoa into these cups."  After pouring hot water, he puts a dollop of chocolate candy frozen low-fat yogurt into each mug ("I don't use milk or cream").

As I sit down to this rather sensible breakfast, Shane tosses a fly fishing magazine in front of me.  Leafing through it, "Do you have this vest with pockets?  This hat?  These boots?"

"I have everything," he assures me with a grin. "Everything."

He drops his spoon, goes back into the living room and returns with a book entitled Fly Fishing Through the Mid-Life Crisis.  I leaf through it.

"Guy who wrote it’s a 'letting go' fisherman too," he tells me.

"You let them go?"

"Sure."

"Doesn't it hurt the fish?"

He throws his head back with a sharp, defensive laugh like he's heard that a million times, "Of course it does, but it doesn't kill them!"

Flipping through the glossy pages of anglers standing thigh deep in mountain streams, I ask, "What's it like?  Fly fishing?"

"Most people think you just stand around and wait for the fish, but you have to follow the fish.  You chase them around trees, over rocks, up and down streams."

"Does it matter what kind of pole you use?"

"Of course it does."

"So it's like a golf club—the size, weight, angle of your arm..."

"Exactly. I collect rods. I've got one that cost Fifteen Hundred. They appreciate in value."

  As we leave, Shane offers, "You can stay here if you want. There's no rush." But I leave with him.

xx

At work, I'm useless. Grinning, but useless. Sitting on break with Georgia, she teases me, "You're in love."

"Yeah, I got one going out and one coming in," I joke back.  "What do they call that?"

"Purgatory."

That night I sleep in my own bed.  Or rather, try to.  My head is chattering away like an Oldie Goldies DJ; my body still on fire wherever Shane touched it.

The next morning, Tony and I meet in the kitchen (for the first time in ages).

"Been about every other night, hasn't it?" he observes, leaning against the door with his coffee cup.

I turn away to dump fruit into the blender, "By American standards, I'd say we're overboard.  How's Poland?"

"Gettin' there.  So you and Shane sound like you're doing okay."

"It's weird.  Hot and cold at the same time."

"Usin' each other and neither one cares," Tony sings. 

Late for work, I gallop down the steps toward my car, toward Edward (whom I also haven't seen in ages) as he turns on the hose and says, "Grace came to see my show last night."  His tone is easy, eyes brightly focused on me.

My chest clenches at the mention of her name.  I don't know what to say.  Playing stupid, "At your theater?"

"Grace," he repeats, as if I haven't heard.  "You know, Shane's ex."

I can't believe his insensitivity. I'm speechless. He fills the void with, "Afterward she went out with Suki and me."  And we talked about what a shame that Shane's using you to drown his sorrows over her.  He doesn't say it.  But I hear it.  Running my nails along his bare arm, I force a smile, "Cool!  Gotta go!"  He smiles uncertainly, as I run away

In the car, I ponder people's dark sides.  Always there, lurking, waiting.  When will I see Shane's?  When will he see mine?