I didn't ask to go to his place, he just knew to drive there, and even as we got out of the car and walked into the building, there was no asking of "do you want to come in for a bit" or any of the other formalities that occur in the business and even during more typical male and female couplings. We were both so deeply in synch with each other that no matter what angle we came at each other from it just happened, made sense and became what it became.

And he became naked very, very quickly. And he was holding me firmly on my shoulders and my sides, touching my breasts like he owned them at times and at other times like he was feeling them for my heart. He made me gasp and buck into him. He made me moan so deeply I sounded inhuman. He fed me his tongue and took my lips between his teeth and gently bit them until he made me smile in the midst of it all.

Our laughing filled each other up, our sex overflowed onto bare skin and bed sheets. What a fucking beautiful mess we made of ourselves and everything around us. Sticky and hot, long sips of soda with ice clinking in tall glasses, our meeting again after such a long seperation from each other was as comforting and as needed as a big gulp of air after swimming underwater from one end of the pool to the other.

His cock felt so smooth, slick and firm inside me, I recall the sensualness of that feeling as vividly as it felt at the time. The longing I had secretly harbored for it, keeping the feeling concealed from even myself, wanting sex with him became a stowaway inside of me. Now I'd confronted it and I let him know. "You feel so good, Joe," I sighed as I ran my fingers on his shoulders and pressed my cheek to the side of his arm. "You feel like your penis was made to fit inside of me that perfectly."

"Don't," Joe said. "Shhh. Shhh."

"Don't what?" I whispered.

"Don't make me think about you this way."

I knew what he meant. I lay quietly and wondered about what lines we were crossing and what it would mean. How it would work, how it could work, and that which would make it impossible to work. Then, it came to me.

"Joe," I whispered again, and he tilted his head to the side to look at me. "You are a good, good friend, Joe. Above and beyond the business of this, you are a good man and I think you are a good friend to me."

Joe contemplated this a moment before answering. He almost caught me off guard with the amount of seriousness in his voice. "And you are a good friend to me, and I think we should talk about you living out of a car and consider some alternatives to that. I think you should stay here. You can help with housework in exchange for a bed to sleep in. Any of this will continue to be business," he said, and pointed to our genitals, which made us both cock our eyebrows at each other simultaneously and then slightly giggle under our breaths.

"I don't think that will work, Joe. I work late nights," I replied.

"I don't see how I can drop you off back at some wall or at some guy's car," Joe said bluntly.

"I'll take a cab, it's ok," I said and he put his hand around my waist as if he thought I meant that I was leaving in a cab right then and there. "Or I can stay tonight like the other night and we can just talk until we fall asleep."

"Or we can do this until we fall asleep," Joe suggested and turned me onto my stomach and breathed heavily into my ear as he ran the tip of his penis over the highest part of my thigh down to in between my legs. I rose to him, turning to look at him with a sly grin and then reached my hand down to guide him inside.

And off to sleep we both drifted as the rest of the world began to wake up.

Upon closer inspection, it was obvious they were coming from under the bed. Joe was under the bed. If the pain in my stomach hadn't been so fierce, I am not sure I would have said what I said or done what I'd did. But, I got to my feet and then laid upon the floor, the coolness of the floor relaxed my stomach instantly. I lifted the part of the sheet that covered the part of the bed that Joe's hands extended from. I couldn't see his face, but I figured with his hands and arms sticking out, it surely had to be there. Somewhere in the darkness.

"Joe, I almost threwup a few moments ago, are you ok?"

A large snore came from under the bed. Wondering if this was a snore to let me know he was ok, or if it was the snore of a man with too many dust-bunnies up his nose, I took his hands into mine in an attempt to pull him out from under the bed. "Joe, it's me, let's get you out," I said as I lightly tugged on his hands. Gently, I thought, but I'm not sure even super-duper gently would have mattered, because next thing I knew, Joe's hands dug into mine and nearly crushed them and then as quickly as they vice-gripped me, they retreated and then I heard Joe click something. And then it dawned on me what that clicking noise was.

A gun.

"Oh, fuck me," I remember saying and then the sound of splashing as I projectile vomitted. The cat came running out from under the bed at that noise and soon after the cat came a gun being pushed out and then Joe himself. He looked frightened and concerned. I was thinking how great it was that his face held both our concerns within it, as all I could do was contort mine as more sickness spilled from me.

I rinsed out the bowl and threw the rag into the garbage, and then refilled the bowl with soapy hot water to soak. The smell of Palmolive dish soap calmed me, and the bubbles were almost cartoon-like in how perfect and curved they were. "I need to shower and brush my teeth," I spoke to Joe, but he seemed to be having a hard time grasping the words with his ears so he just let me know with his eyes that he was not quite here yet.

The water from the shower was strong with the scent and light taste of chlorine as I brushed my teeth and rinsed my mouth over and over again, filling it with the spray of water from the shower-head and then spitting it onto the drain. I was somewhat thankful for the chemical taste as it took away the vomit residue a lot quicker than just the toothpaste would have. I blew my nose to get rid of the rest of the sickness odor that kept replaying itself each time I breathed in a breath of air through my nostrils. I'd learned this trick when I was a kid; as soon as you are done puking, blow your nose and brush your teeth and you'll feel better a lot sooner.

When I came out of the bathroom, Joe was still sitting on the edge of the bed, so I sat beside him. Without leaning into him, I put my side of my head on his upper arm, just to let him know I was there. His hand reached over and pulled me in closer, letting me know he was back enough to feel me.

"A long time ago a man told me some things that stuck with me. I'm not sure who told him these things, or if he'd read them, or if he was just some kind of genius, but his words helped me get through the hardest times in my life," Joe began. I said nothing, I knew as soon as Joe started talking to just shut up and listen.

"Of course it may seem with finding me under the bed that maybe I still need help, and maybe I do, maybe that's true, but I think I'll be alright. Sometimes it feels almost as if I have to remember some things a dozen times before I can fully accept what they meant and how they effected me."

He brought his hand to my knee and rubbed it there as he continued speaking.

"His name was Egg, and those really were his initials, E.G.G., and we always got stuck together doing things over in Vietnam. He was older than me, which made me feel safer and I think made him feel more loaded with responsibility. But he seemed to like that position. An older brother, a father. A good man can take on those kinds of places in life and feel honored, not burdened."

"War is like falling. Fighting in war, that is. Or fighting for a war. Or even against it I suppose, but I'm getting ahead of myself here. Fighting in war in the constant level of fear until you get to a point where you just allow yourself to fall into routine, fall into patterns, fall into just functioning on a daily basis and demanding of yourself to make it through another day. A to B. Get from point A to point B without getting killed. And Egg knew this. He said to me 'Falling from a 5 story building isn't the problem, it's the landing that is the problem, the falling won't hurt a bit, only the landing. All you have to do is allow the fall to occur. You can let yourself land back over in the US, years from now if you have to.' And I came to find that it worked. I let myself fall and never landed fully over in Vietnam. I fell and fell, until it became clear to me that I'd fallen from at least a thousand story building and I had a minor breakdown over there, where I ran out into a field naked covered in mud and yelled at the top of my lungs 'DEAD DEAD DEAD'. I never figured out if I was talking about the deaths I'd seen or created or if I was talking about how I felt about myself. Egg had run out and tackled me to the ground and laid low with me there and just waited for me to get calm and quiet and then he crawled me back underneath him to our safe spot."

"See, you don't cause death, you create it. Because death lives on inside you if you are the one that causes it. And falling and falling without landing works for a long while if you're in the type of situation that requires you to be a part of creating that much death while at the same time trying to stop everybody else from causing your own."

Tears ran down my face. I knew what he meant by that, on other levels, different from war but the same as war mentality. I took my hand and held his to let him knew I understood as he squeezed my hand to let me know he figured I would.

"So Egg says to me that night as we're eating, 'So, Joe, you had yourself a little land and you bounced, which is good. What do you do in a catch-twenty-two, Joe, is to create more options... even if they are imaginary. Whatever it takes to keep that landing away. That is what kills you, not the fall.' Egg and I were incredible pot-heads back then, in case you can't tell," Joe said and looked over at me with a smirkish grin.

We decided, without saying anything further, to let it sink deep into us both.

I counted the hairs in the small shell pattern on Joe's left arm. He touched with his large, warm fingertips the array of small birth marks and freckles on my face and nose. Our feet entwined and I brought my head down lower to rest inside the small area between his chest and arm, which fit my head perfectly. Joe sighed, mentally exhausted, but a smile filled his face as he exhaled. I could feel it in his body, and saw it with my eyes as I looked up at him to smile back.

Sometimes we sat like this quietly just thinking about nothing verbalized. We'd sip tea or coffee, or sometimes soda or juice. Sometimes we'd have some toast or donuts, sometimes I'd whip up some frenchtoast or eggs, although neither of us was a big breakfast eater. There were so many moments like this that often we felt they were just extensions of the last time we'd sat and silently pondered each moment we'd been sharing, each sexual sticky-sheeted adventure.

And some mornings were harder than others.

He held my hand across the table, his middle finger rubbed against the smile-shape of the sideway-C-of-skin between my index and thumb. I had to leave that morning, a client from Ohio had booked me a flight to spend a weekend, and it was difficult not to acknowledge the slight feeling one would get when leaving one lover to see another. Much as emotions are supposed to be taboo in this line of work, they do occur, and I always tried my best to feel them, to allow them, as I'd learned many years before that to hold back anything is damaging to the heart and mind.

"I will miss you," I said matter-of-factly.

"And I will miss you," Joe said without fear. Then, he allowed his fears to speak up. "You are sure this guy isn't some asshole, right? Not just some guy you met recently, taking you away to Ohio, of all places, to hold you hostage in some sex dungeon?"

I lowered my head to hide my laugh as well as some weird feeling of shame. "I swear to you, Joe, he's a nice guy, I've known him for years." I wrestled with the shame in a corner of my mind, pinned the shame to the wall of gray-matter and looked at it directly. Somehow, during months of being with Joe, I now felt a sense of guilt and shame associated with spending more than a few hours with another man. I could easily pull a few tricks a night, with nothing but a business sense, some laughs and a good time feeling. But leaving for a few days to be with and sleep with another man, this was the source of my shame. It almost felt as if I was about to cheat on Joe. It also almost felt like I was about to cheat on myself.

I settled back in my seat, waiting for the NO SMOKING sign to go off. My mind drifted around the plane, watching people, listening to conversations, feeling emotions of other people's lives. A couple two rows up were whispering to each other, and the guy kissed her ear after something he said. A man with a small child seemed flustered and anxious. A group of women behind me were gabbing loudly about a wedding. I shifted in my seat and looked behind me to better hear the story of the bride and groom. The one man with the group of them was pretending to take a nap. They were animated, friendly and vivacious women, perhaps in their late 40s or early 50s. It seems the wedding they attended had many comical elements. It was like listening to a soap opera being read aloud. One of the women saw me listening and exclaimed "Oh, you look just like her bridesmaid!" "Another case of always the bridesmaid, never the bride," I replied, which caused all of the women to laugh. The man taking a pretend nap opened his eyes slowly to look at me, acknowledge I did look like the bridesmaid with a nod, and then winked at me.

As the plane touched down in Ohio, a quiet serenity fell over me. I always felt this way here, in the state of hills and grass, highways and trees. It's the kind of state to grant you peace upon entry. Something about the scenery inspires a desire to go on a long walk. My client and I often went drifting on the railroad tracks, him with his camera snapping photographs of old wooden side pieces and rusted chunks of nails and bolts. We'd talk about life, politics, religion and photography. He taught me a lot about things that had been, things to come, and thoughts and opinions on both. He was a man of many words, and yet a quiet man. A playful yet serious man. He and I had a lot in common, as often was the case with some of my steadier clients.

It was upon this visit with him that he set up a tripod and filmed me jumping up and down naked on his bed, beckoning him to come and play with me. When we watched it later on, we could not stop laughing at how his hard cock came into the view before he did. We kept rewinding that part, over and over again. Laughing hysterically and tumbling around naked on the bed some more.

As I got into a taxi about an hour later, with no destination in mind, I just said "take me to someplace interesting that I can walk around and check stuff out." The cab driver had laughed, mentioned a few places I'd never heard of, and I ended up here: http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/crc/pages/-5925-/

That park is great. Historical and entertaining, there's always something going on there and the people of that area are just so friendly. They've got fantastic sections of the park for kids and teenagers, and there were so many sounds of play, laughing and excitement to hear. They've also got this walkway made of bricks with people's names etched upon them.

If you go to that park one day, you can look for the brick that has my name upon it that my client had made for me that year, using my nickname: Capri Lavender Blue. I'd nicknamed him Chili, after he bought me some the year we met, when I by chance ended up in Ohio for Hands Across America.

Hours later, as the elevator drifted me up to the fifteenth floor, I noticed the light for the sixth and ninth floors didn't light up, and it made me laugh. Sometimes I think I'm just living this life looking for the punchlines or any small bits of humor, even if just naughty potty humor. I'm easily amused.

My Ohio friend had a great sense of humor. As I walked back into his place, searching for him room by room, I found him laying naked on his bed with a wide smile upon his face, eating an orange and watching the news. "Where have you been?" he asked.

"I went to that huge park by the river, that place is great!" I exclaimed and got onto the bed with him. He handed me a piece of his orange and I sucked it into my mouth and we both eyed each other mischieviously.

The guy in two rows up appeared to be rummaging under a seat looking for something. He and I were the only ones left on the plane. Far up front, a stewardess glanced at us both and then went behind some curtains. The man was in his early thirties, if I had to guess. He stood up and began putting his hands into the sections between the seats. "Did you lose something?" I asked.

He looked over at me, the sound of my voice didn't seem to startle him. A sheepish smile began at his lips and went to his eyes. He looked embarrassed. I suddenly felt embarrassed myself and blushed warm on my cheeks.

We both were trying to be the last one off the plane.

"Do you want help looking for whatever item you can't find?" I asked, although I knew nothing was lost. "Or do you just like being the last one off the plane, like me?"

He laughed. Then he walked back to where I was and we were both red faced and laughing softly. "It's not a superstition or anything," he said, "it's just I like to leave in complete silence, with nobody in front of me, and nobody behind me."

"I'm the same way," I said and grabbed my duffle bag and pocketbook. We walked up the carpetted lane to the front of the plane quietly and unboarded together. He was in front of me, until we got to the door. Then, we both motioned for each other to go ahead. I smiled and went out. He followed behind me slowly, pausing purposely it seemed to get a slight distance. I glanced back at him and raised an eyebrow. He glanced down at my ass. I smirked. He winked. I smiled again and faced forward and walked down the ramp knowing the whole way he was gazing at me with wicked thoughts. As he headed to the baggage claim area, I contemplated giving him my name and number. By the look in his eyes, it would have been an interesting way to begin things.

But I suddenly thought of Joe. I waved goodbye and he pouted at me and then laughed.

As I walked away, the thoughts of Joe got stronger. I could not wait to see him.

As I entered Joe's apartment, the first thing I noticed was empty medication bottles on the table, and a phonebook opened to a page that listed what at first appeared to be things Joe didn't need... Draperies. Dredging. Drilling and Boring Contractors. Driving Instructors. The last two made me concerned. I wasn't sure which Joe had called. The first was Drug Abuse and Addition-Information & Treatment. The other one was Druggists, which underneath it said: See "Pharmacies". With the empty medication bottles, I at first assumed Joe must have been looking for a 24 hour pharmacy place to refill his prescriptions. Then it dawned on me that the phonebook would have been left opened to the page that listed Pet Shops, Pet Supplies, Pharmacies and Photo Finishing-Retail, if that had been what Joe had been looking for.

The cat awoke on the bed and sleepily let out a meow of hello and then curled back up to sleep some more.

Two tenants began to talk loudly in the hallway, friendly and apparently discussing the weather, which had been rainy the whole time I was in Ohio but had suddenly turned sunny, hot and steamy from all the condensation in the soil and left on rooftops and inside leaf-clogged gutters.

Outside the window, I heard a garbage truck backing up with the warning beeps and cussing two man crew.

A dog barked, another dog replied with a louder bark.

I sat for a while just listening to these things, wondering what to do, where to look, who to call.

And that's when Joe walked in with a bag of curtains. And a white paper bag full of his prescription medicines.

I stared at Joe with the look of a kitten getting ready to pounce on a ball of yarn. My mischievious grin and tendency to rock back and forth before I just allow my desires to take over had Joe's eyes get wider and wider.

"Joe," I said softly. "Hi."

"Hi," Joe said and I catapulted myself from the chair and jumped into his arms where his tight hug nearly pushed all the air out from inside of me.

"I'm glad you're back," he said in a voice even quieter than a whisper.

"Me, too. You look good. What's up with the curtains?" I asked.

"Well, I got some to give this place a little bit more of a friendly feeling. I planned to have them up before you got back," he replied.

"Your windows are friendly. I like the bamboo shades, don't even need curtains, really," I said.

"That's what I thought, too, but while you were gone I just thought it might be nice to come back to things looking more put together than they are," Joe said.

"I think things look good when there's not something covering them up," I replied.

"Naked windows?" Joe asked.

"Yeh, like naked windows. Nothing to hide."

"I guess it was something I just figured with you being a girl and all, that you'd feel more comfortable in a place that had the frilly stuff," Joe said.

"Oh no, what kind of curtains did you get?" I asked.

Joe lifted white, ruffled curtains out of the bag. Along with two long and tassled ties that were a light shade of eggshell. He also had new curtain rods in the bag, which made a clang, clang sound as he dug around the bottom of the bag to show me the receipt. "Only thirty bucks for everything, not bad for two window dressings."

"Joe, did you just say window dressings?" I giggled.

"Yes, I did, the woman at the store kept calling them that."

We both started laughing.

"I have an idea. Let's go back to the store, return those curtains, take the thirty bucks and buy some Chinese food to celebrate your curtainless, naked windows," I suggested.

"That sounds like a great idea. I have an even better idea, though," Joe said.

I moved my head to the side slightly, in question.

"Let's get you out of your curtains and get you naked, like a window," Joe said.

I smiled.

"Then, we'll go return these window dressings," Joe finished, and we both laughed again.

"Joe," I said as my face came close to his and my hands were on his cheeks, "you don't have to dress up anything to make me feel more comfortable."

"I know," Joe said and kissed me on my nose. "I'm a man, though, so sometimes I'm going to think of you as just wanting or needing things you don't need or want. Guys do that sometimes, you'll find that out in your life."

I stepped back to look at Joe after he said this. Somehow, he'd already come to the conclusion that this was not to be forever. He'd made peace with it already. My heart was both elated and sad at the same time. I knew it wasn't to be forever, but Joe knowing it, too, just made it more defined. I went to the bed and laid down flat, looking at the ceiling. Joe came over, as I sat back up, and I undid his zipper and looked up at him, as his underwear came down and his slightly curved body part came up to greet my lips.

About two hours later, we headed out to get Chinese food.

But his eyes were staring at me with more of a look of "what in the hell are you doing here?" I stared back in answer "you're stoned and have no right to judge me. You don't know me or my reasons." He rolled his eyes at me. I'd never seen him before, but somehow our vision-only conversation was enraging me. He looked about my age, and had the same walk I had, I noticed. Confident but not sure about what, focussed yet searching, busy and intent but with no real destination or goal in mind. Just living the life we were in and not really concerned with what it was all about anymore.

A few hours later, after a driver dropped me back off at the wall, I noticed him, the eye-conversationalist, drive by in a car, staring at me from the back seat, which was filled with pot smoke, all the windows closed in the summer time, air conditioned coldness blowing through vents swirling the marajuana smoke around the batch of them. "Stoners." I thought, and then laughed at myself for judging them so abruptly, as if it were a bad thing to be when it clearly wasn't doing anybody any harm. I watched as he leaned over and said something to the driver and the car slowed down and pulled up near me. "Want to get high?" he asked as he rolled down the window facing me. "No." I said.

He smiled at me in such a way that seemed to suggest he knew all about me, everything I'd ever done, everywhere I'd been. I took a few steps back, my senses were getting confused and he made me nervous. I couldn't distinguish his motives.

Later that night, as a client was driving down the avenue, I saw him again, sitting on a porch with one of the stoners from the car he was in, in front of one of the rare few apartment buildings that lined this business zoned area, with all of its convenience stores, bakeries, fine restauraunts, diners, hot dog stands, bars and churches. He didn't see me, but I looked through the windows of the car as long as I could to watch him. The customer turned to me and said "Do you know him?" I replied "No, but he knows me, I think."

When I went back to Joe's that night, I fell asleep alone as Joe wasn't home. He must have been out talking with his police buddies, or working on some local drug sting. As I lay there right before drifting off, I stared at the ceiling as I pet the cat on its neck and head, and wondered why I couldn't shake this get-high guy out of my mind.

"Good morning, long night for Joe." I said, stetching.

"Hey, sleepy head, did I wake you?" Joe asked as he placed a Dunkin Donuts coffee cup on the kitchen area counter and then walked over to his shelving area to put most of the folders he was carrying into a drawer.

"Nope, the sunshine got me before you got here," I replied.

Joe sat down at the kitchen table and wrote something onto a piece of paper in the last of the folders, got up and put that into the drawer when he was through, and then walked over to get his coffee from the counter.

"Joe, the stuff you are doing with the cops, it's not going to get you killed or anything, right?" I asked. I don't know why I was asking such a dumb question, because there was no definite answer. I guess, looking back, I just wanted Joe to know I cared about him and worried sometimes that the things he did were just too risky. Looking back, I know he worried, for the same reasons, about things I did.

"It won't get me killed, but then again, it might, but I doubt it," Joe replied. "What time did you get home?"

"Around midnight, maybe twelve thirty or so," I replied, and lit a cigarette.

"Early night for Capri," he said.

"Well, I had stuff on my mind, I guess, and just wanted to lay down and think."

Joe looked at me and lit a cigarette himself. "Everything ok?"

"Yeh, it's ok, it's just, well, weird and I'm not sure what I'm feeling, I guess."

Joe got up and came over to the bed. "Tell me about it," he said, as he took off his shoes and pants.

"Well, there's this guy," I started to say.

"As soon as you said you weren't sure what you were feeling, I knew a guy was involved," Joe chuckled.

"Or a girl," I laughed.

"Oh?" Joe chuckled deeper.

I winked at Joe. "Anyways, this guy, I don't know who he is or why he's come into the picture as he has, but he did, and he's now on my mind a lot. He just, well, he seems to want something from me but it doesn't seem like something I can give to him, or maybe it's just that he likes to make me feel vulnerable."

"Is he a client?" Joe asked.

"Nope. That's the thing, he knows what I do, he could get that, actually, he wouldn't even have to pay," I said. Joe made a gasping noise and said "HEY! Now, that's not FAIR!" and we both laughed.

"It's something else, Joe, it's like he's drawing me to want to know him more or something. And how in the heck should I feel about it? Aside from a little bit scared and confused, I'd like to just figure this out quickly."

"I'll tell you what's going on. It's not him, it's you," Joe said bluntly.

"Me? I didn't do anything, I was just sitting there, he's the one that keeps driving by. Stopping and looking at me. Asking me if I want to smoke some weed with him. But there's other things he's asking that aren't being said with words, and I got this, well, this premonition I guess you could call it, I don't know, this feeling that something about him, something with him, he's going to change my life, and I can feel that coming, and I don't feel ready but at the same time feel like I'm not supposed to walk away or run away from any of it."

For absolutely no reason, I started to cry. Joe leaned over to hug me.

"This is not good, why am I crying?" I asked Joe.

"Because you're more ready than you think," Joe replied.

"I'm not, Joe. I'm happy with things as they are," I said and wiped my eyes with my hand.

"You're just a happy person, but you're also a person who has been content to feel things around you without feeling them inside you to the core, the place this guy, somehow, damn him, has reached. But, again, it's got more to do with you being ready than him entering the picture."

"I'm sorry, Joe, I didn't mean to bring this all up with you," I said, knowing that Joe and I had become as close as a vet and a hooker could be, under the circumstances of both of our lifetimes.

"I'm glad you did, and I'm happy you're going to be moving on, and when you do, I know you'll be happier than you've ever been," Joe said, as he hugged me a little harder.

"I should go to Ohio for a few days," I said.

"Run away all you want, Capri, but eventually you'll have to get on a plane back home, alive and with no other options but to stay where you are, feel what you feel, and sometimes that means giving up some things and allowing other things to have a chance."

I held back the rest of my tears, and let them go in the shower, after I gave Joe a slow blowjob to help him drift off to sleep.

"Tony," he said, his hand on my knee, "can we use your room?"

I figured a bedroom would be the best place to be, for the things I knew how to do, knew how to give, but he wasn't exactly looking for just that from me. I should have known, but didn't, probably because the pot was so strong, and my senses were off, but once he got me into the room, and we both lay upon a very worn comforter, he began to ask me question after question.

"Why do you do what you do?"

"How old are you?"

"Don't you feel dirty?"

"Don't you want more?"

I'd been asked all these questions before in my life, but somehow, coming from him, I wasn't capable of giving my straight-forward, rational, well thought out and long, firm answers. I answered in one word answers. "Just because." "Eighteen." "No." "I have everything I want or need."

"Are you happy?" he asked me.

"Yes, I am," I said, and that's when he kissed me.

And I thought, good, now we can just get these clothes off and stop all of this wondering, and we'll just have at it and we'll have a great time, and maybe we'll do this once in a while and that will be that.

But that wasn't that, and what happened wasn't having at it, it was having in it, having around and inside it, having lightly touched surfaces go so deep when, with such delicateness, you'd think it not logical.

And I could not stop touching his face with my hands. And I thought, man, that was some great pot, and that's the only reason I'm feeling any of this, most likely, just some really good pot, that's it, and that's ok, ride with it.

But hours later, outside on the stone wall that seems to mark the middle of Acushnet Avenue, yet usually ends up the end destination of cars, motorcycles, vans full of headbangers and concert groupies, dealers and whores... we talked, quietly, surrounded by the loudness of the city noise.

And it was peaceful. And the high was long gone. And I didn't want him to leave. And I wanted to just stay, to watch the sunrise. And so we did.

We drove to the beach and took pictures of seagulls and a sunrise that, when I look now at those pictures, not faded at all, I remember why so many choices were made back then, all those years ago, and I think it all made sense. Even when I didn't want it to make sense, when I didn't think I was ready, it just did and I was.