A Guide to Living a Slightly Unusual Life
By Pasionara
Dear Readers,
Given that this is the Sex issue of Zimagal Monthly, and the estimable Minxy One has requested that I hold forth abou
t the world’s greatest pleasure in my column this month, I thought I would share with you the most thrilling of my many affairs.
As I write this, I (and all Easterners) are enveloped in the hot, sticky, sex-like days of July...perhaps the weather would inspire
me to these thoughts even if I had no column to write...
(Do know that names and many telling details have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent...)
'Twas long ago now, another life really. So much has happened to me in the months and years, the turns
of the earth around the sun since it all happened. Sometimes I don't even think about it anymore, perhaps
because I don’t often allow myself the luxury. But now comes the torch of summer, and I wonder if these days,
year after year, will bring me around to the lover I knew and loved and had completely, and never had for my own,
not even for one second.
It all started in February, several years back. Around Feb 17th, though I can't be sure. It was after Valentine's Day
and before President's Day, that's all I know. Anyway, there I was fooling around on the Internet. I had just discovered
newsgroups, and was reading "alt.tv.x-files " which obviously had as its subject matter a certain otherworldly television
program (The truth is out there...) when a name, a familiar one, came across my computer screen.
Actually it started before this, when the new phone book came. I was looking at it, and as is my habit, I looked up the addresses
of all my old boyfriends, to see who had come and gone, who was with whom, where they all were. For some strange reason
I thought about Liam Westerbrook, who years and years before had asked me out while I was slaving away at a college internship
at a local radio station. I remembered having lunch with him in the station’s cafeteria, eating tuna without mayo on crackers, and
hoping my tuna breath wouldn't turn him off. When Liam did finally ask me out for a Friday night date, I had to turn him down, because
I had already made plans with the station’s sports man, a South Bawlmer redneck jock named Brad Radnor. (I still am not sure
hat I ever saw in Brad...he has become somewhat prominent in the community and whenever I see his likeness upon my television
screen, I cringe, not quite believing that I had allowed such a testosterone-head to touch the Pasionara temple of love.) Liam
never asked me out again; he probably thought I was seeing Brad seriously and thus questioned his own taste in women. And
of course Brad turned out to be a mistake. As Brad was trying to wend his way into my womanhood a week or so later, I thought
of Liam, and even then I knew something had been lost. Having flashed onto the thought of Liam, I looked him up in the new
phone book. " Liam and Sheryl Westerbrook," the entry read. The address was about a mile from my own. So that was that
He'd found someone and married. I smiled and kept looking up old names.
A month later, Liam's name popped up on the X-Files message board. I laughed out loud, and wondered if that was really him, the Liam that I had known. So I sent him an e- mail of the most innocent kind, asking if he was indeed the same Liam that had worked at that radio station. The reply came quickly. Indeed he was that Liam, he said, but sorry, he didn't remember me? I reminded him that he had asked me out that fall of long ago, but that I couldn't see him because I had had other plans. A couple of e-mail remembrances put the incident into place for him...and we had started the conversation.
What a conversation it became! From those first words, a rapport quickly bloomed. And when I say quickly, it was within days, of e-mails, fired off at all hours, that we were talking like old friends. Soon we were discussing our lives, our loves, our hopes and dreams, regaling each other with jokes, stories, quips. I thought he was one of the wittiest writers I'd ever known. He had become a marketing executive, doing creative work with a large firm in town. And I had evolved into...well, a much more interesting person than I had been in 1982. He asked question after question about my work, my life, me in general. Our friendship was sealed when we discovered mutual interests in folk music, art movies, travel, and, of course, the inimitable X-Files.
I think it was a Thursday when the correspondence began. By the following Tuesday, our curiosities were piqued to a tensile degree. About noon on that day, I answered my phone at work to hear his voice on the other end. Smooth and musky. Could I have lunch with him?. I couldn't that day, but could the next. So it was that Wednesday that we met, or re-met as it were, at a local mod café.
I got there early and sizzled till he showed up. I first saw him as he approached the café, walking slowly but purposefully toward the door. He looked just the same as I remembered: a full, thick head of blond hair, turned-up nose, chocolate cookie eyes. Taller than me, but not overbearing. I felt a rush to my head and connected with the sky, that second that I first saw him again.
We sat across from one another in that crazy café and made small talk, two people on a first date. Yet the words, at first hesitant, began to flow freely, just as they had done on line. He looked at me only when he was sure I wasn't looking, but I felt his gaze on me like fire. I nervously fingered the little boomerangs which covered the table top, tracing the curve which always brings back that which is thrown away. No amount of e- mail conversation could have foreshadowed this, no modern science could have predicted this spontaneous combustion. But we couldn't speak of it, at least not then. Briefly, I worked a comparison between Liam and Todd, my then live-in lover, but then promptly dismissed the thoughts, as it was rather like making an issue of the contrasts between Mexican and Chinese food. Two totally different flavors. I became entranced watching Liam, seeing the craving and guilt and tenderness sweeping like cirrus clouds over his face, casting shadows which only his smile showed through. He told me he found me incredibly attractive and that he hadn't expected this. I said I felt the same, but that I had fully expected it. The waiter brought our lunch. I could barely eat.
It seems like I have spent at least half my time in love in remembrance. Later that summer, after I couldn't see him any more, I would go back time and again to that strange little café. I would look at that certain table and remember us sitting there. I took a summer lover there, hoping that some of Liam's magic would wear off on him. I lunched with an ex-boyfriend there too. But it was Liam, always Liam, that filled the place with the light of his smile.
Then came the time to return to our respective workdays. Liam walked me outside. We went to his car first, where he had a CD to lend me, one in which we had a mutual interest, by an artist who had brought us both joy. I wanted to tape it. I still have it. It is the only thing of Liam's that I possess. Then we walked slowly to my car, which was parked behind the restaurant. Although it was February, there was a soft warm wind. I knew he wanted to kiss me. And I desperately wanted to kiss him, wanted to know his magic, wanted to wrap myself completely in the moment. The shadows of others loomed, however, and I knew the embrace I desired was out of the question. Yet, impulsively, I rose on tiptoe to peck his cheek. And promptly dropped the CD, breaking the case. I apologized nervously. I stood to face him, and clasped him in a hug, because I didn't know what else to do. His body was quivering. He opened my car door for me, and in I got. We drove side by side down Maryland Avenue for a time, me in my old sports and him in his even older roadster. Then I had to turn off on 24th street to go back to work. He looked desolate as I waved goodbye.
That was Wednesday. We continued to correspond, now talking about the genie that had been let out of the bottle, the one which we now had to force back in.
Genies make wishes come true.
Friday night, I went out with the girls, but came in early. Todd was at the house, smoking dope with a bunch of his friends. (I had become disillusioned as of late with Todd; living with a full-time dope fiend was enough to make Pasionara begin to question her sanity).
I felt lost and lonely, as if I could drown in thoughts of Liam. I turned on the computer, logged on, and found a note from him. Quickly I responded, telling him that I was thinking of him too. He was online, so his response was immediate: to my surprise, he asked me if I could come out for a minute, to see him. Like I said, he lived about a mile north of me. Immediately, I made up a story about having to go to a nearby grocer for coffee, and I flew into the night. Todd, perpetually stoned, never noticed the crazed look in my eye.
Here's how it went: I drove slowly down the alley behind Liam’s house, and parked several houses beyond that which I believed to be his. I turned off the car and cut the lights. I got out and turned to face the direction from which I had just come. And then I saw him, the silhouette of him, outlined by the street lamp and the shadows. Oh, god...my insides dissolved. He stepped out of the shadows then, and with absolutely no hesitation, swept me into his arms and took me into the kiss I will never forget, the kiss of my life. I could taste the red wine he'd had, lingering deep in his throat where my tongue reached into him. I could smell his scent, clean, male, life-giving. It made me heady. And all my cells dispersed into stars, swirled and then rearranged in just that second. I knew I would never be the same. I have never felt like that, before or since.
We got into my car, and kissed some more, openly, passionately, heatedly. Words, which had brought us together, were forgotten. I yielded completely to the embrace, feeling the fortitude of his passion for me surround me and send my soul into orbit. His warm whispers teased me more, talk of love and lust and the empty house he was house-sitting just next door. Oh, the ache for him.
But more couldn't happen then; I had to get back home, to Todd, who would just then be missing me. And there was the matter of Sheryl's shadow.
Back to my house in a daze, and I bumbled up to my room. I quickly peeled off my clothes and wrapped myself in the old comforter that had kept Todd and me warm all winter. Amazingly, I wasn't confused at all. I was lost in a new sea, adrift on the wild waves of the open water, losing myself in the tide.
Saturday. Todd woke early as he had to go to work to take care of some project that he should have already finished. I couldn't get back to sleep. It was seven am when I went to the computer. There I found two pleading notes from Liam...written the night before, just after I had left his arms. How could I have just gone to sleep after what we had just experienced? Why wasn't I online? I wrote back, telling him that I had been so dizzy with him that I had had to lie down. Then I said I would be alone that day. Please come over, I said simply. Please. I need to see you again. I need you.
He came, at about ten o'clock. Seeing him on my doorstep sent me into a frenzy. I opened the door and carefully let him in. The neighbors shouldn't know that he was there. Once the door was shut, he drew me into another kiss. This time it was coffee I tasted, fresh soap on skin mingled with his scent. I was again intoxicated. Yet I made a pretense of words, walking him over to the computer and saying "This is where I am when I write to you." His gaze swept over the life Todd and I shared. Then he turned to me, and took me in, and no more could be said. We ended up on the couch, the same couch where Todd and I had cuddled, watched a little tube, had sex. Todd revered that couch...it was a symbol of my comfort, my care, the teddy- bear love I had so openly given him, the love that wasn't worth insuring for life. When we moved a few months later, Todd said that one of the things that made him saddest was leaving that couch behind.
Me too.
Liam laid me bare little by little. Suckled me, drinking divine wine. Embraced every part of me with a desire and tenderness borne of the appreciation that this might never happen again. He rolled his hands over every curve of me, memorizing, enervating. I could swear I still bear the marks of his touch. Then he reached to gently probe me, and instantaneously, I whirled upward into ecstasy. I couldn't believe it. He maneuvered himself to kiss me all over, hoarsely whispering that he had to know me this way. He feasted on me with sheer abandon, pleasuring me over and over. I can't be pornographic about this. He adored me.
Liam's body: smooth, hairless, muscular. Michaelangelo's David. I traced the outlines with fingers, lips, tongue. I wanted to consume him, to take him within, to have him nourish me. To worship at his altar. When I bent to embrace him, he gasped. He moaned my name over and over as I closed my lips around him. I brought him slowly to the brink, then suddenly, rhythmically, over it. I felt his explosion as if it were my own.
We held each other for some time afterward saying tender and sad things. Then he said he had to leave. That night he sent me an e-mail saying he had cried for hours afterward, cried for love, out of guilt for his unfaithfulness to Sheryl, out of the knowledge that he would never get to love me like he wanted to. I told him I wanted to be his mistress. He said it couldn't happen again.
But it did. Ask me about the time, a month or so later, when he found me on America Online and we began talking. Let me share with you that that conversation ended in another furtive meeting behind his house, where we shared our sighs with the nighttime. Other meetings, precipitated by the sound of his voice over the telephone, or a seemingly innocent online conversation, where wild fires were lit and extinguished, where breath and juice and love were exchanged in the most secret and ancient of ways.
And then, our final moment, when we met in the depth of the wettest night I can remember. The little park by his house, where trees in summer's bloom provided cover. Our lives in uproar, unable to forget, craving the completion of that which we had started. If you ask me about this, I will tell you how we took each other in every possible way, over and under and around the jungle gym in that silent, suburban park. Our desperate love. It was early June, and the earth was soaked with summer rains. I could smell its freshness mingled with the scent of him as he drew me down onto the grass. I gave everything I had, and took all I could. It was the last time I saw him.
Since then we have exchanged several thousand e-mails. This includes a letter from him to me, telling me how he wants to be with me again, to be me, to melt into my embrace so completely that we would meld and become one person. We’ve spoken again and again about our time together, with those conversations usually including the words "in another life..."
Neither of us has forgotten.
Make no mistake. I've tried to move on, and other love has come my way. But there is the part of me that only Liam knows, and I have begun to believe that no one else will ever be able to reach it, let alone stoke it and fulfill it the way Liam did.
Now and again I ask Liam if we can get together, for a friendly lunch or a quick latte. Sometimes he even works up the nerve to ask me the same questions. But the date always falls through. We can’t ever see each other again. For although we portray ourselves as friends these days, the truth of it is that there will always be what is. He never says, no I shouldn't see you. No, I should forget all about you, pretend it never happened. No, I have to be faithful to my wife.. What he says is...I can't make it. I can't.
I won’t ever forget this man. And in this season of the year, and of my life, it’s difficult. Because for me, Liam is, and will always be, hidden in the shadows of nights like these...somewhere in the mist and thunder and the sultry humid earth of summer.
Readers can reach Pasionara at pasionara@aol.com. She may even interrupt her reverie to answer your mail.
