I'm probably not the kind of guy you expect to read about here. I mean, sure, I consider myself at least a little above average in most ways. Probably biased lol. But I am taller than average, a little more athletic than average (enough to have played two sports at a small college), a lot more confident and ambitious than average, maybe even randier than average, and although I can't collect famous art or whatever I can afford some nice things.
I know I got this way because of an inner insecurity. I don't want to say anything here about my childhood except that I don't think I ever have or ever will feel that I'm good enough to deserve love. I guess a lot of guys just want their knob polished, or that's how they act, but for me whenever an attractive woman lets me get physically intimate with her, it's a badly-needed affirmation that despite everything I feel about myself I might actually be good enough to deserve my own existence.
When a woman does that for me, she can have anything I can give her.
The best sex I ever had was about fifteen years ago. It was on a business trip to a country that some people would consider exotic--Brazil, Egypt, India, Nigeria, Japan, Russia, someplace like that. Maybe I have the good sense not to be too specific. Even if it was a country you might've heard of, it was off in a little region that you probably don't think about much unless you're really into geopolitics. A place with more journalists than tourists. But not many journalists either. The kind of place where, when white guys happen to see each other, we exchange business cards and talk about opportunities and loopholes.
I had a particularly important client who had a particularly stunning wife. He was a highly placed corrupt government official in his sixties and he looked the part. I was a salesman in my forties and I tried to look the part. She was a trophy wife in her twenties and good gracious did she look the part.
Generally he and I went to clubs and casinos together to grease the wheels of commerce. Models and bottles, courtesy of the corporate expense account. He would choose a girl or two for me and four or five or twelve for himself and I would make a big sale and everyone went home happy.
He eventually liked me so much that on occasion he invited me to some of his mansions and yachts. My job was to be impressed with his wealth and generosity. I've always taken pride in doing my work well.
He also wanted me to admire his wife. Feminist ideals had not deeply impacted their relationship, but she excelled in her role. Very few people travel for work more than I do, so I've satisfied most of my curiosity about different kinds of women in the sense of superficial diversity. So it wasn't so much that she was exotic, no, she was just a very, very, very beautiful and charming woman.
I felt that she liked me--but I assumed it was just because she wanted me to feel that. I thought she was getting a kick out of being just a little naughty, kind of compensation for having to be married to a man more than twice her age. I didn't imagine she really liked me.
But why me? I wasn't the only man her husband allowed into his homes.
She had to play the bimbo but she was actually a very intelligent young woman and I saw through her act. That led to our one significant conversation. Her husband had to take an extremely important call from a man so powerful that even if you're completely uninterested in geopolitics you would definitely recognize the name. Shit was flying somewhere.
So for maybe two hours she and I sat on a balcony overlooking a florid tropical garden and drinking ludicrously overpriced tea and talking about books and music and art.
We had a lot in common. She'd been educated in the west and she loved our culture. We had a funny discussion about
The Old Man and the Sea
. She loved Hemingway except for that book. From Hemingway we made our way to jazz. She'd studied jazz piano, so she had a lot to say about various pianists. She laid out the pros and cons of Keith Jarrett at some length. Really interesting stuff to me too, although I don't play much beyond a few guitar chords. By the time her husband returned, we were comparing our experiences with the paintings of Mark Rothko.
I'm the kind of guy, given my family background, educational background and so on, that isn't so easily impressed. That name-dropping paragraph I just wrote would not impress me much. But she gave examples of the kind of subtext that characterizes Hemingway's best fiction but cannot be found in
The Old Man and the Sea
; she sang lines from memory to illustrate how different pianists approached the music; she described her experience when one of Rothko's works revealed the beauty of the color orange, which she'd previously regarded as fundamentally ugly.
We had a real give-and-take because I pushed back a little on some of her points, or mentioned different ideas. But she enjoyed it, she didn't want me just to sit there and listen, she wanted to have a real discussion. Perhaps
The Old Man and the Sea
represents the work of a more mature artist who has found a different kind of message. Some people, I'm just saying some, might consider Jarrett rather self-indulgent. If she ever got to go to Rothko Chapel in Houston, she should bring headphones and sit there listening to Feldman's composition.
And I joked, "Hey, now, I identify with the color orange."
"No," she told me, "you're a deep, dark blue. I'm kind of a light mint green. We would go well together on a Rothko."
"I should be the background and you should be the foreground."
"No," she said, "side-by-side, vertically, with a dull gray background."
"What's your husband?"
After glancing around carefully, she giggled, "Brown-orange. He belongs splattered on a Pollock with a lot of black and beige dripped over him."
We did have a bit of serious, personal talk as well.
"Do you ever think about the consequences of your work?" she asked me.
"Of course. But I figure the world is what it is, and my highest responsibility is to take care of my family."
"Me too."
"I guess you don't come from wealth like this?
"We could barely afford shoes," she snorted.
"So you've pulled your entire family out of poverty."
"I have," she admitted. "But it's too bad the world has to be the way it is."
"Maybe we actually have enough of everything for everyone now, but no one is going to give much away without a fight, so people are going to keep fighting over it until everyone has enough of it."
"I guess so."
"But what you've done, at any rate, is beyond criticism."
"You think so?"
"Unquestionably."
We were connecting not only as hot-woman and horny-man--but oh, we had that going too, as she kept leaning forward to tempt me with exquisite views down her blouse, pretending that just the way she laughed but our eye-contact confirmed that we both knew exactly what she was doing and exactly who she was married to and that I did sincerely appreciate everything she was willing to share with me.
When her husband returned, I had to express sincere admiration for his wife's intelligence and thoughtfulness. He grunted something about her talking too much.
So I was the right guy at the right time. She fell in love with me, I suspect, because I appreciated her in a way she really wanted to feel appreciated--she didn't study all that stuff for nothing--and hadn't felt appreciated in far too long.
And then one night about a year later I was back for more. Her husband and I explored the virtues of various whiskeys in the "nightclub" in his basement. If you want to know why such and such costs so much, it's partly because guys like him buy it to show off, share a few sips with people they want to impress, and then put it on a shelf and forget about it.
He actually paid someone to buy whiskeys for him. He knew almost nothing about any of it but he wanted to be able to impress other men with his knowledge, so I stood behind the bar like a waiter and gave him a world tour of his own beverages. We began in Islay and Speyside and the Highlands, made our way through Kentucky and Tennessee, reaching Japan not too long before he passed on one of the long purple velvet sofas.
He wasn't a sipper. Not the kind of guy that chewed his whiskey. Like, I understand, if you want to spray champagne around at a party, do so, drench your strippers in bubbly, but don't do that with something that was rescued from a nineteenth-century shipwreck.
His wife, thank God, shared my opinions on this. We had a thirty-year-old Hibiki entirely to ourselves and I wasn't going to waste that opportunity.
"Thirty years old," I joked as his wife and I clinked our glasses together. "A little too young for me, but I've loved her since she was only eighteen."
"That's nice," she commented afterwards. "It's nice to be with someone who appreciates things. Do you know about his cognac collection? He saves that for really special occasions but he won't remember what he was drinking tonight."
"I'm so glad I met you."
"This could be a really special occasion, right?"
"It is for me. I wish we could talk more often. What've you been reading?"
"Simone de Beauvoir," she answered, getting up for a bottle.
"Wow."
Watching her walk, I meant that in two ways. Reading Simone de Beauvoir is remarkable but far more common than having a body like hers and knowing how to walk with it.
"You've read her?"
"Very little but I know her reputation. I've read a lot of Sartre and most of Camus."
"She's given me a lot to think about."
"I can imagine. I'd love to hear about it."
"Unfortunately," she glanced meaningfully toward the fat man on the sofa as she handed me the bottle.
I nodded and poured and we toasted.
"To Beauvoir," she declared.
"I want to go to Paris," she said, changing the subject. "He's taken me twice but we only do the really expensive things. That's nice, I'm not complaining, I chose this life and I know how lucky I am, but I also want to get down in the streets, walk around Montmartre and read at a cafe in Montparnasse and take a nap on a blanket in the Jardin du Luxembourg. I wish I'd had the money when I was in college."
"Paris is my favorite city in the world," I agreed. "I go every chance I get. The morning light there is great for photography."
"Are you a photographer?"
