Greg H Goes On A Date

We met after I responded to a comment she had made on a website, about the link between pornography and violence. Details of that exchange are not necessary, beyond stipulating that she is pro- both. We exchanged messages about food, sex, death and the necessities of both kindness and occasional depravity. We talked on the phone and arranged dinner at a restaurant of a caliber and ticket price that assured a gravity necessitating that somebody put out, as she so endearingly colloquialised it. And put out we did, mutually. But first, the girl.

Sara is a bit younger than me, or a bit older than my daughter, depending on ones' observation of such disparities. I must admit that even I posed serious thought to an age difference involving whole decades. By feat of recall, I happened to remember a particularly good two-part episode of "Battlestar Galactica" that premiered on television the week Sara was born. But, as she professed neither a father fixation nor any concern about said difference, it did not seem significant.

The intellectual parity seemed to duly compensate for any other differences, which is surely what led to our meeting in any case. Sara attended Yale, a small college in the northeastern part of the US far from our mutual rural Midwestern heritage. She had traveled Europe, picking up a good deal of the local tongue, and by her own account, putting said tongue to most gratifying purposes. She chewed up life at much the same rate I had, at her age, doing the same global tour under a slight more regimental banner. We both knew the language of sensual intelligence. She spoke and I glistened.

Under pretext of a first anniversary, I had secured a table in an un-trafficked area, flanked by tall chairs that protected us from diners and staff. Brad the manager came and presented us with complimentary 'champagne' and congratulations. After prompting the first of a thousand mid-dinner kisses, my little ruse was the subject of much laughter. The tart substance with garnish-only strawberry product in the tall flutes became the subject of a snotty, tittering exchange about the questionable derivation of said sparkling wine. She suggested perhaps Asti Spumante, I dealt an even harsher Tottinger's, but we established that we could share such useless knowledge and our capricious use of intellect.

At this point, she exclaimed in mock outrage that she was now assured that I was gay, an apparent recurring situation in her social history. I assured her that I was not entirely gay, but that I was certainly gay for her.

Dinner proceeded apace, through another bottle of white wine and food which, although made with some degree of care, left us both rather unimpressed, fore brains already focused on dessert to the point of frightening the young server with our simultaneous "No!" at the exhortation to dessert. I presented a card of exchange at that moment with my left hand, pen in my right, and immediately bought our passage back into the snow.

My back-of-hand knowledge of the city (and accidental discovery of a parking area behind the restaurant) left us a short trip to the car, but sufficient time for an embrace and even more prelude to the rest of the evening. We had easily charted our next destination as my own house, radically apart from the scores of Starbucks-bound Hoosierati. Or, more precisely, my couch, as our quickest point of horizontal communion.

I might add, at this point, some details about Sara, the personage. She is beautiful, in all ways tangible and otherwise. I may wax prosaic about raven hair, curiously bright eyes, but such picture painting is futile, ultimately, and only serves to put in perspective the miserable existence of the reader who did not spend the evening in such gorgeous company. But I will point out a detail of no particular significance other than its novelty. Sara is proportioned divinely well, and exactly one foot short of me. One foot short of everyone, actually, in that she appeared to be missing exactly one. Her right foot, in point of fact.

Since I am not without my various excisions and acquaintances with grave illness and injury, it passed without notice, except to make her a more intriguing and wholly fascinating person. And as events unfolded, so to speak, I found her to be a most dynamic and passionate woman indeed.

Owing to my willingness to exist without either staff or a lift in my downtown multi-story home, the trek up the stairs seemed best aided by my own offer to carry us both at once, which she had no power to refuse, once I had hoisted her up a few steps and threatened us both with imminent re-acquaintance to certain principles of gravity. Forging on, though, proved easy enough, with such pleasant incentive in my arms.

I managed to lead her into my bedroom without intoning the phrase "this is where the magic happens", despite a day-long barrage of OCD network programming. On the bed, we spent hours becoming, well, spent, on kisses and caresses, exclamations of pleasure, and a mutual discovery of each others bodies that approached adolescence in its purity of experience.

Needless to say, a confluence of my own hardly disguised loneliness and our immediate infatuation led to an outstanding experience of lovemaking, albeit perhaps all the briefer for the events of the evening heretofore. But, owing to a conversation across well-used pillows some time later, I will point out that, to our mutual enjoyment in its honesty, we preferred to term it 'fucking', rather than lovemaking. So fuck, we did, and fuck some more.

It will be prudent to mention to her, at some point, that my former partner was also named 'Sarah', although it will be noted that she retains the vestigial, inaspirate "h". There may be a parallel in that difference. My stormy relationship with her, passionate of its own quarter, was part of the pattern of my life that I could not give up, a remnant nurtured dependencies and expectations.

I profess, in my still sensually accelerated state on this writing, that this free spirit has unhitched me from my hold on some ghosts, and chased out the ever-lingering house guests of doubt and hesitance.

And although so much has gone right in the short time of us, I trust that her odyssey of discovery holds but a short stay in my port. But this too has helped me confront the realization that this is not an acquiescence I must make to my future, but a point of hope. Though transience is the nature of beastly desire, chance and Eros will inevitably shepherd one through yet another few hours of passionate denial.