Dear Sophia,
You seem to be enjoying working out in Marin County. Your letter about your experience with the 25-year old student at the School for Social Expression certainly sparkled. It reminds me, though, of part of a much larger story, one that I have only recently uncovered. I need to get it down on paper, and I think that it will interest you, so I'll draft it and send you a copy. You know that I always value your thoughts, and so I will be interested in your comments.
-- Richard
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I think that I had mentioned Ela. On second thought, you knew that I was enjoying the company of a very special woman, but I don't think that I told you her name. She is working on a tv documentary for an independent production company, and came by my office to do an interview about my investigation of the Medicine Bow, Wyoming "space aliens" case. We had a wide-ranging discussion, as the diplomats say, and... I can see you laughing, but seriously... she is not originally from out West, but has really worked to understand it. We had a deep discussion about how people connect with each other in these wide open spaces and quickly came to agree that too often they don't do that.
The sheer distances between people and places fascinate her, and with the Pagan perspective that she described to me, I began to realize that she was going to do a great job of explaining in video how the land, the Earth, influences people in this region. The Medicine Bow case as an example fit perfectly into her needs, and as we talked, I knew that I was meant to help her project in some way or another. I agreed to contact my confidential sources from that research and ask them whether she could interview them. We discussed how that might be done, and we found ourselves increasingly excited over the contributions that I could make to her project.
Our voices raised, we became more animated. Her East Coast big city heritage came to the surface as she expressed her ideas so forcefully. It was getting warm in my dusty old Union Station office. I can't exactly explain it, but all of a sudden we just stopped. Stopped.
Do you remember when we were up on the Continental Divide and a storm front passed over us? One moment we were in mild, breezy weather and then we could feel the pressure changing and a new wind blew over us. That is how it felt. I could almost swear that the papers on my desk blew slightly askew, even though the window was closed.
We simply stopped talking and looked at each other for what seemed the longest time. I was looking deeply into her eyes when I caught a gentle, seductive motion. Her breasts were moving with her deep breathing; I remember realizing that I must be noticing them because they were firming up. Instinctively I lost eye contact and glanced at what I had already realized were her attractive curves. Ela's eyes moved with mine.
"I think..." I began.
"No," Ela smiled, "you feel," and she glanced down with a mischievous grin at the bulge developing in my slacks. I had not even been aware of it during our discussion.
"While we were discussing my project and your possible contribution, our collective subconscious, as you might call it, was at work doing what comes naturally." She leaned over to kiss me, or perhaps for me to kiss her. Somehow we both stood up, and as I started to say something that was supposed to be intelligent and germane to our discussion, this interesting, brilliant woman put her finger to her lips to shush me.
"You felt that fresh breeze, didn't you?" She said it in a low voice, but stated as a fact, rather than a question. "Sometimes it's time to stop talking and begin communicating."
Her radiant face and the warmth pouring from her as we inched closer together suggested a way of communicating that would be irresistible. Her nipples pushed forward to touch me, and yet I again found her eyes drawing mine. It seemed that I did not need to look at her now, but rather needed, needed, to look into her.
"The hotel where you live is close to here, isn't it?" she queried, again in that low, calm voice. I nodded. She must have read my erotic stories on-line, I realized, not just the scholarly papers to which she had referred. I took her hand and we headed for the grand old staircase like a couple of teenagers.
As we walked out of the Union Station office wing I looked up 17th Street toward the historic Oxford Hotel, and I could not help but think of our wonderful times together. Ela turned her face toward me and her eyes lit with comprehension.
"You have some beautiful memories invested in that building, don't you?"
How had she known that? At the time, I supposed that something about my hand in hers had given my thoughts away. In a flash, I was acutely aware of her hand in mine and that we were supposed to just be business acquaintances,
Before I could ask her about that insight, there was a sudden screech of rubber and the bang of metal meeting metal.
A motorist in her 50's had glanced at we pedestrians blocking her way and for an instant lost control of her car. I would have said that we looked like any professional colleagues walking briskly toward our hotel, but perhaps she spotted something else. Her car smacked into the hotel's guest services limo, denting bumpers. Ela and I never really noticed that at the time.
In our conscious selves, we WERE those professional colleagues, and in hindsight, I think that I also thought on a conscious level that we were those mature humans who know that we can confidently handle sex and the enjoyment that it brings, but would be trying to downplay its deeper significance. You know how much more is truly involved โ we both have enjoyed talking about it and doing it โ but it seems like the academic in me still tries to categorize Deep Meanings as just another file folder. We talk about it in conferences as if it is just a whitewash over our real needs that are in the Biological Science folder.
So, we were caught in that emotional storm front and I, in any case, was still trying to objectify it. But, as Ela might have said, we were spiritually dancing like two dry leaves caught up in that swirl. The doorman snapped to attention and hurried to invite us in. Still just being colleagues, Ela and I chatted about something meaningless as we waited for the elevator. And as we did, the young woman behind the desk turned red and began breathing heavily. When Ela's knowing glance drew my attention to the clerk's natural response to our magnetism, I told myself that the air conditioning must not be working.
We would have been alone in the elevator, but at the last minute a guy in his twenties dodged the closing doors and threw himself between us. He was clutching a bouquet from the florist's up the street. He hadn't really noticed us as human beings, just as obstacles to avoid hitting with the bundled flowers in his rush. Now he looked at Ela's glowing face and their eyes locked. I caught a glimpse of her nose wriggling cutely as she took in the testosterone scent that he unwittingly radiated.