She looked at me with a kind of aloofness, maybe disdain, a certain distance at least.
We were sitting in the rear of a very latest-model, long-wheelbase car, at virtually opposite sides from each other - she, placing her back, half against the inside of her door, and with me edging away, leaning, up against my doorside.
She was visually similar to someone I knew, someone I didn't much like on one level. And I knew in the case of that particular person, the feeling of dislike was mutual. Physically, I'm sure the feelings were completely in reverse; mutually so. But intellectually, spiritually, in terms of what things we believed and the ways we thought, the differences could not have been more pronounced. The whole thing was unfortunately very incongruous. It may not have started out like that but over time it had gotten like that. I was a trained experienced lawyer, now working out of a sophisticated financial institution -- she, a nurse of Polish extraction who although second-generation in a modern Westernized country, still held views and ideals that were not very practical in the present place where we lived. It was all to do with a condo manager. She had tried to get me to help professionally over some matter to do with a condo manager. And I couldn't. ...As far as sex was concerned I didn't know what her views were.
But that was her -- this was only someone like her. A lot like her. Visually. Physically.
Only maybe better looking too, in a few subtle ways. There was something in the face that whilst still having that vigorously euro-peasant robustness, was suggestive of a far more sophisticated intelligence -- more akin to the metro-sexual and calculating visage of 'another city lawyer type' like me I guess.
Which is a dangerous look.
People will often tell you that it is important to be able to tell the difference between reality and fantasy. Which is true enough as far as it goes, but it is far more important to be able to tell the difference between reality and supra-reality. You can be stuck in your life, stuck in a kind of rut, stuck in the flow of the daily rat-race -, or stuck in its inertia. That's real. Or you can observe the attractive lives of certain people and try and see what is going on there. It's all reality but some realities are better than others...
I learned my reality from a British gangsta rappa. Well actually he was Bajan living in England. I just came across him one evening in a nightclub during the middle of some week when there were not a lot of people around, and there he was opening Crystal champagne and raconteuring to all who would listen, in a sonorous voice and strange accent, and appearing to be having a great time surrounded by a small handful of people. I was -- pretty typically for me -- holed up in a banquette all by myself looking into distance with a Belgian Leffe Blonde beer in front of me. All of a sudden this voice pulled me out from the distance into which I had been focussing: "hey white man. Come over with us and 'av some fun man."
"Huh what?" And thus began a friendship and a saga.
But it was in fact a companion with a tall ponytail top-knot, who was sitting by his side who was the agent of my subsequent new, augmented lifestyle. All throughout the rappa's conversation ran this constant reference to his bedroom genies -- 'bedroom genie this, bedroom genie that,' until I eventually had to ask him to explain to a dummy like me what was all this biz about 'bedroom genies.'
Turned out he was employing a colourful and visually quite apposite analogy to communicate what services the female next to him was providing him -- according to what he was saying, it appeared she was some kind of professional dating psychologist who specialised in motivational hypnotherapy for rapstars and other wealthy high-life stylers -- or that is, to be more accurate, who helped such people get game. 'Get game,' in case you didn't know (not that you necessarily don't), is a phrase that means to enable oneself to become exceptionally attractive and score very highly (establish a high game score) in seducing potential sex partners. 'So-and-so got game...' As they say.
Actually, the way in which the woman I soon ended up talking to then, was presenting all these 'motivational' ideas seemed to have a really quite tongue-in-cheek slant, or perhaps a modernised twist to real motivational psychology... She was coming across as if she might be actually claiming to be a genie, as it were. An actual genie, that is, as in -- not a human, someone who could turn into a scorching smokeless flame and speed off through space and time, grow massively tall or infinitesimally small, disappear, and reappear, or produce money and gold and jewels from out of thin air. I had to take more than a second look at her. She certainly seemed to have that strange looking face and upward pitched almond eyes and strange oriental-looking long straight eyebrows. But I guessed it was a kind of an act. Or maybe I was just breathing in too much of the 'fine white particulate matter' that can tend to float around in the atmosphere of this kind of place. For why was I even thinking like this?! Feeling slightly strange like this...
She came into the nightclub every now and again -- mostly midweek but occasionally I would spy her there on weekends, across the dancing crowd, in amongst the faces, flitting in and out of the light beams and the dark shadows and the spinning colours. I suppose foolishly or at least adventurously I had asked once about not just 'having game' but getting into a relationship with someone who would provide the absolute best orgasmic sex. "Easy. Easy." She said. It was easy apparently. And had something to do with accessing the collective unconscious and allowing yourself to move patterns around in synchronicity with your sex drives.
I didn't understand it, really.
Don't worry, she said. I will just make it happen. And she pulls out an iPhone 5 and posts a message onto some board or other: 'guy in black Caballero vest, with dynamic magnetic personality, looking for a bedroom genie, must be able to deserve Ah Ah Ah Armani, forty five minutes outside Kandy Klub.'
And about forty minutes later as I was leaving the club, this big dark car pulls up beside me and the passenger window comes down and this woman calls out: "Hey you. You in the Caballero jacket."
It took me a few moments to realise that this was one hell of a good-looking woman talking to me. And there was this sudden frisson of doubt because of the similarity of looks with the girl who detested me.
"Get in," she said. And opened the door. I stood there I guess a bit non-plussed for a second. "Do you want to get in?" She asked quite softly.
"Okay." I replied. I guess it's easier for a guy. You kind of doubt that you are being dragged away to some basement by a serial killer if a woman in a brand new Jaguar XJ Ultimate dressed in a dusty pink silk halter-neck topped, short dress with tassels, and pale natural chamois almost knee-high fuck-me-like-you-hate-that-I'm-rich boots, asks you to get in...