This story covers 1968-1981. These were difficult times when few adults were around who could provide moral or ethical guidance. Zola thought a lover 10 years older would. Did he? Yes and no. Turns out being a mistress or committing adultery never changes - no matter what dates the misguided love.

 

              The forbidden words - I want to take you away. For a

              weekend.  Lock us up on a hotel in the Yucatan.  Only

              let you out to meander with me through the jungle

              paths, then rush home to each others' legs, tongues; to

              touch all the forbidden spaces beneath your old eyes

              while the humid air mummifies our sweaty rhythms.

 

              You lay your hand on my stomach as it swells,

              recovering from tidal waves. I feel like the ocean,

              rolling into a calm harbor.  Your voice covers my

              nakedness like diamond due, as if you were talking to

              yourself, "To touch you always."

 

              You ask how it is with me. I blush.  I turn my face

              from yours while my hand lingers inside your thigh. 

              It is so similar with you as with others -- physically.

              That is not the right answer.  After so many others, I

              wondered if it were only me who came to that

              nirvana while my partners lingered in some gray

              purgatory.  Me? I jump into that sacrificial Lake

              Titicaca every time a man plunges into me.  I tumble

              to the bottom of the dark pit, only to reel in diamonds

              and rubies. I then ascend in a steaming geyser to

              touch the hot sun of your eyes and to feel whole, holy,

              pure, God-like beneath your palms.

 

              "Spiritually, it's different with you," I say, "much

              different."

 

              I find your brown eyes in the dim light and wonder

              how it is for you, with me, after 11 years.

 

              "It's like no one else," you whisper as if lost in a

              trance amid your emperor-sized bed.

 

              "What about your wife?" I ask.

 

              You shake your head, the trance too thick to

              reprimand me. "It's not the same.  She doesn't touch

              me like you do," you say.

 

              My fingers cease their caress. I look at them.  Aren't

              all women's fingers alike?  Doesn't she touch the

              same flesh, this same man, this same penis?

               * * *

 

              My mind rivets to your first touch upon my virgin

              flesh the summer of 1968, when I was 18 and you

              28.  You were my eternal bachelor, divorced,  my

              rich man.  I became your artist college hippie.  I was

              so angry, when after four years, you married. 

              Someone else.  I knew even at 22 I was too young for

              you, but I had thought you'd wait until I grew up.

               "We haven't made love in two years," you're saying.

 

              My jaw drops.  "Two years?" I can barely stand

              these once a month moments of sanity and now you

              tell me your wife of seven years and you haven't

              made love in two years!  We haven't made love

              consistently for 11 years.  I was out west for a while

              and most of the other years, I was living 200 miles or

              so from you mixed in my tornadoes and hurricanes,

              coming to you with the mask of sanity, seeking faith,

              hope and love within our shared bed.

 

              I'm still grateful after that virginal seduction attempt,

              that you kept your hands off me for two years before

              we consummated our love in the flesh.  I was so often

              on the edge of sanity and you were the one who

              rescued me.  Not dramatically.  Never one to indulge

              in emotions, your letters were like memos, your

              voice inviting over the phone from your

              stockbrokerage chair, steady in business, steadying

              me, and only recently have you begun to talk - of us.

 

              "Two years?" I repeat as you rise from the bed, walk

              across that spacious, airy Frank Lloyd Wright

              bedroom and into the bathroom.  I glance about the

              room. I see the photograph of you and her on the

              dresser - partying in the Caribbean with your sailor

              hats and sun-tanned bodies so firm.  I glance away

              and note the palm tree in a wicker basket in the

              corner of this room, the folding antique dressing

              stand.  Your voice issues from the bathroom about

              how you're both too busy: you with your business and

              jazz music recordings and she with her film work in

              L.A., and how most people are different from me and

              still love each other.

 

              "But doesn't one of you get angry and throw a temper

              tantrum and demand to make love?" I ask as you

              return.  I expect you to kiss me paternally and swat

              my ass, telling me to get dressed, you have business

              to do and I must go. This time you talk.

 

              "Not everyone has your sex drive," you say, smiling,

              offering me another hit from a jay.

               * * *

 

              I shrug and remember the first time you brought me

              here.  For Frank Lloyd Wright, I expected waterfalls,

              marble stairways, crystal chandeliers, inlaid wood

              floors.  I had not expected the utter beauty of the airy

              rooms nor the relaxed comfort of afternoon light

              streaming through the north and west windows. With

              your palm on my hip and your eyes dancing, you

              show me your recording studio squeezed into such a

              small room, but complete with dials and lights,

              gadgets and the organ with your blond wife's face

              capturing your trances. Then you take me upstairs to 

              a majestic bedroom with your familiar emperor-sized

              bed. You show me your modern, triangular shower,

              painted black bathroom walls, his and her long

              closets and dozens of three-piece suits.  I almost

              stopped to count them.

 

              "This is the only room we fixed," you say opening the

              guest room: furnished bed, dresser, mirror, rug. 

              Antiques. Probably expensive.  All the other rooms

              are nearly bare: a functional round glass table in the

              main room off the foyer, a couch in the living room, a

              console piano its only companion other than the one

              white rug, and the desk in your upstairs office.

               * * *

 

              The first time here, you brought me towards your

              marriage bed.  I pushed you away, "I can't, not here."

 

               You don't understand.

 

              "In the guest room?" I ask.  "I just can't here, where

              you do it with your wife."  We heaten each other's

              bodies in the guest room, my mind reeling to hot

              Egyptian deserts, in an oasis, you and me, caressing

              beneath hieroglyphics of time.

 

              Now I listen to you, huddling my knees to my chin,

              happy to be thin again as I was in the beginning with

              you, me 18 and you 28.

 

              I am amused by your money.  You used to give me ten

              dollars taxi fare for the trip downtown so I could

              catch the train home to college. I was so poor, I took

              the taxi to the "L" and pocketed the rest for food.  I

              was so hungry for everything when I was young. 

              Recently recounting to some friends how much I

              liked your Mercedes Benz sports coup, their jaws

              dropped.  They told me it was worth at least $25,000

              or more.  I smiled.

 

              Now I want to take you to the Yucatan. Hide us out in

              a small hotel, hole us up with Double XX beer and

              none of your drugs.

 

              "We always smoke dope," I complained after a few

              years.

 

              "We don't," you say.

 

              You were the first to offer me marihuana at 18. 

              Nothing happened as your hands latched onto my

              flesh.  I wanted to know how far you would go so I

              pretended to be stoned, whatever that was. I stood

              from your couch and followed you into that apartment

              bedroom after selling you the set of encyclopedias

              the week before. I marveled how your emperor-sized

              bed consumed the entire room.  You undressed and

              waited for me in bed. I stared at your face. Nothing

              else.  I let my hand rise to the key-like zipper on the

              front of my red-black-plaid jumper. It crackled.  My

              hands shook.  You left the bed, helped me, then

              guided me into those crisp, cool white sheets as I

              stared into your eyes.

 

              Your palms were flowing with my curves when you

              nudged yourself towards me.  Your sword-like thing

              touched my soft spots. Your hand forced mine onto it.

              Me being Catholic and you being Jewish and me

              being naked for the first time, and with such an older

              man, and me not having any birth control, and I'm

              suppose to be in love with my high school

              sweetheart, and you're so much older than I.... I shake

              and cry, cover my face, clasp the sheets and turn from

              you.  You try hugging me. I say, "I can't."

 

              You say, "You don't have to."

 

              I say, "I can't even touch you!"

               * * *

 

              It's not like that anymore.  Every time you bring out

              the jays, always the jays. This past year, you even

              brought out a small vial of cocaine.  I get heart

              attacks now.  Every orgasm with you, you and your

              cocaine give me a heart attack as your white heat

              pushes me over the edge, flying until you withdraw.

              My heart is ready to leap from my chest as my thighs

              roll like the ocean and you whisper, "To touch you

              always."  I hear, for the first time, how much you

              haven't said all these years.

 

               Still, I want you without drugs.  We don't argue that

              this time. We argue how you finish too soon.  One

              time, I angrily stormed from the upstairs bedroom,

              having grown accustomed to laying in your marriage

              bed since your wife was out of town so often.  My

              shoes tapped the stairs with a new femininity, my

              mouth turned downward with a righteous anger to

              challenge your apologetic voice.

 

              "I didn't know so many would call," you say

              following me.

 

              I remember the early times, in the old place, when

              you disconnected the phone.

 

              "I told you the last time I wasn't satisfied," I say and

              much more crosses our minds, but I am still too

              young to understand how my voice ripples against

              your life.

 

              "I'm angry," I mutter.

 

              "I'm sorry," you say.

 

              You help me with my coat. You've shortchanged me

              again with your phone calls.  Suddenly, I notice the

              gray hairs in your brown curls which weren't there

              before.  I melt in this new knowledge about you.

               * * *

 

              We are reluctant to lose each other after 11 years,

              growing into 12.  This moment pieces itself together

              from our separate lives with moments glued to other

              worlds, now snatched like thieves, intersecting like

              fine geometric patterns your stock market research

              plots over the years.  But I have finally spoken the

              word that tramples our love.  "Adultery."  It stains all

              my love for you.  And you?

 

              "We settled this a long time ago," you remind me. 

              Yes, seven years ago when you told me how, since

              you and she were so much older marrying, that you

              both decided to keep some of your special bed

              partners rather than opt for total monogamy.

 

              Now you stare into my mouth with fear, touching

              something you thought you never owned. We sit in the

              living room.  A new grand piano claims one end, the

              console is on the side.  The couch is white and thick,

              the rug white and thick, the coffee table designer of

              some kind. Refined.  Cultured.  The room is spacious

              but not cluttered.  Tropical plants are scattered

              throughout it.  You're next to me on the couch.  We

              aren't usually like this, with all our clothes on, talking

              in the downstairs living room.

 

              "Can't love just be an isness?" I ask.  "Must it be an

              exchange of flesh?"

 

              "No.  If you change that, you change it all," you say.

 

              "But can't love just BE? Can't we change the

              manifestation, the expression of it, without changing

              the isness?"

 

              We argue until I ask the right question.  "Does it

              change the isness for you?"

 

               In the living room, lit only by he cars driving by at

              dusk, your clear brown eyes don't hesitate a beat,

              "Yes.  Fifty percent of the time when you change a

              relationship that has been going on as long as ours

              have, you ruin it."

 

              I bite my lip. Your arm, on the back of the couch,

              refuses to fall upon my neck or shoulder.  I stand and

              ask if you'll show me your new computer. I feel you

              have announced the death of our love.  I follow you

              up the stairs and into the office, furnished now with a

              file cabinet, bookshelves and the desk computer

              dethroning your Selectric typewriter.  You show me

              purple and yellow lines which indicate graphs of

              buying and selling. You show me how you talk to it,

              review messages from your computer-brother wizard

              who helped install it. I lean over your shoulder, my

              hand close to your ear. I feel like David and

              Bathesheba. I feel blackmailed into making love with

              you.  If I don't make love this evening, you will end

              our friendship.  All 11 years of it, growing into 12.

 

              "I've changed my mind," I whisper.

 

              You are drawn from reviewing business to my face. 

              I've watched the lines around your eyes for years

              now. I've memorized your nose, your rich, wide

              mouth, your business tan and its varied shades and

              your curly Jewish hair trimmed just above the neck,

              and its every gray hair.  You are startled, a rare

              emotion for you.  You freeze.  "Why?"

 

              "Stockbrokers never bet on 50-50 deals," I say.

 

              'So what do we have here now?' I wonder as I

              abandon my clothes and morals on the floor and join

              you in bed.

               * * *

 

              Afterwards, we stand naked. We gaze at the cars

              traveling north and south. Their headlights filter

              through the autumn leaves and into this room. Your

              arms are around my neck and shoulders as I lean into

              your naked body.  I tell you how I know you so well,

              how you can, "Shift your gaze."

 

              You don't understand my obliqueness.  Usually we

              half-talk and half-sing in our mutual telepathy, but

              now you don't understand.  I tell you how you can

              shift your gaze from me and by just doing that, make

              me not exist.  Make my love, our love, not exist. Ever

              again.

 

              I remember the time in the hotel, during our Chicago

              lunch hour. We were walking across Dearborn Street

              with lunch hour people. Your eyes were wide,

              repeating how you don't usually do such things.

 

              "Like what?" I asked.

 

              "Walk in the streets. See all these people," you say as

              you clasp my arm to your side with just the right

              amount of gentlemanly politeness and sensual

              warmth.  "The Palmer House was booked," you say

              as we both laugh and you direct us towards "The

              King's Golden Arms Hotel."

 

              "I've never done anything like this before," you say,

              referring to our lunch hour rendezvous and a hotel

              escapade.  I remind you of the other hotel on

              Sheridan Road, too early after you married. You

              smile, "I forgot...."

                * * *

 

              Then there was the day I came to your office. The

              first time after years of letters and collect calls.  I

              tried looking femme fatale. When the receptionist

              recognized my name and connected it to the letters

              and collect phone calls, I smiled and said nothing. 

              She escorts me towards the arena-like Coliseum with

              its cathedral-high ceiling.  You raise your hand and

              wave among the mass of subdued brown and gray

              desks and computers and men in three-piece suits.  I

              find you and sit in the client chair next to your desk. I

              lay your birthday present before you.

 

              My face is dark.  It is easy to be femme fatale when

              the fated news arrived.  You're smiling.  I am

              untouched by this impressive show of wealth.  I look

              where everyone else looks. The huge flashing green

              lights flow like a fast river above all of us. I stare

              and wonder why you don't squint as I must to catch

              but not decipher those figures, shorthand of

              knowledge, the Dow Jones.  You're asking me why

              I'm not smiling.  Then you make a comment and I

              laugh.  My voice rings above all that money. I cover

              my mouth the second time as heads turn to stare, but

              you're smiling and your eyes haven't quivered in

              reproach.

 

              "I'm depressed," I say.

 

              You're surprised.  You haven't seen me like this. You

              heard, in letters and phone calls, but seeing is another

              story.  You unwrap your present:  my first novel

              written while I was out west.

 

              You smile.  "I don't have anything for you," you say

              eluding to my birthday just six days from now. 

              You're 39 and I will be 29.  We rarely exchange

              gifts. It's as if such usual pastimes are unnecessary

              between us.  Or too risky.

 

              "The man I wanted to marry is marrying someone

              else," I say.  "Married," I correct myself.

 

              "So?"

 

              I shrug.

 

              "Be happy you were privileged to love," you answer.

 

              "That's easy for you to say, you're married.  Me? I

              love daily, always.  It's habit, not a privilege.  But I

              loved him and wanted to love him forever, physically

              and spiritually.  Even monogamously," I conclude.

 

              "Not everyone is as fortunate to love as much as you

              do," you say.  My eyes flash open to the room, the

              wealth I don't have, the second-hand coat I try

              dressing up with a matching hat and scarf and my

              naked, unwed fingers.  Your telephone rings.  You

              answer it, give stockbroker advice, listening as your

              eyes smile weariness.  You clasp my hand,  then

              release it to turn to some figures.  You turn on the

              charm with a warm, nearly hot, good-bye to your

              customer.  You hang up the phone.  "It's all bullshit,"

              you say as we stare at each other.  "Customers buy

              more if you flirt with them."

 

              "I hope you like this," I say, changing the subject.  I

              open the black cover and read the title for you, The

              Chicagoans.

                 "It's not about us."  You raise an eyebrow.  You've

              once mentioned how you're expecting to read

              something about us.  "I'll write one for you someday."

 

              "This is fine.  In fact, this is the most beautiful gift

              anyone has ever given me." Your voice strikes a

              chord, a nuance that escapes everyone but us. I stand

              to leave. You stand also and escort me outside the

              office, leaning into my body as the escalator takes us

              downstairs.  You tell me how much you love me and

              how happy I should be to be me.  I smile for the first

              time in days.

               * * *

 

              "Adultery," I say now.  In effect, no loving.  "I can't

              find a husband if I keep making love with you," I

              plead.  I can't be satisfied like this anymore, I don't

              say.

 

              I like you, haven't been easy to love. I want to hold

              onto night long past sunrise with too many others.

              You survived that.  Then there's been the changing

              addresses, changing occupations, changing area

              codes, my phone calls finally no longer collect. 

              Always you would ask, "Where are you calling

              from?" waiting to hear my exotic town: San

              Francisco, Vancouver, Seattle, Pittsburgh, El Paso,

              New Orleans and even London and Paris. You're

              always surprised when I'm calling from Chicago, my

              hometown.

 

              I called from Michigan this time. Six hours I drove

              home to you, thinking of my latest lover.  He wakens

              my spirit as I did  his virgin flesh five years ago,

              growing into six.  We are growing old together, him

              and me.  Like you and me, but when I was in his

              unmarried arms on his short visit before he was off to

              Darwin's Galapagos Islands, I cried.  I finally

              understood the reality of making love - the grand

              precious reality I had held so often and tasted so

              regularly with you, with others, but never fully

              recognizing its brilliance until I was with David, my

              single lover and helicopter bush pilot. He was a

              near-virgin at 22, and I was so stained at 24, but

              together, he transports me around the world with his

              tales of adventure.

               * * *

 

              I refuse to think of you. For six hours.  I had thought

              adultery. Long before this drive. We have talked

              about it before.  You have persuaded me before. 

              Now I'm coming home to see my ailing mother, visit

              my sisters and nieces and nephews, my old

              roommates, acquaintances turning into friends.  That's

              not true.

 

              I came to see you, with David's love latching onto my

              thighs, claiming me although I know he won't be back

              in town for another year.  I came to see you.  To play

              this charade of love with you in your Frank Lloyd

              Wright house. You keep surprising me with your

              lines.

 

 

                         Detail

              After 11 years, you tell me how when I first walked

              into your house, chatting my memorized encyclopedia

              sales pitch while you lay stretched on the couch,

              enjoying the August interlude. You had stared at me

              as I fingered the sample book, pointing out Mayan

              ruins. I stopped midway because of your stare.  "If

              you're not interested, I'll leave."

 

              "No, no, go on," you said. The film in your eyes left.

 

              "I'd have bought anything you were selling," you say

              now.

 

              "What?"

 

               "I would have bought a Bible, fishing gear, magazine

              subscriptions - anything you were selling. I was

              buying you."

 

              You smile and kiss my unusually quiet mouth.  You

              continue.

 

              "I was thinking of having a relationship with you for

              years the moment you walked into the apartment."

 

              "Huh?" I say, turning to you in your emperor-sized

              bed.  You hand me a kleenex to wipe myself after

              loving.

 

              "Sure," you say.

 

              "Why?" I ask.

 

              "You were a once in a lifetime opportunity."

 

              I confide how happy I was to learn on my last visit

              how you keep my letters in a file and rotate it so

              when you do your books twice a year, you stumble

              upon it in the middle of your review.

 

              "Do you do your accounts in December and June?" I

              ask.

 

              "November and May. I'm too busy those other

              times."  We laugh.  You touch my naked leg, "And, I

              don't take phone calls from anyone at work

              nowadays."

 

              "But you took mine this morning!" I say, raising an

              eyebrow.

 

              "I don't take phone calls at work. I'm too busy," you

              repeat and we laugh again.

 

              Laughter dies from your face. "Did you realize what

              you were saying when you said it was adultery?"

 

              I cuddle next to you, rub my hand along the inside of

              your thigh, pass the knee to the ankle, drawing circles

              and rivulets like the Amazon River. I avert my face. 

              "Yes."

 

              "Did you mean it?"

 

              "Yes."  I kiss your back, "But I don't mean it now."

 

              "Don't do that to me, please," you say.

 

              "I'm sorry," I say as my memory floods my mind.

               * * *

 

               I remember what you forget. Your mind is filled

              with numbers while mine with kisses.  I almost start

              to play, "Let's Remember," but draw back.  All my

              memories of you demand union.  A few times, I

              withdrew from our orgasms like a bandit because my

              mind, in the pinnacle of isness screamed, MARRY

              ME!  I don't know if you heard.  I was afraid of

              falling in love with you and ruining everything.

 

              There is one very important "Let's remember" I must

              share with you. Do you remember, that time in your

              upstairs bedroom, with the cars going by, and we

              were discussing how you can shift your gaze?  You

              were telling me how you and your wife were

              considering having a child, something about her

              biological clock.

 

              "You should do it," I say.

 

              "Why?" you ask.

 

              I stand there in the airiness of your room. I feel

              liberated from my body, that my and your minds are

              floating as one in that spacious room.  I touch some

              deep, foreign knowledge that I will only touch this

              once in my whole life. I feel the texture of our two

              minds within the air, although you are sitting on the

              bed and I am standing, stretching, looking out the

              window. I turn to you, "To manifest love, like we do

              now, but to do it physically in a child.  To give life

              and breath to love. To grow with it, change and be

              changed by it.  To connect yourself with humanity. 

              To have something more important than your

              business."

 

              "I have my music."

 

              "Having a child is different, more demanding,

              spiritually," I counter.

 

              You tell me your wife and you have been talking

              about it, but you are unsure.  I walk over to you,

              place my fingers over your lips and make you stand.

              We hug.

 

              "It's none of that," I say.  "It's to make love physical,

              like we do."  I feel the air about us weaving genetic

              dna and rna strands between us, ready to impregnate

              us with children.

 

              "Then why haven't you done it?" you demand.

 

              I blush. I turn from you. How ignorant you are of me

              sometimes!  "Because it is too expensive," I murmur.

               * * *

 

              After 11 years, you tell me how you planned to love

              me from the start.  Now, just an hour ago, my simple

              assertion, "It's adultery" would deprive you of the

              only love that transcends "Up 97 points today."

 

              I am humbled.

 

              "You don't understand your own power," you're

              saying, "your impact on people."

 

              This is a new conversation.  My eyes focus on yours.

              Power? You deal with it daily, handle it casually,

              easily.  Stockbrokerage work, music contracts in

              L.A., recording studios and executives.  Me?  What

              do I know of power? I know of sex, flesh, love, God

              in its Moses, Buddha, Christ and other forms and all

              those other, non-material powers that you bed me

              for.  We're so obviously foils to each other.  I've

              known it for years. I voyeur in your business and you

              voyeur in my soul.

                * * *

 

              All those moments are in the past now.  I've spent six

              hours of not thinking of you as I drive from Michigan

              home to Chicago. My pilot lover's scent is still

              woven in my long hair.  His voice still clings to my

              fingertips and your Frank Lloyd Wright house is my

              destination.

 

              I'm standing pass the foyer, before the round glass

              table we've shared take-out chicken and pizza.

              Tonight you've cooked for me, the first time, tacos. I

              reassure you I'm only a semi-vegetarian as you mix

              seasonings into the sautéed ground beef.  Once

              before, after shopping at an all night Jewel, we came

              home. You were on the phone as I stood in your

              familiar kitchen, always finding the beer in the

              packed refrigerator. I now tried to assemble your

              sandwich, but after ten years, I didn't know if you

              used mayonnaise, butter or mustard.

 

              Now you take my coat, place it over the dining room

              chair and lead me into the kitchen.  You show me

              how you're cooking for us.  We regress to teenagers,

              like the time I showed you my first car when I was

              29.  I turned on the window shield wipers because it

              was raining. I pointed out the am/fm stereo, the

              8-track tape-deck, the air conditioning, "And cruise

              control," I say, knowing what impresses you.  You

              clapped your hands after I asked where the nearest

              gas station was.  You leaned into the car to kiss my

              good-bye, saying, "I feel like Rock Hudson and Doris

              Day." I waved good-bye and now, you're leading me,

              after dinner, towards the stairs and I stand reluctant.

 

              You're holding two drinks in your hands, walking up

              the stairs. I stand near the foyer, nearly reaching for

              my coat. I feel like a doe ready to bolt.

 

              "It's adultery," I say.

 

              You freeze. Turn towards me, one foot above the

              other on the stairs. Our eyes lock.  I don't melt.

 

              "I can't," I say.

 

              "Can't what?"

 

              My eyes race up the stairs, pass you, to the future.

 

              "Are you serious this time?" you ask.

 

              I can only nod my head.

 

              You're walking towards me now, placing the glasses

              onto the dining room table. How I want to change this

              moment!  I want you to change my heart, corrupt me

              again as you had done the first time after your

              marriage, explaining your arrangement with your

              wife.  Only last year you told me I am the only one

              you've indulged within that arrangement.

 

              "Are you serious?" you ask in a deadly monotone as

              you advance towards me. I want to feel your hands

              on my hips, your lips upon my mouth. I want to

              experience again how our minds dance in galaxies

              and stars beyond our separate realities. Tears are

              flowing from my morality. You won't indulge me. 

              We are both much too old for such dramatics.

               "Yes," I manage, hearing the knife sever our bonds

              more decisively than a judge's sentencing.

 

              "It's adultery and I can't do it anymore.  It hurts too

              much inside," I say to your back as you stride pass

              me towards the grand piano.  "I can't find a husband

              for myself if we keep making love," I nearly shout. 

              But you have totally ignored me. Blocked me. Shifted

              your gaze.  You are uncovering the 88 black and

              white keys and I am recalling the cassette tape of

              your soon-to-be-released album.  Years ago I had

              chided you when you said you had given up your

              music for business.

 

              Now you are playing the piano, something so much

              different from anything you've recorded before.  I

              recall the first time you played the organ now in your

              recording studio.  It was at your old apartment. I

              encouraged you to play one of your original

              compositions. Back then you said you never wrote

              your own music.  That came later.  You've never

              played for me since that first time. Until now.

               * * *

 

              I want to listen to you play music for me.  I think our

              relationship will evolve into this new space. Rather

              than make adulterous love, we will become civilized

              and you will play the piano for me and I will sit and

              write on the white couch as I do now, my notebook

              lit by the cars passing north and south outside through

              the early budding trees.  Your music continues as I

              match my mind to yours trying to blot out "It's

              adultery," by writing as I am now, telling you how it

              feels, after 11 years growing into 12, that it's like

              saying good-bye to the sunset.

               * * *

 

              You finish at the piano.  I stand from the white

              couch.  "I never did that before," you say in awe.

 

              "What?" I ask, following you to the dining room

              table.  You help me with my coat.

 

              "I never just sat down and wrote like that. You make

              me do the damnest things."

 

              Months later I mail you this story about us.  I call you

              on the phone.  Your voice is hollow and distant, as if

              you're one of those flashing green lights on the Dow

              Exchange. You avoided real words with me when I

              asked what you thought of our story.  I forget what

              few words you said then.  I have never seen you

              since.

 

              It was like saying good-bye to the sunset.

 

 

              circa 1981