(Since it's been a while I will refresh your memory-after a fairly uneventful first three days-I take a lover back to the hotel and have a very dirty but fulfilling encounter. After I manage to dispose of him, I wake up the next day ready to embark yet again on the enforced cultural death march.)

Labels: musee d'orsay, paris

Well HAL 2.0 is apparently back to his usually slow paced but functional self. Can't tell you how exciting that is for me. Now I just have the other 455 crises I have to deal with. So soon, not likely before Friday, but soon the end of the Paris Diaries and the Beginning of the Frehel adventure.

Which isn't such a bad thing because despite having 16 pages of notes. I still have no idea what to call the Frehel debacle except maybe Frenchman Fever.

I need some coffee. And maybe another vacation.
(While you wait for the Paris posts, there is no reason why I shouldn't continue to keep you apprised of what is going on in my life. I return to teaching tomorrow and will have access to a computer, so I will be able to continue the Paris posts soon. Until then I give you the New York Adventures of Bunni.)

I was in a mood last night. Compounded by the fact that school starts tomorrow and my computer, of course, will be down and out until Thursday. One realizes when such events occur how much of life is lived in the virtual realm. Or at least how much of my life is about interacting with voices and words and websites and not with physical people.

The only exception to that is the bar.

Which is where I headed at 8 at o'clock at night rather than spend the night staring despairingly at the now defunct HAL 2.0.

At 8 o'clock on a Saturday, there aren't many people in the bar. There are, in point of fact, two other men aside from the bartender.

And I've slept with both of them. Neither one of them was a repeat performance-One Hit Wonders, if you will, if you can apply the term "wonder" liberally. As liberally, that is, as I apply my affection.

It's karoake night so my intent is to drink now, go home, have dinner, watch something on IFC or Sundance, and then, perhaps go back out around 2 am. If my computer was up, I be spening the night furiously typing about my adventures, but that is not to be for now.

One of the One Hit Wonders, one for whom I harbor some special disdain, tries to be cordial. We chat for a bit about how Joseph Heller only wrote one books worth reading. I recommend he read Aldous Huxley's After Many a Summer Dies a Swan and Waugh's The Loved One. He gives away his lack of education by thinking that Evelyn Waugh was a woman. "I don't know what she wrote," he comments offhandedly. "Apparently not since Evelyn was a man in the same way Florenz Zeigfield and Harry Truman's brother Vivian were men. Our concepts of gender appropriate names change over time." Unlike my life...or my luck.

Brilliance Personified finally takes the hint that a little chat about literature will not warm my feelings towards him and decides to play pool for both of our sakes. During our conversation, some other people have wandered in. I haven't taken notice of them.

But as soon as the there is a gap by my side Tall, Dark, and Southern Drawl comes sidling up to ask me if my boyfriend or husband is sitting there. I clarify with precision, "I tolerate OHW, but to call him even a friend is a stretch so please take a seat." We chat for a while. He's with friends who are itching to go elsewhere, specifically Auction House, a personal favorite bar that I don't spend much time in because it's not a bar where one can hang out alone.

So off I go with Southern Drawl to Auction House. Now I know, beyond a shadow of doubt, this man wants me for my body. He hasn't been subtle about it. Letting his eyes drop over my body from time to time. Not embrassed about it, but not disgusting either. A look like the whisper of fingers over my skin.

A hint that perhaps what keeps us chatting is that we are more alike than we know.

We chat at Auction House for a bit and this is where the conversation turns directly sexual. He makes a comment, not involving me directly, about going back to his apartment and having wild sex. Although I parry the comment for a bit, later he brings sex up again-this time by commenting, of course, on the impressive nature of my physicality.

"You have no idea" I tell him.

"Really?" "Oh you can try to imagine, but really they are better than anything you can envision. I have this on very good authority." I'm telling him this not because he'll see them tonight. I'm just having fun torturing him with desire. It's a game I've played a lot of other nights. I don't want just sex, but if I can't have what I want I can at least enjoy frustrating another person's desire. Is it the right thing to do? Absolutely not. But I who can deny me what little pleasure I get in this life. Certainly not this tall dark yuppie with a slow southern cadence to his voice.

"You know a lot of women have described uh certain parts of my anatomy as being beautiful. What do you say we go back to my place and I'll show you mine if you show me yours. That's all it will be-show." "Now you and I both know that's not what's going to happen." He tries valiantly again and again. His friends decide even though it's only midnight that it's late. They want to hit a pizza place by his apartment and maybe go home. He, of course, will go with them looking to score some other girl, more drunk, more easily manipulated, before the night is over.

But not before he walks me home. One last try.

He kisses me soft and slow and sensual but with gentle force. My back is against the railing and so I have no other place to go but further into his arms as he slowly explores me with his tongue. I feel his fingers, so gently, on the back of my legs at the hem of my dress. Then under trying to find their way up. He feels the intake of breathe, the pull away, although there is nowhere for me to go. His hand withdraws, going back around my waist. That slow insistent kiss that will not reliquinsh me, keeps going. He takes my hand from around his neck and places down. At first, I don't know what he's trying to do until my mind finally recognizes, quite surprisingly what I'm feeling. Beautiful I can not vouch for, but astonishing certainly.

My body being finely tuned to sensual pleasure is coming alive and he can feel my nipples, now hard, against him. He lifts a hand to feel the solidity of my desire.

He's like me, this tall dark stranger. A person who knows how to manipulate desire. A person who understands how to use sensual pleasure. That I want him in this moment is true. I could close my eyes and give into him. That in wild abandon I would experience extasy in this man's arms is a fact. It's as true and as concrete as the streets of NY. I can feel it under my feet, and through the power of his kiss alone I can almost feel it like a hand up my dress-through my italian lace panties, pressing into me. Like myself, he is one of those that understands the bodies of others even better than they do. If I gave myself to him, it would be deliciously intense. I would spend the next day in a langourous haze-a sexual hangover. But then he wouldn't call. I would pretend not to care, but it would be yet another paper cut on my ego. In the past I've justified this kind of indulgence in the following way: if he's not going to call anyway, why deny myself the only pleasure I could get from him? Now I think, better he disappoint me now.

Better it be now.

I slowly extricate myself from his embrace. He says he'll call. I am properly skeptical. Although man evolved to have opposable thumbs, they rarely use them to call me.

to be continued....