During my evening with Grace, we went for a ride in Freya. Took the top down and drove around town. I couldn’t help but look over at him from time to time and admire how comfortably he took the passenger seat.

Truthfully, it is one of my favorite things to have passengers in the jeep. Company on adventures. He relaxed into the ride and I stole glances as we passed under street lights.

We got back to Dante’s around 10:30 and as we stood at the bar, and I ordered a coke he interjected to the bartender, “Actually, the lady will be having a Rum and coke.”

“Actually, I’m having a coke.”

“Rum and coke. You have plenty of time to get sober before you drive home.” He teased.

“How do you know I’m not leaving in half an hour?” I retorted.

“Oh,” he paused. “Do you actually have to go at 11?”

“No. But how do you know I don’t?”

“That would be a Rum and coke.” He told the bar tender.

And the game went in a circle for several minutes before I settled by saying, if you beat me best two out of three – I’ll have a rum and coke.”

He beat me with a scissors and a rock. So a rum and coke it was. Unbeknownst to me he was also having the drinks put on his tab, rather than mine. Furthermore – as you all know, I have a weird personal boundary with feeling pushed toward alcohol and or having things purchased for me by men I don’t know. Interestingly, I had neither such reservations with Grace. Food for thought.

As there was nowhere to sit we went to the vip lounge and that’s where things got interesting. We were sitting in the hottest part of the building. Mostly dark with the exception of the reddish lights and glow of the stage. Soft haze from the white fuel of fire dancers and the noise of the crowd gave the space a somewhat mystic and isolated feeling despite the fact we were highly visible to the crowd below.

As I was overheating, I didn’t think it strange to take the ice out of my drink and rub my shoulders, neck and legs as we talked. At this point I was still trying to keep myself at a somewhat professional distance. So the small talk was still about his peddicab and his personal travels and as we chatted I noticed we were leaning closer to each other.

Meanwhile my mind made ideas of how to formulate the book chapter wherein he would be my primary character and force of direction, and his knee came to rest against my leg several times before his thigh firmly lodged against my hip and he scooted closer with his arm resting on the back of my chair.

I at least had the wherewithal to recognize the “grooming process” and while I hesitated to groom him back and push the physical boundary, I continued to rub ice on my exposed skin as it seemed my temperature was suddenly spiking out of control.

He talked a lot as we watched the burlesque dancers and people watched the crowd. And my mind suddenly hit the bridge…

I watched him in the light as he appraised my body. I couldn’t tell if he wanted me to know or if he just didn’t care that I saw the way he was looking at me. Suddenly I was curious what would cause such a serious and delicious intensity on his face so I glanced down at myself.

I was wearing my Marilyn Monroe white halter-top dress and as I’d been rubbing ice on myself as we chit chatted, rivulets of water rolled down my chest sparkling between my breasts in the strange club light and for the first time in perhaps 10 years I felt from my head to my toes like a glittering sexy creature in possession of a profound sexual energy wound to near catastrophic tension.

He gaze was part admiration and part animal fierceness controlled by social decency and all of the sudden I was ripped between wanting him worse than I’ve wanted anyone in years and the grounded terror of reaching out to grab ahold of a white hot branding iron.
Instinctively, I rolled my shoulders forward and gingerly set the half melted cube of ice on the table and looked at my lap.

So many desires were rippling through me and shattering all my well placed carefully managed reserves, that I simply couldn’t process fast enough to keep up.

It was about the time I was sitting/leaning nearly against his chest… he smelled so wonderful heated musk of a man mixed with Reds and sunshine. I decided if I couldn’t keep up with how fast my boundaries were dissolving – that I would for once, not fight it, but let myself be carried on whatever events started to unfold.

As I had come to the conclusion that my attraction to him was stronger than my will to maintain my boundaries, the announcers asked if there was anyone in the audience with a birthday to celebrate.

“Is it your birthday?” Grace asked, his hot breath against my ear.

“No, not until next week.” I answered innocently.

“Are you sure it’s not your birthday? Do you want it to be your birthday?”

And then his mouth was on mine. Warm and succulent and for a fraction of a heartbeat my electrical current overloaded in my brain and I forgot to argue, forgot that I should be being professional. Forgot that I was supposed to be a savvy, untouchable, and focused interviewer here only for my book. I forgot everything, even how to breathe.

My hands laced around his body and I folded myself into him.

We made out for an hour upstairs before leaving together and as I was walking with him toward the car, the cooler outside air woke me up enough to fall into a panic stricken ohmygodohmygod freakout.

I knew I couldn’t take him home with me. I just knew it. I really wanted to. More than anything. But knew I couldn’t.

I was a swinger. A poly. I’m an erotica writer. A practitioner of BDSM and all the non-vanilla world has to offer. I have taken men home at a mere drop of a hat, or the hint of a possibility that it could be fun and I wouldn’t get attached or hurt if they didn’t. I’ve chosen my lovers fairly wisely with the exception of the last two guys I took home with me who turned out to be flakey duds. But the most important thing about being a sexually open person – is know your limits.

I knew Grace would be different than most men I have liked. So instead we went to the park and it has never been so hard for me after making out on swings and the slide and in the jeep not to take someone home.

I’m a powerful independent woman who is open minded and intelligent and my best call ever was to take him back to his apartment and drop him off a little after 3:30. It was hard to part. One kiss turned into another and then we’d be all over each other again. We must have tried to say goodbye a dozen times and each time left me with another hickey somewhere. We agreed to meet on Thursday to do a peddicab tour of downtown.

But once I was on my way home, my legs shaking as I tried to work the clutch, I was smiling like never before. And although I have been coaxed, pulled and shoved toward the opening of sharing human passion and interaction on an emotional level – Grace managed to lure me further into sensations I have forgotten, suppressed, boxed and ignored with his easy charm and seductive touch. Effortlessly, he has made me second guess all my precautions, all my boundaries and every excuse I have made in the last five years to stay safe and lonely.

He did it all with a grin and made it look like cake.

He goes by the name of Grace. You all know him as the hotdog guy. I met him on Sunday to discuss the book.

I remember the first time I met him and that I had tried particularly hard not to make eye contact. As stupid as it sounds, I was so attracted to him and thought him so beautiful – I tried not to gaze directly at him for fear, I guess, that I would be stunned into an even greater show of stupidity. That fear, which provoked me into not remembering exactly what he looked like but the idea of him so the second time I met him it went a little like so:

It was blazing hot yesterday and I’m not really built for heat. Brain-friend and frazzled about meeting Grace for a “discussion about the book” led to me having a minor panic attack about sitting across the table from someone I was actually having a physiological response to. We all know those are few and far between so when I am near a “live wire” so to speak – my coordination suddenly fails and I forget that I know English.

I bustled into Dante’s 15 minutes early and walked the length of the bar past the bar tender and an older gentleman on my way to the ladies room to freshen my sweaty makeup etc. At the end of the bar was a man in a cowboy hat drinking a beer, and as I passed by him – I swear to god – I forgot my name.

He was beautiful. Dark eyes, hair and skin. Relaxed confident body that leaned against the bar and as I passed, very uncharacteristically I met his eyes and smiled, “Hey.” He nodded his beautiful head and said “Hi.” Right back and in true Athena like fashion, as soon as his beautiful gaze was aimed right at me, my feet moved of their own accord and I rushed into the bathroom where I dug through my bag for my gloss and tried to fix my hair.

I wondered if I would recognize Grace right off, or if I should pick a table on the other side of the bar that was easily accessible and watch out for him. Walking back out I passed the cowboy hat and smiled again but made more of an effort not to actually see him, because there was something so pretty about his face – I felt I might get lost in staring. So I brushed past him to stand at the bar and order a drink.

So flustered about the idea of meeting the hotdog guy, overheated in the brainpan and also flustered by the sexy man in the cowboy hat, I started dropping things. My sunglasses fell on the floor, my business cards spilled, I knocked my scarf off the bar where I sat it and finally ordered a rum and coke – fully conscious of the fact, Mr. Sexy Cowboy hat was staring and me and my hands seemed to belong to someone else. Fingers not bending quite right.

“You wanna have a seat here at the bar.” Said the older gentleman who appeared to be worried at my clumsy and uncoordinated efforts to not trip over my own damn feet.

“Oh, no thanks. I’m meeting someone.” I replied.

“Yeah, you’re meeting me,” Came the voice of Mr. Sexy Cowboy hat. “You’re meeting me, Athena.:”

It was at that moment that several things happened to my brain and body. Firstly, my knees nearly gave out and weight fell slightly to be propped on my side by the bar. He walked toward me and my mind raced with “OH what a colossal ASS you are, Athena! I can’t believe you didn’t recognize him right away!” YAY! Way to totally offend the dude you think is hot by not knowing him. Athena, pull it together.

Secondly, my heart started to race. Foolishly and without provocation I was suddenly inundated with relief and fear and happiness which snowballed into an overwhelming sense of absolute TERROR. Oh dear god, what have I just gotten myself into?

Thirdly, I tried to play it off all cool and be like, yeah, I’m so hot and tired I didn’t recognize you at first and I didn’t recognize the cowboy hat.

How could I possibly say exactly what I was thinking? Which was… I am an utter coward.

I didn’t memorize his face at the hotdog stand because I was afraid to see him. I was afraid that my body is coming alive again after years of being asleep, and I have no recent memory in how to quantify when I have such a response to someone. So I tried not to see him. Tried not to notice that he is an observer, or that he floats on charm or that when he looked at me I felt different – - – - like I was being seen for the first time in nearly a decade.

I have hidden my body, and much of my spirit for years. Surviving and thriving on my own under the protection of my ability to go unnoticed. Unseen. Unseen I can be an observer, a witness, a collector of stories. I can come and go without the ebb or flow of lives truly being upset… and selfishly, I can come and go so MY life is not upset.

At that moment when I saw him, truly opened my eyes and looked at him, I realized I didn’t recognize him because I had been trying not to see him before, like a child on a playground who shields their eyes and thinks they are invisible because they are not looking out.

That was me. Walking around with my hands over my eyes thinking, “I am a woman! But you cannot see me as a woman because I cannot see you.”

And somehow, he saw me.

To be fair, it is possible, that my kiss from Runaway NewYorker, woke something in me that made it harder to keep my shield in tact. That remembering what it felt like to be kissed like I’m a woman shook some of my resolve to continue to be unnoticed.

But whatever the case, Grace saw me, and I couldn’t pretend anymore. And despite the fact that I didn’t recognize him at first glance or even second here is the thing that amazes me about this awakening – I didn’t recognize him thinking, “Holy crap! That guy is way too hot to be the hotdog guy, I don’t remember him being that hot.” But I did recognize something about him. I knew right away he could see me, and the fear that expose caused sent me right past him twice without looking further into his eyes to find out what was so upsetting. I recognized right away that there is something so beautiful about him that I could not look directly at him. Like knowing sunlight, but having the self preservation not to stare directly at the sun. So I glanced away quickly, each time.

And the thing that is likely the most upsetting is that I understand – fundamentally – in just a few hours of conversation. Grace has the power to alter me, the way I think and perceive myself seemingly without any effort. He is strong enough to affect me, and THAT is something that scares the crap out of me. It terrifies me that he has the potential to be a rip tide against my little life raft and I don’t know what that means. My instinct is to run away, but it feels silly running away when you’ve already been spotted.

He chuckled at my strange loss of coordination. I tried to pass it off as heat and fatigue and he helped me carry my bag to a table outside where we sat and drank and talked.

I met him at 6:30 and I didn’t part his company till almost 4 am, but not before I found myself covered in hickeys and facing a whole new form of vulnerability. But, that’s tomorrow’s story….