The Summer of Love

By Kalev Pehme

            It's hard to believe that it's been 40 years since the Summer of Love, 1967. Throughout the US, especially in San Francisco and New York City, there was an efflorescence of the counter-culture, including, not to forget, a sudden flowering of a lot of LSD along with Mary Jane. It was the time of the Love Generation, and it was the time of a great backlash from police and the establishment against the Hippies, especially in Haight Ashbury.

[It should be mentioned that in 1967, there were weeks of racial rioting in Detroit, Michigan and 43 people died, 2,000 were injured, and 5,000 made homeless.]

            And there was the War in Vietnam.

            It was a summer of Be-Ins and communal living, Beatle George Harrison walked through Haight. And music just exploded not in San Francisco and New York, but in Los Angeles. Seemingly out of nowhere in L.A. came the Byrds, Love, the Mothers, the Mamas and Papas, Buffalo Springfield, the Electric Prunes, the Peanut Butter Conspiracy, but most of all it was the summer of the Doors with Jim Morrison whom the press treated as if he were the new James Dean or Marlon Brando.  The groupies were lining up Sunset Strip. And it was all so psychedelic.

            That was on top of all the Haight music, from the Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow with Grace Slick singing "White Rabbit." With so many people flocking to Haight, the Family Dog and the Bill Graham's Fillmore were open all week, and the music simply flowed as if it were a cataract over a cliff. It was the time of the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Country Joe and the Fish ("Fixin' to Die Rag"), and so many other great bands, all with Allen Ginzberg chanting Om Sri Maitreya, the mantra for the future Buddha, in the middle of it all.

            It was the year of Monterrey Pop Festival, the first major festival of its kind. There were 32 bands playing June 16-18, including the Who, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, Country Joe and the Fish, Simon and Garfunkel, Canned Heat, Al Kooper, Steve Miller, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Mike Bloomfield, the Byrds, the Blues Project, and the Mamas and Papas. There, Janis Joplin blew everyone away with her group, Big Brother & the Holding Company. It was memorialized in a film, Monterrey Pop, which is a delightful movie to see even today, the most telling point when after Joplin sings her signature "Ball and Chain," you see the close-up face of Mama Cass lip-saying, "Wow!"

            I remember New York City best by remembering Bleeker Street, a cobblestoned lane that is nothing like it is today. It was not gentrified. One missing piece today is the Garrick Theater, where Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention (and a lot of other musicians) played every Saturday afternoon. The place was filled with a lot of suburban and some city freaks, who watched and listened to Zappa start to put together the most exciting and innovative music of the day. But most of all, it was a hoot. Audience members in low basso voices would call out, "Zappa is a mother! Zappa is a Mother!"

            The Mothers would infuriate the crowd with "dead air," when they would sit on stage, smoking cigarettes and talking among themselves. It was a recreational, interactive, freak show.

            The Fugs were nearby at Café Whaa on McDougal Street. Their shows were not only the usual dirty songs, like "The Coca Cola Douche," but they had their moments with the audience as well. One day, they did a show, "The Night of the Great Spaghetti Death," where they dumbed 200 pounds of warm spaghetti over the audience. Great place for a first date. Ed Sanders of the Fugs that year rented sound-system and a flat-bed truck, took to the Defense Department Washington, DC and chanted "demons out," an effort to exorcise the evil spirits from the Pentagon. Unfortunately, the War in Vietnam would continue another seven years. Some evil spirits never leave the Pentagon, and they are now running the War in Iraq and there will be no Summer of Love this year, perhaps never again.

            It was also the year of "the Experience," i.e., Jimi Hendrix and his sound was in London, which was the European center of the counter-culture. Although there would be nearly successive revolution in Paris in the following spring, the youth of France never had a counter-culture as it was in England the USA. It was the year that Mick Jagger was arrested for drug possession in England.

            It was the year that the Rolling Stones released their most psychedelic album, Their Satanic Majesties' Request, and it was a huge success. And it was the year that the Beatles went to sit at the feet of the Guru Maharaishi. Two of their entourage were sisters, Mia and Prudence Farrow, the latter of whom had a song written for her, one of the loveliest, "Dear Prudence."

            With all the Acid going around, something happened to clothing. It wasn't just the ample swirls of paisley everyone was wearing, but the colors. Clothing went psychedelic, in all the weirdest cuts and lengths to go along with the long hair and the beads. The Art Nouveau styling in the music and concert-hall posters also rocked with the florescent day-glo colors.

            "What I have to say can be summed up in six words--tune in, turn on, drop out," said Timothy Leary. Drugs at the time were a communal and social cohesiveness until the meth and amphetamine freaks came along. In New York City, there were Hippies, real Hippies, who lived like Hippies in the East Village near where the Fillmore East was. They had free clothing stores, and provided food to people who needed it. They had colorful stores selling buttons and other curiosities. They lived communally as well. Then, out of nowhere the meth freaks, with ophidian eyes that never saw any sleep or dreams, started tearing up the East Village with horrific violence, because their minds were melting with meth. Within a few months, it was over. The Hippies moved out to the country, and New York City never had any Hippies living there again. It was very much like that as well out West. The Hippies went rural, and started communes of various kinds in the West.

            Today, the counter-culture is either something of nostalgia, or it is something despised by those who never were a part of it, particularly among the religious and conservative right. For the first time in US history, people refused to accept authority. It had a very Rousseauean cast to it. "Man is born free; yet, everywhere he is in chains" seemed to be the underlying political view, although it was never put that way as very few people read Rousseau. I emphasize a great deal the drugs and the music, because the non-conformity that the Summer of Love emphasized used drugs and music and festival gatherings as a catalyst. This Summer of Love is the devil to many people; it is so, because it didn't conform.</FONT>

The Best Sex Ever

By Kalev Pehme

Camille was a woman or hundreds of sexual escapades. An exotic blend of East European filtered through an Argentine combination of Spanish, Italian, and English, Camille's figure at twenty-seven was at its matured peak. Curvy, deliciously busted, and long-legged, Camille had an intoxicating effect on men, including all the various construction men and Latinos who whistled at her and made smooching sounds blended in with various affirmations of love in broken English. Thus endowed, Camille never wanted men who sought her favors. And she tried all kinds from the well hung with great abs to paunchy sleazes who drooled over her, rich and poor alike, hipsters and nerds, geeks and Greeks that she found at various clubs and social events in Manhattan.

Camille lorded over the men in bed. None were good enough for her, and she was a great lover, she knew. Her voracious sexual appetite and erotic abandon was her great intimidation and she went through men like ancient Roman aristocratic women competed with prostitutes for numbers of men done in a day. More often than not, the grand ladies beat the tramps. She did what they wanted, and she submitted to many indignities, but in the end Camille only yawned while she pushed the men out of her apartment door. No one could spend the night.

It was one of those magnificent late June Saturdays and Camille and her best friend Kay, a Yemenite Jewess whose corvine hair and ebony eyes made her as exotic as Camille. They were walking down Fifth Avenue along the Westphalian wall of the Park, heading down towards the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Both were immaculately dressed in summer blouses and skirts in the sun that is always too good for New York. A light breeze rustled their skirts and slipped up between their legs as they reached the northern border of the Met's frontage on Fifth. They were walking very slowly.

Suddenly, after nothing but silly chit-chat, Kay turned to Camille and asked, "Do you see that man there on the bench way down there near the Noguchi? The one with the folded New York Times against his chest?"

"Yes, I do."

"I want to tell you something, but you have to promise never to tell anyone, especially Christopher about what I am going to tell you."

"Well, I have never broken my word to you. I promise not to tell."

Kay was delighted. She had to tell someone because the experience had to be shared. She took a breath, and then continued, "He and I had the best sex I have ever had."

Camille was stunned, and didn't know whether Kay was playing some game with her or telling the truth. "I don't believe it."

"No, it's true," Kay averred.

"But he's twice our age and he is not attractive at all," Camille responded to add evidence to her disbelief.

"Yes, yes, but he is the best sex I have ever had, even better than Christopher, and you know how much I love him."

"You always said he was very good," Camille continued. "He's young and strong, but this man there, well…I mean, really…"

"I meet him at the supermarket near my apartment on Lexington Avenue.  It was just a few days before I had to go to Japan. I was picking out a Chinese apple when he reached over and handed me one. He said, 'This one is the best one of the lot. You can have it.' I thanked him, and we started to talk about nothing. I can't even remember what we were talking about. We separated, but then we came out of the check-out lines at the same time. I was somewhat awkward carrying five plastic bags, and, as a good gentleman would do it, he took a few of my bags and added them to his own. We continued to talk as we walked up Lexington and just about when we were about to get to my doorway, right where the café is on the ground floor of my building, he asked if I wanted a cup of coffee. I nodded, and before I knew it we were sitting at a small table by the window on Lexington. I was drinking coffee; he was drinking tea."

There was a pause, as Kay gathered up herself for the rest of the story. She was very excited, and wanted to finish before they came near to the man.

"Anyway, we started to talk about little things. You know, the what-do-you-do? question, and so on. As we talked and as we did I started feeling different. I was feeling very comfortable and he started to look completely different to me as well. Soon, I realized I was wetting my panties, and I realized that I was very horny. In fact, I was worried that the wetness would show when we got up. We had finished, and I said that I had to go, and he carried my bags to the door, and he offered to bring up the bags to my door. I nodded again, and before long he was inside my place. I practically jumped on him. I felt as I were running into the bedroom, and before long he was removing my panties and we were at all, all afternoon. I had so many orgasms I couldn't believe it. When it was time for dinner, I cooked us a meal…"

"You never cook!"

"But I am a good cook, and we sat down on my bed and ate and drank wine. We sat around and talked, and I just couldn't help myself. I had to have more. So we did it all evening until about eleven when we both exhausted. I let stay for the night. I had to have him there. I woke up first, and I realized that I had to go to work. I was getting off the bed when I discovered that I had difficultly walking. I never had that happen before. I laughed, and then it hit me: He seduced me. I have never been seduced by anyone in my life. You know the guys we find couldn't seduce retarded teenager who is a nymphomaniac. I was so happy. I didn't mind that he seduced, but I loved it. This strange middle-aged man go me in bed, gave me the ride of my life, and I loved it."

They were now passing the fountain second fountain, nearing the man. Kay wanted to get the story out of the way quickly.

Camille, however, interjected, "Well, did you continue to go out with him or anything like that?"

"No, I couldn't. I had to go to Japan and I was there in Tokyo for a year. When I got back, I contacted him, but we never had sex again. Now, of course, I am with Christopher and I am going to marry him, but I fantasize about that night all the time when I am playing with myself."

"That's quite a story."

"Yes, and it's our secret. Anyway, let's go up and say hello."

The two women, looking so Upper East Side, moved into the man's view, and he smiled and called out, "Kay, Kay, how great to see you."

"Hey, André."

He rose up and extended his hand which Kay seized, but she wanted her peck on the cheek as well, which he gave with obvious delight.

"André, I want you to meet my best friend, Camille."

They shook hands. Camille was baffled. André was badly dressed, somewhere about twice her age, and he had a paunch for real. And Kay had the best sex of her life with this man? Not possible.

"I'm getting married, André," Kay announced. "I'm marrying an admiralty lawyer. He's a partner in Booth, Bruno & Coleman."

"Isn't that unusual for two lawyers to get married?"

"Oh, you're such a tease. I love it when you talk that way."

The man was cordial, and he asked, "I have been sitting here for the last hour trying to find an excuse to cross the street and have a drink at the Stanhope café. Would you like to join me?"

 "Oh, I'm sorry, André. I have to meet my fiancé Christopher. I was walking Camille down here, because she wanted to pick up something here. Another time, maybe?"

"Absolutely."

Camille interrupted with an announcement: "I'll join you."

"My pleasure," he said.

Kay gave André a kiss on his check, and then kissed Camille. She skipped a step on her way to grab a cab, while Camille and André waved to her. When she got into the cab, André tucked his newspaper under his armpit, and offered his other arm to Camille whose cleavage opened enough to catch a momentary glimpse of her breasts. They walked across the street and sat down on the southern back edge of the outdoor café.  The tables were crowed, mostly with a group of French tourists who spoke animatedly, and were annoyed when told they were not allowed to smoke.

As she crossed Fifth Avenue, Camille had decided to establish her superiority over André from the get-go. The waitress took Camille's order first, and then turned to André for his order. He casually remarked, "I have the same girly drink as the lady and I hope it comes in a nice girly glass."

Camille was startled, but managed to keep her cool. She wanted to assert herself quickly: "Are you good in bed, André?"

Without hesitation, André replied, "I do get a good night's sleep, and I am an avid and detailed lucid dreamer."

"I don't think that's what I meant," she pressed on.

"I don't think you meant anything related to sex. A young woman like you, it would seem, is far more discreet than that."

"True." She had to give ground and redirect the conversation to an area where she would be more comfortable to regroup. With a sense of self-importance, Camille continued, "I am a curator of the Greek and Roman art section of the Met, over there. I am more of an assistant, but I am still a curator. I have a doctorate in archeology from Harvard, and I got it when I was twenty-two. I worked on the excavation of Ephesus in Turkey for a year-and-half, and then the Met hired me, but not as a curator. I've been working here now for several years, and now I am a curator. I love everything about my job except the pay check. But I have a little outside income to help get through…"

"Prada and Ferragamo," André interrupted.

"Yes. And what do you do?"

André shrugged his shoulders. Camille felt over dressed sitting opposite of him at the small table, which a thick linen tablecloth and small vase with a incarnadine rose.

"What happened to Polyxena," André changed direction.

"Polyxena?"

"No, the dish with Polyxena."

Camille quickly rummaged through her memory like going through the hidden stores in the basement of the museum, and then she remembered: "It was on loan, and we gave it back to its rightful owner."

"Too bad. It was my favorite piece in the collection."

"Really?" Camille was again off balance. "Why?"

"Oh, it's just that I love the story, and the dish had that critical moment before she is about to die."

"I know a lot of archeology, but I am not sure of the story. Tell me about it."

André rubbed his palms and digits very lightly and then spoke: "Polyxena was on the walls of Troy when Hector first saw her and fell in love with her. She was throwing down jewelry as ransom for the corpse of Hector, whom Achilles had just slain. Achilles was like that, falling for hostile and distant women. In a while, Achilles is offered Polyxena for a wife, and he shows up at the temple in his groom's attire, and there Paris guided by Apollo or Apollo alone fires the arrow in Achilles' tendon. The great warrior tumbles over.

"After the city is taken, the ghost of Achilles, the man who opposed the sacrifice of Iphigenia at the beginning of the war, the deceived groom, is hungry for the blood of Polyxena. In the Euripides play, Hecuba, he describes the sacrifice of Polyxena. The young men bring her forth and King Agamemnon tells them to release the virgin. Immediately, she stands tall and tears down the tunic off her right shoulder to her waist near the navel, so that everyone could see her beautiful breasts and torso. Statuesque, she then falls onto one knee and she gives the boldest and saddest speech of all before the Greeks and before the son of Achilles, the brutish Neoptolemus, who is about to kill her. 'Look, young man,' she says, 'here is my breast; if you want to strike here, then strike; if you would prefer the neck, then here is my throat, ready.' Even Neoptolemus has pity for her, but he also has no pity for her. He slashes her windpipe with his sword. Yet, even as she dies, Euripides tells us, she fell in such a way to hide what must be hidden from the eyes of men. After that, some of the Greek soldiers scattered leaves over her."

Camille listened very attentively, and she started to see André to be more than what she thought he was initially. With genuine curiosity, she asked, "Why? I mean, the leaves? Why?"

André nodded and responded, "The scholiast noted in the margins: 'They throw leaves over Polyxena, as if she had won an event at the games: for this is the way they congratulated the winners.'"

Camille shook her head slowly, "That's an amazing story. I never heard it before. I've read all the major classics, but not the Hecuba. I have to go back to it."

"You won't read in Greek?"

"Like Hell. I will too. Years of Greek, Attic, Homeric, the whole ball of wax."

They both paused to drink some more, and Camille noticed that André was imitating the way she was holding her girly glass. She narrowed her eyes at him, and he smiled and then took a sip.

"Are you some kind of scholar, André?"

"I am not unread, but I am not a scholar."

"Then what? Are you a writer?"

"I write a bit, but I am not a writer."

"Oh, stopping be so coy."

"No, I shouldn't be," he said. "I really don't do much at all."

"Are you rich?"

"Hardly. I can't make much and have to live in a rent-stabilized place."

"Then, what do you do?"

"I write a small column for a magazine. I'm the cultural critic for Complexity…"

"You're André Pierre! Wow! I read you articles religiously. Oh, now, I am a bit embarrassed at the way I have been treating you."

Everyone in the art business, the museum business, the music business, the theatre business, the movie business, who was anyone, read André's column and articles. He terrorized everyone with his scathing, venomous critiques. They were written with such wit and such erudition that no one dared try to answer them. But they all read him, especially when there was someone who was envious or took delight in how a fellow in the business was sliced up in this work. André's work didn't effect prices or bring out huge crowds to shows or anything like that. No, Complexity was for the elite of New York City and what was at stake with André was prestige. In the few times that he did praise, say, a new artist at a gallery show, the prestige could translate into better prices, but more often than not it was a great boost to the confidence of the artist. A polymath, André could compare moderns with ancients, contemporaries to contemporaries, literature with sculpture, philosophical bases for various intellectual movements and so on. The acidic prose in which the works he reviewed were dissolved was, even when most brutal, a pleasure to read, at least Camille thought and now she was sitting with this man at a café, a man who had brought her friend Kay to the greatest pleasure of her life.

Still, Camille could not find him attractive. She had known so many brilliant men and women, and she was not drawn to him.

"You're not an unattractive woman, Camille," André broke the silence.

"Thank you." Her breasts involuntarily rose against the nearly diaphanous fabric of the blouse with the compliment.

"And you don't have to think of me as an attractive man or, for that matter, you don't have to think of me as anything interesting at all."

But he is interesting, Camille said to herself, and the more interesting he was the more attractive he started to be. Camille was confused and hesitant. "What are you working on now?"

"Not too much. I am being lazy today. Too pretty."

"It is, isn't it?"

"Very pretty. It's almost delicious. You could lick it."

"Yes, it is." Camille glanced around at the Park, the Met, the rush of cars down Fifth Avenue, and it was so pretty, everything seemed so pretty, and she fit right in.

"You have pretty shoes on, below me, under the table."

Camille moved her feet out from under the table to show them to André. He nodded approval. Camille thought, well, he not be well-dressed, but at least he knows good clothing. She was primping.

"Do you want another drink?" Camille asked.

"No, if I have another one those girly drinks, I'll be falling asleep."

Camille motioned the waitress and ordered another drink. She felt no stress at all, suddenly, and she noticed a fly had landed on her left breast. She flicked it off the cream-colored blouse with her right hand and caught the hardened nipple with her middle finger. She didn't expect it, but thought nothing of it. It was just one of those things, happens all the time.

"What are you doing for the summer, André?" asked Camille. It was just one of those conversation pushers that she threw in to see in what path this event would go.

"Well, not very much. I would like to go to a private beach somewhere, where people are not welcome, perhaps a beach alongside of a tongue of land that has a high cliff jutting into the water. You probably haven't experienced something that, a place where you are not allowed to wear clothing and the beach is not stones, but pleasurable smooth sand. And perhaps there is some moist beach grass along the cusp of the actual shore line, with the shore bitten by delicate waves just waving in and out."

"I found a place like that. It was on a Greek island where there only a few people lived. Only there, the beach was very rocky. I walked around naked on the Aegean. It was so wonderful."

"And the pleasure just begins instead of you, turns into your favorite color and fogs out of you and covers the whole beach and the world around you."

"Yes, it's just like that." Camille felt the flush of the beach again, and she stared and began to evaluate André again. She looked at his face, so non-descript before, and it was wise and full or pride. There was a serenity to lips, and he spoke quietly with great authority. And as she did, the heat of the day or whatever it was, was arousing her. She felt it there, below, and she re-crossed her legs. But now that she was aware of it, and that the girly drink that André made fun of was giving her quite the lift.

"Have you ever heard of the Heraion at Argos?"

"I'm sorry, what?"

"The Heraion at Argos."

"It doesn't exist any more."

"No, it doesn't. It was the sacred seat of Hera, and, as you have read Homer you know that Hera and Zeus once they married had sex with each other for seven-hundred-years. Hera, while she is the goddess of all wives, is also the goddess of the bed, the erotic playpen. In various areas in Greece, the bed was a cult object of worship."

"Yes, in Samos, I remember."

"Hera makes love with Zeus on?"

"Mount Gargaron, where the earth sprouts a carpet of flowers for the occasion."

"Hera is the true goddess of sex. At the Heraion, at the shrine, the worshipper could see on the votive table an image of Hera's mouth lovingly, longingly, sucking Zeus's erect phallus."

Camille choked and then let out a breathy, lengthy, and involuntary "no!"

"Not even Aphrodite would allow an image like that at her shrine," André concluded.

Camille crossed and re-crossed her long legs again. She had made a decision, "André, I have a wonderful amphora at my apartment. It's just a couple of blocks from here on Madison Avenue. I would like you to see it, and tell me what you think of the image. Would you do that now? Do you have time?"

"I would not turn down such an opportunity. I am not at all adverse to beauty."

She paid, and they walked almost at brisk pace. Little was said, but Camille kept imagining what that image of Hera must have been like. She had worked on temple in Anatolia, and thus understood the whole ethos of that life. She was a specialist, an archeologist, a PhD., and all she wanted to do was to get back to her apartment with his strange man. It did not take long. Camille lived in a low-rise apartment, on the top floor, in fact, taking the whole top floor. She opened the door, and directed André into the living room where there really was an amphora.

"I'll be right back," Camille said. "Look it over, but don't, by Zeus, break it."

"I won't touch it."

Camille went to the bathroom. She lifted up her skirt and confirmed what she knew. Her face was flush, and the blouse just couldn't hide it. Then, it came to her, "I can't do this. I can't do this." She whispered it out again, "I can't do this." She was out of control for the first time, and she was plainly frightened.

She found a pair of blue jeans that she had left in the bathroom before she left, and thought it might afford her more protection. She stripped off the skirt, felt her panties again, and decided to leave them on. The jeans would protect her.

Camille found André admiring the amphora. "Do you know what it is?"

"Sure, archaic, red figure, with Achilles and the Amazon queen on the fields of Troy. Very unusual. I have never seen anything like it. How did you get it?"

"Actually, I did a no-no. It's one that was stolen that I saw in a gallery down the street. I told them that I wouldn't turn them in, if they let me have it for a little while to study. The extortion worked. The guy is also a nut for these things, like me. Now what about Achilles and the Amazon queen?"

"Oh, very simple. Impulsive Achilles, always impulsive, is at it again. Toward the end of the war, the Amazons joined in on the side of the Trojans."

"How do you know that?"

"You haven't been reading your Quintus. Tsk, tsk."

"No, I haven't. I am so ashamed," she averred.

"Her name, you see it there, is Penthesilea, and the truth is no matter how good she is she is no match for Achilles. He slaughters her, blow after blow after blow, convinced in his own mind and imagination that he is fighting a warrior that even mighty Ajax could not handled. He has her pinned to a horse. He picks up the helm of the dying Penthesilea…"

Camille had reversed herself. André reached down and lifted up Camille's legs and carried her down the hall to where she pointed to the bedroom.

"Achilles looks down into her eyes for the first time, and then plunges his sword into her breast. At that very moment, impulsive Achilles, so impulsive, is overcome by passion. He takes the virgin warrior with loving care and puts her down in the dust and blood and makes love to Penthesilea's lifeless corpse, still in her armor."

They reached the bed, and André put Camille down, and then undressed her. He put her hand on where she was wet, playing with the spot with the tips of his finger. Camille turned her face sideways as he did, until the flimsy garment was slid over her ankles and off her legs.

André lay down next to her and began by mapping her erogenous zones with his tongue, teeth, and fingers. He would be with Camille for the entire afternoon, evening, and night. It was Camille's first time that anyone had done that with her.

She awoke first, and Camille was all smiles. She looked at André, his less than perfect body, lying on his side, his back to her. Camille gently pushed against his right shoulder, and then again. The third time, she was more forcible. "André. André, wake up."

André stirred, and he felt the push against his shoulder again, "So, you want another crack at it, is that it?"

Camille was nearly in tears, and instead of replying she reached around him to touch him, there, down there. In the entire time they were together, Camille had not uttered any obscenities, never gave out anything but random cries in her passion, and never used any expletives that had been a part of her love making with all the other men she had laid. They did some off-color positioning, but, for the most part, it was all pretty standard love-making, and yet, yet, she thought, it was just so good. André was erect quite quickly and now she decided that she wanted to take charge.

"You get on top," André said. "I want you to do the work. I'm still tired."

Camille mounted him, and as she did she asked, "Tell me about Helen of Troy."

"She is a slut," André began. "Helen is a slut…" As the story went on, Camille worked up a regular rhythm, and as the story continued she intensified the movement. Her orgasm hit just as André recounted, "It is Leuke, the White Island, a rough coastline of dunes, rocks, and woods. The gulls guard the island. They only building on this island of castaways and people who offer sacrifices is a temple with two statues: Achilles and Helen. There are stacks of votive gifts and it is here that Helen lives with her fifth husband. People who go there chant the poetry of Homer, and the sailors sometime heard the horses' hooves and the cries of warriors and the clashes of the swords and the penetrations of the spears."

Camille's orgasm wasn't big like the day before. It was a small one that yet radiated warmly in her abdomen. She kept it in and just lay down on André's chest.

"I've never been seduced before, at least not like this," Camille confessed.

André laughed.

"Do you do this to a lot of women?"

"No," he said neutrally.

"Did you tell these myths to Kay?"

"Of course not. She isn't interested in the Greeks. You are."

"Yes, yes, that's true. She is a legal eagle."

Camille started to grind against him again without getting up.

"André?"

"Yes?"

"Do you think I could sit on your face?"

Camille prepared an elegant breakfast with strong coffee. They at the dining-room table, naked. She sat not opposite, but at André's left side. He really is unattractive, she said to himself. He is not handsome. He's too old for me. Why, oh why did I do it?

"Do you want to stay here today, André?"

"If you like. I don't have anything else to do, except prepare a column."

"I am afraid that if I let you go, we'll never have sex again."

"That's very likely."

"What do you mean, André?"

"You'll go back to being yourself again and you'll just kick yourself for letting me into your pants. You have a very strong idea of who you are, and this lovely and wonderful vacation for me will probably end today."

Camille thought for a moment. Oh my god, she said to herself. André made me forget myself completely. I haven't been me at all. The image of Camille, the real Camille, reformed in her mind and regret began to filter through the pleasure that she had had. She got up, and went to a closet, pulled out a silk robe, and put it on. She returned to André and sat by his side. She leaned over and put her had on his left shoulder. Tears streamed out of her eyes, and she sobbed.

"I can't love you, André. I just can't love you," she finally said. "I just can't love you."

Wendy

By Kalev Pehme

Wendy's office was just above the Paris movie theatre overlooking the Pulitzer Fountain and Sherman Square adjacent to the Plaza Hotel. Her desk was situated so that she had the view before her all day long. Her work was not very demanding and her boss was never around. So Wendy spent a good deal of time learning the ways of that small corner of the world. It didn't tale her long to realize that this spot was one of the favorite places for adulterers to meet. After all, it had a romantic cast to it, a lovely fountain, the heroic statue of General Sherman ("war is killing" Sherman), and the line of horse-drawn carriages waiting to take tourists around Central Park across the street.

            The men and women who met there for the furtive trysts were mostly midtown professionals, or members of the elite of the upper East and West Sides. Many were middle-aged men meeting young women like her. The men were married, and the young women, some as young as eighteen or nineteen, became distinct to her. Some were obvious predators and gold diggers, looking to land a very rich man. But more than she first imagined, there were many young women who truly met these men, because they wanted to be loved and were willing to settle for a man who was married, either because of an unlikely promise that he would leave his wife for her, or for the fact that being a man's mistress was not all that bad. After all, men live with their wives, even love them, but they truly love their mistresses. It was good to have some kind of love in your life rather than none at all, Wendy thought.

            Wendy sighed, as she wished that she had someone in her life. At the age of twenty-three, she never felt that passion at all and she longed for it. Therefore, she didn't hold it against these young women with the older men.

            There is Bob, she observed to herself. That was the name she gave to one middle-aged man, probably an attorney who sported a wedding ring and a ridiculously expensive watch. He had a regular schedule. He was Jewish, and quite a good dresser, custom made suits as well as shirts, emblazoned with lavish ties. He came every other day at the same afternoon time during the work week to meet a lithe Puerto Rican girl with a delightful body, dressed in an incarnadine dress that he probably bought. It was slinky and tight, and set off with an expensive bag and a gold chain around her neck. She always came with a bright smile, and she would French-kiss him in front of everyone on her tippy toes, because he was taller than she was. The crowd there, sitting on the edge of the fountain, is like the rest of New York, leaving everyone to their own devices, noticing, but not becoming emotionally involved.

            The Plaza is an Edwardian-era dowager who seems to protect Grand Army Plaza and the Pulitzer Fountain rather than being just a neighbor. Under nude Pomona, the goddess of abundance who bends slightly down, the Puerto Rican girl has taken Bob's arm and they are walking somewhere, probably to a love nest that Bob owns somewhere on Central Park South or in the vicinity.

            Wendy preferred the men, but she also noticed how many cheating women there were meeting their lovers. It was the same for them as for the men, only the women generally met men of their own age. It was not a rarity to see a middle-aged women meeting a young man, but it was no all that common however. Manhattan women are very well preserved, better than any other city in the world. It is not just the plastic surgery and the best salons, it is the way they dress and the jewelry they wear. And they are all so thin, Wendy said to herself, thinking she could lose a few pounds.

            There was Wendy's favorite woman again; she called her Kay. A woman of about forty, Kay was dressed in a cream-color shift on this day whose warm sun is much too good for New York. She was meeting her beau, a man a few years younger than she, and he was very elegant. Dressed like a model, he was tall and bearded, and smoked in a sleazy Hollywood way. He was reserved, giving her only a peck on the cheek, but sprouted a smile that said exactly what he wanted. Wendy wondered what his tongue was like, a bit embarrassed for herself. They left Grand Army Plaza immediately, evidently in a rush.

            Wendy wondered whether detectives kept surveillance around here. It is so routine. Just hang out, and find everyone who is sleeping with someone else's spouse right here. At least someone's getting it, Wendy thought. It always seems like everyone in Manhattan is getting it except me, the train of thought continued.

           Wendy was not unattractive. She was a brunette, well-figured, with a slightly sense of bemusement in her smile, and looked as if she were easily distracted into a day dream. During her teens and through college, she went through a number of young males who delighted at her body when they could get it, and that was only when Wendy really needed to be mauled a bit. Her last boyfriend was a complete confusion and revelation to her. He would punish her for anything he perceived to be wrong. He did it by pulling off her clothing, throwing her over his lap, and then he paddled her buttocks mercilessly, thirty or forty whacks at time. She wept and screamed, but he continued until her flesh was all pink and red. The only problem was that Wendy enjoyed it. She spread her legs that he could see it all, and afterwards when he made love to her she would explode in orgasms that she never had with anyone else. It was only when she discovered that she wasn't his only bad girl that she, humiliated, realized that what she wanted was someone who was tender and loving. But she never met anyone, not even a married man who would meet her down there beneath alongside Pomona.

            For a while, she tried the dating sights on the Internet, but it was too weird for her. She wanted to be married, so she tried the site that claimed to have brought together tens of thousands to the altar. She filled out more than a hundred questions about herself, and later she realized how the whole thing works. They would match her with someone who answered in exactly the same way. They would find her male counterpart. It's bad enough, she thought, that men and women are attracted and fall in love with people who look exactly like themselves, but that principle was extended to include people who in the virtual world would have the same character and quirks that she did. Wendy tried for a while, and then realized that she didn't want someone just like her. She wanted someone special, because she wasn't special. But, then, why would a special man want me?

            Fours years at a university training to be a journalist, and Wendy ends up as a glorified secretary in a small public relations firm, sending and receive e-mail messages, occasionally writing a press release, chatting with clients on the IM, and occasionally going to a PR event at some fancy hotel downtown. She was smart, but had no way to express her intelligence. What was she going to do romantically, then? Find her male counterpart in the virtual world, go through a preset protocol of questions and answers, and then discover that the man she is supposed to meet is a mirrored reflection of her dull life? She did actually meet one man, the same age as she, who worked in an import-export company on East 47^th Street, who basically did exactly what she did. He was demure like her; he had some sexual excesses that he admitted to, but nothing spectacular, just like her; he chatted on the IM with her in exactly the same terms; and, very early on, Wendy knew that she had nothing to say to him, because he presented nothing new to her at all. The only real difference between them was that Edward didn't want anyone special He wanted someone just like her and he would have married her if Wendy hadn't walked out on him during their final date at—what else?—Tavern on the Green. How boring is that?

            It was just about closing time, and the lovers continued to meet each other in the real world outside of her office. They usually did until about four-thirty, five, in the afternoon. By the time she reached her small co-op studio that her father had bought for her as a graduation gift, all the lovers of the city were at their favorite restaurants or on their way to them.

            It was a very busy Saturday afternoon on Madison Avenue, with an unusually high number of tourists roaming about, many who had stopped in at the Metropolitan Museum of Art earlier. Wendy was hungry and dropped in on her favorite soup bar, a small throw-back to days not so gentrified on the Upper East Side. It was packed, and she barely got a seat. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a young woman about her own age sat down next her, saying, "You don't mind if I sit with you. There's just no room."

            "Sure, you're here already."

            They had ordered the same soup and burger, Wendy noticed. But that wasn't all. She was more than just punk. Her hair was dyed purple, and her nose, ears, and upper lip were pierced. She wore a mid-length t-shirt that exposed her navel jewelry, and wore black nail polish. Her hair was more like feathers, and she had googily eyes and a noticeable tattoo on the back of her neck. It was some strange symbol from some primitive tribe in some remote land, perhaps. She was exceptionally thin, but she wore her wiry frame well, walking on a high platform shoes that were a throwback to the days of disco. Her black, leather mini-skirt barely covered the top of her thighs and as she sat she exposed her panties which were decorated with a pair of kitsch cherries at her crotch. She ate greedily with her long, pointed fingers, and then she violated Wendy's privacy, "My name is Conne. It means…"

            "I know what it means," Wendy interrupted. "I had years of French, and I even went to Paris for a summer to learn more. Why would you use that name?"

            "Oh, I hate my real name. Rita, what is a Rita? And anyway, I am a conne and I love my conne," she replied animatedly, pouting her lips and sticking out her chest while opening her palm to the side of her in a grand gesture.

            Wendy blurted out a single laugh.

            "What's your name?" Conne asked.

            "Wendy," she answered in the latest trend, which is not to give a last name to strangers along with not giving a mobile phone number to any man who is not exactly known to you.

            "That's just like Rita. You should change your name like I did to one name, and make it dirty or very exotic."

            "Why?"

            "Otherwise, you're like everyone else."

            "What's that tattoo on her neck?"

            "Oh, that's some kind of Buddhist labyrinth, but not a maze."

            Wendy was startled to realize that although Conne looked so odd that she really had a solid intelligence about her. It oozed out of her. "I didn't know there is a difference."

            "Yes, yes, there is. The idea of a labyrinth is to get into the center so that you can meditate. You know, where you get the three qualities of consciousness to merge," Conne continued. "They are, the artist told me, the abiding, the flowing, and the uniting. The maze is designed to get you lost."

            "Okay."

            "But that's not my favorite tattoo. Look at this one," Conne said excitedly while lifting up her shirt above her breasts. Her bare nipples were pieced, and beginning above her breasts, flowing into her cleavage, and then curving around to her back and around and down to her leg was a serpent in Japanese colors.  She hissed: "I just love snakes."

            Wendy thought to herself: She thinks it's art. That's why she doesn't care about showing me her body in a such an immodest way.

            "I don't think I could do that," Wendy said. "It's too permanent for me."

            "That's the idea! You can't lose it, and it's all yours."

            Conne repositioned her shirt once again, while Wendy sat a bit disoriented. She wasn't uncomfortable, but she was not her usual self any more.

            "Conne, what does your family think about all this?" Where did that question come from? She thought of what her own parents would do if she had done something so crazy.

            "Oh, my mother and father barely talk to me, but my brother Vermeer is okay with it. In fact, that's why I am here. I am getting a bite, because I am campaigning with him at today's East Side block parties. He's running for the Assembly in the Democratic primary next September 11^th. I love my brother; he's going to be President one day," Conne replied. "I am so proud of him."

            "Does he call you Conne?"

            "Oh no, no. He calls me Rita. You have to vote for my brother."

            "I'm not registered."

            "No problem." Conne picked up her massive macramé bag, and pulled out a yellow voter registration form and a pen and gave it to Wendy, who was stunned to receive it. "No excuses. Fill it out now, and I'll mail it for you. I'll pay for the stamp."

            To her own amazement, Wendy did exactly as she was told. She gave back the completed form and the pen back to Conne who folded up the form and placed it and the pen back into her bag.

            "Remember, you're a Democrat, and you're voting on September 11^th for Vermeer ter Horst for the Assembly. You be voting at the elementary school up the street. Don't vote for that other creep."

            "ter Horst?"

            "Yes, it's Dutch. We're really from Michigan, but my brother wanted to rise up here in New York. He planned it all his life. He's very ambitious. You know, you have to meet him. You really are his type. You'd like him. He's at the 200 block of 85^th Street's party. It's a gas. I'm having so much funnnnnn! I love campaigning!"

            Wendy finished off her quick meal, and Conne literally took Wendy's arm and they walked together up Madison Avenue to 85^th Street with great speed, with Conne practically pulling Wendy along. There the local block association was having its annual block party. It was filled with vendors selling all kinds of tchotchkes and a soul band was playing everyone's old favorites. It was heavily crowded, a combination of tourists and locals, enjoying the sunny late June day. Conne directed Wendy through the bustling horde with a confidence and mobility of a purpled-headed cruise-missile heading for its target. Then, Conne shouted out, "Vee, Vee! I want you to meet someone!"

            Wendy then saw him. Vermeer was her brother, but without any accoutrements. He was dressed casually in Ralph Lauren WASPy clothing and, of all things, saddle shoes, that made him look like a 1960s preppie. He was blond, too, and Wendy thought of him as something really different in his conventionality. He was holding a small stack of "Vote for Vee" handouts. He had been shaking hands with a local resident when Conne called. He excused himself, and walked towards the two women. Wendy loved his smile; it radiated care and love for his sister.

            When they met, Conne told her brother, "I just registered Wendy here and she is going to vote for you on September 11^th."

            "Hi," Vermeer said while extending his hand to Wendy. "I'm Vermeer ter Horst, and I thank you for your support. We need every vote we can get."

            His right hand was warm and sensitively soft. This man had never done a day's hard work in his life, Wendy thought. But he is very good looking and she guessed about twenty-seven-eight-years-old. He looks faithful. That's the world, faithful, Wendy thought absently.

            "Well, you have my vote, for sure," Wendy replied sweetly and with a smile.

            There is something about all politicians who run for office. When told that they have someone's vote, they become very affectionate and appreciative, if they are like Vermeer. It added to his confidence and also to his deep need for love.

            "Vee, she's single and you're single, and she's just your type. As soon as I saw her I knew that she's the one for you. You have to ask her out on a date, tonight, after we do these block parties. I won't even come to bother you. You'll love her and she'll love you and eventually we'll live in the White House. I can't wait!"

            Conne then pulled out a handful of "Vote for Vee" handouts, and started to work the crowd, leaving Wendy and Vermeer standing in front of each other. "Vote for my brother," she would say to everyone she met as she gave them the propaganda. She did with poise, and with a charming smile and enthusiasm. Her appearance, rather than putting off people, intrigued them instead as no one ever expects a motley-painted tattooed-girl to be campaigning for a candidate on the Upper East Side. Moreover, she was very attractive, because of the way she was and stood out.

            "How about it, then?" Vermeer said.

            "What?"

            "Tonight. Are you free?"

            He asked me, Wendy thought to herself. She was absolutely delighted for the first time in years. "Yes, I am. But are you doing this because your sister insisted on it so much?"

            "Yes, but no. I do want to get to know you better, Wendy..."

      "Watson. Wendy Watson."

           "Good to meet you, Wendy Watson""

            "Good to meet you Vermeer ter Horst."

            "Meet me at Pollock's at eight."

            "Great, I love that place."

            Suddenly, Conne came back to them. "So, where you are going tonight?"

            Vermeer smiled at his kid sister: "Pollock's."

            "Great, I love that place," she answered. "We have to get to 83^rd Street now, my president brother."

            "I know, I know, Rita. But we're running for the Assembly right now, the bottom of the ballot."

            He turned to Wendy: "At eight, then?"

           "Yes," and she nodded warmly.

      Wendy watched as Conne took her brother's arm in the same way that she had done previously with her and guided him through the crowd eastwardly. They have an aura about them, she thought. They both have it. They seem bigger than the life around them. How strange. I've never met anyone like them before, she said to herself. She watched them until they turned the corner and were out of sight.

            Wendy then turned and found herself at the end of the block back at Madison Avenue that was still filled with people, shopping and walking about. Then, she saw him. It was Bob, Bob from Grand Army Plaza, Bob with the Puerto Rican girl. He was pushing a double stroller with two young children asleep in it. He was walking with his posh wife, a woman who looked like a younger version of the woman she called Kay. They were all dressed causally, and they were made for each other. They looked like each other, and their mannerisms were the same. They spoke quietly and pointed out various things in the store windows to his knowing wife. They disappeared when they entered a children's clothing store. If only she knew, Wendy thought. May be she does. Who knows? But who cares? I have a date, a real date with a real man on a real Saturday night. Now, what am I going to wear?

Walking in the Fall

By Kalev Pehme

            My house and yard and the surrounding neighborhood is the annual stopping ground for what sometimes seem to be millions of grackles that migrate south to Florida and elsewhere. They fly at remarkable speeds in great clouds, steadier than other blackbirds, stopping around here during the days. The black-feathered males have iridescent purple heads, deep bronze or dull purple on their backs. During the day, the grackles replace the falling leaves and then percolate out of the tree branches at night. Over the years, I have associated the fall and spring with them, because unlike the robins that seem to disappear overnight all at once or appear suddenly in the spring, the grackles come in great waves every day for what seems to be weeks.

            It is autumn and I am nostalgic for the fall of my teenage years during the middle-1960s. It seemed very peaceful, although the War in Vietnam was escalating as did the anti-war movement with it. But the real business of the fall was the return to school and that meant the autumnal reunion with the girls of my high school. In those days, no one carried back-packs or book bags. Instead, everyone carried a stack of books, embracing them like the old, paper, grocery bags tightly against their chests. The proper thing a young lad did to facilitate an ease of communication with a girl was to offer to carry her books (which often meant awkwardly carrying two sets of ridiculously oversized textbooks that no one ever read anyway). We walked because it was expected of us to walk home from school. Now all the kids are so spoiled that there is a traffic jam at the schools of mothers and others coming to pick up able-bodied youngsters who feel it is beneath them to walk.

            That little act, this walking ritual, entitled you to talk about nothings that only expressed the intrigues and feints that insecure teenagers use to attempt to get close to each other. I remember no particular walk, but just the whole way of it all. As there were so many fewer people here on the nook-shotten North Shore of Long Island, the autumn was far more quiet, and on those long October afternoons after school the world seemed to stand still while I walked with this or that girl to the sounds of the grackles in the trees. Inevitably, you heard the sounds of shoes shuffling through dried leaves or on the pavement, the sound of migrating birds, the incessant chirping, if that's right, of the squirrels, an occasional dog barking. What I also remember was that the girls often wore great woolen sweaters, turtle-necked, with short skirts. The mini-skirt started came into scandalous fashion at the time, and I remember that there was a distinctive woolen smell that exuded from the girls. Also, it was the first days of panty hose, and to this day my heart stops when I see fishnet stockings that then glamorized panty hose. There was a new kind of sexuality developing at the time, including the quest for "free love" and it was not lost on us. The girls, as always, were so far ahead of the boys, and are more so even today. In a world without AIDS and feminism that demanded that girls maintain their virginity until marriage, there was a risqué aroma and taste of the hidden forbidden that charged all our mutual encounters that mingled with the forefeel of a new and freer world to come. Everything from music to fashion seemed all new or even revolutionary.

            We smoked cheap cigarettes while we walked, rather difficult when carrying two sets of textbooks, but it was voguish then as it is as silly and stupid as it is now. There were no noise-polluting leaf-blowers then, so that as our amusement broke into laughter or giggles the only other man-made sounds was the occasional car or some middle-aged woman raking her yard with that steady scraping sound. The suburbs were full of housewives, as at that time very few women who had children felt the need to work, although the poorer families found mothers who were forced to go into a workplace that treated them as second-class workers paid with wages that were less than their male counterparts.

            The girls I liked the most were into the arts and literature. The small talk about was poetry, T.S. Eliot, for example, or James Joyce, the formidable literary giant that both thrilled and confounded us. Ulysses was supposed to be very obscene, but it turned out to be a remarkably difficult labyrinth to read. It, too, was about a walk that one ordinary man, Leopold Bloom, took through Dublin on a June day in 1904. But if we didn't find Ulysses dirty, at least we had Terry Southern's hilarious novel Candy or Last Exit to Brooklyn for titillation. There was no open or easy way to get pornography at the time, and to see actual pornography was exceptionally rare. Sex in all its devices and crevices was very much a mystery and in the heat of the imagination, even once we started getting into it. For example, at the time, good girls, even when they were having sex with their boyfriends, faced the great dilemma of whether to perform oral sex. Only bad girls did that (whoever they might have been). But it was a time to experiment, after all, and with a little coaxing, anyway, well…

            Because it was before feminism, young men were supposed to treat young women with especial considerations. During the feminist revolution, many of these considerations came under fire as being only part of a patriarchal or male-tyranny's way of imposing domination through, for example, putting a woman on a pedestal. But there was something else at the time. Young girls wanted their boys to be the way they wanted them to be so that they could enjoy being women. Young males, to repeat, are always so far behind the young women. So, the girls felt it incumbent on them to educate the boys. As early as when I was in the sixth grade, girls, for example, wanted to dance at parties. So, needless to say, they taught to boys how to do dance. But it was more complex. For me, so that I could impress the girls I liked, I learned to read poetry and literature (I already had a good knowledge of painting and sculpture from my sculptor father), and they liked wit. That's how I learned sarcasm, and why I wanted to learn to write. To this day, almost all the best things I love about the arts can be traced to a band of young girls I walked with throughout the year. They were mostly available for that walk, because girls didn't play sports. In fact, most of the girls hated the thought of putting on bloomers and playing field hockey in gym class. Now, all the school fields are filled with more girls playing sports than boys and they don't wear bloomers. They wear tight, short-shorts with "sweet" written across their buttocks. I think that's swell.

            Two generations later, there is a War in Iraq with a murky unpromising future, and there is enough porn on the Internet (which didn't exist then) to make the sexual act look dull and to make young men expect women to be as the porn makes them out to be (talk about a strange twist in this post-feminist age). Our imaginations are pornographic, because we want everything out in the open with nothing hidden. The young women are liberated (thank god!), and the young men are unmanly (too bad). There are teenagers walking with each other, but they are carrying back-packs and skateboards. The ritual walk of carrying a stack of books for to get close to a girl is gone. But the books remain a part of my life as I sit at my personal computer (which didn't exist then), writing this remembrance while the grackles continue to fill up the trees, waiting for their night's flight to the south, leaving me here in the north where it is getting cold in the last years of the summer of my life.

Intimate Darkness

The closer I come to you, mystery

becomes you, dark demise, unknowable,

it seems, a different being, every

face I had known transformed--invisible.

I want to run to someone else, I think,

because conquest and sex is easier,

certain, unlike it is with you, a blink

of an eye opens a pupil darker...

I stay, though, still, lying between your breasts

knowing I know less now about my wife

than I did when I wooed you with crude jests

and jokes and catering to all requests.

And still I fear to know you more--to face

that death is hard in your loving embrace.

By Kalev Pehme

My most vivid memory of Tim Jessen was of the moment when I saw him lying on the convertible-sofa bed in his room along with Naama Kates and my sister, Olivia Pehme, who came for 10 days from Spain to visit me and mother. My sister is nearly 46, a musician, composer, who lives in Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands with her four growing children. Olivia is very attractive, and hangs out with a postman, José, who is afraid to fly but rides a motorcycle like the proverbial bat-out-of-hell. And now my sister is riding a cycle as well, while I am petrified of them. Tim also had a big bike that he was prohibited from riding it after his license had been taken away from him. Naama, 22, is the kind of woman men die for, as her sexual and personal appeal is remarkable. She is an actress and a model, a woman of immense communicative talents. She also is a nerveuse as they would say in the 19^th century, strung out on too much coffee, an insomniac with a kind of vulnerability and strength and seemingly arbitrary and abrupt changes that makes men mad for and about her. When I found Tim there, lying diagonally with Naama next to him and then Olivia next to Naama, he had a big grin on his face and he swung his eyes towards to Naama, a sign to look closely at the situation. It was on one of those insufferable summer days a few weeks ago, and my impression startled me when I saw the three together. Tim, a big honey bear of a young man, was happy and that happiness, the contentment and quiet of Naama and my sister, gave the impression that there was something even greater about that moment, that somehow that all was right with the world and that harmony had prevailed, if only for a moment. It was a slice of time that ought to have been preserved in art, as it is always very fleeting.

A few weeks later, Tim overdosed on heroin, found by his long-time girl friend, Rachel Butler, a dark gamin beauty. Rachel is 31, a single-mom, and she had been doing all that she could for Tim to keep him out of trouble and out of jail. Tim had recently copped a plea because he had been found with 14 pills of an anti-depressant that were in his mothers name, not his, among a number of other things. He was given a five-year probation, and put of jail without any money, without a driving license, and he was homeless.

For the sake of Rachel, who has been my friend for nearly seven years, I took Tim in, not really knowing much about him, albeit I had spent time with him before, mostly at the bars and restaurants where Rachel worked. Tim, a strong muscular man, had fattened up a great deal in jail, and he had saddened a great deal. He came from a dysfunctional family, was a recovering heroin addict, and he was depressed about his lot in life. But he was trying very hard to recover from life as well. There was a tentative optimism.

In our world, justice is always punishment; it is never, never acquittal, mercy, or rehabilitation. The parole system is part of the horrific criminal justice system we have. While one is expected to be checked for drugs and making sure that the parolee is not doing anything illegal, the parole system provides no means by which the convicted may expiate a crime or revive his life, or be a productive member of society, as the authorities like to say. Rachel is not rich, and not working as she goes to school to become a medical professional; nevertheless, she did what she could for Tim, as well as organizing his life so that he could get things like Food Stamps and some kind of welfare assistance. Without a license, it is very difficult to get a job, and it is far worse when carrying a criminal record. Without money, one cannot get on a bus. I provided the home and occasional cash or simply to buy him cigarettes.

Tim, I found out, was a good young man, who was trying to get life turned around, and he was failing. He was constantly depressed, except when he was working on Nothing Sacred, my son Morgan Pehme's new movie, now shooting, starring Naama in the female lead of Delilah. Part of the shooting was at my house, and that was when I found Naama and Olivia with Tim relaxing. And while working in both minor and major roles for the movie company, including one small acting bit, Tim showed the kind of person he is when allowed to do productive work. He labored well, and Tim provided good intelligence and advice. Morgan, the producer, and Dylan Bank, the director, were both impressed with his work and came to rely on him. Tim even found them a location for part of the shoot, after they lost one. The small crew as well as the actors all liked Tim, and accepted him without any hesitation. Morgan and Dylan made Tim a co-producer of the movie, a good title, with no immediate money as the film is being shot on a shoe-string. Tim was socially good in the way the authorities would want him to be, one might say. Tim truly loved working on the movie, and enjoyed the many, many hours of shooting, frequently just spending time before the camera monitor to give his well-received opinion of how the take had gone.

Tim did me an invaluable service. He frequently watched over my mother, who is dying of Alzheimer's, deteriorating relentlessly more each day. Sometimes, my mother would just sit in Tims room for hours while Tim watched television. When my mother was wandering about confused in the dark, Tim took her back to bed. Tim gave me time to get out of the house and from the daily burden of watching over my mother. At the same time, he showed a genuine affection, compassion, and concern for my mother, for which I will always be grateful.

My sister was also impressed with Tim's care for my mother and she got to like him a great deal, as she sat with him and Rachel at the entrance of the house smoking cigarettes. Tim and my sister, as well as Rachel, spent a lot of time with Olivia when she was here, and that closeness came out in Olivia's grief at hearing that Tim had died. It also showed in the reactions of Morgan, Dylan, and Naama who also expressed sorrow over his untimely death as well.

Sometime during the two weeks that Rachel had gone vacationing in Hawaii with her father to visit her family there, Tim left my house for two days. During that time, I believe, he bought the heroin that would cause his death. Unlike a craving junkie, Tim did not use the drugs in the house and remained clean as far as I could tell. He obviously passed his urine tests, or else he would have been arrested immediately and eventually shipped upstate to one of the state prisons.

During that time and after my sister left, Tim's depression was markedly worse. He stayed in bed for very long periods. He drank too much, and he was not a good drunk. Two days before he died, I took him to see his parole officer, and she was not there. She had not been there now for several visits. I was struck by my second most vivid memory of Tim: It was how badly he felt that his P.O. had not been there. It was as if he needed some kind of authority figure to help him, and somehow there was no one. Tim markedly and solemnly quieted down in the car as I drove back home.

On the evening of August 30^th, Rachel had been with Tim until about 11 pm, when Rachel went to attend to her daughter who was a bit nervous about being at a sleep-away in the neighboring village. Rachel told Tim that she would be returning later, and Tim appeared, Rachel said, very happy at the prospect. Soon afterwards, Tim shot up, perhaps as many as three needles which were found in his hand. His death must have been quick and painful. He probably went into convulsions and perhaps lost his ability to breathe. Rachel found him at 3 am, kneeling down with his head to the ground. She called out to him, but when there was no response he turned his body over. He was blue, and Rachel tried to revive him with CPR. It was already hours too late. Rachel called 911, and the emergency services and three squad cars of cops came.

It was all police after the Tim was pronounced dead by EMS. His room was treated as a crime scene, and a little later after dawn a detective came. Rachel and I spoke to him and answered his questions. Throughout the entire commotion, including the fact that the police tried to break through the locked, front door, my mother slept, unaware of what had happened.

Rachel was beside herself in grief, as she no doubt partially held herself responsible for what happened. A woman who has faced so many adversities found herself in the middle of another one. By the time the Medical Examiner came, Rachel left with Tim's sister Jennifer and Rachel's brother, Jason,. I watched the Medical Examiner remove the body, a rather grim job of bagging it and throwing it into van with the usual police and Medical Examiner employee banter. I do not have the results of the autopsy.

At the viewing, there so many people who came to see Tim's body. He knew so many people, and had a wide range of people there. Included in the crowd was Tim's father, whom Tim had never met, although apparently Tim did try on a number of occasions to meet him. He sat with Rachel, holding a cane, watching Tim's body.

Morgan and Dylan came, and they decided to dedicate their movie to Tim's memory. Rachel was so happy at the news.

In the end, there were many expressions of how well liked and loved Tim was by so many. One wishes sometimes that such emotions had been shared more often with Tim during the dark days before he died.

Rachel, ever strong, seemed to be the mistress of ceremonies for all the viewing. She directed people to each other and made sure that everyone was comfortable, especially Tim's grieving mother.

There is a very conventional character to mourning, and the grief that is expressed through mourning is tied to traditions, laws, and old habits. It is exceptionally difficult to report the grief, sorrow, hurt, and mourning that is apart from that conventionality deep within a person. I saw it most in Rachel who always tried to keep up the social part of this event, this death, while breaking into tears and continuing on and then stopping the tears to carry on and then weeping again and still continuing on with a smile on her face.

For all the time my mother spent with Tim, she doesn't have a short term memory and thus she does not remember Tim at all. But I will remember Tim for the good things he did, and I forgive him for whatever bad things he had done. I do so not on my behalf or on behalf of my mother, but behalf of a world that knows only how to punish, especially those like Tim who want and need to remove the punishment out of their lives and to remove from the punishment he had inflicted on others.

The older I get, the more and more karma means to me. Karma to me is not a punishment from one life to another, but a recognition of the great suffering all human beings have. It means that every encounter you have with someone, no matter how slight, no matter how long, requires that a debt must be discharged by one to the other or that a common appointed task be performed, not matter how seemingly trivial or how seemingly important. It takes a great deal of knowledge to know what that debt or task is, and that requires that one has great compassion for all so that we can see our way to the tasks and debts required. Otherwise, we end up having to do them again in another life, and it is better to get these tasks done in one life and find a small measure of happiness.

I believe it was my task to take Tim in and perhaps my task as well was to provide him a place to die, as grim as that may seem. It is my karma to care for Rachel, and it is my karma to care for my dying mother. It is my karma to suffer through so much suffering. But I accept that, because that is all our karma and we must all suffer through it and, in some sense, not take too personally, because the real suffering we have is the one that we are not aware of, as paradoxical as that may seem.

Flowers for Yasmin

By Kalev Pehme

Dominique de Baumont hesitated before she sat down at the cafe table with her friends. She remembered what she had just told her professor: "I am very superficial, and I know it."

She had said or thought that more than once, but when her professor responded, "Prove it to me," all she could think of doing was showing him the celebrity websites that she rushed through each day. For hours each day, Dominique, a dark gamine that seemed quite exotic, amused herself with the complications of the love lives of various movie actors or musicians, the fashions everyone wears, the troubled bodies of anorexic or bulimic teen stars, as well as mentally traveling with them the hot, night spots of Los Angeles or New York or London. She showed her professor, an eccentric dodo from the 1960s with baggage, the paparazzi pictures and the pseudo-excited prose of the captions or the rushed quick paragraphs that required only a third- or second-grade reading level to understand.

Professor Petronius looked and nodded, and then replied, "I don't think that proves you are superficial at all. It just shows you have interest in gossipy celebrity stuff. You think their lives are interesting because they are just like you. But they are the ones who are superficial, not you. They are just images; you are very, very human, and youre prettier than these people. You see them for what they are not, what you are."

It was a dark compliment, Dominique thought. It disturbed her. If I am not superficial, then why do I do nothing but superficial things? Wasn't she only concerned with the mere appearances of things? She never went below the surface of anything.

"I don't get it," she said to her professor. "What do you mean?"

"They are superficial, and because they are superficial you think you are superficial in being interested in them. Perhaps, your interest in them is far deeper than you think. Think about it."

"I won't. I'm too superficial," she replied with a great tease.

He winked back at her. "I'll do something for you sometime, something just for you and no on else."

Dominique thought nothing of the remark.

Dominique sat down with her friends, Svetlana and Themis, who were in a great expressive mood of animating their discussion with a combination of wild sounds and operatic extensions of words that in IM-speak would be reduced to a Pop-Art set of abbreviations and repeating letters written in the language that children use before they learn to spell properly. Dominique pretended to be interested, but instead turned on her computer, found herself in the wireless network quickly, and logged on to her myspace.com page where she displayed posed pictures of herself in various states of self-conscious, pretended acts of sexiness that only showed her insecurities about it all, although she didn't know that. She then turned to the picture of her boyfriend that she had the day before posted for the first time. It was a landmark decision for her. Although myspace is a virtual world of friends, posting Orlando's picture was a kind of signal to her girlfriends and herself that she had reached a kind of threshold with him that required an acknowledgement of a "relationship."

She also saw something else on her home page, a blog had been posted by her professor, who had a page on myspace, simply because so many of his students wanted to be his virtual friend. He has posted a short story, "Flowers for Yasmin," a miniature, as Vladimir Nabokov would call it. It was very short, perhaps about 1,500 words.

Dominique read it, and then noticed that it was a story of a professor who was once a flower child and his student Yasmin, who was been forced into a quandary because she could not find the way to get out of the "relationship" turmoil, which she had no idea existed. The story compared the way that a professor who once had long hair and lived though the Summer of Love, 1967, Hendrix at the Monterrey Pop Festival, Janis in the Bay area, Be-Ins in San Francisco and the Freaks in New York, Sgt. Pepper, Surrealistic Pillow with the very vulgar-mouthed Grace Slick on LSD and everything else, Love is Haight, not to mention the worst year in the War Vietnam to date, and the fact that the entire ghetto of Detroit had been in flames. It was a year to be naked in public.

Petronius quoted Timothy Leary in the story, "What I have to say can be summed up in six words--tune in, turn on, drop out." Considering that Dominique worked all the time when not in school to earn the money she needed for electronic gizmos and the decorative clothing she wore, Leary's most famous statement seemed odd to her and very out of place.

She continued to read: "'All you need is love,' Yasmin read over the title of the Beatles song. But her professor said to her, Now substitute the word relationship for love and read it again.

'All you need is relationship,' and the great chords of the song that she had heard once that followed love disappeared. The Relationship Summer? You are the Relationship Generation."

Dominique suddenly realized something very odd. The entire story had been written for her, but posted on myspace where anyone could read it, and the ones who would read it would be her Relationship Generation where there was an illusion of friendship in a virtual world. Then, she realized something else as she finished the story, which decried the terrible conservative morality that attempts to control love in the form of the lack of commitment of the relationship. The Hippies had been buried underground, thank Jesus.

Dominique looked at Svetlana and Themis who were now making the silliest faces at each other and the affirmation by Svetlana, "I am going to run away with you, Theeeeeeeemis!"

As in a time-lapse video of a rose opening, she realized that her professor had written the story not just to instruct her, but as an expression of affection for her, unconditional love without any thought of return. No one had ever done that for her, and that it was love, not a relationship. There was a difference between this ungainly middle-aged man and herself, he was open about his affection and was not afraid of it, while she and most of her friends truly were fearful. What was once openly expressed in the streets and parks between young people like herself had been driven underground and denuded of definite meaning. Dominique re-read Yasmin's statement in the story, "What do you mean, Professor? That I can't love or have friends or even hate or have a stalker if I use the word 'relationship' to describe these things?"

The question was only answered with a professorial nod and a smile. "With that, he limned the story of her life," Petronius had written.

Dominique was about to run through her usual celebrity websites, when she stopped. They were colorful, but not as colorful as the flowers that once were thrown at National Guard Troops and the constantly reworked poster, "Make Love, Not War!" Dominique had never marched against a war, and there were wars galore as she read the story, Iraq, Israel, Darfur, the Congo, and so on. Flower Power? It seemed childish, as she lived in a world of scientific and technological and economic expectations.

As she lay down in her bed that night, Dominique was in the dark, deliberately in the hot summer night. She was searching for that expressiveness of love that she had found in "Flowers for Yasmin." She went through her soul, and discovered that it was really in a very dark and warm cave within her. And there, Dominique felt heady mushrooms starting to grow. What was once daylight had within her been driven into a heaven for fungi, delicious or poisonous or even loaded with the ecstasy of primitive Indian altered states.

It was the start of the first moment that Dominique felt the desire to have children, and to have children she knew she had to be married. She wasn't a flower child, and she didn't want to hurt her parents by doing something so insensitive as having children out of wedlock. Day after day, especially when she was sleeping with her boyfriend ("bf" in IM-speak), Dominiques desire for motherhood (does a mother have a relationship with baby?) absorbed her daily daydreams.

After a while, she thought of Petronius, that crazy man who had written a story for her, and she wrote him an e-mail message. "I want to have babies. What do you think? Lol. Thank you for the story. Why did you write it?"

He wrote back, "Good, finally you are reaching down into what is truly natural and real, not conventional and virtual. I told you you are not superficial. I wrote it because you inspired me and that inspiration is as close to the direct experience of the divine eros as we ever get."

She read the return message, and turned to Orlando, a strikingly handsome young man with great ambitions who had never worn anything that was psychedelic paisley, and Dominique said, "I love you." This time, she knew, she meant it.

To be a teacher means learning to say good bye to many young people. For that's what I do, say good bye every May to young people I am not likely ever to see again. It is a very strange experience that I have come to accept, as it is a part of education and what it means. But there are so many young people I miss even today from my very first classes that I taught at St. John's, my first teaching job. I think of so many of the students I enjoyed not with sentimentality, but with genuine affection.

           And I mean education, not schooling. The latter is something I do not like very much, the bureaucratic entanglements, the requirements, the artificial hierarchies of curriculum, grading, class sizes, and the vast systems that keep a university from barely sinking. Education is about learning things that can't be taught and having to say good bye to many young people is a part of my education and the education of my students.

            My son Morgan says good bye with the word "peace," but not with shalom. There are many meanings and usages of "by" or "bye," but in the farewell it means, from the Scottish and English dialect, finished, over. So, it is a good finish. Perhaps peace is not such a bad synonym or substitution, but I still prefer the good bye.

            A good bye is a kind of perfection, but this still perfection is a parting. We say good bye to the dead as well, those who have perfected their lives. To say something is over and it is good means that the moment that is passing was good. The mystery writer terms all of life as the long good bye. It was one of the goods of our lives.

            It may be said proverbially that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but the absence of my former students has nothing to do with the affection that I have for them. Having said good bye to them means that I don't say good bye to the good memories I have of my favorite students and even some of the incorrigible ones that I have had. These memories fill their absence in my life and contribute to the continuing sense of how illusory the everyday world is, fleeting moments that in and of themselves do not last. Moreover, even the memories fade or they are transformed in various ways, just children grow, students learn, and old men pass away. To some, all moments are completely illusory and perhaps it would be best to say good bye to them in favor of a reality from which we never part.

            However, if there is such a reality, we are all ready it. We never part from it and we are it. That means that our experience of the illusory character of the world must somehow be an essential part of something that is non-contradictable, one, completely self-sufficient, perfect, formless, always other, apart from all things, while still flowing through all the beings that come to be and pass away. Plato called this one great reality, the whole, the Good. It is called the Tao among some Asians, and it is called Brahma, and many other names.

            Plato called it the Good, for a reason. It is because, he believed, the Good was logos-choiceworthy, i.e., that the Good is spoken and reasoned about in a certain way. We speak and we reason with a direct relationship with the Good and that reasoning and speaking induces desire in us. As such, it induces the desire to know, especially for the indispensable knowledge of the Good, the whole, as it really is. Moreover, when life is dedicated to this knowledge and the difficulties it presents and it is made the direction of one's entire life, it provides the man a life of pleasure.

            Yet, that seems very odd, as the Good is apart all things and is the whole of things. As such there are no words that can encompass it and there is no reasoning that can directly apprehended it. Logos, that remarkable word in Greek that combines speech and reason together without any kind of separation, cannot bespeak the whole because then it would be the whole itself. Everything that is ever said of the whole, the Good, the Tao, etc. is always deceptive and always illusory to what it is.

            But we can experience the great Good in many ways, and perhaps the simplest way that we experience the Good is when we say, "Good bye." For the Good appears in the world of coming to be and passing away as a good, a predicate. Saying good bye with the parting and the absence, even a permanent one, is an action that can illuminate what is so much greater than ourselves, which we like to imagine we are separate from in some kind of separate reality.

            Perhaps that is why there is so much emotion when we reflect upon a significant good bye, as when we say good bye to the dead or to someone who is moving away never to be seen again, as is the case of so many of my students. The impermanence of all our beings is seen and felt, but when the whole of things is seen as the Good we desire it. That desire is felt most strongly when we say, "Good bye"--a moment when we want something to last, to be permanent, eternal, and yet the only way we can have it is to let it go.

            Good bye, to my graduating seniors and to the students who will never have a class with me again. I will miss you.

Adultery in Manhattan

By Kalev Pehme

As Welles relaxed with some Jack Daniels and peered down the great wall of Fifth Avenue from the sculpture garden on top of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he suddenly felt his spirit drooping and he knew why. He had come to hate all the fashionable and wealthy parts of Manhattan, because adultery had become all too conventionally common. He was thinking of his wife, who at that very minute was somewhere ensconced in some mica-black bedroom with white and metal trim in the svelte 70's shacking up with some executive of a large corporation or some sticky, fat financier whose allure was that he had a few billion dollars invested to accrue more billions. He knew that for Joyce it was all about the only way she could find sex exciting, and it was with money and financial power. It turned her on. It was the only thing in the world that she could be passionate about. Otherwise, her life would be flat and dreary, with only the banality of shopping to divert attention from her life. "I always come back to you," Joyce admitted without admitting anything.

            "What for?"

            "I love you."

            Joyce was one of those Upper East Side women who always, but always, will look absolutely marvelous no matter what and whatever age. She was still young, but she was now strategically easing herself into what a good combination of diet, exercise, surgery, yoga, tasteful jewels, hair, dress, and just the right shoes, do for a woman to put her into a kind of timeless preserve of beauty that could appeal to the young stud or the baronial old man who knows that a great fortune is better than musk or pheromones and a far better aphrodisiac. When Joyce went to whatever fashionable restaurant it was that week to luncheon with other women of the same ilk, she and her friends became part of the furnishing of the restaurant that gave it appeal along with the fresh flowers and candles. The light is always right.

            Welles wanted to move, but he was too poor to do anything and it was that reality that gave Joyce the control she wanted over him. Basically, he was a kept man, incarcerated in a gilded cage, wondering why it was that Joyce ever wanted him.

            "Why is it that you want me, Joyce?" he once asked.

            "Oh, silly you. Because you are a genius and some day that genius will make sure that hundreds of years from now everyone will know who I am."

            "Why would think I would do that?"
            "Because eventually you'll have to write about me because you'll need to, and when you do, even if you make me into the worst bitch on earth, you'll do it so brilliantly that everyone will think, god, I wish I knew her. And you know you will, if you havent done it all ready without me knowing about it. I should hack your hard drive."

            The truth was that he was writing about Joyce and for a long time. He wanted to do it like Proust, using all those slick, black limousines, orchids, tails, silken gowns, and great weights of gold and diamonds and mix them with refined images of art and long prose sentences that went on forever. In that swirling vortex of vertiginous images Joyce would emerge like Aphrodite out of the foam or on a shell with opaline skin and great tresses of curly blond hair. As he tried to weave this spell, he realized that it was an absurdity. Joyce was not Odette or Albertine any more than TriBeCa or the Upper East Side is the fashionable district of Paris in which Swann walked dolorously after seeing the Prince of Wales.

            He sipped down some more of his drink and continued to stare about the Avenue and Central Park. He admired the Westphalian Wall and the flagstones of the sidewalk, but he realized that there was something different about Manhattan. It didn't have the splendor and the wonderment that he needed to write about it in showy sentences. For all the millions, the amazing collections of art that private collectors owned all over the place, and the richly designed apartments with all the best of the best, his Manhattan, Joyce's Manhattan, felt like the word "plastic" did when he was young. To inflate his sagging spirits, he richly inhaled a breath of nostalgia for pre-plastic New York, whatever that might be, perhaps that of the Depression age, when the homeless lived in Central Park or along the riverbanks and the wealthy on Park Avenue were Republicans who made fun of Roosevelts betrayal of his class and everyone dressed for dinner, not just for the parties.

            He could hear the rumble and clatter of the Third Avenue Subway in his head, and felt the eerie loneliness that New York City used to have under the El. It was different from the loneliness he felt today in the 21^st century. In the past the loneliness was from a genuine loss or lack of love in ones life. Today, he realized that it had nothing to do with love at all. Joyce loved him, of course, she did and, oddly, he loved her, if only for the fact that he had fallen for this doom.

            No, it was about the way they lived now. Joyce no longer loved him without a contract and all her relations with all the men she had were contractual as well. Maybe it was always that way, he thought, but he had not noticed that years earlier when he was young. There was still enough reckless abandon and risk to love. Now there was none. And Welles was lonely and wished that at least he had the insanity of fantasies, flesh, a vast array of perversities or maddening anxieties that could invade that loneliness and fill it up with long sessions with a therapist who would prescribe this or that drug to make him happy. No, Welles couldn't fill up his life with the torments of mental illness to escape. He was alone, because he longer thought like anyone else around him and even as perceptive as Joyce was she now truly did not know anything about him except that he was a brilliant writer, a completely abstract expectation since he had not written a book for over a decade and his literary accomplishment seemed to diminish from the public's attention.

            He was a slow writer and he couldn't help it. The Saturnine plodding was part of his mental make-up where his melancholy also served to put him into an altered state of mind where Welles communed with something that at least was real, although everyone else thought that this state was something that either drug-induced or merely an insanity. There on the outer limits away from everything, Welles had been writing about Joyce. He had to rename her, as Joyce was really not a good name for Joyce. But he couldn't think of an adequate name, so he left it at Joyce which he could with a single push of a button replace with anything, even the name of god.

            Welles felt odd that he wrote so slowly on a computer. It would make sense if he had to carefully write out each sentence with his horrible orthography with a pen or pencil on lined or unlined paper. He remembered that Flaubert would spend weeks on a single sentence, but he was not Flaubert who truly believed himself to be an artist of a special kind. Welles really was not an artist in his mind. The word had been denuded of its grandeur, as he could tell by simply listening to the conversations of the people milling about the galleries of the museum over which he was drinking. He felt that calling himself an artist was giving himself a social pretension rather than an adequate description of what he was doing when he was writing.

            "So where are you this afternoon, Joyce?" he murmured to himself.

            Joyce left all her affairs to his imagination and never acknowledged them openly. He had no idea whether Joyce was saying horrible things about him to others or whether she was doing the same to the men she slept with, never giving them an inkling of what her married sex life was like. Perhaps there was just one large silence about husbands and wives and lovers that had to be kept, a kind of acknowledgement that these arrangements were solely for certain emotional purposes with no strings attached or for the inflated senses of self-esteem that people needed. They had mistresses and lovers; it was expected, after all. That's what we do in New York. There is a morality to all this deception and betrayal somehow.

            The rooftop at the Met was not very crowded, even though the sunlight and warm breezes, although too good for New York, nevertheless, had the affect of calming Welles down. He wanted to talk to someone, but he had no more friends. The really good friends all left Manhattan years ago and were lost to him in either some rural discovery or driving fast cars down the freeways of Los Angeles. Welles traversed the roof to get another drink at the bar, waited on line behind a few French tourists who were debating the relative merits of eating out in Chinatown as opposed to somewhere else.

            Welles consumed his drink quickly. It was very expensive for so little booze, but he was there for the atmosphere, which no longer interested him. He left the garden and took the elevator back downstairs and walked to the great entrance hall. He looked up longingly to where the great statue of Perseus holding Medusas head once stood. It fell and broke into millions of pieces. He repossessed his notebook computer from the cloakroom, and walked out the museum carrying it down to Fifth Avenue and 82^nd Street. He stood in the sidewalk watching the cabs lining up and the traffic flow and froze not knowing which to go. His head turned up the avenue and then down and then straight ahead on 82^nd Street and he didn't know where to go.

            Again the distant ringed planet stalled his progress. Perhaps it was an omen. Welles closed his eyes. He decided he would cross the Avenue and then walk to Madison Avenue on 82^nd Street. If he were to do so, then Welles made a decision. He would walk up Madison to 86^th Street and then walk down to the supermarket bookstore and he would go to the cafe and write for the rest of the day, at least as long the battery would hold up.

            Welles opened his eyes, and without much thought found himself before the entrance of the bookstore. But before he could enter, he heard his name being called, "Welles, Welles Pauwells!"

            He turned and before him was a young woman, about 22 or 23, whom he vaguely remembered in another form. She looked a bit of a mess, completely not very Upper East Side at all.

            "Welles Pauwells," she sang out.

            He nodded and she walked up to him and extended her hand for him to shake. He did.

            "Do you remember me? I'm Arlene White. We met at NYU when you gave that guest lecture on the invention of the novel. You said it was Rousseau who really invented the novel form."

            Welles's mind reset itself to the room in which he spoke. It was small, but comfortable with a large seminar table. He remembered where Arlene sat, two chairs down on his left, and he remembered that she was far more beautiful then. Quite stunning in fact, with dark sultry eyes and she teased him with her breasts. A smile came across his face. "Yes, I remember you. You asked me all those questions about sublimation and art."

            "I'm glad you remembered."

            "What are you doing now? Did you graduate or you working on a PhD?"

            "No, I'm not in school, but I'm into a lot of things."

            "Do you write?"

            "Sometimes. I have a notebook I carry with me."

            Arlene reached into her back pocket of her jeans and pulled out a small ringed notebook whose pages were ragged and some barely held. It wasn't clear that Arlene was fighting over le mot juste on its lines. She looked dowdy, very thin, and her clothing, Welles now observed, she was dirty. Her hair looked bad, because they hadn't been washed for a while. In the silence, Arlene fidgeted and she scraped her hands together.

            A strange sensitivity inclined Welles to ask, "Would you like me to buy you a cup of coffee and some pastry? I was about to go to the cafe."

            "I would like that a lot. But, listen, Welles, I have a problem." She hesitated and wrung her hands nervously.

            "Yes?" Welles looked at kindly with every intent to help her.

            :Finally, she blurted out the truth in all its misery, "I need money."

            Now, Welles understood..

            She continued, "I need $50 and I need right now. I'll do anything for it. I'll let you..."

            "I understand," Welles interrupted. "But I really don't want to have sex with you."

            "How 'bout $25 for a blow job?"

            Welles nodded his head sadly, and reached into his pocket where he kept the cash messily folded. He never carried a wallet any more. "Here, you don't have to do anything for the money. Please, just get some help for yourself. Do it for me. Do it for a good memory we have of each other." He handed her about $75. He didn't count it, just gave her the bills.

            Arlene's face lit up, nearing the brightness of that day at NYU when he met her. Rapidly and with genuine thanks, Arlene leaned over and gave Welles a brief kiss on his cheek. "Thanks," she said, and she turned quickly and nearly ran East on 86^th Street and disappeared.

            Instead of going into the bookstore, Welles decided to walk up Second Avenue to a restaurant which an acquaintance owned. He reached the restaurant, a dull-looking unsuccessful place which to his amazement managed to stay open. It occurred to him now that perhaps the restaurant was doing more than serving food to stay open. He went into the door, and heard someone say, "We're not open until tonight."

            "Ed, do you mind if I hang out here. I just want a table to write on for a while. And a drink or two."

            The owner now recognized Welles, saying, "Sure, Mr. Pauwells. Use that one over there. What do you want? The usual?"

            Welles nodded. He sat down, opened his computer, and then began to write for two-hours straight. Instead of writing slowly, Welles wrote rather quickly, at least for him. He felt tremendously satisfied and rewarded himself with some cognac, coffee, and conversation with the restaurant owner before he went back home.

            Welles found Joyce in their opulent bedroom. She was about to remove her dress and change. Her hands were behind her neck about to undo a clasp. "Welles, be a dear, and do this for me."

            Welles undid the clasp and she let the dress fall to the floor. Welles saw no stains or signs that Joyce had done anything that afternoon. He always looked for a sign, but there were never. Joyce was very good at hiding things. "What did you do today?" he asked.

            "I went shopping." She motioned her head to an arm chair where two large bags sat holding whatever goodies it was that Joyce bought.

            Joyce was in her most wispy and lovely bra and panties now, the ones that she always bought in exclusive little shops in Europe. She went through the ritual of removing her earrings and her other jewelry. It was obvious she was about to take a bath. Welles observed her, as he had done so many times. It was the sameness of the routine, always the left ear first, then the right, then the pearls. He noticed every movement as it was done in the reflection of the mirror. It had that look of a very expensive ad page in a very good fashion magazine. Joyce is elegant, Welles thought, very elegant and efficient in her movements. He decided to walk up to her and he lovingly put his hands on her shoulders to interrupt her.

            Joyce smiled. She liked when Welles touched her, because he did it without any real calculation. She sighed and then asked, "What did you do today?"

            "I wrote a lot today, unusually so. Did it at Ed's place; it's closed in the afternoons."

            "Oh that sounds very good. Why were you so productive?"

            "I had some inspiration, from a girl."

            "Really, now thats intriguing? Was she good?"

            "You know I would never betray you. I am completely faithful. I believe in fidelity."

            "Yes, and I love you for it. I'm going to take a bath."

            There was a perfection of Joyce's body that met up with an ideal that she had in her own mind. It was carefully constructed and deeply worked out. Everything was in place and there was no excess of anything on Joyce. She had all the right curves, and she walked well with the perfect posture. Joyce had made herself into a work of art, it was true, and Welles truly admired that as it was the kind of art he could never attain. Joyce disappeared into the bathroom and locked the door behind her.

            Welles heard Joyce singing behind the door. That was unusual. Perhaps the whole day was unusual, he thought. Arlene came to his mind, again. He sifted through his memory of her in the seminar room. She really was so pretty, but she was pretty in that afternoon, too. Only she was dirty and desperate. He knew he had done something wrong in giving her all that money. She would be holed up somewhere in some stupor. She was very lonely, he could feel it now. But for a moment, a very brief moment, he was not. And for that, he was grateful.

            Welles knocked on the bathroom door and called out, "Joyce, how about doing something different tonight?"

            "Like what?" Joyce asked.

            "How about going to Queens and finding something to eat there?"

            "That's odd."

            "Why?"

            "That's what adulterous lovers do to make sure they don't get caught in Manhattan, where everyone sees everyone else. You haven't done that, have you, Welles?"

            Welles laughed, "No, but with you I might like it."

            Now, he knew what kind of a day Joyce had.

            "Okay, call the garage and tell them to get the car ready at seven. Do you have any ideas where to go?"

            "No, do you?"

            "There is a nice Persian place off Marathon Parkway. You'll like it. Belly dancers come there every night and dance for tips. They'll turn you on. I know how you like that kind of thing."

            Welles thought about what he had written that day. It was about the great silence that he could never penetrate. He felt good. Today, that silence broke twice and he had caught up in words where his Saturnine mood had stop retrograding and went direct for the first time in years and years.