California Reaming - A Woman's Adventures In Polyamory

So you're on your way up to the Sierra foothills to spend a lovely weekend with your new lover. She's managed to fanegle a cabin for the two of you from her park ranger friend who's away herself. You've been looking forward to this with growing anticipation, ever since your previous and first encounter six weeks earlier in Berkeley. Already the chemistry between you feels great. Finally the day arrives, you head north from L.A. in your rental car, the directions are perfect, you reach the cabin in early afternoon.

And there she is, walking down the driveway as you pull up. Ready to bestow a warm and sensuous hug upon your person.

Politely she asks if you want anything to eat or drink, you take some water. And then...you find yourselves undressing each other right there on the living room carpet, you're not even going to make it to the bedroom.

Nirvana of nirvanas, no? A dream scenario, yes?

Well, maybe, because I don't remember the first two hours of it. I totally blacked out. It has to be one of the weirdest things that has even happened to me. Beyond mangling my left knee in a cycling accident. Beyond blowing out my aorta even. Because this smelled of something psychological, something I maybe could have prevented.

At first I was annoyed. Because J sat me down and explained all the delectable erotic bits my brain just drew a blank on. We fingered one another just to the point of fisting, we shared a strap-on, we humped each other, we ate each other out.

We moved about the cabin, apparently, which was rather spacious for a cabin. The woman owner had done well by it. We covered ground.

And I can't remember any of it. Not a drop. Part of me wants to roar with laughter, because the idea of that is so funny. Talk about falling asleep in your own porno movie! But then I had to ask myself, what does this mean?

J got kind of frightened about the whole thing. But not at first, it took her a while to realize I had checked out big time. We're not talking two minutes here of blackout, but more like two hours. After a while, J said she looked into my eyes and it dawned on her I simply wasn't home. Interesting how my body carried on doing its thing, and it was a while before J picked up on things.

She tried to talk me down out of my tree, but no luck. She waited a bit, hoping I might just come out of it on my own. No deal.

She even pondered calling this guy D that I live with, that she's heard about but has never met. No time like the present to meet him, at least over the telephone. She was actually set to call him and say something like, "Well D, ah, your girlfriend...seems like she's taken a hike somewhere...does she do this often?" or something like that.

J had no idea what was going on with me. There she is, alone with this blonde woman, in a cabin miles from civilization, as we are want to call it. And her ladyfriend has taken leave of her senses.

I am not sure what I would have done. I would have been scared, and J certainly admitted later that she WAS frightened. She just didn't know what to do with me.

I didn't know what to do about me, either. Did I need a medical doctor, a therapist, or a priest?

TO BE CONTINUED

Well, why not? People go to sex parties for lots of reasons, probably, but I had to sit down and think about it myself for a minute or so. Reasons, excuses, whatever. My partner and I have reasons and excuses that go back a ways. I like to say it's all because of our respective holes. No, not THOSE holes, and not the holes in our heads, either, although we certainly could be described as having those too.

My partner started life with an undetected hole in his heart. His parents didn't recognize this until he got to be around 8 years old. He was tired all the time. Instead of playing outside he'd be lying on the sofa watching TV. After having heart surgery, he really felt he got a second chance at life, so to speak. D tells me that afterwards he became like a completely different kid, full of energy and vitality. Food became a big thing. Bigger than it normally is in a Jewish household in Brooklyn. He would visit his friends' houses and basically end up raiding their fridges. The mothers had to keep an eye on D, his appetite was enormous. The man can still sit down with an entire roasted duck, cooked by him, and polish it off in one sitting. My arteries slam shut just at the thought of it. Oddly, his cholesterol level is better than mine.

In a few more years, the other appetite came along - sex. I never realized how much action there was going on in D's particular yeshiva. Are they all like this? I wondered, as he told me stories of 13-year-old boys fucking each other in the stairwells, around corners. Not circle-jerking, or cocksucking, mind you. But outright anal sex. Great, I thought, so, where are the rabbis?

The hole that affected my story happened nearly a decade ago, when I survived a sudden rupture of an undetected abdominal aortic aneurysm. Not many people do. Usually you're dead by the time you hit the ground. An aneurysm forms in an artery, it's a bulging out of tissue, like a balloon, which can sometimes burst, leaving a hole in the artery from which blood runs out into the surrounding body cavities. Basically, you're bleeding to death internally. In this case the artery was my aorta, the largest blood vessel in the human body.

It was not pleasant, especially for close family members, who clustered around my bed in the ICU at UCLA Medical Center. Nor for D, who hated hospitals ever since his own heart surgery as a child. He had not been inside one since. I was not expected to pull through initially, so he went because he thought he would never see me again. My chances were not good, but years of being a highly trained cyclist saved my ass. I had a heart that just never gave out, and that got me through.

More years of unpleasant follow-up surgeries. I lost my appetite for food, then for sex. I looked like a concentration camp survivor. I lost muscle mass. It took a while to build my body back up. Just when I did, another complication developed, I went under the knife again. Back to square one. I felt like Sisyphus, forever doomed to rolling that damn rock up the mountain.

Naturally this got to be very depressing. I was very depressed, for a while I was on Paxil. Let me tell you how horrible those anti-depressants can be, they really fuck up your sex drive totally. I guess the doctors figure you're depressed anyway, so you probably won't care about sex, so why not take Paxil. When you take Paxil, you can still get aroused, but you can't focus well enough to have an orgasm generally. Your mind is all over the place. A very frustrating situation. I would never take that drug again. My advice is just suck it up, be as depressed as you have to, but stay away from those seratonin-uptake inhibitors. They are nasty.

But eventually I got better, I lost the Paxil, along with my appetite for food, and that has never really recovered, to this day. Five major surgeries in about six years can pretty much gut your appetite for good. But my sex drive did return, I'd rather have sex than food, wouldn't you? As long as you have enough of the latter in order to do the former.

So, basically I followed the path my partner D followed. We both came out of our caves of misery like bats out of hell. I had some living to do now, and time to make up for, and I went about it all in gung ho fashion. I could finally start to feel again what it feels like to have a healthy, strong and physically very fit body. I could look around and see things I wanted to be part of again. I started buying more bicycle equipment and backpacking gear, because I was going to pursue these activities again.

I was happy to be here. Here or anywhere. And yes, like D, our libidos kicked into overdrive. A celebration was in order. And we both wanted to celebrate with as many people as we possibly could.

- - - - - -

D and I went for the second time to our "touch-junky" massage party, primarily aimed at the bisexual male. We got there about an hour or so into things, and already people were naked and lying about. Just what we like to see!

Our host A mentions to me later that he has never had three good-looking women at one party under his roof, so he is quite pleased. There are actually five women there, but two of them are quite large, I figured A was not including them. This is a man who abhors fat as much as I do.

The cutest girl was on her stomach when we arrived, getting a massage from A and various other people. Dr J they call her, she rides a bike too apparently. All over San Francisco. She has crossed the country several times as well. A slim, quirky looking girl, very pale. She is getting loads of attention here tonight. She's my type, I would love to give her loads of attention too. But it's intimidating to see various male hands already at work massaging her.

No room for D and I on the main mattress, so we end up in the bedroom, where A comes and starts to play with one of the guys. They don't mind sharing the bed. D starts to go down on me. It takes me a while, but he finally gets me off. Part of the focus problem we had was because A and his friend start babbling away in Spanish, and that is distracting. Maybe I should have started moaning in Spanish, just to keep us all on the same page.

If you aren't used to other people fucking in the same space you're fucking in, it may take a bit of getting used to. But hey, it's an acquired life skill, and I am sure you can all achieve it.

The night is warm, the apartment is small, as mentioned earlier, and we are sweaty in no time.

We migrate after this through the various rooms, out to the kitchen, where D gets himself in a row of guys who are handling each other, four of them. Mostly older guys, but two of them have absolutely fabulous members. One is really thick, the other is just...well. He just is.

So I decide I'm going to lean against the wall so I can watch both the living room action and the guys in the kitchen. A two-fer.

As I start doing this, two new fellows arrive. A's ground rules for his parties are that straight men cannot attend unless they bring a woman. So I figure these two fellows are bi. They give off the flavor though of being rather hetero, I am not sure why I even say this. Just a vibe.

So I get to overhear their dialogue. Both of them are rather young, about the youngest bunch here tonight. The rest of the people are 40s and up, probably. The two of them are looking around at the people, and now they're debating. Is it worth staying or not? Blah blah blah. They are uncertain. The taller guy makes a squeak about being "really sexed out" from the night before. Details are not forthcoming though. I want to know what a young and horny guy thinks is TOO much sex for him to handle.

Finally, the taller one leaves, the smaller guy sticks around. He's got an interesting haircut, buzzed up the back and around both sides, a mini ponytail on top. Earrings and piercings and whatnot. I like his look.

But before anything can happen on that front, A comes over to me, he is remembering D and I now. It's been about six months since he saw us at our first party with him. After a bit of conversation, he says, "I'd really like to take you into the bedroom...and DO something with you!" he exclaims boldly, loud enough that D can overhear this as we all hang out in the kitchen. There is a massage table here, which is where the four guys are centering their play. A and I are in the doorway. A picks me up and playfully carries me into the bedroom.

But once there his body doesn't seem to want to get hard. Turns out he has taken ecstasy, and it has parked him somewhere out beyond the back of beyond. This I find surprising, I had heard the drug makes one rather sexual. Or at least enhances your mood if you are in a sexual environment. A is mentally lively, and very verbal tonight. It's just his body seems to have taken leave of him.

Then one of his younger boyfriends comes in and really disrupts the flow. He is very gay, and none too hesitant about butting in. On top of everything else, the guy is naked except for these ugly socks. Ugh ugh ugh.

I migrate back to the other room.D tells me later that after I left the kitchen, he got fucked by one of the humongous guys. So the night is a success as far as he is concerned. Ditto me.

At one point A says how much he loves watching D and I, he loves my muscle definition, and finds all our play fun to watch, because we look good doing it. Nice to hear, I guess. A is really into thin, fit women.
Dr J is an interesting woman, but she seems to have no interest in playing with other women. So far at his parties, I have not seen women play with one another. But this is the girl I would play with, given my druthers.

The other attractive woman is early 50s, in pretty damn good shape. An ex-Mormon there with her husband, who is 70. He is not attractive, but bold, and gets his hand on my knee for the longest time. Then I get up, and make a point of putting his hand back where it belongs. He didn't ask permission at all. I should have nixed it sooner, but I am learning too. I don't like being outright rude, but still, I was too polite to him.

When I see the wife later, she's getting fucked by our newly arrived ponytail boy. He seems to waste no time. I am happy he hooked up with the woman, as she is not bad looking. Her 70 plus husband is watching it all approvingly.

Turns out Mr. Ponytail is an ex-Mormon too. Small world, they probably said to each other. Then they got down to business.

One wonders what the church elders would have thought of this night.

I first met my partner D in late July, 1990. In west Los Angeles at a bisexual potluck. That's right, NOT a sex party. Just a potluck? Well, we have to start somewhere I suppose. I almost didn't go to it, ditto D, who had just landed on the west coast for a new technical job in a recording studio. Being a transplanted New Yorker, he didn't have a clue about how The Car Is King in L.A. He didn't own one yet, so he took a taxi from the San Fernando Valley over the hill to west L.A.

He walked into the party a bit late. I remember looking up from my conversation, and seeing a fairly tall, handsome young man of around 30, walking in the front door. He wore a two piece white linen suit, his hair was long and curly. I really liked the hair.

The black lady who put this party together saw me eyeing him and she turned to me and said, "You should get some of that, he's fresh meat."

My sentiments exactly, although earlier in the evening I was zeroing in on a tall, dark, good-looking Irishman. In a colorful Hawaiian shirt. It looked like the dust - or is it the sod - of the Olde Country was already being shaken off his person in that shirt.

Instead I ended up talking with D. We liked each other right away. He was easy to talk to, no pressure being applied. He could carry a conversation. I liked that he was a New Yorker. They know how to talk. Later he asked if I would like to go out for dinner sometime, I gave him my phone number.

He remembers my blue sundress, and looking at my bare back. Clearly she's an older woman, but her body looks in fantastic shape. He thought that we were going to hook up, but not that night. Down the road. Having resolved that in his mind, he turned his attention to the black hostess. Her he was trying to bed that night. I was for later on.

I told my therapist that I had met this guy at a party, although I had gone there to meet another woman. The women at the party were not appealing at all, what else is new. I rarely meet women I feel attracted to physically, but guys more so at that time.

I told my shrink that, if D called me as he said he would, I was going to sleep with him.
And call me he did, a few days later. We arranged a dinner date. Did I mind picking him up in my car? I did not, I understood his situation.

Lots of L.A. women get really bent out of shape over guys who own a car that's not good enough for them. A guy without a CAR at all? Forget it. I've heard several guys talk about this over the years, I know it's true. Women can be mean that way.

I wasn't that way. It was one of the many rather quaint things I discovered about D. We laid plans for dinner. I laid plans to get him into bed.

TO BE CONTINUED

Last night I finally got to meet L, who came down with her friend V to our local girlie bar. L and I have corresponded for several months via email, and found we had lots in common. We decided we wanted to meet.

L is early 50s, in great shape, V is a little older, not quite as slim, but not bad looking either, Jewish, rather interesting.

They already know about my precarious lifestyle. I live with a bisexual guy, have for many years. So that becomes a topic of conversation, of course.

The questions went like this:

1) So why are you looking for a woman, when you already have a male partner? Why do you want more?

2) Since he goes to bathhouses for his male fun, don't you and he use condoms when you are together?

3) What exactly are you hoping to find in women, and how do you visualize the relationship developing?

I don't mind the questions, perfectly natural given the situation. It helps me to sharpen my own ideas about what I want out of girlie dating. I find I am constantly doing this anyway. So these were my answers...

1) Greed, in a word. I am a greedy little bitch. I am Oliver, walking up to the headmaster, bowl in hand...."please sir (or ma'am, in this case), can't I have more?" Who decided for us that we should only hunker down with one mate? I have settled a lot of my issues with men when I met D; now I want to scratch the Woman Itch, which has been driving me off and on for much of my life. Having been so lucky in finding a great male mate, I am now, more than ever, hellbent to find The Female. I feel it's almost a balance thing. You try to establish, in your own mind, the two poles, male and female.

2) D and I certainly used condoms during much of the first year we got together. Then we had our HIV tests, we played it by the book before we finally lost the condoms. L seemed rather surprised, dare I say shocked even, that he goes to bathhouses, has protected sex with men, then comes home and has UNPROTECTED sex with me. Condoms are not foolproof, I say to them. But we try. And we succeed, given our safety record of being together 15 years now.

3) I hope to find a woman as easy to deal with as D has been for me. Would we all be under one roof? Don't know, I haven't been down this road before, and each case I hear of appears quite unique. So we would have to feel our way, so to speak, and find what works for us. Right now I think it better if The Woman be quite independent, she has her own life, her own living space. I would love to spend lots of time in that space, but it doesn't have to be a permanent thing. Uhauling does not appeal to me, in any form. I can visualize going on trips with her, long weekends away together. Physical enjoyment is at the top of my list. I want intensity, and am not afraid of that anymore. Threesomes? Not looking for that, D is really not into that many other women, unless they are like me in attitude. Of course he would like to meet and socialize a bit with her, if for no other reason than ascertaining she is not a loony.

After about half an hour of chat, D looks across the table at us girls and says, "Well, we're in love, how are you girls doing?"

We think we're doing ok. We all head back to the couple's small digs in Venice. The romance of Venice is vastly overrated. For years it was overpriced, crime-infested, drug-ridden. D and I know, we've bought them there. Now it is overpriced, crime-infested, drug-ridden. And Julia Roberts is moving into the area.

S and J struggle to make the rent in their tiny closet of an apartment. But the waterbed seems to be a major investment, and before long the four of us are rolling around naked on top of it. Just try having sex on a waterbed with other people onboard. Could the last moments on the Titanic have been anything like this? It's a wonder we weren't all getting seasick.

We split up at some point, D went into the living room with S, and I went into the bedroom with J. She has a really nice white body, nothing is too big, nor too small. She has never been with a woman before. I think we had an amiable time, I seem to recall going down on her. But for the life of me I can remember little else.

S was definitely into having his cock sucked, and reciprocating, but little else. D refers to these guys as the "Bi Orals." They're just too scared and unadventurous to try more. For some reason that eludes me, cocksucking can be a proper male activity, but more than that and the guy worries about that Fag Label. D of course wants more.

After all, any good Orthodox boy who's grown up getting fucked in yeshiva stairwells is certainly going to have no patience with guys who say, "Hi, I'm bi oral."

He wanted the world, the world in fact being S's lovely ass. Not to be, however. J and I came into the bedroom where the guys were playing, right at the moment where my partner D was trying to seat himself on top of S. We all played some more on the waterbed, and at one point we all toppled off onto the floor. The three of us thought it was hilarious, but the wife seemed quite annoyed by the whole episode.

She was already verbalizing her unhappiness at having to get up early in the morning to go to work. Wherever/whatever work was. We spent the night there, and J in fact did get up in time to head out to work. She was not happy at all about leaving us alone there, as if she knew we would promptly set about having more fun together the minute she left.

The minute she left we started having more fun together. It was quite lovely. The boys played with each other while I watched, then D fucked me good, then we made coffee and chatted and went our separate ways. We each knew we had a great time, just the three of us, but nobody wanted to comment on that.

We hear from S and J over the next few months, but it is difficult arranging more rendezvous. We never do hook up again. Then the connection seems to fade for good.

About two years go by, then out of the blue S calls me up at home. How did he get my number, I remember thinking. I must have given it to him.

"A blast from your past," he begins. Right away I recognize that raspy voice. Sounds just like Billy Idol, actually, I finally decide. I am feeling happy to hear from him again. Especially when he proceeds to tell me he and J have separated, a divorce is pending.

Quel surprise, thinks I. "I just want you to know, I'm not carrying any baggage," he says to me. Great, I'm thinking. Maybe now it can be just the three of us, just the way D and I had hoped it would be anyway.

Then S throws in the clinker. "So, are you still with D?" he asks. I realize then he's looking to separate me from my flock, he no longer seems in bi mode, he is on the lookout for a woman and I have become "it."

I remember my feeling of bitter disappointment. I am pretty much in league with D now, I wouldn't take on S without D there too. S sounds like he is now a pretty damn straight guy after all. And probably a pretty conventional one. My interest has already crashed and burned. We talk a bit more, then the conversation winds down. Nothing more to be said. The ship sails on.

Maybe I am turning conventional too, I start to wonder later. D and I are moving apace as a couple. I resisted that for the first couple of years. Monogamy has never been my thing, but I have been able to work through that over some time with D. I have had to learn that good things can come too in close relationships, and that now was the time and here was the person with whom I would undertake this journey. I was feeling I had made progress, so I didn't want my apple cart disturbed now by any "blasts" from my past.

But having sex, publicly, as a couple. With other Persons of Interest. Now, that's an idea we still like, and it's time is coming.

- - - - - - -

Fifteen years ago last weekend I managed to start working my way into a relationship. With a bisexual man. How strange, thought my female friends, gay and straight, who pretty much took me for a dyke and seemed to feel I had - momentarily at least - taken leave of my senses in grand style.

The fact he was as queer as I was did not matter to them. Now they could worry about my dying of AIDS.

The fact he was over fourteen years younger and quite nice looking had no impact either. If you want a baby, have your own, I heard. Or, you've got yourself a BoyToy. That he certainly was, and we had a lot of fun together.

I viewed the whole thing with some trepidation. "Regard it as an experiment," said my therapist, a young woman in training who I worked with for quite a while. I had never been in a long term relationship with anyone, so I felt her advice for now was good.

When D and I first hooked up, in that first fresh glow of our relationship, we did what apparently other bi couples attempt.

We went out on a hunting party, looking for another couple just like us. Mirroring becomes a big part of your equation, you are so blown away by the fact you found another human being quite like you in your bisexualness, that you need to pinch yourself.

And pinch another couple. Just to make sure it's all real.

We answer an ad in the local free press in Los Angeles, and meet a likely sounding pair who suggest drinks in Santa Monica. Our couple-in-waiting make their entrance, and they are identifiable right from the start. They've described themselves well, very well. S, the boy in this arrangement, makes eye contact with me as they're walking in the door.

It's an intense look, and I find myself wishing I could run across a broad or two who would look at me the way he does. His wife J is a beauty too, but for some reason it's S where our eyes land first.

He is pretty close to being an almost dead ringer for Sting, or Billy Idol. More Billy Idol, I think in retrospect. Personally I always loved that raspy rough voice of his and the fuck-you attitude; his drugs were probably badder too. S had punk blond hair, he was about six feet tall, strongly built, in black leather jacket and pants. And he's a Brit too, he sings with a local rock band.

I have no recollection of what she did for a living. Somehow marketing is clawing at the back of my brain. Actually though I have very little recollection about J at all. Other than a few comments she made while we chatted away over drinks.

I realized pretty quick that she was going to be the weak leg of that famous four-legged chair.

You know about the four-legged chair theory of polyamory? It takes four strong legs to make a good chair. But if one of them is not up to the task, it tends to make the rest of the chair a little iffy. This was J's situation. She didn't really really want to be here. She was doing this to keep an eye on him.

They had been married only a short while, but early on S began making noises about playing as a couple. He had grown up in the British school system, and we all know what THAT is like. Experiments with bisexuality become the norm. S was no exception, and he obviously enjoyed his experiments. Because here he was, some years later, ready to take up where he left off.

"Isn't he a dish?" J says to me quietly at one point. Dish was not the word, he was fucking gorgeous, with a fun, sarcastic kind of attitude about things. I concurred with her, trying not to drool over him as she and I talked.

But her comment made me realize why she was really here. He was going to do his thing with or without her, so she figured she had better enlist if she knew what was good for her. She couldn't prevent it from happening, but she could certainly keep an eye on things. So nothing would get out of hand.

What was her worst nightmare? I didn't want to go there. Numerous women I believe probably do exactly what she did. They have to. It's part of the grand American tradition of being "a good sport."

TO BE CONTINUED

I have only gotten a couple of rides in my entire life hitchhiking from women. They tend not to stop at all. When I drive now in the States, I always try and pick up women hitchhikers. I've been there and I know what it's like, so I try to help them out.

I climbed in, feeling extremely happy at what I thought was my new good fortune, and just happy to be moving again.

She seemed like a respectable, middle-class type, a bit hesitant at first in our conversation. But then she started to ask me a lot of questions. Usually when I hitch, I try to seuss out early where the driver is at, what he wants from me, why he may have stopped. Usually it's a way for them to pass the time, I feel. Especially if they are making a longish trip. They'll even put themselves through a few hours of hearing my abominable French to enjoy a bit of non-boredom.

This woman seemed to fit in that category. But then it felt like she was really zeroing in on me with her questions. She wanted something.

Around and around she flew, circling in on me. Then it dawned on me. She's making a pass at you, woman.

I tried to pretend I didn't really understand. Not very likely, since it was clear I had been understanding all the conversation up to this point. I couldn't chicken out now.

"Do you sleep with women," she was inquiring. Now she was watching me closely too, and I began to get really nervous. Her eyes were not so concerned about the road. She fixed me with an increasingly intense look.

I mumbled something. I could have answered, truthfully, "Of course I sleep with women." I was sleeping with men and women at the time, and this woman was right to pick up on that about me.

She must have been around 40, a really nice looking woman actually. Her dark hair was short and swept up over her ears, she wore a skirt and low heels and a pullover sweater. She had the flavor of an Italian woman, but her French was excellent.

I could see a wedding ring on her finger.

She was polite throughout the ride, but the probing continued. I was feeling very uncomfortable now. Something about her. Maybe it was the intensity she was starting to reveal in her questions. I sensed a great neediness there in her, and frankly it scared me.

I was starting to wish I were back roadside with my gardener friend. Something was not right here, and the hairs on the back of my neck were standing upright now, telling me so.

What did I imagine she was going to do with me? If I had consented to letting her take me home, wherever home was, what would have transpired?

Maybe it was the wedding ring. And my memory of a news story from some bay area free press rag, about a young lesbian who thought she was going home with a woman, only to find that the husband was lying in wait too, and proceeded to rape the girl, as his wife watched.

Today, of course, the idea of a family gang-bang would not phase me one bit. But back then, like I said, I was young and stupid and scared of so much.

I had already been in a threesome with a married couple, so this was nothing new. But the whole tone was different now, in this car, going down this road. It did not feel right to me. In fact, it felt scary, and much as I was into bravado and doing crazy stuff, this was not going to be one of those days.

I had her drop me off right after we crossed the border and reached the outskirts of Ventimiglia.

We parted politely, I thanked her, as if nothing had happened. In a way, nothing HAD happened. And yet it felt like everything had happened.

From the vantage point of the present, I look back on this trip and wonder, were I there now, I probably would have gone off with her. Probably. I tend to assume I am safe with nearly all women, I am strong enough and fit enough to fend them off.

But it was her psychological neediness coming at me in waves. That's what scared me. I liked things clean and tidy. I realized it was not going to be clean and tidy with her.

Does she pick up other female hitchhikers? Do they all get propositioned? I suppose if you are a married French housewife, with time on your hands and a Mercedes to tool around in all day, that you could line up a certain amount of mischief.

I hope so, anyways. It reinforces all the lovely notions I have about the French. I like to think there are other attractive but strange women roaming around out there, luring girls to their doom on the Riviera.

- - - - -

My favorite kind of weather for hitchhiking. Dark, overcast clouds on a cold November day. Good for me. The wind is picking up too. With any luck, I can get a ride from somewhere near Nice, along the French Riviera all the way across the border into Italy. But I have no luck at this, and end up waiting a couple of hours somewhere between Nice and Ventimiglia, which is the first town you hit just across the border into Italy.

I had flown to Nice from California to visit an old boyfriend. He was now separated from his wife, also a good friend of mine. She decided she wanted to leave her husband, her baby boy, to become a full-time lesbian. She returned to the States, gave me the other half of her plane ticket, and suggested I visit E in the small town he now lived in outside of St. Tropez. I did. But he and I were in different places now, and our long anticipated reunion did not quite go as either of us had planned.

So after a week or so visit, I decided to head out on my own. Back down into Italy, where I had visited some years earlier.

I like hitchhiking, it's fast, usually pretty reliable, and certainly, always, interesting.

But today had little traffic, and they must have been uptight French bourgeois types, not inclined to stop for yet another scruffy looking hippie kid standing by the road with a backpack. Thank God it wasn't summer, the roadside competition would have been fierce.

My theory about hitchhiking is, if you're female, you fly. Today was therefore an oddity. Maybe the gloomy weather had conspired to put every driver on the coast into a funk of sorts.

So as I stood there, and waited, I looked around the area, seeking distractions. I found one rather quickly in the guise of a Spanish gardener, who was working in front of a villa situated right by the road.

He saw me eventually, and ambled over for a chat. I could tell he was not French, but at first - given we were close to the border - I thought he might actually be Italian. But no, I heard him roll his "r's" in the best Spanish tradition, and realized he was a foreigner here too. It's funny, my French is far from perfect, but I can always understand the other foreigners when they speak it.

Speak it we did. We must have chatted for about five minutes about this and that, when I became aware he was peering at me more closely. Quite closely.

What came out of his mouth next really floored me. "So, are you a boy or a girl?" he inquired, somewhat hesitantly, like he had a wager on it. I was a little insulted at the time, but looking back on it, why wouldn't he ask?

I was late 20s at the time, fresh out of Berkeley, I had a lean, boyish frame, my blonde hair fell below my shoulders, I had that scruffy long-haired look that a lot of the boys travelling about had back then. Girls too. I wore battered jeans, a denin shirt, and I had a tan suede jacket to ward off the cold.

I should have replied, "Which one would you prefer I be, monsieur?" Or, "I can be either, it depends up to you." Hhmmm, which would he have preferred, I wonder. In retrospect today, that's what I would have said. But back then, I was young and stupid, and quick repartee did not come so easily. So getting annoyed with his question was the best I could do.

Now that we had established I was a female, he seemed relieved, and more interested. Luckily I saw a car coming and I stuck out my thumb. The driver stopped, wonder of wonders, so I was plucked away from this gardener and his quickly accummulating dark clouds of evil thoughts about what he might like to do with me.

The car was a Mercedes, and I felt good about things right away. Always nice to be in a nice car when you're travelling on the Riviera, I say. To my surprise, when I opened the car door to speak with the driver, I saw she was another woman.

TO BE CONTINUED