California Reaming - A Woman's Adventures In Polyamory

One of the enjoyable things I learned about in working for S was how the world treats you. Especially when you are rich and famous. It was amusing to see and hear how people reacted. Sometimes it drove S around the bend.

"You know," she starts fuming to me one day, "Just because you earn some money, people out there think you've suddenly forgotten the price of light bulbs." They think that, in amongst all your dinero, you won't miss one or two bucks here and there. Wrong. S was smart with her money, in spite of the efforts of others to separate her from it. And they come at you from out of the woodwork.

Take her plumber, for instance. S had trouble during the winter with the pipes in her house; they ruptured during the cold weather. The guy tried to fix things, but it just wasn't quite....proper. Then he has the nerve to sit down and write S a three page letter, basically saying that, because she had lived in many places and was used to a higher standard of living, she should not expect quite the same when she was at home in London. Well, please forgive me for breathing. She gave me the letter to read. It was rather amusing, in part because you would not expect plumbers - in the States at least - to write such nice English. OK guy, maybe you should not have become a plumber. But you are. So fix the stuff already and quit whining.

Even when you have money, it seems life is still not perfect. I poke fun at the Brits in general, and London life in particular. It's like living in the Third World, I joke to S. Except we don't get the fruit and the great beaches. Sadly, S is inclined to agree with me. The Brits are a monumentally inefficient bunch. In spite of Margaret Thatcher's best efforts at the time to whip them into shape. I am pleased to think of the fact that S did not pick one of her own, she picked me, the American.

Most evenings S relaxed at home, but on several nights she would go out to visit friends or some other activities. She had a cab service to pick her up. Out front S had her own car parked, but we never used it. Not once. And this after she had me put onto the insurance policy, just in case S and I went somewhere.

I meet T, S's long-time boyfriend. He is some ten years younger than S. Good for you, woman. T works at the British Museum. And he looks like he does: neatly trimmed beard, nice looking guy. He seems like a really straight shooter who enjoys S's company, rather than her money. I compliment S on her choice. She is pleased with that. Some weekends he stays over.

It's midway through by three month stay with S in London, and I plan some shopping sprees. I rarely shop at home, other than thrift stores, which I enjoy mightily and make out like a bandit in. I can navigate through them easily. Malls are not my thing. But London is the place for clothes horses, so out I went, determined to replenish my wardrobe for some time to come. When I get home S wants to inspect my loot. She is impressed I've managed to pick up a white tuxedo jacket for $25.

Near the end of my stay I get a chance to wear the finery. S and T and I go out to the current posh restaurant downtown, a French place. While there S has to say hello to people she recognizes. One dark-haired guy at the corner table with the horn-rimmed glasses looks vaguely familiar. It's Harold Pinter, one of my long-time culture heroes. S says hello to him. He's divorced now from Vivien Merchant, and is seated tonight with his current love, Antonia Fraser.

Over dinner S suggests I take a vacation when I finish my work with her in London. Where would you suggest I visit, I inquire. She ponders for a long moment, then says, "Tunisia."

We've talked a lot about the Middle East, S knows I have spent time there and seen most of the countries. After a summer of rain in London, I am more than ready for the late summer heat of North Africa.

So I book a package and fly into Sous, then by bus to the resort I am staying at. Not many Americans here at all, and the one or two I do meet seem like ripe CIA material. Instead I find three groupings: the Brits, the Germans, the French. Separately housed of course.

When I head out to the beach on day one, I make a rather surprising discovery. The women are all running around topless. My mouth drops open. S had told me ahead of time that she did not think foreign women did this, not in north Africa even at a resort. But lo and behold, they're doing it now, and not to be the odd man out, I yank my top off in nothing flat. Now we're living!

The Brits are the most forlorn-looking creatures on the beach, they look sadly out of place. Like very unhappy white bunny rabbits. For some reason, they just don't tan. The French are behaving in their usual animated and stuck-up fashion. They're just crazy. The Germans I probably feel most at home with, even though I don't speak the language. Give them a ray of sun and they're there. As naked as they can get. They LOVE the sun, and they have the tans to prove it. Real outdoor babes. Funny thing though, after healthy exercising and a bit of sunshine, what do they do? They light up cigarettes when they're taking the elevator up to their rooms. Amazing. I ask them politely if they could refrain, but they look at me as if I were crazy. Only recently do I hear that the Europeans are finally starting to crack down on smokers. It's taken them far too long.

It feels good being back in a hot Muslim country. And Tunisia is a Muslim country, no doubt about it, but Muslim light. They are a good-looking people, and I like going into the town of Sous and threading my way through the souks. I know enough French to get around and enjoy myself.

Near the center of town I stop for a cold drink, and happen to spot a really beautiful Tunisian woman making her way down the street. She is an absolute stunner, and she's dressed in western clothing. Her long dark hair is pulled up, she's wearing chic sunglasses. No veil for this little darling. No one seems to care what she's wearing.

I have a sudden impulse to follow her, to see where she goes, maybe to speak to her. But it's too bloody hot, I am enjoying the shade too much and the cold drink is irresistible. This part of the world is too hot to chase women. Were I on the other side of the Mediterranean, it might be different. But here the climate drives everything.

Tunisia concludes a wonderful summer. I fly back to England, rendezvous with S and getting my final paycheck before I fly home.

S heads off to her little studio apartment in Monte Carlo, where she will write the book itself. I get a postcard from her a few months later, showing a dinghy resting on the beach. It reminds us both of an episode from the book.

And that lesbian scene? Well, it did happen when the women are holed up on the island. S gave me no hints as to how it would progress. But when my copy of the finished novel came, I got to see for myself.

Why is it lesbians are always hotter on the page than they are in real life?

- - - - - -

My employer in London, a writer named S, had broken into writing as a newspaper woman. Her first big novel made a ton of money and went on to be one of the first big TV mini-series in the early 80s. It was a potboiler, pure and simple. But it managed to buy her a nice four-story townhouse in the happening part of London at the time, Camden Town. The Regents Park Zoo was quite close by, and if you happened to be alive around 4 a.m. or so, you could be serenaded by the stirring sea lions.

After our first day or so of working together, I had to confess I had not read her first big book. S laughed. "Don't worry, neither have I, really." She could tell it was not my style either.

But even if you're writing for a schlock market of housewives you still have to pull it together in a realistic fashion. The research really does have to count.

As the novel got under way, S had already decided to make one of the women bisexual. This was the character Susie, a flashy little blonde who seemed to have an eye out for every man around, tied down or not.

This seemed an odd choice to me and I had no hesitations about telling S that. One of the things she appreciated about me was that she saw I had no qualms about offering comments and criticisms. Intellectually I ran very well with her. I knew story and characters well enough to know what they needed to have along for the ride.

The Susie bisexual angle did not work for me at all, and so I argued that point with S. Not that Susie couldn't ever be bisexual; it's just the way S had drawn her was not yet convincing enough. She finally agreed with me and removed the bisexual bit.

Then S went in to the meeting at the studio with the Big Wigs with her first draft. As you might suspect, the first thing out of their mouths was, "So what happened to the lesbian angle?" S argued with them that it made no sense, but they didn't care.

Hollywood loves its lesbians. Especially the studio heads. And lesbians it will be. Back into the story went bisexual Susie. S and I just laughed. We're just whores doing a gig. Now get out of our way and let us lie down and do our thing.

S let me do my thing pretty much in my private time. She gave me the run of the top floor of her townhouse, which was actually a suite of rooms, with bedroom and a nice sitting room with a fireplace and bath.

S inquired politely if I required anything? I wondered outloud if she knew any...well, sources for illegal substances. She did. Presto bingo, right at five o'clock in the evening the doorbell rang and I happened to be right there to answer it. A neatly dressed young man was standing there. "I heard it was something of an emergency run," he said. The Pot Man Cometh. Thank you, sir.

Unfortunately I decided to be nice and offer S a finder's fee, of sorts. So I rolled her a nice big fat joint which she took to bed that night. I never expected her to smoke the whole thing, but damn if she didn't. It would have lasted me nearly a week.

"I couldn't move," she tells me the next morning. "All I could do was just....lie there in bed," she moaned. Gulp. You need supervision, I tell her back. We had a good laugh over that experience.

Then S inquired, "Would you like me to fix you up with some men?" As if not to sound too forward she added, "Mind you, I'm not suggesting that this will be a stud service, but I do know some people." Why can't it be a stud service, I should have quipped back. This surprised me. Because basically I hadn't thought about sex in London for the three months I was going to be working there. And basically because I was surprised she assumed I was heterosexual, something not many people took me for back at that time. Maybe she was politely giving me the benefit of the doubt.

Of course, now, I would have said, "Hhhmmm, men, yes, please fix me up." And about a week or two after that adventure, I would have gone to S and said, "Well that was fun, but how about a few good women? Surely you know some lesbians, don't you?" I mean, that's what writers are all about, isn't it? They know all these weird types. Still, it might have surprised her. A little bit anyway.

But I was still a bit shy at the time, and quite enamoured of my friend, Ms. Kar, back in L.A. I did not know where that situation would go, but while in London I had planned on nothing really sexually for myself. So I thanked my employer for her kind offer, but said I would take care of that myself.

Of more immediate concern to me was where the hell would I do my sporty stuff? And what sporty stuff would it be? S had already put her foot down about my bringing over my bicycle. Probably a wise move, as I would have had to readjust myself to driving on the left again and that would take a bit of time. So I gave up on the bike and found a local pool where I could swim my mile and a quarter, and a local Y where I could weight train. In between I ran about five miles through the city streets of London several nights a week.

We worked an eight hour day in S's office that overlooked the little garden she had in back. For some reason it rained nearly every day that summer in London. The temperature would be fairly warm, so the window would be open as we worked, and when the rain started it came down with such a cool hissing sound. Hell, monsoons sounded just like this. And sometimes the rain came as thick as it did in an Indian monsoon season. Our tropical story of women in danger was impinging upon our life in London.

The research was the biggest thing we worked on. I had lists of places to call and people to bother. I told S it was good she hired a woman like me, because I had been to the tropics and was enough of an outdoor girl that I could relate to what the women in the story were going through. If she had hired some prissy type who had never made it out of London, it would have been a disaster. I was the perfect tomboy for this.

Our interviews were quite fascinating for this book. The major coup we achieved was getting two Royal Marines to spill their guts for us over the course of a long day. Aided and abetted by a fabulous Indian meal at a restaurant around the corner, then followed by hours at home in the living room, plying the Manly Men with some damn good Scotch. They spilled their guts alright. We summoned a London cab at the appropriate time, poured the two guys into it and pointed them toward Victoria Station. We assume they made it home OK. Wonder what their wives thought.

S had learned in advance that the Royal Marines take pride in not spilling their guts about. Our pair's job was to provide p/r for the public, but of course in these matters it seems their real job is to obfuscate whenever possible. Hence our copious efforts to wine and dine and basically seduce them. Intellectually of course.

The question I wanted to ask them really occurred to me later, namely, "How many ways do you know to kill people?" They had that look about them. One of them looked a lot like John Newcombe, the tennis great of the early 70s. With long sideburns and a handlebar moustache.

I like to think S got good value out of me. I know she did. Early on she had told me about her last assistant. A British woman whom S seemed to know a bit before as a friend. But it didn't end in friendship, that's for sure. One night S came downstairs for a late-night nibble and happened to find her assistant standing at the xerox machine, copying portions of S's diary. My mouth dropped open and I started to laugh. It was so bloody cheeky I just had to hahaha may way through it.

S liked that I reacted that way. "I could tell right away that you were a 'normal' person," she said to me. She liked that. She wanted that in her next assistant. She liked my level of good old American get-up-and-go. "The people over here don't seem to have a work ethic anymore," she complained to me. I was about to say that few persons of decent repute had ever attributed a work ethic to moi, at any time. But I held my tongue. I think she was confusing my energy and chutzpah with a more truly Protestant thing, which is not me. When I am working creatively though, I am happy.

S loved Americans, and had spent time there. She had spent time everywhere. It sounded like a lonely life though, at times. S had been married in her salad days to a really big figure in the world of architecture. Now a Knight. Their divorce had been rough. S had two sons by the man. J was a hot young clothing designer in the London scene, a dead ringer for David Bowie in his Thin White Duke stage, same type of deep voice actually. And flaming to beat the world. Gay as gay could be. But a fun guy. You were doing well when you got an invite to one of J's parties. He had a house just down the mews street from his mother. I met J when he dropped in one day. I came home from a run and saw a hot-looking young man, all in white, doing a shoulder stand on the carpet of S's study. Nice ass, I was about to say. But thought better of it. After all, he could be anybody.

The other son, S, I only spoke with on the phone. Apparently my deep voice intrigued the hell out of him. "Mother, is that your assistant? My God, that voice!" He wanted to meet me but it never quite panned out, I don't recall why. S took after his mom, and had gone into the newspaper business.

His mother had one of the best editors in the business, Michael Korda, son of the famous 1930s film director, Alexander Korda. "When you've been critiqued by MK," she told me once, "usually you want to go and open the nearest window and throw yourself out." Exactly what you want from an editor worth his salt. If you're not on the knife's edge of life and death with your editor, then it's probably time to find another one.

TO BE CONTINUED

In the spring of 1985, I had an opportunity to work for a rather famous writer. She and I had met on the Sony Pictures lot in Culver City, California, back when it was called Lorimar-Telepictures. The studio had flown her into L.A. to write an outline for a mini-series, after which she was going to return to London to write the novel version of said story. I had recently graduated from film school, and to pay the bills I signed up for the studio temp pool. The powers that be recognized my writing background, and hooked me up with this lady. I was to be her assistant, typist, and generally her second brain on the project.

They stashed her at the fabulous Bel Air Hotel, a place I had not been to before our meeting of course. Why would I go there? I can't afford it. But if you can afford it, and you want to go to L.A. and not have anyone know you're there, you probably want the Bel Air. It's a lush, sprawling Mediterranean-style hotel, with lovely bougainvillea, a large swimming pool, and privacy up the wazoo. Orgies could be going full-tilt in the suite next door, but you'll never hear them. And we certainly made no peeps ourselves, other than the shuffling of papers. Lots and lots of papers. Between shufflings, we ordered lots of room service, who arrived with big pots of wonderful cafe au lait that we drank like water and ten dollar hamburgers, served covered on a silver tray.

I watch S try and eat her hamburger. Actually, she takes her knife and fork and cuts it in half first. I tease her about that. Before I'm done with you you are going to learn the proper way to eat a hamburger.

The writer's name was S, and she had rather antiquated methods of working. Even by 1985 standards, when computers were just coming along. She liked writing in long hand, then having the notes typed out. S explained to me why she would not want to buy a computer.

"My methods don't suit me on a computer," S said one day. She would literally cut out and scotch tape the strips of paper together. I understood immediately and felt the same. When I would come to write my own material later in the decade, I relied a lot on what I learned from S. Like her, I would start my ideas in notes in long hand. Then I would type them out on the simple computer I had back then.

S made a joke one day, about how the studio execs would go ballistic if they ever knew how she really worked there in those long days we spent working in her suite of rooms at the Bel Air. Didn't Jack Kerouac also end up with a huge roll of paper on a spool that was the first draft of "On The Road?" We literally had a roll we could push across the floor.

S told me one day something I have never forgotten, about writers and writing. And she knew all the big people. William Peter Blatty (whom she called Billy), Neil Simon. William Goldman. There were three or four other people, men and women, that S lumped in the group. Herself included. That group consisted of the top-flight writers that Hollywood would pay big bucks to come up with stuff. It's only a very small handful of people and they all seem to know each other.

S said to me, "You know, people think writers are always worried about people stealing their ideas. But we don't think about that. We have ideas up our wazoos. But they are very reluctant to share their methods with people." For S, the method was everything. I understand what she meant. Writers really never run out of ideas. Ideas are cheap. But the method by which one treats the idea. That's what counts.


The story was an interesting one. Basically, an early version of the TV show"Lost," only with women. A group of couples attend a business conference on a Papua New Guinea style island. While there, the island goes through a military coup. The husbands and wives get separated, the husbands are all lined up against the wall and shot. The wives run for their lives into the jungle, where they have to survive until they can be rescued. Robinson Crusoe with broads. Swell.

It was interesting to see how a best-selling writer puts together a book. S was from a background in journalism; she had been the first woman editor of The Observer. S was known for her impeccable research, and this is where I came in. Having spent time in the tropics, I had managed to acquire about a quarter of the diseases the women eventually came down with. Things like dengue fever and leishmaniasis, the latter being especially horrific. You start with infected sand fly bites, and quickly proceed from there with scratching, germs arriving and before long you have open, oozing sores, mostly on the lower legs. Lovely. Sepsis and death set in if you don't stop the infection in time.

The research was quite staggering in its array and variety. Lots of things I could describe to S already, like what the air is like in the tropics just before the monsoons hit. Suddenly, there is this calm, followed by a sudden hiss of rain coming down in sheets. She had travelled the world a lot too, so we could bounce off ideas about the places we had seen and how they actually were.

As an American, I was also useful to S about life in the States, when we go through our sporting seasons, what game is played when. Background research that I could help her flesh out.

And of course, being we have hot-blooded women cloistered together in a remote location, one has to ask, "So, where's the big lesbian scene?" Or scenes, if we want to be really hopeful.

Well, that was there too. Albeit with a number of misgivings.

TO BE CONTINUED

What does my partner Dave like to laugh at? His humor is strange, sometimes stranger than mine I think.

He has carried around this little cartoon for quite a while now. It is illustrative of Dave's humor.

The cartoon is from an old Hustler Magazine. Of all things. And it has nothing to do with sex. Of all things, considering the source is my man Dave.

It shows a crowd gathered to watch a man being burned at the stake. Medieval times. It's all very matter of fact. Before the poor victim succumbs, a man in the crowd points to his potato, now baked in the embers, and says to the burnee, "Hey would you mind kicking out that potato for me?"

My sample is (probably) even worse. It shows a redone version of that classic news photo from the Viet Nam War, of the naked little girl fleeing down the road, her clothes burned off from the napalm. Only now the cartoon highlights what the Walt Disney people were trying to do circa 1990, as reported in the New York Times. If you are ready to believe this, Disney wanted to create a theme park on the east coast, consisting of nine playlands, with themes ranging from the impact of slavery on America right up to the wrenching era of the Viet Nam War. God, what goes on in the minds of these people anyway?

The cartoon is brilliantly reworked from the news photo, so that the naked fleeing girl and other villagers are now joined by Goofy, happily running along the road too.

Holy Christ, I said when I saw the cartoon. This is one of the most damning cartoons I have ever seen in my life. Although the Iraq War recently reminds me of another cartoon, maybe by the same guy, who knows.

This recent cartoon apparently aroused the wrath of the Pentagon and Donald Rumsfeld in particular, as it shows an amputee lying in a hospital bed, being visited by The Man From The Pentagon. He says to the soldier, "Now you're battle hardened."

People yelled and screamed about this, but in our book it's a brilliant cartoon. Can anything say more resolutely how stupid the war in Iraq has become? This cartoon nails it. Sorry to say.

Humor for Dave and I most certainly revolves around pain. That's just the way it is.

That's a twist of the knife you're getting, by the way. Did you think it was really a lemon?

- - - - - - -

My friend P and I head up to Harbin Hot Springs up above the California Napa Valley. P has been there many times. I have never been there before, in fact I had never heard of the place. And me who had lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for most of the late 60s into the late 70s.

Harbin was a hippie hangout back in the early 70s. Now the crowd arrives more in BMWs and they are definitely more gentrified. Harbin is a large spa, clothing optional. Meaning you get to run around naked in the main tub areas. They have a large-sized heated swimming pool, a large hot tub and smaller ones, saunas, cold plunges. For extra bucks they give a whole gamut of massages, body work, whatnot.

The Human Awareness Institute crowd seems to have discovered this place too. We arrive Sunday early afternoon. The weekend crowd is leaving, the kids are going home too. It's a more raucous place on the weekends, and according to my friend P it can sort of turn into a sex party if you're lucky and happen to be there on a Saturday or a weekend night. So we get to see Sunday, and a bit of Monday too. Monday is much nicer. Quiet, few people. But on the weekend there is definitely a more cruisey feel.

The large hot tub is dimly lit and quite lovely in the evening, and a goodly number of people are in it. P gives me a sample of "watsu," a kind of water massage. Your partner holds you against her chest in the water, and gently twirls your body in the pool. It feels very relaxing and calming. Of course, if you are a male, you are more than likely to get an erection. If you don't there's something wrong with your masseuse. It's a very sensuous experience.

P gets a Swedish massage while I chat with an interesting older British woman in the communal kitchen. You can stash your purchases of food in the fridge. The kitchen is large and has all the cooking utensils one would need.

Unfortunately P and I have a rather contentious debate just before retiring for the night in our tent that P has brought along. For about $25 bucks, a person can camp alongside the creek, and use all the facilities. It's a great deal. So we've pitched the tent, smoked a joint, and next thing I know we are in the middle of a debate.

About anger, whether or not it is useful. I say yes, it is a trigger to alert the person. Of course what we do with our anger is another matter. But in and of itself, I think anger can be quite a useful thing. P does not agree with me. She finds it totally destructive and a negative force from the get-go.

Ah, P, you are truly a child of the 60s! And I am no longer. Trent Reznor and NIN and Ministry occupy my soundwaves now. Screw the classic rock.

So we argue, and smoke the joint, and I tell P about how angry I felt recently, after a night alone in the city. You don't want to spend much time in San Francisco now after dark. It is just getting too dangerous and dirty a place. Crime has soared there now. I had dropped a friend off, and while waiting for a light to change I saw some black guys who started throwing rocks at my car. I managed to get away, but it was a scary moment. I told P that part of me wanted to gun the car up the curb and into the bastards. She was quite upset with me.

Wow, numerous times in my life I run across women who have a hard time dealing with anger. Mine or anyone else's. P and I close the evening on humorous notes, finally, and we both end up sleeping well.

I don't think it's caused inharmony in the weekend. We head back to town. On the way we have another discussion about Disney's Bambi movie, and what a traumatic experience it was for P and I as kids. I said I was going to go and post something on Craigslist, like "Did You Survive Bambi?"

I enjoy P's company. But we seem not to have a long shelf life together. We start slacking off in our pool playing. I run across P at a few Santa Cruz socials, but then she seems to drop out of sight for a while.

Friends say she had to have sinus surgery. After she recuperates, I know she was eager to head back to work. She had no health insurance, so working off her medical bills was probably at the top of P's To Do list.

She heads up to north Berkeley to stay for a while with her daughter, and I do not see P after that. I enjoyed the woman. She had the right kind of head. In the end, I don't really know how she saw herself. Was she bisexual? Lesbian? Queer? Those words did not seem to need to cross her lips. She just did her own thing, and inspires me to carry on in the same fashion.

- - - - - - -

Last time I began writing about my new friend P, who lives over in Santa Cruz. We never became lovers, although the idea seemed to be hovering in the air, I thought. Perhaps for her too. It's just I don't think we knew what to do with each other.

Other than to play pool. Which we did on a pretty regular basis last spring. But why not go down the other road too? You know the thoughts occur, especially when you meet another gay or bisexual woman and she is seemingly unattached at the moment. For some reason though we did not, and perhaps it was better we did not.

I could probably describe P as being somewhat polyamorous, and probably bisexual as well, at least at some points in her life. After all, she tells me she has a daughter, now married and just delivered of a baby herself this year. P seems to have several women floating around when I first meet her.

One of them is named B. B drops in on P one day, and as it's a rainy day with not much cooking outdoors, the cooking moved indoors, as it were. They ended up hanging out and then having sex together. It all sounded wonderfully casual and easy the way P described it to me. Why is she describing this to me, I wonder. Am I being sent a signal? I am unsure.

P describes herself as a very "sex-positive" person. That was another term I had not heard until about a year or two ago. At first I thought I had misheard. Isn't everyone sex positive really? No, they are not. Again, it is a term that seems specifically derived from the lesbian community, the same that is afflicted with that other malady, lesbian bed death.

Do gay men describe themselves as sex-positive? I wonder. I think not. Women, don't you love them?

P tells me she has been to older age lesbian functions, and she does not fit in at all. I can see why. The same reason I don't. We are both fit, physically very active, and sexually very active. The group in our area is full of very decrepit gay women. Very few keep themselves even remotely together after forty, it seems. It is sad. She and I feel no sense of common experience there at all.

For my friend P, her situation may be complicated by the fact she was raised in England until her teens, her U.S. military father was stationed there. So she has a great British accent, and given her deep voice and looks, she reminds me very much of the singer Marianne Faithfull. She is well-educated, and well-travelled.

Another experience that impacted her strongly occurred in the late 60s, early 70s. P lived on the original commune of that era in Tennessee, called The Farm, I believe. This is probably what makes her different. Not the fact she is gay, or bi, or polyamorous. But that she came out of that hippie era. The counterculture ethos stays with you, even if you do make heavy inroads into yuppiedom.

P hasn't gone down that road, thank God. She is a free spirit. I recognize her as such.

P works as an independent contractor restoring old houses in Santa Cruz. It is very physical work, and she says she does not need to do anything physical beyond that to stay in shape.

P turns me onto one of the two best sex parties I have attended. It's connected with the Human Awareness Institute people. I had not heard of them before, but after attending the party up in the Sebastopol area I decided they were a fun and pretty crowd to hang with. I let P know I had a blast.

Not many lesbians or bi women seem to really dig sex parties. Monogamy is more likely to be their order of the day. P is unusual in this regard.

I am curious about her friend A. P tells me something about her. Apparently she is very bi, and at a point in her life - late 40s now - where she really feels a need to develop ties with men. That's probably a hormonal thing, I can relate to that as I recall my feelings in my forties. Your body is getting ready to enter menopause, so it's telling you, "It's now or never, baby." If you want to have a baby, that is. Not that A does, but obviously it's a feeling that moves her towards male persons. A sounds not very successful though, at least at this point where P is describing her friend to me. She had a rather odd blackout too when she was with a male sex partner. She woke up the next morning with nary a clue as to who the guy was or how she got there. Wow! We girls and our blackouts, what's going on here? Our guardian angels have to do a little overtime when we get in that mode.

So sorry. Apologies all around. Is this what they mean by the Wages of Sin?

TO BE CONTINUED

My friend P lives over the hill in Santa Cruz, and we started hanging out together a bit last spring. She had put an ad on Craigslist, just looking for a woman she could play pool with. I had been looking to get back into it myself, so it was good timing. She was not quite as good as me, but she was improving fast, so we had some good matches down the road in Capitola at Fast Eddie's. Tuesday night was a freebie for ladies.

P and I found a number of things in common. She is also over fifty, and in great shape too. Everything about the woman is imposing, starting with her height. She is about six feet tall, big-boned but lean, with a slow and relaxed way of walking. Her hair is cut straight down near shoulder length, ash blonde. Usually she likes to wear a colored bandana over her head.

Her voice is very deep and distinctive. Before we met, after I had spoken with her on the phone to confirm our meeting time, I told a friend that this P woman sounded like a tranny. I wasn't sure. But then she may have wondered about me, since my voice sounds really deep too.

I'm glad we did not let our voices get in the way! Meet we did. P rents a room in this big old house near the university. It is huge and spacious beyond belief and it is very easy to feel lost in it. P's room is up the wide wooden stairs, and has a view overlooking the ocean.

But it's not the view of the ocean that really grabs me when I first enter the room. It's those gorgeous color photographs on her wall I'm looking at. Gawking might be better. Pictures of P and some of her circle of lesbian and bisexual women friends. Doing all sorts of yummy erotic things to/with one another, like fisting each other, wearing strap-ons, and just having fun in general.

They are mind-boggling, beautiful pictures. Both lovely to look at and very erotic. The combination is wonderfully achieved. I almost feel like bursting into tears. This was what I was looking for when I re-entered the fray of female dating again. Experiences like this.

Immediately I want one of the photos. It shows P and her friend A, a lovely looking girl in her early 40s, with long curly auburn hair. They are lying side by side, naked, gazing happily into one another's eyes. It is a beautiful photo, because of the energy there between the women.

P is pleased by my reaction, but not surprised. Everybody reacts that way apparently. But she says she would have to ask A's permission; they are after all quite naked, and A doesn't know me from Adam. Or Eve, I guess we're talking.

Those photos. I can't get them out of my mind. We go off to play pool but those images.

I think I want to work my way into P's Inner Circle of friends.

To Be Continued

Last time I was continuing to write about my friend N, who tells me she is doing visualization work with her yoga instructor to call into her life a female partner. I have always been of the opinion that these are useful exercises, and sometimes quite effective. Over the years I have also busied myself with astrology and the Tarot.

Part of me now feels these things reflect something about our need to control our environments. I felt like I did not want to leave anything to chance, so I went looking for certainties. But really, there are none. And there should be none. The universe does not seem to work that way.

If I am going to sit down and visualize a lover, it is going to be someone who probably I should not be involved with anyway. What I am visualizing in other words may have little to do with who might really be appropriate for me. I only think they'll work out. Too much ego talking, perhaps.

I want I want I want. Can't we hope someone can be called into our life in just a general way? Do we need to spell things out in great detail? And if we can't get what our first choice is, so to speak, can we be happy with the second, or even the third?

For instance, I know that my brain could never have programmed Dave, my partner, into my life. I was not capable of visualizing a male other than someone who was a lot like me, with many sporty interests, maybe a yen for lots of foreign places and travel, a love of intellectual things and a passion for films.

When I met Dave I was busy placing personal ads to meet someone who was quite atypical from him. He has told me himself that, had he read one of my ads, calling for a guy who could cycle fifty miles on a bike, he would have said, "Fuck this bitch and the great outdoors and the horse, or bike, she rode in on."

I never would have found him had I persisted in my egomaniacal way of phrasing my personal ads. And yet Dave has turned out to be just exactly what the universe would and should have ordered up for me.

The fact he was bisexual was more than I could have hoped for. It was always in the back of my mind I suppose that a bi person would be the way for me to go. He would "get" my attraction to other women, I felt. And he would grant me permission to pursue those interests, as I would grant him the same rights with other males. So I lucked out in finding a guy who was even more happily bisexual than I was.

I had not necessarily intended to look for a younger man, either, but it worked out that way. Looking at my chart, I can see astrologically that this was certainly in the cards. My 7th House of Partners reveals all: a Gemini sun, indicating a partner who comes to me much later in life (when I was 45), the planet Uranus closely conjunct the sun (indicating highly unusual things about this partnership, and also a fierce measure of independence). Uranus is also the ruling planet of Dave's sign, Aquarius. Mercury is also conjunct in this mix, indicating younger persons. It also indicates a relationship based on communication and mentality.

So, he was there all the time, but I just had to get out of the way and let his train come into the station so to speak.

Maybe this is what I want to tell my friend N in Los Angeles. We rarely get what we want, in exact terms. But like the Stones' song, you do get what you need. It takes some pains to see through the stuff I think I really want, as opposed to finding out what it is I may need. And people seem frightened of their needs. We would all much rather go after the "wants," just because it leads us to think (falsely) that we are in control.

That lovely UPS package we are waiting on from the universe takes its own damn time. And it arrives in ways we might not imagine, in a form we may not be capable of recognizing, or at a time when we think it's bloody inconvenient.

But before we send it back to the manufacturer, maybe we should give it a chance, and be open to what the possibilities are. There may be a real gem waiting for us at the bottom of the soup bowl.

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My friend N in Los Angeles is looking to find a woman friend, and I figured I would keep my eyes open for her. I spend lots of time on dating sites for women, and I see lots of profiles. Why would I want to help her find someone when I feel like I want to run around the court with her myself, so to speak? Well, it feels like less of a sting to me if I could manage to hook her up with someone appropriate.

Who is appropriate? Recently N wrote to me describing some visualization work she is doing with her yoga instructor. N is big into yoga as well as tennis, and in fact visited an ashram in southern India to take a yoga course earlier this year. They are working on calling up images of whom N would like as a partner.

She writes to me that she is not especially interested in dating a tennis player type, or a jock for that matter. Why, I wonder? Are they too big and bubbly? You know, the softball types of girls. That's usually about as far as the gay women get with sports. On the other hand, I thought I would always love to hook up with a woman who shared my athletic interests especially.

But maybe N is on to something. Maybe jocky girls just don't work out, after all. N writes, "I am interested in someone who has a creative profession, makes enough money to buy a house with me, is femme, can have a political and cultural conversation on the level of someone who reads the New Yorker and the New York Times, and is stylish and interested in sex. If you find one of those, send her my way."

Hell, if I find one of those rare birds I'll keep her, sorry N. Can't you hear the humor in her words, and realize why it's there? Women like this, straight or gay, just don't grow on trees. Especially in the dyke world. I feel for N. She has herself a chore. Being late fifties and a woman as well-travelled and educated as N is, she is going to have problems finding a lover. But I think N is quite a catch. Can't we even be fuck buddies? But that's not even possible, I no longer live in L.A.

In my Magic Wand World, I would like to go there, at least once with N. To see what that experience with her is like. It reminds me of moments earlier in my life, when I would arrive at a certain point with a number of my women friends. We were compatible in many respects, but quite often they were not interested in going further. Why can't be just be friends, they would say. I didn't understand either why we just couldn't be friends. But something else was pushing me to move further up the mountain, as it were.

Carl Jung wrote once about a dream where he was in a vast house, and he could explore all the rooms, except one. That was off limits. I feel this way often with women. Our friendship is like a vast house, I want to go inside all the rooms. I don't want to hear, "This door is closed."

N and I talk pretty intensely about this over the phone one night. "We have discovered so much," I find myself saying. We have many interests in common, and it has been so interesting discovering them that I ask myself, what else could we discover together? It feels unique to me to find a woman like N, and I certainly want to go into every room in the house. She's an explorer, and so am I. And yet this door stays closed.

Suck it up, I tell myself. You are a big girl. Indeed I am. And I have done a lot of work on myself, psychologically speaking. Fifteen years ago or so, this situation would have felt overwhelming and highly unpleasant. Now it is annoying. It sits far more comfortably on my shoulders than before.

After N and I have fully expressed ourselves to one another, we feel we can continue our friendship at least. It has become a very rich and mentally stimulating one. Usually I am not interested in hanging around if a woman is not inclined to go a sexual route with me. But N is compelling enough that I find our time together rewarding. I write to her that this may in fact turn out to be one of the richest female experiences I ever have in my life.

And sex will not rear its Medusa-like head at all.

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