A rose and a bottle of whisky.

Last summer, I was packing for a camping trip to an island in the St. Lawrence River when I found myself exploring a dating site. I'm really selective about whom I might start contacting through those things, but when I happened upon her profile and saw her picture, I blinked a lot and literally stopped dead as my jaw dropped. It wasn't just her look, but the vibe I got as I read her words. I wanted to see her in a 20s flapper dress. I wanted to watch her bounce and jump on a bed as one of her images showed her doing in a Las Vegas hotel. I wanted to get drunk on her exuded happy energy, her healthy and free playfulness, her sensual and experimental sex.

It was already a very challenging time for me, the closing scenes to a long, slow, tragic opera. People, places, and things in my world were dying, and I was resolutely trying to learn everything I needed to while also defiantly adapting and overcoming to what possibilities could be ahead. Just being on the dating site felt like one tiny step toward a bigger picture of personal revolution.

The truth is, I never expected I'd actually meet her, but over the weeks and months that followed, she became my crack of sunlight.

The email I initially sent was just a word of praise and admiration.

"This is just a note to say hello and to tell you that I think you are dropdead gorgeous," I wrote. "No, I don't make a habit of writing that to women on this site. No, really. Your attitude captures my attention. You strike me as someone who is capable of being both scandalously electric and sensually feline, depending on your whimsy of the moment. You're articulate, have a keen eye with a wit to match, and you very probably have some serious cajones. Damn, but I like that. A lot."

She wrote back. We discussed the benefits and travails of being non-traditional people in a compulsive world, dancing in the rain, rolling down hills, starving to be around trees while also celebrating the decadence of city living. News of my camping trip left her breathless. The way she openly shared her sense of wonder and play melted my bitter cynicism.

"I wanted to be a fighter pilot, an astronaut, a poet," she replied. "I have skinny dipped and I like being nekkid in general. For wine it's cabernet in the winter, gewurtztraminer or pinot grigio in the summer. I'm a beer lover extraordinaire, but whiskey is the beverage of choice. Up close, belly buttons are SO bizarre to me.

"I love to drive fast. I say things like 'poetry is the burlesque of writing.' I love 50s pin-ups. I like to dress up as them and as lumberjacks. I know I really like someone if they'll go off the beaten path with me. I live for close human connections, I have a nice voice, I cook spicy meals, I examine plants, bugs and the sky all the time. I write down my dreams as often as I remember to. 'Licentious' is one of my favorite words and I like you a lot because you're encouraging my inherent narcissism. Oy."

But the big shift in our emails, the moment when our friendly and slow flirtation changed gears into a new and more heart-stopping direction, was when she posted something smarmy and I "threatened" her with a spanking.

"You really must be cautious when you say this sort of thing," I wrote, typing with a smirk. "Do you really want me to put on that particular air, that particular shirt, that particular presence? I mean, hey, I'm perfectly cool with being your equal, your potential new friend, someone with whom you're flirting with... and yet, you wayward lady you, you would elicit something even further, something even more intimate, and playfully sinister?

"I can't possibly believe that by writing something like "please sir, may I have another?", you couldn't possibly imagine the potential result? The nature of consequence? Are you suggesting that you deserve to be splayed across my lap, your hands gripping the legs of a sturdy wooden chair, your bobbysoxed toes barely touching the floor as you vainly attempt to balance yourself across my thighs? That your tender behind should be exposed to the candlelit air as the flannel pajamas, or delicate panties, or stonewashed jeans that you happen to be wearing are slowly peeled from your quivering skin? That you await the attitude adjustment that you so richly deserve? Desire? Is this what you are suggesting?

"You forgot to capitalize that 'S' in "Sir". You deserve something for that alone, hussy."

Ooo. Big moment. I already decided that I Really Liked this woman, and somewhere deep inside me I knew that I had opened a very intimate door. I had shown her just a hint, a whisper, of my Topspace, and had done so without preamble. My logic was simple and from the belly: this was a part of me, and if I wanted to be honest to both myself and any potential new partner, I had to share that sooner or later. That kind of self-awareness and acceptance had become part of a lesson I was grasping during those days in my relationship life, and so the opportunity having shown itself, the risk was taken.

Still, watching my inbox, it knawed at me that maybe I had overstepped a boundary and made her uncomfortable. Was she into this? I prepared myself for disappointent, for the possibility that she would stop emailing me altogether for being such a freak. It was a few unsettling days before she responded.

"I accept.

"Sir, you are too right. I must be more careful with my words. Not because I disliked your response: yes, yes, please, I do want that shirt, that air, that look. Playfully sinister, I'm happy to delve into, but you're right, more initimate indeed, and I should learn my lesson in the possible consequences of my waywardness. The result I didn't give enough thought to: I was naive in my dangling of this fruit. I was enticing something I knew not, something I foolishly thought I could handle. Thank you for smartly calling me to task. You are right, Sir, about my suggestion. Right, spot, on. I never could have predicted you. I never could have suspected what immensely strong desire would waltz unannounced into my life."



We started talking on the phone not long after that, and we would go on for hours. The phonesex was fabulous fun, and she boasted to her friends about it. The afternoon she jilled herself at the public phone in her office building as I listened to her cum remains one of her favourite early memories of our play. Her girlfriend at the time got playfully sick of hearing about me.

I was in a world of bliss when, later on, I enjoyed the site of her city's skyline approaching me as I cruised on the highway. With each passing mile and truckstop, I felt all of the angst that was in my world at the time slip away from me. I was moving forward in more ways than one. I felt free throughout the entire drive, eager to meet her in person.

The sun was shining bright through the trees that stood along her street. I sat in my car for a while, relaxing, breathing deeply as I meditated upon what I was about to do and listening to the birdsong around me. A rose and a bottle of whisky were grasped in my fist as I rung the doorbell, and all the weeks and months of sharing came to a beautiful, deliciously tense moment when I saw her coming down a set of stairs and open the door. I met her slate-blue eyes and her radiant smile for the first time.

What followed from there that day was pure, sweet, liberating gifts from Aphrodite.



Happy anniversary, baby. Love you.