Panties and petroleum.

At the King Street border between the pretentious, yuppie, upstart Liberty Village and the historic, downtrodden, depressed Parkdale 'hoods of Toronto stands a high-walled, gated, ominous compound. It's the city's Road Operations and Transportation Services building, where the heavy machinery and working vehicles that maintain the city's streets are kept. Inside, boiler room dispatch offices respond to emergency calls regarding flooding, fallen trees, and other city problems.

My current work routine takes me past this building several times a day. And every single time, I'm reminded of the Grrl. It isn't just because the West Queen West pad that we shared is only a few blocks away; that happened later. It's because of the dark evening when we were inside that compound together and where I first saw her (mostly) bare body.

Flute was a friend of mine. A sometime handyman and fulltime freespirit, he played a charming First Nations flute when he wasn't helping someone put up drywall. He worked inside this compound at the time, handling dispatch calls to ferry emergency repair vehicles to Toronto homeowners who were freaking out over this thing or another. And he had access to city vehicles.

My situation was different then. I didn't own a car at the time. For reasons that escape me, I was unable to pick the Grrl up from the airport, and Flute was more than happy to offer me a ride with a van that he was using regularly. He and I had a bond about the women in our lives, and he was totally cool with helping me out when it came to Someone Important Coming To Visit.

It was the first time she had come to Canada, the first time we would be together. After our first meeting, we were touch-and-go for a while as she mediated matters with a previous partner. By the time we were planning her visit, she had left that boyfriend and I was excited to pieces about the all-clear signal.

I remember watching her stroll down the walkway at the airport. The roses I gave her. Our first, real kiss. Taking her and her luggage to That Van.

That Van was not exactly a chartered limousine. A bluecollar working vehicle, it was an awful shade of sky blue with countless scuffs and dents and marks and stains. The interior was packed with plumbing and electrical equipment, used rags, safety gear, hardhats. Flute was a smoker, so on the grimy dash was a mayhem of crushed Du Maurier boxes and snubbed filters along with the old Pepsi cans and dozens of torn road maps, fuel receipts, work orders, and the like. Both the seats and flooring were stained and worn. A side mirror was cracked. Rust bordered the double panel doors on the side. And throughout it all, the lingering, dense odor of old oil, gasoline, kerosine. It was a scent that was so deep that it almost had a texture, as if you could feel it entering into the pores on your face if you found yourself around it for too long.

Romantic, no?

I loaded the Grrl's luggage into a reasonably clean spot in the back, she found some acceptable space on the rear benchseat, and the three of us laughed as we pulled away from the airport.

She was hungry. I already planned on taking her to dinner, but as it turned out, traffic had kept Flute away from his duties longer than he had hoped. It became necessary for him to stop by the Road Operations compound for a short while. The Grrl smiled through the minor inconvenience. We decided to do dinner first, after this detour, and go back to my pad later.

It was growing dark. After we pulled into the compound, Flute secured a gate behind us and parked That Van in a small alley before he dashed into an office for almost an hour.

The Grrl and I relaxed, talked, passed the time. We kissed some more. I was feeling the first stirrings of what would become one of the deepest love affairs of my life.

Practical-minded, the Grrl asked me to fetch a few things from her luggage. Since we were doing dinner first, she decided to change clothes. Here and now. Then and there. In a dirty van that was parked in a narrow alley between two foreboding municipal buildings, on a stained and cruddy backbench. I fumbled a little in the twilight, but found and returned with some fresh pants and a very bohemian sweater.

Still seated, she smiled. Both of the van's center doors were wide open as I then watched her slowly remove the black Tshirt she was wearing to reveal a tight sportsbra. We talked, casually. She kept smiling. She removed her Doc Martens to lower the khaki camoflage pants she had on, leaning back into the seat as she reached for her belt buckle. She kept looking into my eyes, smiling as I listened to the clink of metal clasps, the zing of a lowering zipper. I smiled back as she raised her beautiful, broad ass from the dingy seat and started to wiggle the pants down her legs.

Her radiant, slate eyes. Her thighs. Black thong. Her facing me, her legs open as her knees were level to my eyes as she took the pants from my hand.

The mound between her thighs. The bulge and the faint hint of seam, barely made out in the dark.

She put on the pants. Flute would return shortly after.

Changing into dinner clothes on the stained seat of a workhorse van, and all the while beaming with a wide, toothy smile as she watched me watch her. That's the kind of woman she is, and why it became so easy for me to go crazy over her.

Later, I would learn all about that mound, that bulge, that seam. I would learn all about the way the Grrl's outer labia would flush several shades of red when she got excited, hot, wet, and how that labia would swell like two crescent-shaped pillows. I would learn all about the way the flesh of her cunt would resemble a short-stemmed tulip, as if the flower were simply laid upon her body, the petals ensconcing the tender clitoris that I would enslave myself to for the next several years.

I really miss giving her head. And how she would do me too.

The sex we shared that night was extraordinary. We simply kissed and caressed for longer than I could remember. We smoked some dope, listened to soothing yoga music, and entwined for hours upon hours. I relished in her joy to be taken in her ass, and loved how she moaned deeply as she had me, her eyes crushed tight and her teeth biting her lower lip as she felt my calves to her thighs while I slowly and deeply thrust. She would breathe deeply and groan when I would stop to lay still on top of her back. I remember the soothing, complete pleasure I felt to have my bodyweight on her, holding her, my legs snaked around hers, my fingers massaging her scalp through her short, auburn hair as her opened sphincter gripped the very root of me tightly, snugly, warmly when I filled her with my total all.

Between wine and cannabis and sensuality and beauty, we didn't simply "see God." We became God. Kali and Shiva.

And it began with that moment of seeing her bare legs, her thigh, her underwear in that most unsexy of places. That unsexiest of places that, of late, I pass every day, several times a day.

Wow. That was at least seven or eight years ago.

Yeah. I miss her. Still.