ellipses

They drive to the art opening in Mill Valley. Her old boss is now semi-retired and painting, and this is her first full-fledged show. They get to Main Street and park. They're chatting, glad to be out of the city, which is freezing. Summer's not a good time to be there, too foggy, but Marin, Marin is a bounty of sunshine. They're early, too early, so they go to The Depot for coffee and a browse through the bookstore. She buries herself in the narrow aisles. A woman's trying to order an espresso drink but the machine's broken. She contemplates a purchase. She buys the book, they go out the door, and the wind kicks up a notch. They find the salon where the art opening is – a strange place to have it, she thinks, but what does she know? She's no art-opening specialist. They go inside.

Canvases of circus scenes line the walls. They're strange paintings, all of them, half-innocuous fun, half-horror movie. She can see why clowns can be so frightening, why the lion-tamer borders on the bestial. There's an odd carnality to the paintings, they both see it, and they roll eyes at each other across the room and wind their way past the barbicidal combs and nail polish counter towards the far end of the salon, where the wine is. "Thank God for alcohol," one of them says, and they both laugh. They pour themselves generous portions of Chardonnay and walk the perimeter of the room, just circling, waiting until it's polite enough to leave.

Three hours later, there will be a kiss at a bar, a kiss with a Cosmo between them, a kiss that takes them out the door, out into the night, out into the car, out into the beginning of things.

...

Wait a minute.

You don't care about the art show. You don't care about the book I bought, whatever instructive value I thought it had. You don't care much about the circus, at least not anymore. The circus creeps you out.

You don't care about Marin, or the fog you have to drive through to get there. You're impatient with any talk about weather and are wondering why I even bothered to mention it, metaphorical possibilities aside. You don't care about my former boss, and why should you? You don't even know who she is, and she's here as minor character anyway and that's not what interests you. You're irritated that it took me this long to get to the point of the story, the juicy part, because you would have liked to know about that sooner. Your time is precious and I have forced you to spend some of it reading about bookstores and salons and the circus and Chardonnay. What you really care about is that kiss.

You want to know that it took place in a dark-lit bar called Martuni's on the corner of Valencia and Market, where they sometimes have drag shows. You want to know how a chaste early evening at an art opening could have morphed into that kiss, into me looking at her all of a sudden, looking at her differently, thinking wild thoughts about "what if" and not knowing, exactly, where they were coming from. You want to know that we were friends and that this did not start out as a date, but that it turned into one somehow. The evening turned and it wasn't the Cosmopolitans, although you may want to know that Martuni's is generous with its drinks.

You want to know about the ten minutes it took me to turn my brain off for the crucial second I needed to reach out to her. You want to know that we were talking about nothing at all related to sex and yet that may have been it, the sort of subtitled conversation you have with someone who's gotten to you, the way you consciously avoid the topic in favor of the less charged discussion about everything else, about anything else. You want to know that it was excruciating, the ten-minute wait for my mind to shut itself off, and the prelude of that decisive moment when she said, "Are you okay?" and I couldn't even say "yes," my other functions becoming inexplicably compromised. The ability to communicate – usually my forte – reduced to a semi-nod of my head. And so you want to know that I looked at her then, looked at her like that, and then just went for it, just got right down to business and kissed her.

And you want to know that it was great, that the kiss was great, and that it was an enormous relief that it was great – I mean, really, you have no idea until it happens, do you? You want to know that we paused long enough for her to say, "I've been wanting to do that for the last hour," and how that made everything even better. And you definitely want to know that we ordered another Cosmo and kissed again. You want to know that the owner of the bar came over with our drinks and told us we couldn't do that anymore. "No kissy-kissy" is what he said, and of course we were appalled, I mean they have drag shows there, for God's sake, and it's kind of a gay bar if you get right down to it, and this is San Francisco and so by those standards alone we were hardly doing anything at all. So you want to know that we ignored him, and kissed again, disbelieving, and you want to know that he came back and wagged his finger at us and said "I mean it." So you want to know that we left our half-finished drinks right at the table and got the fuck out of that bar, hot-blooded, horny, how we walked forever back to my car and got in and turned to each other again.

You want to know about the makeout session in my beat-up 1982 red-orange Beemer, and how it felt like high school, that same groping, the same stiff squeakiness of the seats and how the gear shift got in the way and how she pulled the lever and her seat went back. And how in that movement, in that one movement, the top button of her shirt came undone and what an invitation that felt like. And then how I got my left hand around the cup of her bra and my thumb crept over the fabric and maneuvered its way to her breast, to the skin of her nipple, you want to know about that. And you want to know about the sound that came out of her throat, a sound that arose from the ether of my car. An animal sort of sound. You want to know how she got her mouth on my neck and how something inside of me unlocked and opened for her, and how an hour, an hour magically went by like that and the windows actually steamed up, just like the movies, like television. You want to know how we finally stopped after that hour, straightened ourselves up again, realized how late it was, realized the limitation of a car, realized it was time to go.

You want to know how I drove up Guerrero, all the way to the end of it, and how we didn't speak much during the ride and that all of a sudden it was like we both got nervous and shy. You want to know how I was afraid, I was, afraid that she would ask me into her house and it would be too much, and I wouldn't know what to do. I was sort of new at all this, I forgot to tell you this part, and so the "what if" had been growing exponentially as we drove, so by the time we got to her house it was too much and too soon and I wanted some time with this, some time. I wanted the stretch of a night to myself to dream about the what if.

So you want to know that I drove up to her house and let the engine idle, and that she said, "I want to invite you in but I better not," and how relieved I was, because her saying this felt somehow more hopeful, more promising. You want to know how we kissed again to seal the night in, and how I drove home with my shirt half-unbuttoned and my pants unclasped, and how I went to sleep with my clothes on that night, wanting to keep her with me just a little bit longer. Yes, you want to know about this. This is what you want to know.