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СКАЧАТЬ I ask? What did you expect?’

      He raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m not exactly doing very well at this, am I?’

      ‘You’re honest,’ I said. ‘That’s good.’

      ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I thought – you’re a stranger.’

      ‘So are you.’

      We looked at each other as the shadows shivered.

       Nights in White Satin

      Simon speared the last-but-one avocado square.

      ‘So,’ he said, after some waves crashed into the rocks down by the shore, ‘so what DO you like?’

      He leaned back and pointed the delicately constructed vegetable arrangement at me. It really looked very refined from all angles.

      ‘I like – I like being passive,’ I said, looking straight into his eyes. ‘Or, maybe, receptive is better.’

      ‘That sounds very good to me,’ he said. ‘I like to be the one who moves.’

      ‘Ah!’ I said, crossing my legs the other way.

      ‘What’s your favourite?’ he asked. ‘Really?’

      He sucked the food off its stem.

      ‘I love – I love – bondage,’ I said.

      There was music on the terrace, but it too was subdued and designed not to overwhelm nature. As if anything could overwhelm that Big Sur night.

      Had I said the B-word a little too loudly, in my enthusiasm?

      Bondage is a word that makes me flush with happiness whenever I get to say it. Bondage. I want to say it now. Join me if you like.

      Simon had heard it, for sure. He automatically looked around, like that prey animal again. No one at the surrounding tables paid any attention. The waiter didn’t hover. Nepenthe had good staff.

      I relaxed. Simon leaned forward. ‘Me too,’ he said, a little more quietly. ‘I love bondage too.’ He lingered sweetly on the word. And now he laid his hand on top of mine. His was cool and soft.

      I relished the sensation. And, true to my word, I let him be the one who moved.

      I closed my eyes so I could feel him better. He ran his fingers over the back of my hand. Delicate lines of investigation, following the shape of tissue and muscle. And the bone underneath.

      ‘I like soft wide bonds, around my wrists and my ankles,’ I said. ‘Not too tight, but certainly, certainly not too soft. I love that pressure.’ So much easier to speak with my eyes closed.

      ‘All sorts of ideas spring to mind,’ Simon said. ‘Let’s see what I can create. Improvise, like the guys did on stage.’

      ‘Oh, yes, right,’ I said, ‘you used to be a roadie.’

      ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘In my wild youth.’

      ‘So you should know about ropes.’

      He smiled. ‘But, like you, I prefer silk.’

       Not to Touch the Earth

      The stars were shining brightly over the Big Sur when we walked down the slightly dangerous Nepenthe stairs. More dangerous in four-inch heels of course. Which made it only practical that Simon should catch me when I wobbled on the steps about half way down, and wind his arms around my waist. I held him tight. We stood there, blending into the night, breathing together. We didn’t kiss. Just stood. The pine trees sent out sharp scents that reminded me of childhood baths.

      ‘I can’t find my car,’ Simon said when we finally made it down. He shook his head.

      That was little weird, I thought. There weren’t that many cars left. Most of them looked kind of grey in the environmentally sensitive lighting. Were we going to walk to Carmel, 20 miles away?

      ‘It’s because I’m in another world,’ he continued, looking at me as if for guidance.

      ‘I can’t help,’ I said. ‘I’m living in my dreams.’

      He nodded.

      ‘And also I’ve never seen your car.’

      He found it, of course. It was grey (really grey in all lights of day) and very comfortable. Surveyors need to drive all over California, apparently.

      He drove me back to Esalen, down the long and winding road along the cliffs.

      We kissed. A long kiss in the car when he said goodbye, under the watchful eye of the Esalen night guard. Another long kiss when I got out, leaning into his window.

      Simon was a stranger in the sense that I had never met him before. But he was not at all a stranger in the internal landscape of my mind. On the contrary, I’d been intimately acquainted with him since I became aware of my sexuality. He was the man who had already spoken a word of magic from my most secret dreams.

      True, though, I had no idea what the life of a roadie was like, or what he surveyed now.

      Of course we had made an appointment.

       Welcome to the Hotel California

      I had the four-inch heels in my bag again when the time came. The Esalen boys didn’t need to know everything.

      Something I had no need to hide was my skirt. The blood-red silk skirt that spread out so wide, like a corona around the sun.

      I’d worn it before, to fire-dance night just outside the Esalen canteen, and to shamanic journeying in the hilltop tent, when the drums rang out and we were asked to imagine falling down into a hole. It actually had tiny little bells sewn into it that made an elvish sound that you could hear tinkle when I moved. If you were very close, and if the night was still.

      The skirt was long, all the way down to the ground. I had to lift the front when I walked.

      I loved that skirt.

      The boys loved it too. They made extra room for its extravagant layers in the van. I had many compliments from the female shaman about expressing my true nature.

      They didn’t know the half of it.

      ‘Here it is.’

      Simon opened the door to the hotel room and ushered me in with a little bow. Quite some time since I had been in the proximity of such a well-cut jacket.

      That room was expensive. White and asymmetrically shaped. Big windows on a veranda that overlooked a pretty creek with ducks. We shuttered them. It had a huge bed. Firm. I tested it with a well-placed thump.

      Simon СКАЧАТЬ