Looking back, at the way it all started, I guess I should have seen it coming but I didn't and now that it's happened I feel like I am a cartoon character sitting up on a cartoon sidewalk with googly eyes spinning wildly and pop art stars circling my head from the intense blow I took.

Forgive me if this is a bit convulted because I still feel dazed. And as if divine providence has stepped in to rule my world, Janis Joplin just cued up on the radio. Ahhh, yes, that Bobby Magee *is* something.

It took me by surprise from the beginning, when I met him and he suddenly told me that he was taking me out this week. But I shrugged it off, as I always do. He wasn't my type.

And then he called the next day. No waiting, no games, he called. And I called him back. I pushed him back again, as only I can. "I'm really busy this week," I explained, but he offered to wait until the week after. It's almost if I knew the inevitable was careening on a crash course toward my Partygirl planet, because I gave in and told him I'd set something up with him the next day.

Before I even got a chance to get to him on Monday, he got to me. E-mail. Oh, he got to me alright. He may as well have spoken to me in a foreign language because I could not comprehend what the hell he could have been doing, asking me what I like to do. We had a good laugh about that, when we spoke tonight. How it had thrown me, because I am just a superficial Partygirl. Just the good time girl about town. The good time girl at work. The good time girl among family. I'm that girl.

No strings. No commitments. Scoffing at relationships and intimacy.

And then he called to confirm our date. "Hey," he said, "just confirming that we are meeting at X at 9PM and if you aren't going to make it, can you call me at X and let me know?" Did he know me in a past life? Had one of the others tipped him off, I wondered? But I found myself curious, at this guy whose game was having no game. The one who called like he said he would and asked me what I liked to do and then called to confirm a date. My brother and I suspected he was a serial killer. "But in case he's not," my brother advised, "try not to do anything weird." Great. Thanks.

No worries. No strings. No Commitments. I *scoff* at relationships, remember?

And that's how I treated it tonight, as I headed downtown to meet him at the predetermined bar. I was not caring. No worries, I thought to myself, he'll just become another friend. If I have a horrible time, I bail. I say I have to meet someone. I have to get up early. Millions of excuses. Because, I'm not looking so I have nothing to lose.

As my taxi pulled closer and closer I started to feel that feeling in my tummy about meeting him and I wondered, "When did you butterflys pull into town?" I chased them away.

I beat him there. Early, damn. I've never been early a day in life. Not a minute. Nope. But here I was.

And then he arrived and the moths flew for a minute until he came and sat next to me with that easy smile he has. And suddenly, it was like seeing an old friend.

Hours flew as we covered everything from Dostoyevsky to Proust to Joyce to Eggers to Jaquelyne Suzanne. We covered my life in London and his years in Paris. His voluntary solitude for a year in the North fo France. His teens in boarding school. His studies at the Sorbonne. The emotions that surface when watching a bullfight in Spain, resigned to knowing that man or beast would die. My unhappiness with my writing, with my painting, with myself. His rages at his novels (two finished) which resulted in holes in walls, injured hands, destroyed furniture. So that all he has left is a mat to sleep on. Computer on a stool. A stove. And nothing else.

My cluttered life, my cluttered room. My passion for pop culture. His obsession with French Literature and classics. His teaching, my desire to learn.

When his hand first started stroking my arm, it was like a thousand feathers tickling my skin. I tried to continue speaking normally but it was hard. When his hand traveled to the back on my neck and into my hair, it was near impossible.

But I still didn't understand. And I laid back on the loveseat, and I never knew what was happening until I felt his breathe against my lips and then we were kissing. Softly, closed mouths on closed mouths, slightly open and searching lips against slightly open willing lips. Softly. Nipping. Pulling. Sucking. Softly. Finding the corners of my mouth. My chin, my jawline. Nose rubbing against nose. Talking to me, asking me if it was okay. Speaking normally as if everyone made out like this all the time in bars.

Lips back on lips. Tongue, just a tip of a tongue, touching my lip. Pulling back, as I leaned in. I caught the beginning of a smile on his face and I went for it anyway. So he won. I surrendered. I couldn't take it. Stillness. His hands all over my face, stroking my hair, rubbing my shoulder. Then. Bare hand. Hands that intimately knew both life on a farm and the keyboard of a computer and the concrete of walls. That warm hand, on my bare skin at my neck. The hand in that L shape that you would use to shove someone up against a wall, but instead he used it to claim my neck. Oh, God.

The kisses and then the hand holding my forehead as if to plug my thoughts from escaping to - to keep them inside there instead of spilling out and making a mess of what he started. He knew. He kept that hand there while he kissed and nipped and used his teeth to lightly bite and all the while the hand kept my lunancy locked inside of the box where it belongs and not radiating the innocent beauty of what could be. Of what was. Of what is.

We took little breaks, with my head resting on his chest or his sinewy arm under my neck. We shifted around. He held my hand. Stroking. Lightly. Caressing. I stroked he inside of his wrist, running my finger along that vein that contained the precious blood that brought him to me less than a week ago. I used to my finger to keep that blood pulsing and doing it's job, to keep him with me.

We started again, and at this time, I really couldn't have given two cents if the Pope himself had walked in at that minute. I didn't care who saw, I wanted him. And I showed him. More talking. "Have you ever dated anyone like me?" he wondered. "How do you feel feel about dating someone like me...not that I assume you would..." And I laughed and didn't reply because all I was thinking was, how I could date anyone BUT you? "I need you in my life. I need to the pop culture," he teased. I can be solitary too, I said. I reflect, I said. But I don't think he believed me.

"Do you want to go to a movie?"

"Now?" I replied, puzzled. I laughed and asked, "what's playing?" He laughed, as he leaned in and kissed me ever so lightly by my ear. "No, whenever...this week...let's go see a movie, anything you want. Pollack?" Yes, I replied. Yes, I have been dying to see Pollack. He didn't believe me. I am just a Partygirl. No, no, really, I have. I swear. "Or anything you want to see, anything. The Mexican? A teen flick? Anything." I laughed. "I don't care, I'll go," I said, "but I do want to see Pollack."

I looked around and I laughed, as we kissed. "What," he asked. And I told him, that as if we were in some foreign film, the others around us started making out as well. Caught up in our passion, couple after couple who had been watching us, were now concentrating on their own piece of the action.

It made me hotter. I could barely catch my breathe when he said that he thought I had finally lost my inhibitions, but he thought I may have passed them on to him. Oh no!, I cried.

I could barely stand, dizzy from the kisses, when we finally got up to go. We walked out and he grabbed my hand and we walked like young lovers. I pulled him a little and he took my hand and he held it in between both of his behind his back. He stopped me on Avenue B to kiss again. We kissed and kissed and the young drunk, trendy East Villagers detoured around us and giggled. "Love," I heard someone say and so did he because I could feel his smile as he pulled away and apologized for embarrassing me. "I'm not embarrassed," I said.

"I need you to tell me how you feel," he said. "I need you to tell me what you want because I don't know." I will I promised, and volunteered nothing else because my head was still spinning wondering if this guy is for real.

We barely said goodbye but for kiss after kiss as he put me in a taxi and he headed for the subway. I forgot to say goodbye, flustering, confused, the driver asking me where I was going and for a few seconds I blanked. Where do I live? WheredoIliveWheredoIliveWheredoIlive?? When I finally got my bearings and looked up, I realized he had been staring, watching me the whole time, and had only just turned to walk away.

I didn't get to say good bye. To thank him for the night. But it doesn't matter. There will be more. There will be forever.

And I thought about when I lifted my head from his chest to stare at his profile and I remembered my realization. He is like a rock. Hard and solid. Unmoving and unwavering. Calming. Serene. I can hold onto him and not drown. He's not going to let me drown.

Like I said, I should have seen it coming, but I didn't and I tell you all of this with shock and incredible certainty.

This, is going to change everything.

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