PASSION

As I write this, my pelvic region is sore, and my abdominal muscles are raw. I have been doing a lot of fucking in the past 24 hours. I can't get into details-- "What happens in the bedroom stays in the bedroom" is how Eve put it, and I have to agree. However, I must remark on the increase in sexual activity, because the past four years have been dry as a bone for me in that department.

I have been in erotic limbo ever since I left Jeanie and effectively turned down the last great extended run of nonstop monogamous sex in my life. I've had opportunities and turned them down. I've also tried to score and was rejected. Sometimes I wasn't in the mood; other times, I let myself give in, but only when I was comfortable, and even then it was few and far between encounters.

Half the time, I couldn't sustain the interest to indulge in even the most tawdry one-night stand. So I see my recent resurgence in orgasmic quantity as "making up for lost time".

It helps that Eve and I are very passionate people when we are in bed. She is more active, outgoing, and sexy in her daily life; I am deceptively horny, keeping the raging torrents of my desire under the most severe wraps until the moment when I take off the mask and reveal myself to be a sex-mad beast underneath the stoic veneer.

Foreplay is very important, that I can tell you. But I see foreplay in a different light than most people.

Saturday night, I was with Anna, trying to find a birthday party for a former co-worker. It was being held at an artist's loft somewhere in Glendale, and we kept getting lost because of the obscure location.

Just as we were on the verge of giving up, I found the address. We stayed for about an hour before we got bored. Not that there wasn't potential: David J from Love And Rockets was the DJ, and my friend Carol is a great party host. But I barely knew any of the people there, and as nice as they were it seemed just a tad too inclusive-- too many in-jokes, bits of circle-of-friends-style gossip, and stuff that went completely over our heads. Plus, not too many people showed up, on account of either the location or the general feeling in the air of non-festiveness.

I'd had plans with Anna for some time, because when I asked Eve if she wanted to come with me she told me she had a Christmas party to attend on the same night. I didn't want to go to the party alone so I asked Anna, who had just announced at the time that she was going to be in town for that week.

I think that Eve, upon discovering that I had a "date" to this party, made it a point to tell me about her friend Laurie having a party at her apartment later on that same night. This was done, I feel, to make sure that I wasn't going to run off into the night with some other girl. Of course, Anna is married, and I told this to Eve, but it didn't seem to matter. The fact that Anna is an old flame is enough, I suppose, to warrant something like this.

Eve and I aren't an official couple, you see-- we are going through all the motions but we haven't admitted it to each other. We insist that we are not in love with each other, that we are using each other until the both of us stumble upon something better, but I think we are just afraid to be the first one to confess how awesome it is now that we are back together.

After Anna and I left the birthday soiree, we stopped at my apartment to confirm Laurie's party. I called Eve-- there was a riotous noise on the phone. She was at her company Christmas party, exchanging Secret Santa gifts and geting hammered in some restaurant's private back room. I told her we were headed over to Laurie's, and she said she'd meet us there.

Anna stayed with me at Laurie's until she had to go home, tired and weary from the massive amounts of pot that we had been smoking all evening. As luck would have it, five minutes after Anna left, Eve and her "date" showed up.

Eve looked like a rock star, with a strapless brassiere-like top and her patented black slacks and overcoat, a sexy Trenchcoat Mafia style that marked her both as an outcast and an insider. She walked in and saw me on the couch-- she was acting like she was tough, like she barely knew me. She introduced me to her "date", who was a pretty dark-haired girl that worked with her at her job. Eve made no overtures towards me that would signify our bond. I was cool with it-- she was drunk, rowdy, and wanted to project power and authority. Eve immediately set about trying to convince Laurie to get drunk on muld wine and kettle, but Laurie was already trashed.

I noticed that Eve was looking around the apartment, as if she were looking to find something, or perhaps someone. But the only other people in attendance were myself, Laurie, Ethan (Laurie's husband) and Darrell, their next-door neighbor. Once she realized that we were the only people there, she seemed to calm down a bit.

The night went on, we all drank, and eventually it was time to go home. Eve's date dropped the both of us off at Eve's car, and we headed straight back to my place.

Everything up until this point was foreplay.

When we got inside, it didn't take long for us to move on to the next stage. And we stayed in that stage for the rest of the night, onto the morning, throughout the next day and into the evening. We were so lazy, so absorbed in our private cocoon, that we ordered breakfast lunch AND dinner by phone. I stepped out of the apartment once, to rent Christmas DVDs for our holiday marathon and also to score smokes.

That was it.

I guess she and I are in that stage where we want nothing except to screw. But this time it has the added allure of being with someone who I have known for years, someone with whom I have always felt close and intimate. I am just surprised that, at my age, I can still get it up like a high-schooler, reloading with little down time. I am NOT surprised at Eve's energy level, of course, because she is always at that level, even when she is chilling out. It's serious business to her, and we are both prepared to take each other on.

I watched It's A Wonderful Life for the first time all the way through-- excellent motion picture. A true classic. No wonder lesser talents keep milking its formulas, its scenes, its dialogue-- the movie stands alone as a minor achievement in cinema, a thoroughly modern fable without being preachy or heavy-handed. And I like the moral, that no man is a failure if he has friends. Those are sage words of advice to live by.

Another bit of advice (and a hilarious irony, in my mind) came from a Chinese fortune that belonged to Eve. I found it as I was cleaning up my room, shortly after she left. The fortune said, "You are in good hands."

"Yes, she was in good hands, wasn't she?" I chuckled to myself.

She is probably just as sore as I am, walking around slowly and turgidly, slightly leaning and hunched over, thigh bones aching joyfully, the small of the back slightly strained, the area of the gut flexing and stretching...

If this keeps up, I'll be twenty pounds thinner by the Spring.