Your goal is to insure that rose leaves are dry by dusk.

I love you, wild garden.

And I loved this boy, the boy whose mother grows roses. On our first date, I took him to the wild garden, showed him a rose blooming there, so red and big and so fragrant, I was blushing.

Fragrant Cloud. The blooms are coral-orange, high centered, and one of the most fragrant flowers ever. Its green foliage is an excellent foil for the large blooms. This rose will blossom best in areas with long cool summers.

Even though it was late November it still bloomed. Extravagantly. Obviously it had no shame, obviously it reveled in its own beauty. Why was it still blooming in November? He said he would ask his mother, because his mother grows roses. Now it’s early in the new year and the roses are not blooming anymore, but some still linger in the cold nights, and some might call this miraculous. I know I do. Even in the bright frigid morning air, they hang there, frozen, a still-life, but somehow still defiant.

Then, a month later, this boy called me up and told me, “I’m not falling in love with you.” And I thought, How odd, because I have fallen in love with you. I didn’t say this, but I thought it. I thought: How is it possible that a rose can still bloom in November, and how is it possible that I have fallen in love with you?

Meanwhile, the gardeners in my neighborhood have covered up most of their rose bushes with plastic bags. One tall vine looks like a man, a scarecrow, wrapped up tight in plastic with a bucket for a head. So surely his mother has covered up her roses, like he has covered his heart. Because I am just vain enough to feel that he has fallen in love with me, but that this has scared him and now he has run away. And I’ll be honest and say that he wasn’t a boy, he was a man. And I’ll be honest and say I wanted to keep him and plant him in my garden. I wanted him to blossom every night, even in winter, inside my mouth, inside my head, inside my heart. I wanted him to bloom so extravagantly that he would wake up in the middle of night, smiling, a tear running down his face; crying from the sheer exuberant joy of being so firmly twined between my legs. How I would open to him in the morning, like the earth opens to spring. I wanted him to see I am as fertile as the vernal equinox. To show him that the roses that bloom are red and white and sometimes pink and sometimes yellow, and when they blossom beneath the sun, they fill the air, the rise above the garden. They possess such grace. Tell me, who would not want to witness such fertility, such beauty?

So, it’s a good thing he could not see me pacing the small confines of my apartment, all the wildness washing out of me, because I was pacing and crying. It’s hard not to feel the futility of love when this happens. It’s hard, but I resisted. Even as I remembered the way he would grab me and push me down on the bed, enter me without a sound, like a queen receiving her consort; the way it’s done in mythology, the passionate coupling, where words are not necessary. That’s the way he made love to me. He didn’t kiss my neck or my ears, he didn’t tickle my feet, he barely had time to caress my breasts. Once at a bar, while drinking scotch, he let his hands run along the contours of my body; tracing the musical shape of my waist widening to become my hips, my thighs. That was lovely. At that moment I felt mythical, more like a rose than a woman.

Peace. Blended yellow and ochre, 40-45 petals, a sensuous explosion of fecundity, perfectly symmetrical as if one bloom begot another bloom and so on and so forth. Revered for its perfection.

It was a warm November, that’s what the almanac said, but still people marveled that the roses were still blooming. But, I love you, anyway, wild garden. I do. I always marvel at your beauty. I love you in the summer because you appear to be sleeping while the cicadas hum in the tall grass. I love you in the fall when the russet leaves drift down into your mouth, and I love you in the winter, when only one white rose, frozen, stubbornly refuses to fall to the ground and say, “Enough. I give up.” I am not a fickle lover. I am steadfast and I have taken you into my heart without a moment’s hesitation. I know you will change as the seasons change, and I know you will shape-shift into different versions of yourself, but I have never let this scare me. And that’s why I am good and pure even though I’ve had many, many lovers. I am still innocent because I believe in wild gardens where roses bloom in November. I am Persephone. I am 11 years old gathering tadpoles in a yellow bucket. I keep a collection of camisoles and knee socks in my dresser drawer to remind me of this innocence. I keep a vial of lilac oil on my bathroom shelf and a dried bundle of roses that hang upside down, so that I will never forget who I really am.

New Year, aka Arcadian. Bright, yet graceful, orange-yellow flowers that are almost resistant to change. Arcadian manages to be both boisterous and refined at the same time.

And now this. This heartbreak. Now the image of him entering me in the morning while the sun was coming up is only a memory. And because it is early in the new year and because the world outside is frozen, I keep warm by focusing on his silhouette emerging from my shower, handing him a cup of coffee. And the way I would gloat as he dressed, “Oh, this man, is here, inside my home, getting dressed. He made love to me three times last night.”

I have to be very careful that I do not let this memory shatter into a mess on my kitchen floor. I have to hold it delicately, reverently. Like the way he would take the tip of himself and gradually push his way between my legs, and the way I would shiver, be covered in goose bumps, when he began to make love to me. And at that exact moment, when he was finally and completely inside of me, I saw stars. This is true and anyone who has lived through this will agree because it’s like the magical four words: once upon a time. Once upon a time, he entered me, once upon a time he made love to me.

Dainty Bess. Instead of double, high-centered blooms, she makes do with five petals, each a delicate light pink, almost silver. She is considered an easy-care rose, and an excellent choice as a specimen near paths, or in the perennial border.

Once upon a time, he pulled me down into the damp grass of a deserted park, the ground cold, the street lights arcing out into the night, a halo of broken leaves inside my hair, a laurel wreath crowning the head of the queen. His tongue like the serpent; a sinuous tangle of flesh inside my mouth, his fingers exploring my cold skin now warming to his touch. My body left an imprint of this warmth, phosphorescent, almost radioactive. Walk by there any time of night, and you will still be able to see it. It glows in the dark. But don’t touch it, or it will shatter, and be forgotten. Best to leave it alone, and let it fade of its own accord, when it desires, when the moment is right.

Mutabilis. High variation in bloom color due to the rapid change as the blossoms mature. Blooms change rapidly from copper orange through the warm spectrum to finish crimson.

Believe it or not it is Jan. 3, the temperature is minus 17 and one white rose will not be forgotten, will not fall. Sometimes it hurts to walk by and see this. Sometimes the impulse to pluck it and bring it home is so great, my hand trembles. I want to pluck it and put it in my freezer until spring. Wrap it in plastic and keep it all winter long, bring it back to the garden in March. I don’t think this is crazy. There is a species of roses, tiny roses, that hibernate all winter long, they look like they are sleeping. Yet, they are awake, but in stasis, just waiting for the first headlong rush into the warmth of spring. This shows an intelligence I had not thought possible in roses, in gardens. But it exists and that is part of the miracle. So, my belief is that this rose is not dead, but sleeping, and that is why it has not fallen to the ground even though it is Jan. 3 and the temperature is minus 17. And that if I bring it home, it will revive in the spring. There is plenty of evidence to support this theory. Think of Attis. They say that in the old days, during the spring festival, he was hung or otherwise slain beneath a pine tree. And the pine tree was always in a grove or a garden. His blood fertilized the earth, and everything bloomed like it was supposed to year after year, century after century. So I think it would work.

Angel Face. Deep mauve, ruffled flowers; a tremendous rose because the flowers are produced profusely … the only drawback is that it’s so low-growing that the scent may not reach your nose unless you bend over to enjoy it.

Why should my heart break every time I pass this garden? Why should I have fallen in love with someone who doesn’t love me? I should take matters into my own hands, I should take this white rose home, pray for its return. He said his mother grows roses, right? All the more reason to do something. Something is better than nothing. Better than pacing this small apartment, piercing my skin on the wrought iron gates of the garden, that in truth, I have never entered. And yes, I know it’s not really my garden. And of course, I don’t grow these roses. They are not mine. I don’t tend to them, water them, mulch them and cover them up in October or November to keep them safe. I have not given birth to this garden, but that doesn’t mean I love it any less. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have a right to happiness, to fertility. Let me fall in love again. Let me grow a garden of wild roses in my heart. Let this white rose bloom in the spring and let me bring it home.

Because it so elusive, the pursuit of a blue rose has been the goal of many a breeder. The closest anyone has come has been lavender roses, normally moving the magenta tones toward the blue end of the scale. The problem is that most of these hybrids have been plagued with weak growth, and shy blooming.

I love you, anyway.

Earlier, when I came downstairs to meet you, I liked the way you lay stretched out on the hood of your car in the sunlight, early November, waiting for me, the yellow leaves falling into the street as you read a magazine. I liked the plastic lizards on your dashboard, the odd assortment of tools in your glove box, the way you drove with the map in one hand, the other in my lap. Your laugh is manic, your fingers are long, and we criss-crossed our way through Brooklyn all through that afternoon; Park Slope, Prospect Park, Bed-Stuy, Brownsville, Kings Highway, until we reached the ocean, Little Odessa. The Cyrillic alphabet scrawled across shop windows, the Russian women trailing fur coats, the Jews on their way home from schul. And there we were, mismatched, holding hands, telling stories.

Mostly I longed to rub my tongue up against your teeth, my nipples up against yours. And it wasn’t just your limbs, long and loose in faded blue jeans, or your manic laugh, or the way you keep yourself so tightly wrapped. I think it’s more the fact that I loved the smell of you, under your arms in particular, that it was so provocative, so familiar. And later that evening, the way your cock unfurled in my mouth, and the way I felt so beautiful, finally, beautiful as you opened your mouth to mine. But, we are so mismatched, your mother would never approve of me, your father would desire me, and I am older than you.

The night I met you, I was aware of you the whole evening. A Halloween party and I decided to dress as myself, cowboy hat and denim jacket. The neighborhood bordering Queens, an industrial loft. I knew no one there, so after a couple of drinks I twirled around on the dance floor, dressed up as myself, happy in some small way to catch glimpses of the night through the wide loft windows. Happy to see the full moon, the indigo sky, the stars so vulnerable. Suddenly there you were, dressed up in a coat of blue light, arms flapping, such a tall man. I asked you to dance, yes, I remember that, asking you to dance. Suddenly I was in your arms and kissing you before I even knew your name. But it was Halloween and late and I was drunk. Something in your eyes, something in the way you held yourself, the way you spoke to me, told me to go home alone. That I shouldn’t take you with me, spread your legs across the length and breadth of my bed, light candles, undress and make love to you, because I would make love like a fool.

No. I wanted to wait so I could remember everything because it was almost like love. It felt like I should wait, we should wait, to do it right. So I hopped in a cab and you wrote your phone number on my wrist with a magic marker, and I wrote mine on yours. The next day you called and asked me if I wanted to go to a museum, the Giacometti exhibit. But I was terrified and hung over, so I lied and said I was busy. Terrified because I am worse than the long-lost girls in fairy tales. Because I have been hiding my heart in a tower of stone for so long now, I have lost the key. And I have worn this solitude for so long now it, too, is like a coat of light, but it is lit by the moon. It is lit from reflected light.

So we met the following Thursday and your body immediately filled up my home. And I was glad. You stretched the length and breadth of yourself against me, you pulled up my shirt, pushed aside my blue velvet brassiere, and I felt the extravagant warmth of your skin and your mouth. But I was shy because I liked you. So I couldn’t make love to you. And for once, I was stripped of all my masks, and in all honesty, I am so, so tired of them: the woman of the world, knowing, sophisticated, jaded, wise, cynical. Enough. I called a friend the next day, someone who has known me all my life and said: Can you believe how I behaved? Like a shy little girl? And he said, Of course I can believe it. Because you are. You are a shy little girl. I have never been so happy to hear anything in my entire life.

Because I have been to London, Edinburgh, the South of France and back. I have had lovers from Australia, lovers on the East Coast, lovers on the West Coast. Men have poured champagne down my belly, proffered raw oysters by the light of the Mediterranean, and amber glasses of cognac in elegant hotel lobbies. Charming, handsome men with foreign accents, gold and silver credit cards, some with wives, some with girlfriends and it was never like love. It was only a game that I got very, very good at: Round and round I went wearing French lipstick, high-heeled sandals, silver earrings, offering up a provocative smile that promised nothing. Dinner with a film distributor from Manchester; steak frites and cordials. Dinner with a producer in London, in a deserted bistro on the cold and romantic streets of Edinburgh.

Oh, I got to be so good at this; onion tart and merlot with the dark-haired Israeli. He thought he had me hooked. But I could walk off at a moment’s notice and not care for one second what I left behind, because it certainly wasn’t my heart. Walking into my small apartment in Brooklyn, beset and besieged by jet lag, I would linger for a long, long time in a hot bath lit by candles. Transformed into a shy girl. Longing for love or something almost like love. Drinking scotch at 4 a.m. because it was 10 a.m. in London, listening to music, watching the sun rise. That was my secret life.

And somewhere between a bleary sunrise on a 747 and an aching hangover in an overheated hotel room, I lost my innocence. There were mitigating circumstances to be sure; a divorce, a death. But none of that compared to this loss. You are a shy little girl. You are. Not five years ago, not four years ago, not even last week. Yet after I met you I easily slipped into the skin of an adolescent girl. Suddenly I could conjure up all that heart-fluttering innocence, fresh from the pages of my diary; the maroon leather faded, the ink now the lightest of blue, the pages yellowed, brittle. I could practically smell the sand from the beach, taste the boys whose mouths I kissed. That is what I mourn most of all, after all these years, years you have not lived, and there is nothing I can do about that. But somehow the sight of you, the smell of you, made this innocence possible again. Because it was almost like love, love. Because the potential for that innocence beckoned me and I became reckless in search of it. Suddenly it became the most important thing in the world to me.

So when we had dinner again the following Thursday and you said you wanted to come home with me, I decided I would show you who I really was, I decided for once the masks would come off. When we walked into my apartment, I immediately turned down my bed, I let you lay across me, I let you unzip my pants, pull up my shirt, I opened myself to you. And we made love, we really, really made love. Yes, we did. When you entered me, you said, “Oh baby you are so tight” and I loved that. I loved the way you kissed me. I wanted you to say my name over and over again, I wanted you to be sure that I knew you were there, deep inside me. I wanted you to be sure you knew that’s exactly where I thought you belonged. It was almost like love, love.

And then last Saturday. One o’clock. Perhaps a few minutes after. What color was the sky? It was more than blue and the leaves, yes, were yellow but lit from within, lit from the light of the sun, so the sky was blue but it was also gold. I remember these details. I do. I wanted to frame every minute of that afternoon, and every minute of that evening like a series of photographs, and so I have. And I am offering them to you.

After Coney Island, after the boardwalk, after the gulls, the sunset, after we left Little Odessa, it was dark and we wound our way on the highway that rings the East River and snakes beneath the Verazzano Bridge, music playing on the radio, your long fingers wound around the steering wheel. I couldn’t resist cupping the back of your head with the palm of my hand, stroking your short black hair. I didn’t know who you were then or now, but I liked the mystery, I liked the way the back of your head fit into the palm of my hand. The way it was understood that after dinner, you were coming home with me. The way there were no questions asked, so no answers were expected.

At the restaurant, I kept your knees locked between my knees. I didn’t care what I was eating or drinking. I didn’t care who was there or how much the meal cost. I didn’t even care what you were talking about, or that the medium rare steak was bloody. I was impatient to get you home. To my home, to my bed. Yes, yes, yes, here’s the money for the bill, but where will we park when we are back in my neighborhood? In the end, we parked in a garage across the street and then finally I opened the door to my home, and again, I was assailed by shyness. In the end, I got into the shower alone. But I knew you were standing outside the closed door, naked. Waiting for an invitation. After a few moments, you got tired of waiting, pushed aside the shower curtain, and stepped in. Under the sharp spray of hot water, your brown eyes glassy, your erection slapping against my thigh, the dark night from the skylight showering sparks from the moon, you kissed me.

Your mouth filled with water, your hands traveling over the soapy slippery contours of my body, you kissed me and kissed me, and I kissed you back because it was almost like love. Your mouth literally imbedded in mine, your tongue literally wrapped around my tongue. That was the kind of kiss we kissed. The kind of kiss you get once or twice in a lifetime, and then afterward you are glad and say: That’s all I want. My wet hair streamed down my back like a shank of damp silk, my naked breasts glistening from the hot water, I was so clean. Freed, even if for a few moments, from the weight of my history, wholly myself, my heart lit like the yellow leaves under the clear November sun.

Then the fall onto clean sheets, surrendering to the light from the red candle, surrendering to your long loose limbs, legs and arms, wrapped around me, my back arched. In the morning, I still didn’t know you but I asked you to make love to me again. I asked you to kiss my back, and you did. An hour later, a hot cup of coffee and you asked me to part the gauze curtains so you could watch the sun rise. I saw the clouds shot with pink light, I surrendered to that image, to that innocence. It surrounded me. It did.

Things went awry after that: A tangle of missing socks, of questions, of things unsaid. The awkward sheets undone and scattered on the floor. Misapprehension, suspicion. I’m so sorry. I would’ve done anything to undo that, but I couldn’t. I think that sometimes words fail me, and so I didn’t try. Instead I thought: Watch me. Watch me closely. Because I am older than you, I know more things than you, and it’s more than how to kiss someone, it’s this: This series of pictures. They are rare. Trust me. What time was it? It was 1 o’clock on Sunday, 24 hours later. In the end it wasn’t love, but it was almost like love. Yes?

The next time you meet a woman, and you kiss her the way you kissed me and the next time the day rains down so much gold and blue light you are almost blinded, and the next time you step into the shower with the moon overhead and kiss her, your mouth filled with water, white seagulls wheeling overhead, the morning sky shot through with pink light, remember this is one of the reasons we are given breath, remember that even if it’s not love, but almost like love, it’s why we are alive. For me, it is a gift unwrapped; the yellow paper, the gold and silver ribbons at my feet.

I am determined today to get on the train and go into the city. No, don’t protest. I have to get on with my life although I am haunted to the core of my being by the pictures of the missing on every tree limb, every mailbox, every store window. Snapshots of family picnics, of sunny vacations, glorious smiles. We now are a city with the souls of thousands floating over our heads. At times I feel it is not the smoke that stings my eyes, but the ghosts of people ruthlessly ripped from their lives.

And I really can’t be persuaded to fly to Paris. Yes, I will miss kissing you in the Fifth Arrondisement beneath grinning gargoyles, sipping hot coffee at the café. And then the train trip south to Cote D’Azure. What happy times we have had there! Thick omelets oozing butter, warm croissants and white cubes of sugar for our coffee set in a white bowl, while we sat on a white terrace overlooking the blue Mediterranean. Remember the restaurant on the beach in Juan les Pins? Yes? First, five hours of making love followed by lunch under the yellow and black striped awning. I do. I remember. I remember how ruthlessly you bit off the heads of the shrimp, then popped their pink bodies in your mouth, how the grease from the butter made your face shine in the hot light. How your dark skin got even darker as we sat on the beach, your head in my lap, your tongue tickling the inside of my thigh. We like to eat and we like to make love.

But I really can’t be persuaded to get on a plane. You must understand that the whole world has changed for me. The whine of an ambulance, the roar of an F-15, the smell of smoke signal danger, disaster. It is personal, private. It is global. I cannot be persuaded to get on a plane, not even for you, my darling. I feel I must continue to pay respect to my city, my home. So, right now, we will have to content ourselves with our letters, our words, and the odd phone call until I can get to you or you can get to me. It will be alright. Don’t you think? That’s what I tell myself, it will be alright.

Here, let’s walk through our first morning in the South of France. Read this and then close your eyes:

We arrive in Nice by train at 8 in the morning. We settle into a gleaming silver Mercedes, and haggle over the price to Juan les Pins, the driver finally agrees to 350 francs. While we speed south, you are nestled against me and your hair smells like sunlight. The Mediterranean to our right is a blue bowl of water. I turn and rest my head on your shoulder, suddenly the car swerves and you admonish the driver, in fractured French, to slow down. He pretends he doesn’t understand you. Then you relax, hand your fate over to the gods, kiss my earlobe, blow softly in my ear because you know how much I like that. And I do like that. My spine tingles … wait, momentarily distracted by a fighter jet flying overhead, my God … that was low. Shit. OK, where was I? Oh, yes, my spine is tingling because you have just kissed me. But my spine is tingling, though not from pleasure, from fear. I’ve lost it. I will have to try again tomorrow. Sorry. I’m just so sorry about all this. I’m feeling very sad now, and don’t think I can continue. Let me try again tomorrow, my love. Let me try again.

Date: 9/16/01 2:00:45 AM Eastern Daylight Time

From: sss@artdoc.com (New York)

To: rwd@sn.com (India)

You must explain Islam to me, the Middle East. What have I missed? Am I so out of touch with the rest of world? This is what I know of Western culture, this is what I know of New York City: Before September 11, when I rode the subway, I would look around me, at the faces, yes? And before I would bury my nose in my newspaper, I would give a little sigh of satisfaction surveying the diversity around me. There is the thin Korean man wearing black leather sneakers carrying a worn briefcase, his eyes closed but not sleeping; and there a woman, gleaming, her skin the color of onyx, her head wrapped in multi-colored kenta cloth, a choker of shells and leather around her regal neck; a trio of young boys from Guatemala; a well-dressed couple from Park Slope, and me. This is my New York, this is Western culture as I know it. It is diverse, pluralistic. The shopkeepers, the green grocers, the car services, are all run by men and women from the Middle East, Muslims, these are my neighbors, my friends, so what have I been missing?

You know this city, you do, you’ve spent many months here in my small apartment in Brooklyn Heights. And you must understand, darling, that this is the supreme irony to me, to attack this city, above all cities. It continues to be incomprehensible. And here is the further irony, we are all so far from the world of politics, even you, halfway around the world in New Delhi. For the most part, we just live our lives, we just fall in love, we just go to work to pay our cable bill and then eat dinner at the little Dominican restaurant on the Lower East Side.

So don’t try to poke holes in my resolve to get on a plane, to fly to Paris. There is no half-way now. Listen, I am afraid. My classes are cancelled, perhaps permanently, and to make matters worse I am running out of money. And to make matters worse, more than 5,000 people are still missing, they stare at me, accost me on the simplest of tasks: mailing a letter, shopping for tomatoes, they are always there.

I confess that these days I am seized by a desire to cradle the head of a fireman on my shoulder. If we are to be completely honest with each other, as you entreat me, then this is what I am feeling as I write you. I want to cradle the head of a fireman on my shoulder, I want him to shower in my bathroom, illumed by the morning sun pouring in from the skylight. I want him to feel safe, redeemed. This is my simplistic, perhaps clichéd response when I see their anguished faces on the evening news. This is what I feel — an almost atavistic desire to offer comfort, succor. A hot cup of coffee, a hot shower, my warm body, my life. Don’t let this hurt you. I love you, but you are so far away … and they are here, standing at the fire station, one block from my house. I see their mute faces, standing in the open doorway, talking softly to each other. I long to go up to one of them, enfold them in my arms, kiss their tired eyes.

Don’t let this hurt you! What else have I to offer? Don’t worry, I won’t do this. I am too shy, but I wish I could. I wish I could open my mouth to them, my legs, enfold just one of them within myself. But again I am too shy, so instead I offer them coffee, I offer them a smile, a “good morning,” and then I move on, feeling horribly hopeless, unable to offer anything of real substance.

Don’t give up on me after reading this. I am still yours, body and soul. You have my heart. I love the cinnamon taste of your dark skin, the feel of your warm tongue trailing up my legs, the way you grip my hips as you enter me, your habit of humming Hindu music, just under your breath, after you slide off my body, covered in sweat. I love your mind, too, the way words pour from your mouth, so eloquent, so impassioned and so intelligent. The way we have not cared about cultural differences — your God, my God, in the end we know they are the same God, and how we always find redemption and connection in the act of making love. This is the highest form of worship I know, to open up to another human being so completely, and this is what we have, you and I.

But there has been a shift in the paradigm here, so profound and so tragic, I feel I have lost my way. I get off the train in Times Square and cannot for the life of me discern east from west, even by looking at buildings that I have known for 15 years. What does that mean, do you think? Will I ever find my home again, in a home so utterly changed? And will we ever find our way back to each other, now that jumping on a plane and flying across the Atlantic, even to Paris, seems impossibly remote, filled with hidden danger. “Oh, my love, thou art fair to me.”

Date: 9/27/01 10:20:23 PM Eastern Daylight Time

From: sss@artdoc.com (New York)

To: rwd@sn.com (India)

Your continuing silence really hurts me. I have set my alarm for the middle of the night to call you, but you must turn your phone off because I get your machine time and time again. Listen, I cannot help what I feel! It was just a desire, a wish, abstract. Surely you get a glimpse of a dark-haired woman, her sari drifting luminously from her shoulders, like a cloud of yellow silk, and desire her? Want her? All the more so because she is flesh, because she is palpable, standing in front of you at a cocktail party, her lips just inches from yours, your resolve lessened by a couple of scotches. Perhaps you have wanted to invite her to a dish of curried lamb at the café that stays open all night, where you listen to music you both can hum along to, sing to?

And her eyes are infinitely warmer because they are gazing straight into yours, and not just a photograph because photographs are cold, they are. I have often kissed your photograph, and it is cold, it is flat, and not at all real. If you say this isn’t so, then I don’t believe you. You are lying to me, and we have always promised to be honest, no matter what the cost. Don’t you see, this is the price we pay for falling in love with people who live on opposite sides of the world. And this is the price we pay for living in an age of terrorism, where 19 people armed with box-cutters massacred 6,000 people. What can I say? This is not something either of us asked for, yet this is what we are given, and we have to struggle along somehow, learning new rules, new ways to soothe our broken hearts.

Darling, please listen to me! I promise to not make love to a fireman. Just writing these words makes me laugh, because the sentiment is so naive. And trust me, there isn’t a red-blooded American woman alive right now who doesn’t have this desire, this attraction. This, too, is atavistic. They represent strength and courage, they are 100 per cent masculine, a glorious sea of testosterone. In truth? They are probably just as wounded, they cry as much or more as anyone walking the streets of this city. In truth, they probably go home to their beds at night, to their wives, too broken, too tired to do more than just roll over and fall into dreamless sleep.

Come now, don’t pout. Let me tell you about the river I walked into this evening. Since you have refused to speak to me, I called an old friend from high school who lives in the East Village. We agreed to meet for dinner. I took the 4 train to 14th Street, half asleep, still very numb, disoriented, displaced. I walked up the stairs and took in the memorial at Union Square, the posters, the half-burnt candles, the dried flowers, and just let it wash over me. I couldn’t take it anymore. I can’t take it anymore. So, resolute, I turned away and walked east to Avenue A. I fell into step with the myriad of people sauntering along, the air still warm, the smell of smoke still lingering in the air, but now almost familiar. As if the air always smelled this way, dark and sulfurous. Soon I was walking beside a well-dressed couple. I admired her gray felt hat, its flourish of feathers at the brim, her elegant skirt, her trim legs encased in silk stockings, the cut of his jacket, the bright flash of his tie. I deliberately matched their step with mine, why I don’t know.

At the crosswalk we were joined by a group of men and women in their 20s, also dressed up, their skirts shorter, their hair longer, but still elegant, still somber, dignified. When the light changed, we crossed the street together, but now I felt I was walking in a river, the water warm and sweet. Then in flash I remembered that it was Yom Kippur. I was walking in a river of Jews on their way to synagogue. Soon, the whole of 14th Street was flowing with Jews, accompanied by scores of others. And it seemed we were all walking in step with each other: Jew, Christian, Muslim, agnostics, drug dealers, kids on skateboards, teenagers with yellow and pink hair, hip-hop blaring from speakers. And, as if by mutual consent, we all stopped in front of the fire station, and reverently gazed at the names of the missing. After a moment, we all started to process again.

Finally, the procession stopped in front of the synagogue. Where, I confess, I touched the hem of the jacket of the woman with the gray felt hat, silently wished her love, and continued walking east.

Date: 10/1/01 5:20:23 AM Eastern Daylight Time

From: sss@artdoc.com (New York)

To: rwd@sn.com (India)

Well, darling, I’m afraid I have done the unforgivable. I slept with my old friend from high school. No excuses. I am tired of begging you to write me, to call me. So I won’t proffer excuses. I will just tell you the story. You be the judge of whether or not I am an immoral woman (though I don’t think I am).

We sat at a tiny storefront restaurant, there couldn’t have been more than 10 tables. The waitress set down a plastic bowl of homemade salsa, fresh chips and then sangria filled with peaches and apples, wine-colored. I had one glass, then two, then three. I ordered chicken fajitas, he ordered a vegetarian burrito. Midway through our meal, someone lowered the window because the smell of smoke had become intolerable. It made a loud noise, everyone in the room jumped. It sounded like gunfire; then a collective laugh at our panic, then back to the business of drinking sangria and eating Mexican food.

After dinner, without saying a word, I followed him home to his one-bedroom apartment. Without saying a word, he closed the door behind us, didn’t turn on the lights, took me in his arms, and kissed me. Yes, I kissed him back. I hadn’t a thought in my head. I didn’t think of you, I didn’t think of the amputated skyline, I didn’t think of the 5,000 souls floating in the air over us, I didn’t think of a single thing except how good it felt to have a warm body next to mine. He continued to kiss me. Then we both silently and slowly took our clothes off, still standing, still kissing, still not talking. Then we lay down on his red leather couch and quietly, silently he entered me. I rose up to meet him.

When it was over, he poured me a glass of wine and turned on the news. We haven’t spoken of it since, and I don’t suspect we ever will. It was totally in the moment, stuck between the pages of history like a footnote, like a maple leaf picked up from the sidewalk and pressed between a forgotten book of poetry. Nothing more, nothing less.

So there you have it. My story. Write me and tell me that you have done the same thing. Write me and tell me that you also felt compelled to take a stranger to bed, an elegant woman clad in yellow silk, delicate gold filigree dangling from her ears. Tell me that as you unwound your lustrous black hair, she kissed your back and your shoulders. Tell me that you caressed her nipples as if they were spun sugar. And that when it was over, you still didn’t know her name. That you will never speak of it again. That it meant nothing. Then call me and tell me you love me.

I am 15 years old, and I have an 11 o’clock curfew in the summertime. I am never late. Mostly I saunter down to the park, which is bowl-shaped, with a public swimming pool at its center and a pleasant smell of chlorine and sun-tanning lotion. In the evening, there is an outdoor concession where I buy ice-cream cones or soft drinks in paper cups. Spreading out along the periphery of the pool is a small forest of trees and some stairs, set in stone, leading up the hill and deeper into the woods. This is where I kiss the neighborhood boys and smoke joints, my hair still damp from the pool, now bleached platinum from the sun and the water. I wear a modest two-piece bathing suit, lime green and white; the top has a small padded bra with white ruffles across my small breasts. And when I finish swimming, I just pull on a pair of cutoffs, slip on flip-flops and carry my bathing cap and hairbrush rolled up in a bathroom towel that I take out of the dryer in the morning. One night I meet a boy at the pool, and we arrange to meet on the hill adjacent to the pool when we are finished swimming. I like him a lot. He chews peppermint gum and when he tells me his name, he whispers it in my ear and I like the smell of his breath. It is a mix of peppermint, chlorine and root beer.

I get out to the hill before him and spread out my towel and lie back and look at the stars, brilliant and shining, because they have just flicked off the fluorescent lights. The night air feels fresh and welcoming and I am pleasantly tingling from the sun and water, but also in anticipation of possibly kissing the impossibly cute boy I have just met. He is from the south side of town, so he is a foreigner, exotic. We go to different schools. Finally, I see him loping up the hill toward me, his hair damp, slicked back from his forehead. He sits down next to me, so close I can feel the hair on his forearms, so close I can see his toenails, cut short and gleaming pink by the light of the stars. Suddenly, he leans over and begins kissing me. He reminds me of a bird swooping down from the sky. He descends over me, and begins kissing me with mouth and lips and tongue and teeth. Slowly I slide back, until his arms and his chest, his wings, cover me. He kisses me and kisses me and kisses me. It is heaven. But it gets to be 10:30 p.m. and, with great reluctance, I tell him I have to go. We exchange phone numbers, but I never hear from him.

But then I start to notice a silver Corvette parked on the street one block from my house. This car is so sexy looking I feel it between my legs. And then one day I see that it belongs to a very good-looking man, at least 25 or 26 and married. He is dark, Latin looking, but not Latin, perhaps Italian, with that wiry black curly hair that is irresistible to me. He is out there every day polishing that Corvette, and when I walk by, he says, “Hi, beautiful.” This makes me so nervous I automatically hold my breath until I walk past him. Sometimes I am so self-conscious, I trip on my too-long bell-bottoms and stub my toe and feel like a complete and utter fool. It begins to feel like I enter a “zone” whenever I come close to this man polishing his car in circular, sensual, repetitive motions. A zone that is distinct and separate from my world, just one block away. A world where I am just another gawky teenager, with brothers and sisters, a harried, overworked mother, living in a small one-story brick house. But as I approach the car, and enter the zone, that world melts away, like a movie, and I become a sophisticated grown-up woman. The air is always so charged by his attraction to me; it bounces off the gleaming metal of the car and hits me in the eye, in the mouth and between my legs. I am not used to feeling this way. It feels strange and wonderful, and I begin to have a sense of the power I posses. This is heady stuff for a 15-year-old small-town girl.

One day as I walk past, he says, “What ya doing tonight?” I say, “I have a date,” trip, stub my toe and keep walking, my face burning in embarrassment. I hear him call out, “I wasn’t asking ya on a date, I was just asking what ya were doing tonight, dumb bunny.” And the way he says “dumb bunny” is sexy and adorable and confuses the hell out of me. After a couple of days, we are talking, having conversations, flirting. I tell him my name and I find out that he’s the uncle of two brothers with bad reputations whom I know from junior high. The more he talks to me, the more dangerous the zone feels, but also more irresistible. I am being pulled into something I am powerless to stop. This is nothing like the way I feel when one of the neighborhood boys sticks his tongue in my mouth in the woods at night. I am in control of that. They kiss me, their hands move toward my breasts and I push them away, light a cigarette and say, laughing, “Get out of here!” But this older, married man with the silver Corvette is different, dangerous. I feel things I have never felt before, things I don’t understand, things I feel compelled to follow.

One day he says to me, “We ought to go for a ride one night” and, breathless, I agree. So the next night, Saturday, I meet him in the driveway. He keeps the Corvette at his grandmother’s, so his wife and children are always somewhere else, home, wherever that is. I never ask him, and he never offers to tell me. Before our assignation, I take great pains to dress and put on make-up. I steal my mother’s green eyeshadow, her red lipstick. I wear a pair of hunter green bell-bottoms with a matching halter top. My hair falls in platinum curls around my face. This is my first real adult date and idealized visions of us cruising down by the lake swim through my imagination — my hair is blowing in the breeze, the water alternating silver and blue in the sunset. We stop by the concession stand made of stone down by the beach and he buys me a Coke and tenderly brushes the hair from my face. But that is as far as it goes in my imagination. That is as much as I’ve seen in the movies, as much as I know about what happens between a man and a woman: close-ups of lips barely touching, whispered words of love, an achingly beautiful backdrop of tall pine trees silhouetted against blue sky, the air smelling sweet. His wife never figures into these romantic fantasies. She barely exists. I never even consider what it means that he is married. I am 15, the year is 1975 and I think I am in love for the first time in my life.

When I walk toward him, on this Saturday night, his eyes light up and he says, “Baby, baby, baby!” I smile proudly and I feel an expansive warmth spread through my body. My brand-new body, which I’ve barely had time to get used to, so smooth and so new — like that car, aquiline, shining, glinting in the sun.

It is early twilight and sprinklers cast arcs of cool water over emerald lawns. Children ride by on jewel-colored stingray bicycles. But all I hear as I walk toward him is the sound of my footsteps and the beating of my heart. I am acutely conscious of my breasts, my nipples aching. He holds open the car door and says, “After you, my bunny.” It is strange to sit in a car so low to the ground, with its soft white leather interior. I sink even lower into the bucket seat. I’ve ridden only in the family station wagon, with faux wood, plastic seats leaking stuffing, the interior studded with candy wrappers and dried-up pieces of chewing gum, crammed in next to my brothers who smell like sweat. He, on the other hand, wears cologne that is spicy and sweet at the same time.

He wears a tight black T-shirt, emblazoned with a picture of the Rolling Stones. He hasn’t shaved and a dark sexy shadow covers his chin and the sides of his jaw, and I can tell his hair is freshly washed. In my heart, I know I am his woman. We shoot off down my street, heading east toward the lake, and my heart is singing. His body is inclined toward mine, and when he downshifts his right hand grazes my knee. After a while, it remains there and I do not object. We pass a group of kids I know. I say “kids” because at this minute, I am not one of them. I have entered another dimension where I am grown-up, driving in a grown-up car. I cast sidelong glances at his forearms, his wrists, his hands, so muscular, covered in a fine net of black curly hair. I can’t get over how good he smells.

He leans over and says, “You having fun, bunny?” And I love it when he calls me that. I struggle to adopt a pose of sophistication, worldliness. I sit up straighter, smile back at him and say, “Yeah.” In response, he guns the engine and veers sharply to the right, and then we are cruising on Lake Shore Drive. The lake to our right, the road twisting and turning, we drive underneath a canopy of fragrant pine trees. The air wafting across my face is so fresh, and the night so like my dreams, I am breathless. I tell myself to remember this moment, remember his profile, so strong and assured as he maneuvers the car around hairpin turns, remember the light pressure of his hand on your knee, that delicious feeling of ownership. Remember how when he turns sharply you are thrown against him, and when he quickly moves his hand from your knee and pulls you in closer, how you stay there, his arm around your shoulder, pulled tight against him as he drives.

It is just like in the movies, but it’s somehow better than the movies, because it’s your life. And maybe, just maybe, you are cut out for something better than this one-horse town on the banks of Lake Michigan; maybe this is just the beginning of an unending chain of events in which someday soon you will land, famous and rich and beautiful, in New York or Los Angeles or even London, the small-town days long forgotten, the days and nights of swimming in an overchlorinated pool, being groped by little boys in the bushes, getting straight A’s, but with no hope of escape because your mother only wants you to learn how to type. Remember that this night is magic, and the stars over your head are magic. Remember that this man wants you, has you pulled close to him, so close your chin rests on his chest, muscled and taut beneath the T-shirt. Remember all these moments so that you can string them together like a necklace of diamonds and rubies, so that you never forget.

He abruptly pulls onto a deserted promontory on the south side of town. He parks his car in the gravel, practically at the tip, the lake a dizzying swirl beneath us. He pulls me close and begins to gently, gently kiss me. Now it is night, the sun far below the rim of the western horizon. First his lips barely touch mine, then his tongue delicately explores the inner corners of my mouth. I have never been kissed like this before! I don’t even really know what to do with my mouth. I just follow his lead, as if I’ve been kissed like this a million times. Whatever he does, I do. After a few chaste kisses like this, which feel as if a butterfly has landed on my lips, he says, “Come on,” and gets out of the car. I follow with a small satisfied smile and watch while he pulls a brown leather pouch and a blanket from the back seat.

I get out and see that the silver Corvette continues to gleam even though the parking lights are not on. It must be the moon, I think, it must be the moon that lights up the car so that it seems to shine with its own interior secret light. In front of the car, skirting the edge of the promontory, he lifts the blanket high up in the air with a snap and it magically floats to the ground. He sits down and motions for me to follow. It’s not very comfortable because of the gravel, but the blanket is thick and I settle in next to him while he extracts marijuana from the pouch and begins to roll a joint. When he is finished, and when he is sure I am watching, he puts it in his mouth as if he is sucking on it, and pulls it out with a twist.

He lights the joint and passes it to me. At least this is something I know how to do. I have been smoking marijuana for a long time, at least two years, and I expertly draw on the lit joint. I draw long and hard, the tip flaring, glowing in the dark. I inhale deeply and my lungs fill with smoke, and I pass it back to him. We sit in companionable silence, knees drawn up, close together, alone in our little world. Alone with the stars and the car and the summer night. The marijuana is potent, more so than I expected. My mouth gets very, very dry, and suddenly I am so stoned I’m not even sure that I want to open my mouth to ask for something to drink, sure the words will come out all wrong and that I will sound stupid. So I say nothing, but after a few minutes, he jumps up and gets a six-pack from the back seat, and even though I don’t really drink and in fact hate the taste of beer, I gratefully take the can from his hands. I pop the top and drink long and deep. He laughs and says, “Easy does it bunny.” But I drink the whole thing, I am so thirsty, so wrecked from the joint.

He looks right at me, his face distorted in the darkness, and when he says, “Whatsa matter, cat got your tongue?” his voice sounds far away. I manage to say, “I’m just really stoned.” He replies, “Yeah, it’s good shit, man.” Then he lies back and whispers, “Far out.” A second later he pulls me down to him, but now I don’t like kissing him. Now I want the movie to be over, the credits rolling, so I can be home in my bedroom, on the phone with my best friend, telling her all about my big, glamorous adventure. I want her voice to be filled with envy, with awe. I don’t want to be strewn across this strange man’s body, paranoid and uncomfortable. Now his kisses are not delicate little butterflies, but big and wet and devouring, my face covered in saliva. He presses me so hard against him, my breasts hurt. Then with a little flip I am on my back, the gravel digging into my spine and my shoulder blades as he lowers himself onto me. He begins kneading my breasts and I say, “Ow,” but he doesn’t hear me. It’s as if he’s been transported to another world and is not with me anymore. I am no longer his bunny.

His hand roughly grabs my hand and leads it down toward his erection. I rub up and down and he begins to moan, and this really scares me, because the moaning is insistent, driving. I move my hand, and he grabs it hard this time, and keeps it there. Then he pushes my body forward until my head is draped over the edge of the promontory. “Wait, wait,” I say, terrified now of falling into the water. I know that the currents here are fast, that the water is deep and cold. He replies, “Then stop fucking around and do what I tell you.” “OK,” I say, “OK.” “That’s my girl, that’s my bunny,” and then he eases me back away from the edge. After a few more sloppy kisses, he unzips my pants and tries to slide them down over my hips, but they’re tight, and don’t go down easy. He says, his voice rough, “Godamnit, help me.” Obediently, I do what he says. I arch my back and slide my pants down around my ankles. I look away from him, not sure when it got ugly, not sure when the romance went out of the night. But I am sure that this is all my fault.

He rubs between my legs until I feel raw and chafed. But I don’t make a sound; I barely breathe, sure that if I remain as still as possible nothing bad will happen. His breathing now is ragged, uneven, as he pulls my underwear down. I try to stop him, but he pins my thighs with his knees as he spreads my legs. I struggle briefly but he pushes my head until it is over the edge again, and then I remain perfectly still, like a bird trapped in someone’s hands, and then I understand what is going to happen. He stands over me and unzips his pants, pulls them down and then hooks his thumbs into his white jockey shorts and pulls them down, too. I remain still, spread-eagle, naked beneath him. He enters me quickly, forcefully, in one long stroke. “Ow,” I say. “Ow, that hurts.” “Shhhh, bunny,” he says as he enters me now again and again and again, with short, fast, hard strokes. His thrusting has pushed me perilously close to the edge of the promontory, and I concentrate on not falling over.

I am dry, I am a virgin, it is 1975. It’s a hot summer night in late July. I am 15 years old, but suddenly I am no longer a virgin. It really doesn’t last very long. I keep my head inclined away from him, still dangling off the edge of the promontory. With a gasp and a sigh, he rolls off me, looks down and says, “Shit, bunny, I popped your cherry.” Again he gets up, naked from the waist down, and grabs fast-food napkins from the back seat, tenderly placing them between my legs. “Thanks,” I say. He replies with an edge, “Anything for my bunny,” and then lights a cigarette. I dab the napkins between my legs and, without sitting up, say, “Am I still bleeding?” In response, he looks at me and winks, “You’re fine.” I place the napkins to my side, I cannot look at them. But now I notice, as I sit up to put on my pants, that the headlights of the Corvette look feline, predatory. He looks over at me, smiles and says, “We should get going.” “Sure,” I say. He flicks his cigarette into the lake, and I watch it sail out over the water, suspended in midair for a second, and then follow its trajectory until it is doused in the cold, dark waters. Meanwhile, he has gathered up the blankets, has thrown the beer cans into the trash and is impatiently waiting for me behind the wheel of the car. I get in quietly, close the car door without making a sound.

We drive all the way back to the north side of town, and still I do not say a word. He turns on the radio to a loud rock ‘n’ roll song, his hand thumping the steering wheel during the drum solo. I desperately want to redeem the night from this ugliness; it’s the only thing I can think of as we drive. I practice saying things to him in my head, things like, “Well, that was a little rough,” or “Next time you should ask,” or “I’m really not that kind of girl.” But I don’t want him to get mad, gun the engine, slap me or never speak to me again. I’m not sure what I fear most. So I say nothing, absolutely nothing, except when we are a few blocks from my house, I quickly blurt, “Right here is good.” The car screeches to a halt and I am thrown into the dashboard. He says, “Right here is good for me, too.” He leans over and kisses me on the forehead. He says, “Be good.” I nod and get out of the car, closing the door behind me. He roars off into the night, home to his wife and children.

I look at my watch and see that the crystal is cracked, but it’s still running: 10:30 p.m., right on time to make my curfew. It is painful for me to walk, so I walk slowly. My neighborhood is quiet and deserted, all the kids in bed now sleeping, or watching TV, eating blueberry Popsicles, the juice dripping onto their chins, spilling over their summer cotton pajamas, their stingray bicycles thrown at odd angles on the sidewalk or in driveways, as if stopped in midmotion. At my house, the front porch light is on, but I dread facing my mother. So instead I walk up the driveway and over to our swimming pool in the backyard. I cup my hands, dip them into the cool, blue water and wash my face over and over. Then I walk up to the screen door and holler, “Ma, I’m home. I’m smoking a cigarette on the back porch.” She yells back, “OK!” I light a cigarette, sit down and realize that I have never noticed the yellow halo cast from the porch light, and how it’s always clouded over by large moths, the blue-gray color of the sky at twilight. And I have never noticed how the swimming pool casts an aquamarine glow onto the side of our garage, or how the trees seem to whisper as the wind passes through them. I have never noticed how quiet it gets out here at night.

Finally, a good friend of mine walked up to him and said, “Are you going to kiss this beautiful woman or not?” I was mortified, but also curious and titillated. He said, “Am I going to kiss you?” I said, “Please.” For at least an hour, we necked at the bar, ordering drinks, necking some more, until it was obviously time to catch a cab and go home. And if there is anything more romantic than making out in the back seat of a cab hurtling over the Brooklyn Bridge, I wish someone would tell me about it.

I attract younger men by the score. Men my age don’t give me the time of day. I don’t understand it. Initially, I fought it. One hot summer afternoon, I picked up my phone and found there was no dial tone. Swearing, I stomped outside into the blistering heat and called the phone company, which promised to send someone over. Half an hour later, in walked Mr. July, fresh from the pages of Playgirl magazine: 6 feet of masculinity; 21, maybe 22. Jesus, he was beautiful. Low-slung jeans, a worn T-shirt, broad shoulders, long legs, my God (my God!). The tool belt weighing down his pants, the sweat making his shirt stick to his substantial physique. Stuck at home, working on deadline, I felt like I hadn’t been out in days, but thankfully I never sit down in front of my computer without brushing my hair and putting on makeup. Though I wasn’t in total disarray, I was certainly not at my best.

In addition to being gorgeous, he was also very sweet. So we got to talking and discovered that we were from the same part of the country — “No!” The same state — “You’re kidding.” And finally, yes, the same city — “Get out of here.” We even knew the same people. I thought, “I probably went to high school with his mother.” Even for a freewheeling, sophisticated, urban-outfitted feminist, fresh on the heels of the new millennium, that was almost too Freudian to take. Yes, he was flirting with me. And in a studio apartment, with the phone in the bedroom/office, it wasn’t hard to miss the big double bed, freshly laundered, with the blinds drawn, and the cool and dark of the apartment. I knew he was thinking what I was thinking: “Let’s rip our clothes off and go to it!” But I decided to remain noble, because I felt seducing him or vice versa would be immoral. I didn’t want to take advantage of a very handsome, but also very young, man. So with great regret, I didn’t take him up on his offer for a drink later. (Sigh.)

Later, talking to my friends, male and female, I was stunned to discover that they felt my reservations were wrongheaded, prudish, way too high and mighty. In particular, a male friend said that my telephone man was old enough to make his own decisions, that it was his decision to make, that there was nothing immoral about sexual attraction between two consenting adults.

Hitting 40, getting no interest from men my own age and having a flock of young men hovering around me seemed to happen all at once. If I were being honest, I’d have to admit that part of my hesitancy stemmed from my belief that going along would never lead to anything — a relationship, commitment, brunch on Sunday morning. When “The Graduate” with Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft first came out, I identified with Hoffman. I was, after all, his age. And Bancroft was sexy, yes, but she was bad: a ravenous seductress who used her young lover, and then turned on him. To me, she was Lilith, Eve, Medea, Cleopatra and all the other bad women in the world rolled up into one. I didn’t want to cast my lot with them.

And I also resented the “older woman” role. When the hell did that happen? Suddenly, at the age of 40, things seemed to change for me overnight. I no longer worried as much about my blond highlights fading as I worried about covering the gray. My peers began reading self-help books about catching a man, holding on to a man, rekindling the passion with a man. My seemingly enlightened male friends began jumping ship on their 20-year marriages, taking up with women half their age, or at least 10 years younger. I began to envy even the dowdiest 25-year-old, with her apparent disregard for the stomach sticking out from underneath her skintight tank top. “Yes, she can get away with it,” I thought.

Even when I have just a few errands to run in the neighborhood, I feel compelled to put on a brassiere, comb my hair, put on lipstick. I especially hate bras and always have. Small-breasted and petite, I tried to get away with going braless for as long as possible. And when I have to wear one, it’s the first article of clothing I take off when I get home. I would love to go out of the house braless, but that’s undignified. (Isn’t it?)

So why are these young men attracted to me? Why not to their feminine peers, with breasts bouncing free, unfettered, in tight sweaters and tank tops, their legs smooth and taut, their complexions unlined and rosy. Well, all I have to do is look to my own history of romantic involvement. In my 20s, I had a long-term relationship with a man 20 years my senior. And there was plenty to recommend it, including his sophistication and his experience. He dressed and moved like a movie star, a man with two marriages behind him and five children. He was sure of himself; he knew exactly who he was and how he had got there. I found this intoxicating and sexy. People in their 40s or older do have a stronger sense of themselves, after all. They’ve lived through jobs ending and beginning, marriages ending and beginning. Through trial and error, through sheer number of years lived, they have learned to take the good with the bad. They have an appealing sanguinity about life. When I asked my current lover (27) what attracted him to me, he said, “You know who you are.”

And I do. Sophistication, confidence and maturity are aphrodisiacs, whether for younger men attracted to older women or younger women dating older men. What’s more, men think nothing of pursuing a woman 10, 15, even 20 years their junior — they do it without batting an eyelash. It’s much more socially and culturally acceptable. But I have sometimes been chided by “friends” for robbing the cradle; they make allusions to the man’s “issues with his mother,” as if dating an older woman were an indication of deep-seated neuroses, and certainly not productive. It is difficult to shed the mantle of an “overly aggressive woman, seductress, treating a man like an object.”

I remember my first encounter with a man 15 years my junior. I gloried in his thick, black, curly hair that hadn’t even begun to think about thinning out. And when he took his shirt off, I almost passed out from sheer physical joy in his firm and ripe nipples. The whole evening could’ve ended right there, above the waist, limited only to lips and teeth, hair and nipples, and I would’ve been happy and fulfilled.

Was he an object? To a certain extent, yes. But in the heat of sexual passion with any partner, the glory of the body, of the physical, is present. To a certain extent, it’s what sex is about for both men and for women. But society has a long history of distrust and even fear of the power of female sexuality. I have enjoyed my younger lovers, but have felt sheepish in admitting to it, as if it points to some inherent flaw in my psychosexual makeup. If I could completely divest myself of this acculturated belief, and come out of the closet, this is what I would say:

I love younger men. They approach sex in a way that is pure, unfettered by bitterness, unblemished by past heartaches and still completely infused with the joy of two naked bodies. One man, 25, stood close to me, our bodies almost touching, but not quite. He unbuttoned my long black dress, slowly, deliberately, stopping every few moments to caress my hair, my face. When I stood before him, stripped down to my underwear, he kissed me long and deep, and then he took his clothes off. And I loved his young body, standing before me, completely naked. He was perfect, his erection rock hard, a thing of beauty. Again, the evening could’ve ended right there at that moment.

I won’t pretend that this assignation was in any sense a meeting of the minds, but to a great extent, that was the beauty of it. It was about now, this minute, this second, this arm, this leg, these lips. There were no expectations, and that, not surprisingly, is very freeing.

If lovemaking is all about the moment, if it does not get tangled up in the zeitgeist of relationships, the thrill of early adolescent wonder and the awe of what your body can do and how it can make you feel return. And I like that feeling of purity and innocence. Who wouldn’t? In contrast, a sexual relationship with a man my age inevitably leads to questions of commitment, then to the histories of ex-wives, ex-girlfriends and painful betrayals, so the boundaries and the rules begin to solidify even before the first kiss. Making love with a much younger man circumvents the need for all this angst. At least on my part. Sure, lightning could strike and we could fall in love, become a couple, but that is highly unlikely, so it doesn’t enter into the transaction.

Is this the female version of a midlife crisis? Perhaps. Is it a way of avoiding the responsibility and commitment of a relationship? Perhaps. But consider this: Sex hasn’t been just about procreation for a long time, and women first burned their bras more than 30 years ago. In the absence of interest from men my age, is there any reason to not respond to a younger man’s attention? I think it verges on the revolutionary for a mature woman like me, in her 40s, to come out of the closet and say, “God, I love to fuck. I love sex and I love sex with younger men.” And to say this with no apologies, no hang-ups. I’m not there of course, but I’m working on it. Our male counterparts discovered this a long time ago. Why isn’t what’s good for the gander good for the goose?

Recently I met a man 20 years younger than I. He was smart, sophisticated and good-looking, and I lusted after him with every fiber and synapse and female hormone I possess. Who can explain such a thing? Yet this attraction (and it is mutual) remains embarrassing to me. If I had the courage, I would invite him into my bathtub and then into my bed for a night of unbridled, lusty lovemaking. What do I fear? Snide comments from my friends, yes. Snide comments from his friends, yes. In his presence, I turn into an adolescent again, gawky and insecure. I have trouble looking him in the eye, my heart beats faster, I blush for no apparent reason. What I’d like to do is take him to the Catskill Mountains, on the night of a full moon. Bring a worn, soft blanket and a bottle of good white wine, grab his hand and take him high up into the hills, where the wind whispers through the leaves of the trees. I’d like to quote T.S. Eliot in his ear — “Let us go then, you and I,/When the evening is spread out against the sky/Like a patient etherized upon a table” — and slowly divest him of all his clothes. Kiss him till his mouth is bruised like a piece of ripe fruit, take him, all of him, inside me slowly, until the moonlight shines in our mouths, our eyes and our hair. But I won’t. This is what I fantasize. I am still too hung up on how it might “look.” What a shame. What a shame that I am still so concerned about what other people might think.

It’s said that a woman reaches her sexual peak in her 40s and men in their 20s. If this is true, then I am right on schedule. Here’s hoping I can have 10 more years of younger men, their eyes bright and gleaming, their bodies taut and tender.