As he walked into the recommended establishment, he questioned the wisdom of embracing the guidance of those so much like himself, those who sacrificed their morals and traded in their long and hard-earned trust to satisfy needs unresolved since his adolescent years. While the community he had found was predominantly consistent to the “live and let live” nature he had embraced after crossing over and coming back on the table that day a few years ago, it was also conflicted in that its diversity offered as many options for immolation as did it resolution. The script on the window stated “Ms. Lea- Anne Piper Dream, Proprietor” and while he was here to determine if she was good to her name, he also knew that some scripts are not intended for men such as himself. Men with so much to lose.
The abode into which he entered was prominently in need of the attention that he himself desired to embrace, if only for a moment. But it also showed that like himself, such amenities had not always been absent. To wit, he sensed the environment would soon reveal its shortcomings to be as temporary as his intended foray into this world of borrowed passions.
His fight or flight instincts emerged just as she entered the reception area. She was every fantasy that he wished to fulfill when he embarked on this, his unholiest of endeavors, and her disheveled appearance suggested that she would not be one to judge. She extended her hand and introduced herself as Nikki Tender and that inner unfulfilled adolescent of his immediately registered her as “Barely Legal Tender”. Her sheepish smile as he uttered “Eric, Eric Revue” conveyed her awareness of his wayward thoughts.
As they sat at her sparse desk in the reception area, he noted the absence of indicators suggesting the settled life that he enjoyed. No pictures of a spouse, nor of kids at soccer practice. No lover’s poems printed on the finest of Hallmark cardstock from the Valentine’s Day recently passed, and perhaps most telling of all, she wore no wedding ring. She was 24 at most by his estimation, although his ability to accurately gauge such things had gradually dissipated as he steadfastly and dutifully marched through his midlife.
This is a period during which he all too easily surrendered Neil Young and Fleetwood Mac concerts to evenings enjoying Ke$ha and Victoria Justice with his children. It was not lost on him that her interests would more closely parallel those of his children than his own. While he reminisced about his first real girlfriend while daydreaming into her similarly big brown eyes, he remembered with bitter-sweetness of the evening doing shots with a younger coworker, looking around the bar and questioning aloud whether it was “underage fucking drinking night in this place”. The look on his coworker’s face delivered the news that he had truly become “that guy”, the older guy in the bar who should probably be somewhere else. The older guy who should be anywhere else right now, as he sat is Ms. Dreams’ enclave where past desires meet with current opportunity, as he once watched the Caribbean merge to make love to the Atlantic where the two entangle at The Point in St. Kitts.
Nikki went directly to the point, as the clientele never much changed in this place and customers were in the market for what were ultimately the same sins. When she asked “so what do you like”, it was clear that she expected neither a conversation concerning music nor the culinary arts. She was asking, in the politest of possible terms, “so who have you always wanted to fuck with reckless abandon”.
Eric was at once apprehensive and grateful. He was never going to ever be comfortable with this soiree, and her eagerness to skip the formalities was helpful. As he described the most beautiful women he had ever met, those few locked into his conscience every bit as vividly as his children’s first steps, he could feel the vibe of each distinct environment just as surely as he could recall the effect each had on the favorite on his sexually aroused senses, the natural scent of each beautiful women. He talked about the petite barista in the Arts District of Dublin, how she embodied every fantasy he held about beautiful petite women with perfect racks. He talked about Erika, the former world class gymnast who happened to share a horseback ride to the San Luis waterfall in Costa Rica, how they had connected despite the presence of her overbearing husband and how he had, in a rare moment of brevity, disrobed to partake in the waterfall’s discharge so symbolic of the many times he would dream of her. Nikki made mental note that McKayla U’May, a former gymnast and stunning redhead, would make for a nice blend of the two and had recently made the move to their east coast office. She would be a nice match.
He talked about the hike to the Kiyomizu-dera Shrine complex in Kyoto, through the winding streets of vendors, and how one young lady in particular, a dead-on knock off of a young Lucy Lieu, had affected him in such a way that “the wife must have noticed”. And he spoke of the young women in Salzburg, the petite brunette in Alter Markt Square handing out flyers for the Sound of Music Tour, the one whose dimensions only grew tighter with time. The type of yoga body that men dream of spending hours gently touching and exploring, hours spent marveling at perfection achieved, the genetic lottery winners as he often referred to such women. Nikki noted that Akoya Pearla was back in the fold, after some time spent working independently in the big apple. And he spoke of his only encounter with a lady of the night, the one sent to his room by the hotel staff while traveling Central America without his family, that trip to Costa Rica that had initially planted the seeds of this blossoming desire. Back when his moral compass still knew true north from due consequences. Back before the moment he met the co-ed checking backpacks and coats at the St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, the one who frowned and responded “I want someone to sin with me and I am stuck at this lousy job” when he asked how she was doing, the one who reminded him not just of Nikki Barely Legal, but of his long-ago first love who had betrayed him like no other and left him during his darkest night.
Could Nikki have possibly understood then, indeed could either of them understood, that it would be she more so than Lee Anne’s posse of wonderful ladies who would at last satiate his needs? How could she have known that which he himself did not yet understand, that this was not about the resentment of missed opportunities during his decades-long marriage but rather a longing to recapture the passion and intimacy of his youth? How could either of them have known that her very own kisses would be the ones that would feel so much like those of the one who left him decades ago, the one who herself through her many failed relationships would never again come know the intimacy that she felt in his arms?