I can’t remember the exact moment that we met. I can’t remember because everything up until the moment she looked at me was so insignificant, it couldn’t have mattered. I wish I had known it would matter, so I could have savoured the build-up and replay it over and over in my mind. “Jennifer, this is Christine, our new receptionist,” echoes in my mind when I relive, in slow motion, the moment I turned without a care into Christine’s riveting cornflower blue eyes. How can words describe a circumstance that wipes out all consciousness? Nothing existed in that moment, except her. She was a rare creature who didn’t seem human to me. She was utterly captivating. She wore billowing, romantic dresses that flowed around her petite 5’ 2” frame like the fog that flowed over the pacific hills when it rolled in. It was as if her body moved through space parting the air that never seemed to touch her skin. She had a smile like a diamond that could light up the darkest void, but her eyes could cut through glass with a stare that made my blood simultaneous freeze and boil. She was 21 and I was 18. The world was opening up to me in ways I never imagined, and she was like a portal into new and completely unexplored territories of wonder and magic. We became friends by default because we were both the youngest in an office of mostly middle-aged women. I was jealous that she was old enough to go to clubs and drink. I wasn’t in love with her then, I wanted to emulate her style and mannerisms and allure. Truly beautiful women have an elusive quality that isn’t self-conscious, and it allows them to be noticed and to affect the very energy of room. It’s a kind of grace, and I wanted to touch and take it for myself. At that point in my life, I had only been with one other girl, another Chrystine, who had seduced me when I was 16 and had shown me the pure pleasure of clitoral orgasms. I had been with boys, but I had no idea how my body worked until Chrystine touched me. But the idea of being with women frightened me. The draw was overwhelming, but the mechanics thwarted me, and the thought of touching and tasting women revolted as much as it riveted me. I was also in the midst of a relationship with the love of my life, and sexual pleasure outside of the bonds of that intimacy never occurred to me, much less than the idea that I could be bi-sexual. I thought I wanted to be Christine, not that I wanted to be with Christine. Christine and I remained friends for a few years, and in the strangest of plot twists, I introduced to her to the man she married. He was fresh off the boat from Ireland, and she fell for him like most American girls fall for the charm and attention that Irishmen use like ninjas when they want someone. But true to form, once they have you, the men of Ire wane like the moon and within a year, Christine began to get restless. It was my first St. Patrick’s Day as a 21 year-old, and we made plans to take on the motherload of festivities across San Francisco. The inner Richmond district was a mecca of pubs in those days, and we started at Ireland’s 32. Christine was having a dilemma , and she bought me a drink while her husband, Kevin, went to the back of the pub to drink with the boys. Ever since I’d known Christine, she had a lover who worked on a TV show called Falcon Crest. It was an evening soap – I think it was a spin-off of Dallas – about a winery in Napa. Every year, they would shoot for 2 weeks on location, and this camera man and Christine would spend the 2 weeks together. She had originally told her lover she was married and wouldn’t be able to join him, but she was really sexually frustrated, and she wondered if she could just spend one night with that man and get away with it. Then she turned to me and asked if I would join her. At first I thought she was asking if I would go in her place, and I protested that her lover would be mighty disappointed to be expecting her and get me. She looked at me like I was out of my mind and emphasised that she had asked me to join her. She explained that her lover had always wanted to see her with a woman, and somehow in Christine’s semi sex starved, addled mind, she thought it might be less like adultery if she had a menage a trois rather than if she was with her lover alone. I don’t remember answering her before her husband walked over to us and she grabbed my arm and pulled me into the ladies’ room. I was barely in the door, when she pushed me against the wall and kissed me in a kind of frenzy. It was so surreal and unexpected, I felt nothing. I couldn’t wrap my mind around what was happening. When I think of that moment, I wonder if she knew, even better than I did, how much I wanted her. Men can be pretty clueless when women are attracted but women tend to be more astute about such things. I’ve always wondered if she had always known about me when I hadn't known about myself. When the reality of what was happening landed with me, I kissed her back. I wish my brain had a switch that I could flick off in moments like these because I missed some of the experience while my mind went nuts about how wild the whole scenario was. My body, on the other hand, came alive in ways I hadn’t really expected. And my poor, naïve heart exploded with the magnitude of a hundred nuclear bombs. I was in love with this woman who was kissing me in the bathroom of an Irish pub, and we hadn’t even finished our first pint. Chris leaned her forehead against mine, our fingers entwined, and she took a deep breath and sighed, like she was giving up something or giving in to something. Then she pulled away and looked at me and said, “I want to take you home now.” I held my breath and followed her, afraid that if I even sneezed, it would all evaporate. I think she told her husband I wasn’t feeling well, and we grabbed a taxi back to their place. She held my hand and kissed me all the way. I couldn't fathom how much more beautiful she had become to me riding in a dingy cab back to Noe Valley. When we got to her apartment, her almost desperate state abated, and she poured us both glasses of wine. Neither of us spoke. Since they had already invited me to stay the night, Christine had the pull-out bed set up in the living room. It only dawned on me years later that she had done that with forethought. She undid the buttons of her dress and let it fall. There was nothing fancy about her underclothes. She was in a plain white cotton bra and white cotton panties – anything more than those plain garments would have sullied her perfect milky rose skin. I had never seen another woman naked like that in front of me, and she just let me take her in. She let her hair down and took off her bra and laid down on the bed. Female beauty is bewitching and intoxicating. The pleasure of just seeing her almost naked lounging in front of me would have been enough, and I could have stayed in that moment forever without ever laying a finger on her. If I could paint, I would have put Raphael to shame. If I could write, Shakespeare’s sonnets would pale by comparison. But all I could do was marvel at her. When I touched her the nerve ending of my finger tips climaxed. When I kissed her, she melted like soft, hot wax taking me in and engulfing me. She wrapped herself around me like I was a life preserver that could save both of us from drowning. All my fears of being with a woman evaporated as my appetite and instincts rose. My hands and eyes and tongue wanted to know every inch of her. There was no order or rhyme or reason to my excavation. My hand reached for her thigh, my mouth found her breast, my tongue and fingers bearing down together. To feel her buck against me with pleasure made me jealous of men for the first time in my life. To have felt that kind of convulsion from within her - that men get to feel that from within - is a glory I can only dream of. Wanting to feel her flesh and pleasure surrounding me, I reached inside her. I had never felt the silky, delicate, viscous honey of woman, and the more I felt her contract around my fingers the deeper I wanted to dive in. I remember thinking ‘no wonder men like having sex so much,’ and simultaneously realising that I normally did not. And then the revelation to beat all revelations hit me, I could do to Christine what I had always wished men had done to me. I removed her underwear and slid three fingers into her as deeply as I could to give her the sensation of girth, and with my middle finger, I started to gently, ever so gently, caress her from the inside. No thrusting, no friction, just expansion and caresses in waves with the ebb and flow of pleasure she was experiencing. When I could feel her shift from contraction to expulsion, I tasted her for the first time. She smelled like the sweetest, condensed cream with a hint of metal and she tasted like watermelon and electricity. My tongue delighted in the ridges and folds of her flesh. Once the fear that I wouldn’t be able to make her cum subsided, the power of having her pleasure in my grasp took me to a place of ecstasy I’d never considered, and I began to have sympathetic convulsions with her while still holding her back from letting go until I couldn’t stand it any more and I let her loose. As she reached the climax of her first orgasm, I began to use friction to build further waves of pleasure and release until she was completely empty of need or desire. And just before I was bout to disengage, we heard her husband open the door downstairs and she vanished into the bathroom. I went to the kitchen to wash my hands, and Christine appeared in sweats at the top of the stairs just before he came in. I hadn’t realised how much time had passed while we were alone there, but Kevin was quite drunk and very happy. I realised even if he had copped on to anything – like the bed being a mess or her dress on the floor – he wouldn’t remember it in the morning. So we chatted for a bit, and they went to bed. I couldn’t sleep. I could smell her on the sheets and I could feel her dampness in places. I wanted to drown there. I wasn’t disappointed that Kevin came home. I was elated and hopeful and utterly fucking dumbfounded that she would want anything of me, much less this. I started to imagine when and how we could see each other again and how perfect this all was. I even considered if I could be with Kevin if it ever went in that direction. Curiously, it never dawned on me to think about bringing her into my relationship with Anthony. I don’t think I could have ever let Anthony see what it was like for me to be with a woman and certainly not one that I had fallen for. In the morning, Christine was very casual. Open but aloof. She wasn’t avoiding me and there wasn’t tension, but she there was something missing. On our way out to breakfast, Christine suggested that I bring my bag with me, so they could drop me off after we ate – and I knew in that moment that she was going to pretend that nothing ever happened between us. It was as unfathomable and surreal as when she first kissed me, except instead of my mind exploding with possibilities everything within in me wrenched and convulsed. I ran to the bathroom and vomited – which at least provided the excuse I needed to get out breakfast and fit well with the story Christine had given Kevin about my not being well the previous night. I couldn’t bring myself to hug Chris good-bye, and Kevin gave me a ride home. Chris never spoke to me or saw me again after that morning. I was equally devastated and grateful. It was the beginning of my realisation that ecstasy – even for a moment – is worth a lifetime of bland happiness. And because of Anthony, it also taught me that I have the capacity to love more than one person in more ways than I could ever experience, and having that love in the face of devastation softens the blow and makes most of life’s severe disappointments endurable rather than destructive.