Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 This is a true story, and happened to me in Chicago many years ago when I
was twenty.

   I had finished my third year of college on the South Side.  My friends
who had roomed with me all year scattered to the four corners of the earth
to work summer jobs back home or take internships on the East Coast.  I had
a local job at a financial firm where I researched foreign, publicly-held
companies, so I stayed.  Hyde Park, the neighborhood surrounding the
campus, emptied out in the summer since few students came from Chicago, and
those who did were suburbanites.  And surrounded as it is by bad
neighborhoods I knew it became a desert isle for three months until the
incoming freshmen arrive for Orientation at the end of August.

   So beyond work there was little to do, little I could afford to do as a
student, and no one around to do it with.  It was a fitting book-end for
another year at the university that has been described by its inmates as,
"Where Fun Goes To Die," "Proof That Hell Does Freeze Over (Chicago winters
are bone-chilling)," and "Proud 300!  (A Rating of the top 300 party
schools in America listed Chicago dead last, below Brigham Young University
and the single-sex military academies at Annapolis and West Point)"

   If in Alaska where men outnumber women 60/40 the women have a saying,
"The odds are good, but the goods are odd," then Chicago men, who outnumber
the women by the same ratio, could well claim the inverse, "The odds are
bad, and the goods are worse.  Until February, when you gotta do what you
gotta do." But even with lowered standards the crushing workload, lack of
disposable income, and dour grey surroundings made for bitter, bitter
celibacy.

   That was why she struck like a ray of sunshine in that morose place. 
Glimpsed from afar, down the block, through trees, getting a coffee across
the quad, a flash of gold on green as she tossed her hair against the
backdrop of the sheltering oaks.  She was breathtaking.  My God she had a
perfect complexion with rosy cheeks, real golden blond hair, a tight body
with B-cup breasts and lips that always had that shade of red lipstick that
spelled desire.  She moved with athletic grace that captivated you.  Her
smile was bright.  Her manner was warm.  She was the promise of reward my
friends and I always told each other waited on the other side of all the
suffering and punishment we were grinding through at the school.  She was
the girl every one of us would have given our right arm to be with.

   But she was also fleeting.  No idea what her name was.  No idea where
she lived.  No clue even what she was studying.  There was no way to find
her, to meet her.  She was a unicorn you half dreamt you had seen.  And the
more you saw her, once here, three months later, there, the more you
debated whether she was a sprite sent by a kindly god to draw you forward
through adversity, or a new torment sent to redouble the pain of your
loneliness in that god-forsaken place.

   Finally I had had enough, and rented an apartment on the North Side in
the hopes of meeting more girls and having a life.  And I focused on my
plans to escape miserable Chicago.  I planned to graduate early.  I
polished my resume.  I applied to as many foreign internships and programs
as I could.  I wanted out in the worst way.  I wanted to catch that unicorn
for myself.  I wanted her to be a blessing, not a torment sent to further
crush my soul.  So I did the only thing I knew how to do: work harder.  I
spent every waking moment researching and planning.  And research, in those
days before the Web, meant a library with Lexis/Nexus; I often travelled to
the campus on the South Side to get access to those resources.  I had
bought a used, small Honda motorcycle to make that possible, and to get to
class for the ensuing year, because I couldn't afford to take the El and
because it was too far to bike.

   It was in July, then, that I was commuting to the campus to work on an
application for a scholarship to study in Japan.  My friend Mike was a PhD
student with an office in the Law School where they had the Lexis/Nexus
terminals, so I would ride down, ring him up on the intercom to buzz me in.
We would smoke a couple cigarettes, drink horribly burnt three-day old
coffee that had lingered in the faculty lounge, and he would regale me
about his latest exploits with the women who found him, his goatee, and
mastery of Russian Studies irresistable.  My underclassmen friends and I,
actually, revered Mike as an oracle, an archetype who could find and slay
with ease all the women we could only dream of.  We took notes whenever he
swanned into his cups, deep into a two-pack Marlboro Red nic-fit, and began
growling out his wisdom with a sly grin and interspersed with choice
Russian sayings.  We reverently inscribed scrolls with his Laws and pinned
them to our walls and bestowed them upon incoming freshmen who had earned
our favor:

   1.  Attention!  Attention!  Attention!  (Women crave attention, so give
it to them and you will receive the creamy goodness) 2.  Roses are Stupid.
(Never give a woman roses when she told you her favorite flower was
daisies--It shows you were not paying attention) 3.  Never let your circles
overlap.  (Never date two women who might have gone to the same school,
work for the same company, or live in the same building.  The risk of
discovery is too great)

   On one of those sessions, I sighed and told Mike about the blonde, and
wondered how I couldn't seem to manage to apply his laws to meeting that
girl.  Trying to be helpful, he asked me to describe her.  I did,
appearance, height, weight, manner, etc.  It's not much to go on in a
normal city or neighborhood, I know, but Hyde Park was not a normal
neighborhood, and Chicago was not a normal city.  Really, a realm of
despair within a realm of darkness.  So if you had spotted the unicorn, you
noticed and remembered.

   Mike did know her.

   "She lives in my building, man."

   I gaped.  "No fucking way."

   "Yeah, eta pravda.  She lives in my fucking building.  Hot little
number, blonde, tight body, likes those flower print dresses in the summer.
Ruby red lips that I have fantasized about seeing wrapped around my fat
cock."

   "What's her name?"

   "No idea, dude.  I see her in the laundry room once in a while and she
reacts to me like a skeevy old perv.  She tucks her chin into her shoulder
and darts for the door.  Ahh, the lacey underthings in her basket are the
stuff of dreams, man.  God I would love to have her dance in my lap."

   Now, Mike was our guru.  We all were certain he had entertained an
endless string of ethereal beauties for the three years we had known him.
He was a published author.  He had the ear of presidents, parliamentarians,
and scholars across the Eastern Bloc as they struggled to write new
constitutions and recast their societies after the fall of the Soviet
Union. He had made love to more women in more countries and more languages
than we all had ever dreamed of.  So I wrote off my chances with the
unicorn entirely.

   Life does occasionally hold surprises in store for us.

   Not long after that conversation, I was nearing the end of the work on
the application for Japan.  I had finished work.  The days were long, being
summer.  The sunlight was still strong in the evening.  But storm clouds
were building in the West as I rode south on Lake Shore Drive, the way they
do in the Midwest in the summer.Just at the exit off Lake Shore Drive, the
heavens opened up with a summer squall.  I gritted my teeth through the
downpour to Walgreens, where I meant to buy some smokes for the sessions
with Mike.  Moving through the aisles I caught sight of the girl at the
checkout line.  I was quite wet, and my riding boots squeaked on the
linoleum.  As I ruffled my drenched hair, I caught the girl's eye.  She
smiled at me and shyly averted her eyes.

   Yes, I know that many more confident men reading this, and every woman,
would have read that as a green light.  But remember I was beaten down.  I
had grown up poor and had given my all to attend that university and earn
the right degree in the right field.  And still I could not get the time of
day from either companies or women.  And my friend Mike, whom I respected
and revered, could not get the time of day from her.  So it was my honest
conclusion that that girl, the unicorn who had teased me for years, was so
far out of my league that I didn't even dare hope she could wind up with
me.

   I passed her.  I sighed.  I sought out the Dunhills my friend had turned
me onto.  I bought them.  Outside, the rain storm continued.

   As I left the checkout line and walked to the glass doors, I could see
the cloudburst tail off to a drizzle.  Miserable weather for a miserable
night in a miserable town for a miserable dude.  Perfect.  Nothing for it
but to ride through to the law school.

   "Do you think you could give me a ride home on that motorcycle of
yours?"

   The soft voice at my left elbow was hers.  She was splayed against the
wall of the Walgreens, trying to avoid the rain under the 8-inch overhang
of concrete slab they called a roof.  Her flower-print sundress was so
plastered against her body I could tell she was wearing an athletic bra and
spandex shorts under it.  Her hair, normally wavy, clung to her scalp as
though she had emerged from a swimming pool; it looked brown with damp. 
Her lips were as red and vivid as ever.  Her teeth were perfect and
brilliant.  Her eyes were green.  I had never been close enough to see
their color before.

   I was stunned.  No idea what to say or do.  Couldn't say a word.  She
smiled shyly and glanced down.

   "Uh, sure," I managed.  "My bike's over here."

   I offered her my leather jacket and helmet, which she accepted.  She
drew the jacket's lapels up to her chin and inhaled its scent, "I love
Eternity--it is Eternity, isn't it?"

   I nodded dumbly.  The transition from my expectation of unbroken misery
that evening to this beautiful girl sitting on my bike, curling up in my
jacket, and reveling in my cologne was so abrupt.  I had stepped through
the Looking Glass.

   I mounted the bike and fired it up.  Her arms and legs tightened around
me as I straightened it and tucked up the kickstand.  I could feel from the
pressure between my shoulder blades that she was hugging herself to me and
nestling her face in my back.

   As we pulled away onto 55th Street I tried to avoid the potholes to give
her a smooth ride--inexperienced riders freak out when hitting bumps.  But
the streets there were so patched and re-patched hitting some roughness was
unavoidable.  The jouncing bike triggered a reaction I had not
anticipated--she clung to me tighter, so tight I swear I could feel her
grinding on my back.

   "Yeah," I thought to myself, "I am a man."

   Boy I could have had that ride last for hours.  But all too soon it was
over and I was pulling up outside her building--my old building, Mike's
building, and letting her off.  As she returned my jacket and helmet she
said, "My name is Nicole, by the way.  Thanks for the ride.  I'd love to do
it again sometime."

   The ride to her place had emboldened me enough to get her number, and I
gave her mine.

   "My name's Rory.  I'd like that.  Anywhere you want to go.  Give me a
ring."

   I gave her what I hoped was a confident smile and rode off.

   At the Law School Mike gave me a high-five.  "That's a fucking great
story, man," he puffed on his Marlboros, "What are you gonna do to seal the
deal?"

   My fragile confidence left me.  "I dunno, what should I do?  Should I
call her tomorrow?"

   "No, man, let her come to you.  She digs the motorcycle dude thing,
you're supposed to be aloof.  If you call her first it will ruin her
fantasy."

   I was a starving man.  Sitting in front of a banquet.  He was telling me
to wait for somebody to serve me.  My trust in Mike was strong, but my
self-doubts were strong, too.  I decided to do it his way.

   The next day I got home from work and checked my messages.  My phone was
dead.  In the pile of mail there was a disconnect notice I had overlooked.
It's hard to stay on top of your bills when you're a student.

   I had to get the phone back online.  Quickly, I found the nearest
bill-paying kiosk for the phone company: in the North Loop.  It closed at
6pm.  I had 30 minutes to make the 15 minute drive back down Lake Shore
Drive from Sheridan Avenue.  Reverse commute, no traffic, should be easy. I
blasted out to the street and slipped my bike through the backstreets, past
the lights, and across the scant median that separated the dead-end from
the onramp.  Making good time, I kept constant eye on my watch.

   Then, at Lincoln Park Zoo, flagmen appeared and waved for everyone to
stop so a caravan of dump trucks could enter the road from a utility
entrance.  Minutes ticked by.  My margin ticked down.  The instant the
flagmen moved out of the way, I cranked the accelerator.  Passing the dump
trucks chunks of gravel pelted my helmet and jacket.  I didn't care.  I had
no time.

   Across the Chicago River I took the exit for Wacker Drive.  I knew I
could slip down a couple blocks on State Street, though you weren't
supposed to so city buses could move, and jam into the North Loop to the
kiosk before anyone was the wiser.  Damn!  Damn!  A crowd of tourists
dawdled in the intersection, gawking at the skyline and taking pictures. 
Minutes ticked by.  My margin ticked down.

   Threading around, I turned on to the street in front of the kiosk and
slipped into a pay spot behind a taxi.  Fished a quarter out of my pocket
and fed the meter.  Through the glass doors of the kiosk I could see the
line of people waiting for the clerks.  I ran to the door.  It was locked.
6:03pm.  I knocked on the door.  Flashed my notice at the clerk.  The
middle-aged woman at the counter shook her head and wagged her finger. 
FUUUCKK!
West of Hyde Park, there was another kiosk that stayed open until 7pm.

It was a 30 minute ride, but I could make it if I hurried.

   I vaulted back onto my bike and gunned it.  On the southern stretch of
Lake Shore Drive, around 35th Street, there's a sharp hill where you can
almost achieve lift-off if you take it fast enough.  I had to have gotten
air that day.  I screamed past the Museum of Science and Industry and
rocketed along the Midway.  Past Jackson Avenue the burned out husks of the
neighborhoods surrounding Hyde Park began.  Block after block of abandoned
houses, with their doors stoved in and their windows all broken.  It was
like the surface of the moon.  I was afraid to go there, even with friends.
Without I was taking a big, big risk.  But it was where the payment center
was, and I had to connect with that girl.

   Again, everything contrived to block me.  Green lights missed. 
Unexpected detours.  Then, at 6:50pm I arrived at the center.  Its lights
were off.  The doors were locked.  No explanation.  Nobody there.  No way
to pay my bill and have service restored.  I was going to miss her call.  I
knew it.  Even the sun, which had lingered until 8pm the previous evening,
had decided to give up early.  The shadows lengthened.  The moonscape of
South Chicago grew more ominous.  I knew I had to exfiltrate quickly.

   Crushed.  The one good thing that had gone right in my life had been
turned by the evil of that city.  Cruelty heaped upon cruelty.  There was
nothing to do but go to the University Pub and drown my sorrows.

   So I rode back along the Midway, pulling up outside the pub.  It lay in
the basement, you had to enter the building upstairs to get to it.  It
opened at 6:30pm in the summer--I had worked as a bouncer there two summers
before.  But the entire building was dark.  Every door was locked, even the
back doors I knew the caretaking staff left ajar when they were cleaning.

   So, no beer.

   I thought, Mike always had vodka.  He drank it in big, manly Russian
tumblers--no insultingly mincing shot glasses for him.  And he was wise,
especially when enlivened by spirits and tobacco.  If anyone knew what to
do, he would.  His place was only 2 blocks away.

   There, his window was lit.  I could see shadows moving.  His door would
not answer.  Denied.

   I climbed onto my bike.  Nothing for it.  Ride through the darkness to
sit in my apartment in the dark, alone.  My mood could not have been
blacker.  One try to start the bike.  Nothing.  Second try, nothing.  Third
try, and the engine turned over.  Then, she walked out the front door of
the building...

   "Hey," she said.

   "Hi," I said.

   "Funny running into you here.  I don't even know why I left my
apartment. Maybe I was going to go do laundry, but..." she shrugged.  She
wasn't carrying a laundry basket.  "What brings you around?"

   "I've had a crazy day.  Crazy day.  But it looks like it's getting
better." I smiled.

   She answered with a mischievous smile of her own.  "How about that ride
now?"

   "You're on.  Climb abord."

   "Hold on, let me go change real quick."

   I waited while she ran back inside.  When she came out she was wearing a
form-hugging black leather jacket, boots, and brown leggings that left
little to the imagination.  Her blond hair was wild.  Her lips were red. 
Her eyes flashed.  Her cheeks were rosy--she had taken time to put on some
makeup.  She didn't need it.

   I handed her a helmet and she swung onto the bike behind me.  She
wrapped her arms around my waist, her hands burrowing up under my jacket; I
swear she caressed my abs.  She pressed herself tightly to my back.  I
couldn't feel her tits through our leather jackets, but below where she
ground against me I could feel heat.  A swelling started in my pants.  If
she dropped her hand into my lap then I would surely have exploded.

   I gunned the throttle.  She tightened her embrace.  We rode off into the
night.  Engine noise, wind, and helmets precluded conversation. 
Communication came through her hot thighs and heat at my back, and the
pressure in my pants.  I hit as many bumps as I could.  In my mind I could
imagine her gasping as she clung to me.

   Up Lake Shore Drive, the skyline of the city lit up.  It is a fine one.
Its lights glittered on the water of Lake Michigan and the Chicago River.
The Gold Coast, a showcase of Mies van der Rohe's floating boxes, lined the
way.  Then, the darkness of Lincoln Park and lakeshore beyond.  Past the
northern end of Lake Shore Drive where it turns into Devon I turned into a
small public beach tucked away between high rises; I parked the bike on the
blacktop and took Nicole by the hand to lead her onto the sand.

   We walked to the water's edge and sat.  In the distance, a radio played
Sinatra.  She cuddled close.  Her voice was low, throaty, and breathless in
my ear.  She sounded giddy.  Desire hung on every syllable.  I was in a
daze.  The reversal of the day's fortune was unprecedented.  One moment,
black despair; now, this.  She traced her hand up the inside of my thighs
to the pressure in my jeans.  Her nails scratched along my fly and veered
off to follow the course of my hardening dick.  At the head she circled the
frenum slightly.  Even through the interfering layers of denim and boxers
it was the most erotic touch I had ever experienced.  I turned to look into
her eyes.  They were glisteningand available.  Her lips parted slightly. 
The tiny mole on her snow white cheek made her perfection.  I fell into the
curve of her chin, her flushed cheek, her pursed lips, the tangles of her
hair, the glint of her eyes, the brief flare of her nostrils, the scent of
her perfume, her pearly teeth, her expectant tongue--it was hot, hot, hot.

   My self rushed into that kiss.  Hurt.  Loneliness.  Relief.  Worship. 
Expectation.  Desire.  Bravado.  I combed my fingers through her hair and
cradled her head in my hands.  I tugged her back and opened her throat to
nips and kisses.  I traced a line with my tongue from her collar bone to
just under her chin and lingered there, sucking and nibbling.  My left hand
cupped her breast under her open jacket.  Her breathe became ragged and a
low, hoarse moan escaped her.  Her fingers stroking my cock became firmer
and bolder.  She gripped me in her fist and slowly jacked me.  I hooked my
arm under hers and pulled her roughly to me.  She swung her right leg over
and straddled me.  Her eyes flashed as she dove on my mouth and covered me
with kisses.  Her crotch pressed on mine.  I was sure she had soaked
through her leggings.  She ground her clit on my cock.

   I fumbled for the hem of her leggings.  They were cold and wet; my
imagination lept to how hot she would be inside.  I swear my hard-on nearly
burst through my zipper.  My fingers caught the edge of the fabric. 
Shaking, I started to tease it down.  "Not here," she whispered hoarsely,
"your place." I groaned with frustration and stood up with her still
straddling me.  I walked her over to the bike.  My desire had given me
added strength and I swung her onto the back like a rag doll.  She
straddled it, pressed against her mound with one hand, and ground herself
into the seat.  Her eyes barely contained her need.

   I can't say I really remembered the ride from the beach to my place.  My
brain was fully occupied by the soft, wet, hot girl clinging to my back and
the pain of my cock straining in my pants that flexed when I hit bumps.  My
loins had begun to ache with the dreaded ache of blue balls.  I knew I had
to get her back to my place and impale her before my system tore itself
apart.

   Before I knew it, we were stumbling up the stairs to my third-floor
apartment, both drunk with desire.  I don't know if I even fully closed the
door behind us after rattling the key into the lock and turning the
tumblers.  My place was spartan.  An old broken down sofa we had rescued
from an alley in our second year and pressed back into service.  My futon
lay on a loft which was only a couple feet from the ceiling--not near
enough room for the wild sex that was about to occur.

   We fell to kissing.  Her tongue around mine, drinking me, my lips
devouring her ears and neck and eyes, tip of my tongue sucking into her
mouth, panting, clenching.  I combed my hand back up through her hair and
pulled her head back.  I held her that way with one hand and shucked her
clothing with the other, tossing jacket this way, shirt that way.  I flung
her bra into the shadows and sucked her nipples into my mouth.  Her breasts
were small, but pert.  Her nipples stood out like erasers and when I
nibbled on them she squirmed in a way that said she might come from that
alone: so I made her.  Her knees buckled as the waves of pleasure broke
over her.  She begged to be let down.  I refused.  I didn't know who I was,
dominating her like this.  Some shadow beast had possessed me as I
possessed her.  I held her upright with that strong arm and ravished her in
place.  Over and over again I made her quiver by licking her tits.  She
moaned and cried for me to take her.  I gripped her panties and the crotch
of her leggings in my left hand, my fingers combing through the top of her
pubes.  She was sodden.  I forced the tight garments down, a faint pop
sounding as her ass sprung free of the confinement.  A smaller parting told
me I had taken a couple of her short hairs in the process.  The small,
sharp shock woke a new depth of need in her.  In the back of her throat,
her voice low and desperate, she began keening, "Fuck me, oh please fuck me
please fuck me please fuck me gimme your cock now oh god,"
But the beast that possessed me knew she had further to go before I
brought her to the edge.  Naked now, I bent her backward over the arm of
the sofa.  Her feet lifted off the floor slightly.  Her back bent in a
yoga-like pose.  She was so limber.  Her pussy turned up to the light like
a sunflower opening to the sun.  Her lips parted and cupped.  She was so
wet she glistened.  Still keeping my hold on the back of her head, I bent
over to plunge my tongue into her vulva.  She tasted like a fine liqueur of
flowers and musk, and some undertone I couldn't identify but that
intoxicated me.  My head was spinning.  My tongue was spinning.  I swirled
and plunged it into her, sucking my mouth over her sex and curling the tip
of my tongue backward to press into her G-spot.  My ears were buzzing with
the rush of blood in my ears but I could hear her moans rising like an
approaching thunderstorm.  Her body convulsed over and over and her juices
coursed and surged into my mouth.  I departed from her pussy between
crescendos and traced down the pucker of her ass.  It clenched and quivered
with the aftershocks of her orgasms.  I watched it, fascinated, then when
its lips parted slightly I dove in with the demonic tongue that had come to
inhabit my mouth.  Right in, lubricated by her wetness, I went to the hilt
and drilled her mercilessly.  Her moans turned to gasping coughs as she
twisted and turned and thrashed.  Her hands clawed at the sofa, at my hair,
at my leather jacket which still lay about my heaving shoulders.  "Oh my
god oh my god ohmyfuckinggodmyfuckinggodoouuuuuuhhhh!" erupted from her
mouth, she having somehow found the breath to manage anything beyond
gibberish.  I bore into her until she lay broken like a puppet whose

strings had been cut.  Then I rose and cast off my clothing.

   She lay over the arm of the sofa, twitching, she gasped for breath.  She
could not move.  My cock sprang free of my jeans and slapped against my
belly.  I picked her up by the hips and brought her pussy down onto my
steel.  I plunged into her to the hilt in one motion.  Still beyond
recovery, she grunted once.  The angle of her vagina was so perfect that I
had her G-spot doing pirouettes on the tip of my cock, where I kept her for
minutes before stabbing up and beyond into her depths.  Her passage
clenched around me, having regained some motor control.  She began moaning
again, and then suddenly coming alive and humping herself up and down.  I
felt her orgasm building in her calves as the arches of her feet formed
around my buttocks and her heels dug into me, forcing me deeper.  Her
shoulders and arms and hands writhed in ecstasy and she thrashed her head
from side to side and then began bucking her core up and down on the sofa.
Then, a vibrating and clenching I never experienced before, and never
since, possessed her cunt and became a wild thing breaking free.  Jets of
liquid heat spurted into my pubes as I drove into her.  Rivers of molten
lava ran down my shaft and balls and splashed to the hardwood floor.  She
was squirting pent up desire all over me in a cascade.

   I couldn't contain myself any longer.  The beast that had taken over and
made me a task master to her pleasure began to relent, and a tingling that
sprang from my toes and fibers of my lungs and throbbing of my temples
exploded through my loins as my cum released.  Pulse after pulse after
pulse I poured into her quavering softness until it escaped the depths of
her womb and overflowed to mingle with her juices.  A groan that came from
some primordial place escaped me.  I grabbed her hips so hard I lifted her
off the sofa by them and whiplashed her up into an embrace.  She flung limp
arms around my neck and somehow found the strength to nip at my nipples and
kiss the rivulets of sweat off my chest.  With the broad swath of her
tongue she licked up my neck and bored her tongue into my ear.  She nibbled
at my ear lobe and whispered in syncopated rasps, "Oh.  My.  God.  That. 
was.  divine.  or.  Unholy.  Your.  cock.  is.  amazing."

   The superhuman strength that had filled me began to ebb, as my orgasm
ebbed.  I pivoted her to the floor and propelled her into my loft, climbing
up after her.  She curled herself into the blankets next to me and passed
out.  Echoes of the tryst rang in my mind's eye.  I held onto them as I
slipped into oblivion.

   The next morning I awoke.  She was gone.  No word.  No note.  Just her
panties, left on the arm of the sofa.  I didn't have her phone number and
couldn't call her.  I wasn't sure of her last name.  Rings on her doorbell
went unanswered.  She never reached out to me again.  Time stretched into
months and years and I never saw her again and did not know what had become
of her.  It was not until I returned to Chicago for graduate school that I
happened to learn that one of the women in my graduate program had been her
roommate at the time.  I nonchalantly mentioned I had known her slightly
from some of my undergrad classes and wondered what had become of her.  The
woman said she had told her about the tryst that had affected her so deeply
that she had gotten scared; with desire that intense she was afraid of
losing herself, so she ran away to marry some other guy, somebody safe, and
moved to England with him.  Of course I didn't let on I had been that
lover--it had been such an unique event that it didn't really seem
afterward like it had happened to me, but rather to two kindred spirits (or
demons) who had borrowed our bodies for a moment of unbridled lust.  And I
wonder now, many years later, if that had been it, or if animalistic forces
like that lurk within all of us, only waiting for the right moment to
emerge.  Maybe we are each of us only the tips of the icebergs of our own
minds...