Off to Monterey - Meeting The Cuban
I'm off to California. I'm not going to email Surfette. Nor text nor call.
But I might (just might) see The Cuban.
As I've been going down memory lane since seeing The Beauty, I figure I should share the story of how I met the woman that kicked this whole thing off. This is the story, written shortly after it happened in 2002, of meeting The Cuban.
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She sent me an email, on New Years Eve, when I was off with the Beauty. I laughed at it - just my luck to be getting email like that on a day when I'm off with the one girl I've wanted for nearly a year.
I mostly ignore it, but I flag it for followup. Something catches my eye. She's read my website, seen the various friends I've had and their websites, and wants to meet me for a drink.
"what's was my point again? ah, yes, if you ever feel like meeting up for a drink and making a new friend in the city, feel free to write. no worries, i'm totally normal. 24. art director. cute."
What the hell, my life's gone surreal already, I'll email her back and we'll have a drink.
I suggest we drink at the wine-bar/coffee shop around the corner from my apartment. Two reasons - first, it's around the corner from my apartment. Second, it's downtown enough culturally that if she's as upper west side as she seems, I can flee into the "well, I'm a hipster" prickishness that I've taken as my own.
I got there early, pick a seat with my face to the door, and wait. I start in on a glass of Cote de Rhone while I wait, and read up on drafting wills in New York, because I'm a law student. That
Every time the door opens, I hold my breath... is it her? Is it her?
Each time, it's couples. Or men.
Five minutes after Eight, the door opens, and a scene from a movie walks in. A stunning and elegant woman, hair trailing behind her in the breeze, looks around the room. She spots me. Under my breath, I protest "non ce posso." She starts walking towards me, and I freeze. I tense up. I start to relax when she tries to kiss my cheek. In standing to give her that kiss, my chair falls from the weight of my bag and my coat.
She scurries around the table to help me with it. I'm awestruck and speechless. Women like _her_ do not troll the internet. Women like her spend time on St. Barths with the money from the settlement of their first divorce.
We sit. I'm utterly tense, and she asks me questions about a topic I know a lot about (me) and I start telling her stories, some of which she's already read. I start to relax. And then I notice something.
She's staring at me.
don't stare at me like that. Not with those lips. You mentioned being friends. Your lips are going to make it impossible to befriend you. Because I'm going to try valiantly to kiss them. And that hair. And your face. I'm getting distracted.
The Colombian calls, to warn me that she's at my bar. It's bad form to bring a woman whom your attracted to out drinking at the bar where your sort-of-girlfriend is lurking with her friends. She's not my girlfriend, really, but she thinks she is, and I haven't dissuaded her from thinking so, for whatever that's worth.
Instead, I try to take her to Plant bar, and we hold hands when we walk out the door. Who is this woman? She's driving me insane. I'm feeling things I haven't felt for a woman in years, maybe ever. And we've just met.
We make it to Plant, only to be disappointed with the DJ. So it's off to a local hideaway spot, where the lights are so dark that even I am attractive.
We sit down, me with my whiskey, her with her scotch, and I realize that what's happening is that I'm rapidly falling for a girl I've barely met. I will control myself. I will not take her home. I will be good and respectful and see.
She's paying for all the drinks. Mine and hers. "I invited you out to drinks, so I'm paying." I offer her cash, and she pouts, offended. "Next round" she faux-scolds me.
There is a lull in the conversation. "Now is the time when I make us both uncomfortable and ask you if I can kiss you. Can I?"
"Not yet" she responds. I throw my hands up in mock surrender.
"On your time, then."
"You're extremely attactive" she responds. I start to blush. It's not often a woman makes me blush. I deflect it.
"I think you've had too much to drink. Have another."
"You don't have any idea how attractive you are, do you?" she says, processing that fact.
"I have an inkling." I'm not going to tell her that I'm on the peakof the single longest string of new sexual partners I've ever had - a grand total of three in a month. But compared to her, I'm nothing, dirt. She's blown me away.
"You make me nervous" she confides. "I was nervous after I emailed you, and when you emailed me back, and when you called. I mean, you could've been like 'wow, who is this freako' or something." I was glad that I hadn't thought those things.
"I make _you_ nervous" I replied? "You've gotta be kidding me. You're ridiculous."
We continue to talk, and I'm feeling a connection unlike what I've had with women in the last several months. It's not so much the sex, although she oozes sex. It's more of a desire to become whole with this other person. I've just met her. I think I need less to drink.
I relax. I let go. I talk, and we chit chat, and idly banter, and generally have an amazing time. Eventually, it's time to go, we both have work in the morning, and we're both more drunk than we'd anticipated. At one point, I'm not quite sure when, her lips, soft and warm and wet and as nice as anything I've ever felt, are on mine, kissing me, her tongue gently probing my mouth, seeking I'm not sure what.
We kissed in the bar for an hour. I eventually got uncomfortable, since the only other patron was a guy hitting on the bartender, and we were the spectacle of the evening.
I suggested we leave. We made it as far as the outside of the front door and just past the bouncer when one of us, and I'm pretty sure it was me but not certain, threw the other into the wall, and I had one of the most passionate kisses I've ever had in my life. I grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled it, eliciting exactly the moaning response that I was hoping for. We stopped back in the bar to retrieve my scarf, and for kisses in the warmth, and then stumbled home to my apartment, kissing each other on the way, throwing each other into walls, unable to penetrate one another deeply enough, not able to get enough of what the other had, desperate to have more.
"Would you like to come home with me?" I asked her when she got to the front door at my apartment.
"Another time. Not yet."
I kissed her again. "How about now?"
"No."
"Would you like me to stop?"
"No."
"Come into the vestibule, or the front hall, where I can kiss you without freezing."
We went into the vestibule, kissed for a half an hour, put on a show for the neighbors, put on a show for my poor neighbor who was trying to get into the building.
"Are you sure I can't entice you to come upstairs?"
"Not yet. I want to, but I hardly know you."
"Wow. Ok. Will I see you again?"
"Definitely." We make plans to see each other again soon, and she's off into the night, catching a cab and flitting off into the middle distance.
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Back to the present, we had a brief fling and it didn't work. I can look back now, look back on what I did wrong, how much growing had to do, and how badly off I was at that time in my life. A week that started with The Beauty ended with meeting The Cuban. The Cuban and I would eventually have a magnesium relationship - as bright as it was short. Years later, though, we've managed to be friends, and I hope to see her this weekend. One never knows, though. Even if not, I always liked this story. Picture perfect meeting, even if it was for a brief moment of my life.