3/15/07

     I met Gabriele at work.  I hired her.  She was German and I liked her faint accent when she spoke.   She was also a natural beauty.  Rich shining blonde hair, cut to her collarbone, framed her pale pretty face with its green eyes.  Her lips were full and pink.  She was nineteen.  The appeal of her physically was undeniable.   At 5’5”, her figure was lean.  She couldn’t have weighed more than 95 pounds.  But, she  possessed 34C breasts that were accentuated by her waif-like thinness.   In the interview, I hadn’t considered them.  She made a habit of wearing tops somewhat over-sized.  It wasn’t until we dated and laid alone together on her bed sofa after sex that the secrets of her body’s beauty were revealed.  That took six weeks of flirting and fleeing to be realized.

     The rules required couples to remain professional and personal relationships were discouraged at work.  In our case, manager/employee, a relationship were forbidden.  If discovered, one would have to go.   We were and she did.  But, Gaby and I stayed a couple for quite a while. She was my most tummulticious relationship EVER.   The biggest reason for our longevity was Gaby.  In our affair, she seduced me, left a scar on my eyelid, tried to run me over with my own car, left me for days on end to cavort with her ex-boyfriend (a South Florida millionaire), stripped naked on our drive home from a skinny dipping party and f-cked me at noon in my car on Daytona Beach, in view of sunbathers.

     Each time I felt I’d had enough, she moved out or left me and I went on with my life.  She had low blood sugar and when she drank alcohol, she turned on me or behaved totally different .. from sizzling hot to icy cold.  It was a confusing and frustrating time for me.  Every time we broke up, I was convinced that was it and, usually breathed a deep sigh of relief.  In days or weeks, we would be dating again.  But not traditionally.   We would just hang out.  Well, she would hang out and when I went home, she was on the seat beside me.  She would move back in, in time,  and things would be fine for a while.  Then, a dreaded night would be thrown at me or she would ‘disappear’.   Arguing peppered our relationship and I was too easy going to find any merit in that. 

     You might ask yourself .. ‘if things were so uncertain and unpredictable, so filled with strife and occasional mayhem and deceit, why didn’t you just quit, Dande?’   I DID .. many times.  I’ve come to realize that nothing is sexier than a woman comfortable with her gender.  She tends to be a person with greater commitment to her own agenda.  In other words, she’s comfortable in her own skin.  Confident that she loses more in not trying, than giving it her all.  The impression of this on men is that she’s reigning in her own heart.  That’s reigning, not reining.  She’s in control of herself.   She’s bearing her soul .. trusting in her own wiles .. answering a call in her being and won’t be denied.  These are powerful dynamics in a man’s eyes and they have captured more hearts of men than we (men) care to admit.  It’s soft domination.  And a man can recognize it in a subtle way.  You might say, it disarms us, as headlights disarm a deer.  We hesitate in awe.  We will become as hard, as a woman is soft. "The woman in her, brought out the man in me".

     Once, we had been broken up for weeks.   I missed the sex, the quiet logical conversations and the company.  I missed waking her grouchy self up and turning her hag into a happy female full of fun.  But, I remembered the consequences of my good boyfriend disposition.  I was horny.  It was eating me alive.   Out of the blue one night, I answered the door and Gaby stood proper and unassuming on my steps.  Her perfume rose a kissed my nose.  She smiled and asked to come in for a talk.   I consented, but assured myself that I needed to be strong, determined.  We sat in my front room and slowly developed a two way conversation.  She put me at ease .. flattered me .. apologized for all the trouble she’d been to me .. told me she missed me, but knew I needed space. Otherwise, she’d have come over long before now.

     I think the hole her hook made in my heart is still there.  She made a novel suggestion, since we were now agreed that we could be friends.  "Let’s play  Strip Poker!"
     "WHAT??!!"
     "Strip poker!" she laughed, grabbing my hand and pulling me from the sofa onto my feet.  ‘Comon!’ and off to my bedroom, we trotted. 
     "What are the stakes?" I asked, as we bounced on the bed, pulling our legs into an Indian pow-wow posture.
     "Whadayamean?" she asked.
     "If you win, what do I owe you?" I said .. "if I win, what do you owe me?"
     "Oh! .. well, if you win .. I’llll .. hmm, I’ll clean up your house for a month!" she said.

     Was she setting me up??  Because with that  suggestion, I started to get this low in my gut lusty ache that was curling up through my chest, like still rising steam.  I could feel my groin pouring gunpowder into my cannon and the bliss of fleeting satisfaction, based on my answer made me weak.  Deliciously weak and vulnerable, I came to understand.

     .. to be continued
    
     As time went on with Gaby and me, breakups were more definite and longer.  Winning her way back into ‘us’ was more challenging.  She stopped drinking and started taking better care of herself.  She broke off relations with Ledo (the millionaire), so he stopped ‘borrowing’ her on a whim.  These changes were gradual.