Last Loves Lost

She was lovely and exotic. Picture Lynda Carter in the Wonder Woman days, but from an Atlantis in the South Pacific. Dark eyes, lively and mischievous but also mysterious. Casually sophisticated, an island girl at home in the big city- except she was not exactly from an island, and Vegas wasn't quite like most big cities.

She never came right out and told me that she was a prostitute, but she never asked me for any money either. I may have picked up the tab for a meal once, but that was as close as it got. We made out in my car once or twice, but again- that was as close as we got.

She joked about the clutter in my company car. It was clean ever after. She told me that I was the handsomest man in Vegas, which on my best day was stretching the truth way too far -- but what the hell, it made me feel good.

She lived in a hotel apartment behind Circus Circus with a few other Asian transsexuals. They seemed like a fun bunch; I was referred to as Haole James. We double-dated once and the other guy brought up Bukowski. I assume we were the literate minority of this particular subculture.

A co-worker from my job happened by the Lounge one night, probably amazed to find me there. I felt helpful and asked my girl to have her friend talk to him. It turned out that both my co-worker and her friend were Korean -- dumb luck, more than anything else, but I guess in retrospect it probably looked a little racist on my part.

Only once did I see the boy that she'd been, in a brief flash during an unguarded moment between kisses. Seen in the dim streetlight spill from outside the car, her head at a three-quarter turn, she was a lonely round-faced Asian-American boy from the Pacific Northwest...just for a millisecond, then immediately back to being a sexy and thoroughly feminine sophisticate. The insight surprised me a tiny bit, but it surprised me a tiny bit more that it didn't bother me at all.

I thought we might be falling in love, but I could be wrong on one or both sides.

The last time I spoke with her, I had just finished cleaning out my apartment. I was working up the courage to tell her how I felt, but also goodbye. Before I got to any of it,

she told me she'd see me later, at The Lounge...it seemed like she was brushing me off (was this her work phone?). So I never said either thing; I was out of time. The summer was over. I was left with an empty bag that once held my wild oats, so to speak. And so on.

She called my cell phone around Christmas, less than a month after I proposed to my wife. She left a short message, neutral and slightly uncertain, and I think I heard loneliness and desperation beneath. I wish I'd saved it. No, I guess I don't.

And that's all.