You’re intelligent. You’re ambitious. You combine charisma and character, and command respect, all in your four inch stilettos. You can deflect bullshit off your magic bracelets, leap tall douche-bags in a single bound, and never lose your femininity. You’re a SuperWoman, you’re spectacular, and you’re single.

Okay, maybe that part about the magic bracelets only really exists in the comics. But just because you don’t have super powers doesn’t mean you can’t date like a hero. Here are five steps to help you date like a SuperWoman; mere mortals, please shield your eyes.

Never Go Shopping When You’re Hungry
If you shop for food when you’re stomach is rumbling, everything in the supermarket looks good. Everything is appetizing when you’re dying of starvation. If you’re hungry enough, you will eat junk; things that are entirely devoid of nutritional content. Dating is similar, in that when you’re unhappy with who you are, you’re more likely to date junk, and conduct entire relationships that are devoid of emotional content.

We all make better decisions about who to love when we aren’t starved for affection. Liking yourself is the start to being liked by someone, and being happy with who you are is the only way to become part of a happy couple. So before you go love someone else, fill up on love for yourself!

Pick Strawberries
It’s important to live and love with as little fear as possible. Life is short, and often painful. You can’t predict the future and you can’t change the past. Try not to allow past pain or future uncertainty to keep you from enjoying the present. Ideal circumstances rarely happen to people, but ideal people can happen to circumstances.

Say and do the things that really matter to you today without hesitation, because you never know if you’re going to get another chance. Your life is now. When strawberries present themselves, pick them.

Recognize Your Teachers
The Universe has a twisted sense of humor. Whatever blessing you ask of it, it will present you with the appropriate tools needed to develop in you the qualities you require to attain that which you seek. Ask for love and The Universe will laugh, and whisper ‘Are you ready?’, knowing full well that you are not. It will scrape away your preconceptions, strip you down to your bare essence, and then it will point, and laugh.

The Universe wants you to become an individual worthy of it’s greatest gifts, so it will send you teachers. When relationships don’t work out, try to learn the lessons well enough not to repeat your mistakes, and then forget it all just enough to be open to making new mistakes. Remember, the Universe is preparing you to be part of something delicious.

Don’t Settle For Less than You Deserve
You accept only the highest standards for your job, your friends, your home. Why enforce a lower standard for your love life? Not everyone can afford a BMW, and not every man can be with you. Be reasonable, be realistic, but never underestimate your intrinsic worth. The second you settle for less than you deserve, you deserve what you settled for.

Great Sex Reinforces Love
Great sex is to a relationship as oxygen is to air, in that it is a necessary, but not dominant component. Prolonged exposure to pure oxygen causes brain damage, but deprive the body of oxygen for even a few minutes and you’d die. Similarly, a relationship comprised of nothing but sex is ultimately toxic, but without it, relationships lose their fire and begin to die.

Sexual chemistry is a powerful thing, so try to only form those kinds of bonds with someone you genuinely care for. The best sex in the world will isn’t reason enough to become romantically involved with someone who’s not right for you. Remember, it’s not what’s between your legs, it’s what’s between your ears.

© j summers 2010

* This post originally appeared on I Am A Super Woman, featuring Alexis Tirado.

“Double expresso, black.”

The large Puerto Rican man sitting just to my left looked at his watch and laughed at my order. “That looks dangerous” he mused aloud. “That would keep me up all night.”

“Pequeña, pero muy fuerte” I replied, adding four brown sugars to the already potent potable. “Como mi gusta.”

It was already late in the evening when I joined The Quartet at a sidewalk cafe on the Upper East Side. The surface of the table around which this motley crüe had gathered was obscured by packs of Marlboro Reds, half empty coffee cups and flavored lubricants; I’d inadvertently interrupted a taste test. The blonde with the perfect bone structure and indefatigable ass handed me a tube labeled “Strawberry Sensation.” I opened my maw and squeezed.

“Too oily, and there’s an aftertaste” I critiqued. “Every woman’s flavor is unique; when I put my mouth on my partner I want to taste her, not polyhydroxide silicate and red dye number ten.”

“That’s hot” she purred.

A brown-haired man with a thick Bronx accent ambled up to our party, completing our sextet. He kissed the woman to my right on the cheek, clearly the High Priestess of this elite sexual cadre. Jade anime-eyes seemed to occupy fully half of the kabuki-like perfection of her face, and she was impossibly thin in the way only women from L.A. seem to be able to get away with, without looking emaciated. I’m certain a stiff wind would have blown her away, were it not for the voluminous contents of her brassiere and the gravitas of her thoughts.

The brown-haired man inquired about the Priestess’ recent foray into monogamy. Her response brought the spirited discussion to an abrupt standstill:

“I’ve finally met someone who can out-fuck me” she confessed.

If you knew of whom I speak you’d appreciate this was no small admission; her appetite and prowess are the stuff of legend in the Land of LaLa. I recognized a mix of surprise and pride in her voice; there was definitely a sense of power in her surrender, the way a true martial artist bows in reverence when bested by a superior. This tone was familiar to me because I’d known it once, long ago. I wondered if my dinner companions could hear my thoughts echo against the walls of my mind as I faded to flashback.

Doo refused to eat anything but Deli-Cat. Every so often I’d surprise her with Fancy Feast or some other feline treat clever advertising had convinced me was irresistible to the taste-buds of a cat, but to no avail. Doo was happy to turn up her nose and starve until I filled her bowl with her preferred delicacy. I was purchasing an economy size container of this edible when I met Mischa. Naturally platinum blonde hair and eyes like ice crystals, she’d been a member of the Ukrainian gymnastic team until puberty kicked in and made standing erect without falling forward a supreme act of balance. The attraction was instant and powerful, and worth overlooking our obvious differences: Mischa was a dog person.

A relatively new transplant to New York City, Mischa taught elementary school. If she had taught my second grade class instead of Mrs. Paccelli, I might never had graduated from grade school. There was a natural buoyancy about her personality; around her everything just seemed… lighter. Our time together was fun and frivolous, until the night we decided to take it to the next level.

Every (grown) man knows the first time you bed a woman you calibrate the barometer for your entire sexual relationship. You can’t show off; it’s gauche. You can’t be perverted; you haven’t earned the right. You can’t replicate a technique that worked with a past lover; what pleases a woman is as unique as the collection of shoes adorning her closet. And under no circumstance can you under-perform; not only will you negate any possibility of a second (or third) act, you will become an object of derision, earning a place in her sexual Hall of Shame, where she will trash you to her friends at the first sip of fruit-flavored libations.

I wasn’t willing to risk not being invited back between Mischa’s creamy thighs; even if I never saw her again I wanted to be a smile on her face when she was old and gray that her grandkids wouldn’t understand. With the axiom “flexibility can’t be overrated” in mind, I tailored my sexual arsenal to suit the former gymnast, and made myself oblivious to the world outside of her pleasure.

After two and change hours of (what I felt were) my best efforts to buck her ever-lovin’ frains out, Mischa flipped me over and pushed me down. “Your bandana is still on” she growled, pinning my arms behind my head. “I guess I wasn’t fucking you hard enough.”

Had I known my traditional headgear presented such an affront, I might not have absent-mindedly left it on. Maybe I’d accidentally invoked her incredibly competitive nature. Whatever the case, sweet little Mischa spent the next two and change hours demonstrating her olympic level endurance, and proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that she could not only take everything I had to give, she could give it back, in spades.

Tiny, but powerful. Like I like it.

The next morning I woke with what could best be described as a sex-hangover. My legs were wobbly. I was severely dehydrated, and convinced I was suffering from a magnesium deficiency. Still, despite all obvious manifestations, ego would not allow me to admit I’d been out-fucked. “Fluke” I consoled myself, as I consumed copious amounts of Gatorade in an attempt to restore my internal mineral balance. “Next time, I won’t hold back.”

I didn’t. And neither did she.

While I had the good sense to remove my bandana before our next encounter, Mischa made it clear that I could not best her in a game of sexual one-upmanship. One night with her left me bereft of the basic hallmarks of homo sapiens, like the ability to stand erect or conjugate verbs. Robbed of my equilibrium, I forced myself to limit the amount of times I could see her in any given week, as my sex-induced delirium left me incapable of tasks requiring fine motor skills or higher reasoning. Had I been asked to operate heavy machinery or perform long division whilst recovering from sexual catatonia, a casual observer might have thought I was suffering from early onset dementia.

I’d met someone who could out-fuck me. The concession was liberating, and monogamy seemed a welcome inevitability. Some obstacles however, aren’t easily overcome.

Like most immigrants to New York City, Mischa had settled into a community of her countrymen. The Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn however, is not a place where a person of color ventures after dark. When her family discovered our affair they branded her a pariah. Her sister, with whom she lived, threatened her with expulsion. Apparently her previous boyfriend, who’d beaten her, was still preferable to sleeping with a black man.

There is no purer test of racism than this: imagine a person of different ethnicity of whom you believe yourself fond. Now imagine them sleeping with your sister.

My flashback ended as my compatriots began to disperse. The large Puerto Rican man and The Blonde recused themselves to perform unspeakable acts upon each other. Bronx Accent Man began his venture back uptown, while The Priestess and her Familiar turned westward. For a moment, the green of my envy rivaled the jade of her eyes; her longing to return to her lover’s bed was viscous. My own longing for such a lover was unfulfilled.

© j summers 2010

There are few things in life Morgan enjoys more than giving me shit.

One would be belly tickles with her lhasa apsos. Another would be Manolo Blahnik’s personal contribution to a shoe collection roughly equivalent to the GDP of Paraguay. The other things can’t be mentioned here, as they might sear your retinas.

A tsunami in a size two, Morgan is equal parts beauty, brilliance, intransigence and sarcasm. A former nationally ranked figure skater, my best friend is now married to a guy she loves “way more than she should” and is mother to forty seven pounds of blonde-haired, chin-dimpled, testosterone fueled rambunctiousness. Unimpeded by budgetary constraints and settled into domestication, she now lives vicariously through my (sometimes) sordid dating-slash-love life.

Translation: if I ever decide to run for public office, a large portion of my campaign funds will have to be diverted towards hush money, as Morgan knows every detail of my life that is blackmail-worthy.

I’ve long thought meeting for dessert makes for a perfect first date. As it stands I’ve frequented the same dessert place since my early teens. Long before a deal with Beelzebub was struck to put a Starbucks on every corner, you could go to La Coccina de Salvatore, order hot apple cider with a cinnamon stick and a slice of pecan pie suitable for divine consumption, and sit unmolested, with a book or sketchpad, for hours. It wasn’t until after my divorce La Coccina became my default first date restaurant.

Salvatore, the proprietor of said establishment, practically raised me. Having enjoyed my continual patronage from childhood on, he always knew when I was in a dating phase. “Zhahk” he’d say in his thick Italian accent “wha’ja have tonight?” “Sally” I’d reply, you know I always get the same thing: pecan pie, heated, with two scoops of vanilla ice cream.” “No,” he’d counter, smiling wryly, “wha’ja have? Blonde, brunette, redhead?”

I once even had a date call “shenanigins” on me, mid-date. “This place is amazing” Marcy remarked as she dipped her focaccia in spicy olive oil and balsamic vinegar. “How do you know of it?” Without hesitation I responded “I’ve been coming here since I was thirteen.”

Convinced she had me cornered, a smirk curved its way across her full lips. “This is your first date place, isn’t it?” she alleged. “You take all of your first dates here, don’t you?”

“The owner is sitting right behind you” I quipped without flinching. “Why don’t you ask him?”

Marcy made a quarter turn to her left. “Sir” she inquired, “are you the owner of this restaurant?” Salvatore, swarthy, statuesque and stout from a lifetime of air-dried meats, stinky cheeses and red wine, leaned back in his chair. “Yes madame, I am” he said. “How may I be of service?” Marcy pointed at me without turning in my direction. “Do you know this man?” she asked Salvatore. “Yes, of course I do” Sally replied. “Tell me the truth” Marcy challenged, “does he bring all of his first dates here?”

Salvatore stroked his salt and pepper beard. “I must admit, Zhahk has brought many women here” he reassured her “but none quite as beautiful as you.”

Unfortunately, Uncle Sally’s old European charm isn’t always around to rescue me. The second they told me they were out of pecan pie I should have known that my date with Eloise was doomed to end in disaster.

Which is not to say it didn’t start off in spectacular form. We were dining al fresco on a warm autumn evening, candle light flickering both in her ample cleavage and hazel eyes. Eloise, an RN by profession, displayed both depth and warmth as our conversation meandered across a broad range of topics. She segued from one subject to the next with casual confidence, between bites of her tiramisu. Her index finger turned circles with her golden tresses, as our discourse descended form cerebral to sensual.

We began to compare notes, to see if we had similar likes, dislikes, predilections. Tension and anticipation were building when she leaned forward, and quietly asked me what the nastiest thing I’d ever done with a woman was.

I’ve always considered myself a bit of a libertine. With more than a dash of hubris, I brazenly recounted the bevy of sex acts I’d participated in that one might consider “fringe.” Eloise simply sat there smiling, unfazed and unimpressed. She was refreshing her shimmering lip gloss as if preparing for a proclamation when I finally conceded. “If a man and woman are engaged in a consensual act” I confessed “I don’t consider any of what I’ve done ‘nasty’. Tell me” I asked now brimming with curiosity “what’s the nastiest thing you’ve ever done…?”

She leaned forward and revealed her clandestine kink with me: Eloise liked to poop on people. The molten Mississippi mud cake I’d ordered in lieu of my beloved pecan pie would remain unfinished.

Which brings us back to Morgan. After Eloise shared her scatological secret I don’t recall which happened more expeditiously: my calling for the check and settling the tab, or my hitting speed dial from the taxi. As she had many times before, Morgan listened intently as I recapped the nights events. The revelation evoked a mix of revelry and revulsion. And then, Morgan proceeded to tear me a new one.

“Why did you leave?” she demanded. “You always call for the check too soon! Here was a unique opportunity to discover first-hand about the sex life of someone different than you,” she snarked “and you bailed before you could get the details!”

As I absorbed her taunts I reluctantly ceded; she was right, as usual. Speaking strictly from an anthropological standpoint, I’d blown a unique opportunity, and abdicated my responsibility to feed Morgan’s deviant sense of curiosity. In retrospect, some (but not all) of the questions I might have asked upon further investigation, are:

How did you first discover this activity stimulated you sexually?
I realize you’re hot but, how many guys actually submit to this?
Are you strictly the pooper or do you enjoy being the poopee sometimes as well?
What’s your diet like? Eat a lot of fiber?
I sleep on Egyptian cotton 300 count sheets; what kind of bed linens are best suited for scat?

The one question that did not need to be answered was how early in a relationship Eloise would introduce the concept. Bridging the subject of defecation for sexual satisfaction on the first date was both efficacious and practical; there are certain fetishes you need to know your partner is open to before becoming emotionally embroiled.

“So does this mean” Morgan snickered, making no attempt to restrain her amusement “that you’re not going to call her again?”

“Fuck you, Morgan” I chortled. “Just because I take your shit doesn’t mean I’ll let just anyone shit on me.”

© j summers 2010

Summertime has always done strange things to me.

Maybe it’s the direct infusion of vitamin D derived from my brown skin sucking up sunshine. Maybe my Caribe Indian blood boils to some ancient tribal genetic imperative. In any case, there’s always been a quantifiable metric between heat and my sex drive: my normally already overactive libido, triples.

I can’t think straight; I claw the walls. I simply. Cannot. Get enough.

Resi discovered this the first night we chose to be intimate. An Ivy league post-grad working on a dual PhD, she was far more beautiful in person than any woman online had a right to be.  A former professional dancer who’d abandoned entertainment for academia, she was a delicious melange of brilliance, social activism and seething passion. From the first moment I saw her, I knew I wanted her exclusively.

It was late September, deep into a brooding Indian Summer when she returned from travels abroad. Our courtship progressed according to a natural order of things: I’d pick her up at Grand Central Station, and cook for her while we discussed the stacks of books she was normally surrounded by. She’d perform her latest choreography for me, and we allowed a cauldron of sexual tension to come to a slow boil. The night (and subsequent day) we finally succumb to our primal urges, we were just plain greedy in our appetite for each other.

Twenty four hours and eighteen prurient acts of coitus later, Resi politely asked me to “put that thing away.” She then put me on two weeks probation; enough time for her to recuperate and properly heal from the excesses of our indulgence.

Fast forward to the summer of 2010, one of the hottest summers on record in New York City. Its no secret I’ve neglected my writing; I’ve been remiss, virtually absent. I wish I could say it was because summer was dickstracting me in the way it tends to do every year, and I was busy bucking the frains out of the nubile denizens of my fair city. The truth is a bit more… ominous.

In May, after stretching, acupuncture and massage failed to alleviate six months of crippling sciatic pain, my primary care physician sent me for an MRI of my back. The scan  revealed a golf ball sized tumor sitting inside my spine.

Doctors can’t explain what causes nerve sheath tumors. They couldn’t tell me how long it had been there, whether it was malignant (ependymoma) or benign (schwannoma). Given it’s location biopsy wasn’t an option; the only choice was removal. After a second expert opinion confirmed my diagnosis, I consigned myself to the care of a talented neurosurgeon. On June 28th I was admitted to Cornell University for laminectomy, with tumor resection.

Skip this next part if you’re squeamish.

The operation is as follows: they make a six inch incision in your back, spread your muscles apart, then use a drill to grind a piece of bone in your spine into nonexistence (laminectomy). This exposes your nerve sheath, a tube that runs the length of your spine down from your brain stem and protects the most delicate parts of your nervous system. Carefully they remove the sheath from your spine, and slice vertically, exposing your spinal cord and all of your nerves, like strings from the bow of a violin come undone.

I actually came out of the operating room singing. When the recovery room nurse asked me who I was, I said “Madonna.” When she repeated the question I corrected myself and told her “I know I’m not really Madonna; I’m Lady GaGa.” She asked me how I felt, and I began to sing “Like a virgin.” And then I realized she was cute, so I put my hand on her arm, and, tubes still up my nose and needles stuck into both arms, composed myself. “Just because I came out of surgery claiming to be Madonna and singing ‘Material Girl’” I reassured her “doesn’t mean I’m gay.” She laughed, and asked if I had any weaknesses. Without pause I responded “Chocolate, whiskey, and raven haired women.”

The operation was a complete success. And the tumor (schwannoma) was benign.

My sciatic pain was completely gone. As soon as my caretakers decided I no longer needed a morphine drip, I was released to recover at home. Three short days after having my spine outside of my body, I walked up four flights of stairs to my apartment, unassisted. The road ahead seemed long but passable, with the support of my family and my amazing friends.

There was just one problem: my cock wasn’t working.

The heat index soared to over 100 degrees on my first few days home from the hospital. And there, in the place where my frequent, sometimes unwanted, straining erection was supposed to be, my cock laid like a log on a bump. A strange tingling sensation permeated my genitalia, as if I’d sat on my hand and it had fallen asleep.

I was suddenly far more worried about my cock than my back.

I knew not two weeks earlier, surgeons had filleted me like a fish. I knew my body was a pharmacological panorama, between the lingering effects of having been under general anesthesia, the pain-killers, the steroids, and the half-dozen other medications I’d been prescribed. I also had the trauma of having a catheter–a device clearly conceived during the Inquisition–and an experience far more painful than the actual surgery. Logically I knew all of those were reasonable explanations for my condition. None of them brought solace.

Before the surgery I’d prepared myself as much as anyone can. Emotionally I resolved myself to whatever the outcome might be. There was a 90% chance the tumor was malignant; I seriously considered (and came to peace with) my own mortality. I knew I’d have excruciating post-surgical pain. I researched all of the possible worst case scenarios and prepared myself mentally. Partial paralysis? No problem. Inability to achieve erection? Problem; one I hadn’t anticipated.

I didn’t want to seem… ungrateful about my results of my surgery. As major surgical procedures go, this was a best-case scenario, a win on all counts. A different type of tumor in a slightly different place would have been a death sentence.

But then again, so was impotence. This was summer madness of a different kind entirely.

When my doctors called to see how I was recovering, this was among the first things I mentioned. Before surgery I’d made it a point to ask how long before I could expect to resume “normal sexual activity.” Now they were telling me that my nerves were “realigning themselves,” and that this was “normal and to be expected.” Except there was nothing normal about it to me, and it was absolutely the last thing I expected.

Having nothing to do but lay on my back and recover, I began to obsess. I watched the filthiest porn the interwebs had to offer, to no effect. What if I had permanent nerve damage? What if I was never going to be able to have sex again? What if the last time I had sex was the last time I’d ever have sex? I cursed myself when I thought about the coat-check girl who’d flirted so heavily with me two nights before the surgery. I’d passed because she was quite possibly half my age; now I was seriously second-guessing the wisdom of that decision.

I started to wonder if they could just put the tumor back.

Several years ago I had a conversation with my then girlfriend about a friend in his early thirties who suffered from erectile dysfunction. “Baby if that ever happened to me, I think I’d jump off the roof.”

“Don’t worry” she reassured me. “I’d push you.”

I thought about one of my personal heroes: Professor Stephen Hawking, who despite suffering total  paralysis because of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, managed to become the one of the preeminent minds on the planet, as well as as husband and father. It didn’t help; I became convinced I’d never feel like a man again. I swore to all the gods in heaven and all the demons in hell that if this condition was temporary I would never waste another erection again for the rest of my life.

And then a miracle happened: an angel whispered in my ear.

I felt a familiar twinge where numb tingling had tormented me. She whispered more; corpuscles began to fill with blood. More filthy whispers; the fallen began to rise. Mental stimulation accomplished what physical stimulation could not. If anyone ever doubted the brain is the primary erogenous zone, here was proof positive.

That was the first moment I knew I was going to be okay.

Having never been sick before, this entire ordeal has been life-altering. Few things will put your sense of priorities in order like serious health issues. Life, and the quality thereof, is something taken for granted by most: family, friends, the ability to sit up, walk, run up stairs, carry your own groceries, or the simple pleasure of a good, strong hard-on. I’ve got my back and my cock in working order again, with an entire month left of summer.

Bring on the madness; it’s time to field-test the equipment.

© j summers 2010

Equivalent trade: the fundamental principle behind the science of alchemy. Understanding how to deconstruct a thing, in order to reconstruct it into something else, while having the awareness that nothing can be gained without first giving. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost.

These thoughts raced desperately through my mind as I tried to understand why I was standing alone at the airport terminal, instead of greeting my new love. I mentally deconstructed the sequence of events leading up to that moment a thousand times, in futile attempts to reconstruct them in a way that made sense.

I double checked the flight arrangements. I confirmed her departure with the airlines. I hadn’t received a phone call. Had I been duped? Was it all an elaborate charade? Had I committed some unknowable offense that made her change her mind at the last minute?

There was no way to know and no one to tell me. I was in the tenth ring of the eight circle.

Having stayed long enough to watch subsequent flights from Athens deplane and having no other options, I left, thoroughly unstrung. I did the only thing I could think to do: drive home and check my email. As it turned out, an email was waiting for me in my inbox, not from Tatiana, but from her sister. In Spanish.

As I’d studied French in school, I was suddenly grateful for having dated Latinas. While my Spanish is spotty at best, what broken phrases I could discern from the note were chilling. “On the plane… Couldn’t breathe… Air masks… Need my Ana.”

I began to extrapolate. I knew she had a lung condition; was it aggravated by altitude? Something had clearly happened on the flight from Athens to London. Protocol would not have allowed them to send her back to Athens or forwards to New York City. I deduced that she must be in a hospital somewhere in London.

There is a huge difference between a leap of faith and a jump of stupidity. My next action (or inaction) was going to be determined by my fractured belief system. Either I’d been played the fool, or the woman I (thought) I loved was in a hospital across an ocean.

To me, Love was an X-file: I wanted to believe. Love however, demanded sacrifice. Desire came with a price: in order to get, you had to be willing to give something of equal value. A good friend of mine has been known to say “it’s not passion if you won’t board a plane for it.” So I did the only thing that made ’sense’ in my mind at that moment.

I took my rent money for the month and got my ass on the next flight to London.

My utter distraught must have been palpable as I boarded the plane that evening, because the head flight attendant actually pulled me aside and asked me what was wrong. I told her the whole story, the friendly emails that became the all-night phone call that turned into the summer of living to talk to this woman I’d never met. I spoke of the afternoon I’d spent waiting in vain at the airport, the frantic email from her sister, and my impetuous decision to spontaneously empty my bank account in the attempt to find a strange woman in a foreign country.

Clearly she thought me an idiot, or insane. Or both.

Whether she deemed me madman or moron, she recounted my adventure to every other flight attendant. The tale somehow made it’s way to the captain, who took it upon himself to radio ahead. His initiative not only confirmed my wild assumptions, they yielded results: sure enough, the previous day a plane had landed early because of a sick passenger. He was able to locate Tatiana in the hospital. By the time I landed at Heathrow there was a car waiting to take me to St. Anns.

It was morning in London and the city beat with a pulse not dissimilar to my beloved New York. A cabbie with a cockney accent talked me up for the entire forty-five minute ride through rush hour traffic on the wrong side of the road; seems he’d been briefed on the particulars of my trip. Not having slept I don’t recall a damned thing he said, as my mind was overwrought with wild thoughts. I did my best to absorb the surreality of it all: based on sheer speculation, had I really flown across the pond on a whim and a prayer? Was I really that kooky? Was my want, my need to love and be loved, so all-encompassing? At what point had I become a believer again?

We pulled up to the hospital and, refusing a tip, my taxi driver wished me good luck. With my heart in my throat I approached the admissions desk and inquired if they had admitted a woman named Tatiana (for the record, Tatiana was her middle name; her actual name consisted of primary, secondary and tertiary given names, combined with a dual surname). Before I could get the polysyllabic appellation out of my mouth, she stopped me. She already knew who I was; she’d been expecting me. As it turned out, the saga had gotten around the hospital staff; all were curious to catch a peek at the damned fool who’d taken a transatlantic flight to meet a stranger as if he’d hopped on a subway across town.

It occurred to me that, taking a non-family member to the room of a patient, broke every known convention. Given the ridiculosity of my drama, combined with my disheveled appearance from not having slept on an overnight flight, I was fortunate to have not been fitted with a straight jacket upon touchdown. As it turned out, Ana had lent credence to my crazy, having told every doctor, nurse, attendant, orderly and anyone else who would listen why she had to get to New York City. I’d even beaten her family to her bedside.

The first time I saw Ana in person, she was sleeping soundly in an oxygen tank. I gently took her slender fingers into mine; she opened her eyelids. Even through the plastic, the green of her eyes shone like emeralds. “Jackie?!?’ she inquired incredulously; her voice frail and thin. “Am I in heaven?”

I squeezed her hand and let the saltwater streams flow. “Not yet baby” I replied. “I was kinda hoping you’d hang around for a little while.”

© j summers 2010

‘For every man who wants to fuck you, there will be ten women who will love me.’

That charming bit of arrogance was the last statement my ex-wife ever heard me say without the benefit of a lawyer as an intermediary. My final acerbic retort: born more of my unrelenting need to believe that I would love, and be loved again, than an actual ill-wish. The rest was legalese, a deluge of overproof rum, and suicidal thoughts.

And vainglorious, unfounded hope that someday Love would restore me to her good graces.

There is something to be said for gratuitous fucking. While extolling the virtues of Love, I gleefully rode her sister’s backside like a mad monk in heat. I indulged greedily while waiting (in vain) for Love to deign me worthy again. In my heresy, the ashes from the plumes of smoldering sacrifices I heaped onto Lust’s golden altar obscured the skies.

And I grew angry, and bitter, wandering a desert of my own dissolution, all the while searching cracks in bones for portends. Something, anything that could give even the slightest flicker of faith; a reason to return to my ministry.

And then, Tatiana called. And we talked, for fourteen hours straight.

Mene, mene, tekel, parsin.

Sunshine found me the next morning in a state of splendid bewilderment. Blissful, ignorant confusion overwhelmed me as I considered the events just past. Had we really conversed nonstop for more than half a day? Who was this succubus who deprived me of my sleep and senses? We’d been conversing via email for months; had I been blind to her charms all along? I decided to do something that simply hadn’t occurred to me before then:

I checked her online profile.

Tatiana was a classically trained dancer by profession. Olive skinned and raven haired to her tapered waist, her words were graceful and lithe, yet each verbal pirouette was filled with drama. Independence, power and passion irradiated her every expression, suffusing this woman-child with playful iridescence.

And then there were her eyes.

Deep in caverns hidden beneath the surface of the earth, superheated magma flows upwards, cracking rocks and forming hydrothermal crystals as it cools. Should these newly formed crystals meet the element chromium, they might become emeralds. In their purest form, they would still have been envious of the gelatinous orbs that were Tatiana’s eyes.

In short, Ana was beautiful. I simply hadn’t noticed.

Occupation bade preoccupation with the Greek Goddess pause; the affairs of the day were upon me and I was both unrested and unprepared. I relegated the writing on the wall to temporary obscurity and sealed the fantastic combination of surreal events away my mind under a single word:

Unsustainable.

She called back that evening. And we talked, for nine hours straight.

She called the next day as well, and we talked for twelve hours, the day after that, eight. And so it went for the entire summer of 2000. We spent the entire summer not sleeping, on the phone, talking like we’d invented conversation.

The question begs, just what does one yammer on about for endless hours into the night, night after night, ad infinitum? The answer? Just about a bit of everything. Ana was a polymath; from arts and science to politics and pop culture, there didn’t seem to be a subject on which she lacked a well-versed opinion. Equal parts dandy, siren and coquette, it wasn’t as much the topics of conversation as it was the spirit. She knew how to engage me fully; how to draw out my opinion without compromising her own, how to contend without competing, how to be resolute of her own mind and still respectful of her own femininity. No matter how much we spoke there was never enough time to say it all, and many nights we fell asleep and awoke to the gentle sound of each other’s snoring.

And then there were the first forays into phone sex.

In my grand naivety, I’ll fess not only to having been a phone sex virgin when Ana and I met: I hadn’t truly conceived she was thinking of me in that way. It became clear she could paint images in my head as vivid as any Van Gogh. Her words touched places hands could not go. In my service to Lust, I’d lost track of the number of women who’d licked my body.

This was the first time a woman had ever truly licked my mind.

By the end of summer 2000 we were convinced we were in love, although we had not yet met in person. Her vacation in Athens, Greece with her family was at an end, and she was returning to the States to resume her dance tour. Compulsion to meet for the first time, face to face, transformed into arrangements. Tension and excitement built to fever pitch; I slept less the night before I went to meet Ana for the first time than I had all summer.

As I drove Samantha (my jeep) to JFK Airport, I silently thanked Love for reinstating me to her service. It had taken a while, but I was ready to love again.

There was just one problem: she never got off the plane.

© j summers 2010

How do you know if somebody loves you?

Do you trust what they say, observe what they do, or both?

A bone in your inner ear translates vibrations in the air into signals that your brain interprets as language. Photoreceptors in your retinas convert light entering your irises into shapes, colors, motion. We rely on our senses to help us navigate through the Scylla of Perception and the Charybdis of Reality.

Ultimately these prove insufficient. We formulate premises and test hypotheses, based on available data. We create systems that enforce our desires, predicated on theory. But facts are phantasms, shifting like desert sands. Theories are always subject to new information.

The sun revolved around the earth for six millennia. Then Copernicus proposed heliocentrism. Newtonian physics defined gravity for four centuries. Then Einstein gave us special relativity.

Somebody loves you, until they don’t.

The nature of humanity is to resist new truths until forced to do otherwise. We clutch our ideas because they provide the perception of stability. We create the world we (want to) live in. Like science, love is always subject to new data. When new truths replace old, we bristle, and brand its bearers heretics. We defy Darwinism, often choosing mental or emotional extinction over assimilating new information and circumstances. We barricade ourselves inside fortresses of established thought, because it is easier than changing existing patterns of behavior, or wrapping the mind around new concepts.

Like gravity being a distortion of space-time. Or the idea that someone who loved you just doesn’t anymore.

The dullest layman and the most preeminent physicist on earth have (at least) two things in common: neither can fathom the true nature of the universe, and neither can ever truly know the recesses of another’s heart. Neither sight nor sound nor vast intellect or profound feeling are an accurate gauge of what is real and what is not. Perception defines reality; love cannot be established via empirical evidence.

There is no litmus test you can take for love. As with science, we choose to believe. We create systems that reinforce our desires, filling gaps in logic and observable phenomena with ephemeral qualities, like faith. When someone says ‘I love you,’ we believe, in large part, because we want to. We base our lives on scientific ‘”facts” that are actually just theories that haven’t been proved untrue (yet). Love exists largely because we will it to.

Love is a system of beliefs. If the system is undermined, we come undone. When someone stops loving you, it will shake you to your core. Your perceptions will reluctantly realign, like shifting tectonic plates, along the lines of new information.

You will question everything. You will lose faith. In other words…

Love is a religion. This I know for I wasn’t just a parishioner, I was a high priest. I preached her values, presented my sacrifice upon her altar. “Credo in te, spero in te, amo te super omnia ex tota anima mea, ex toto corde meo, ex totis viribus meis. Amen.”

I didn’t just believe, I proselytized. That is at least, until the Goddess rejected me. My fall from grace was epic; I scorched the skies with my contrail, crashed to earth with singed feathers and shattered nimbus. So was the sorry state of my love affairs after the debacle that was my relationship with Betty.

What becomes a defrocked cleric most? I prayed for a miracle. I wanted to believe again.

There was nothing that could be interpreted as flirtatious in the note Tatiana sent me. Once a week, every week, I’d receive a courteous inquiry about my health, my family, my work; I reciprocated. We became online friends, confiding as much in each other as one could trust the textured words of a familiar stranger. And so it went for six months; all due civility and no expectations, until the day the phone rang.

Samantha had assumed my chauffeuring services after Veronica’s untimely demise. She was black and stout, her low center of gravity providing unusual stability for a Jeep. Her retractable canvas roof simulated but didn’t quite replicate the sense of driving freedom her predecessor gave. I was leaving Grimaldi’s pizza when my cell phone vibrated; it was Tatiana calling from Athens, Greece, where she was vacationing with family. Earlier in the year we’d performed a perfunctory exchange of phone numbers; it seemed she was recovering from her own fall.

“Jackie” she chirped nervously. “It’s Ana.”

It was maybe the second or third time we’d ever spoken on the phone. A mix of Venezuelan and Greek, her voice was lyrical and childlike. I attributed my inability to place her accent to the fact that she spoke six or seven languages fluently. “Is this a bad time?” she asked meekly. I pulled Samantha over into Fulton Ferry Pier. It was noon on a Tuesday, about as perfect a June day as one could hope for in The Big Apple. I reclined in my seat, the panorama of the lower Manhattan skyline framing the backdrop of our first real conversation.

Einstein once said “When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute–that’s relativity.” I don’t recall if it was the rumbling of my stomach or the beeping of my cell phone battery about to die that made me look up—suddenly the sun was setting over the East River. Time had vanished into a black hole. Still on the phone, I put Samantha into gear and drove myself home, wondering all the while “who the hell is this woman…?”

I plugged the cell phone in to charge while I fixed dinner, utterly transfixed and unable to resect myself from this yak-fest. Hunger satiated and still talking, I splayed myself across my bed and underneath my skylight, and watched the moon ascend from nadir to zenith. Finally the weight of our eyelids overcame us; the overpowering need for sleep and not the desire to cease conversing brought a seemingly premature end to our marathon natter. It was two o’clock in the morning.

We’d talked for fourteen hours straight…

© j summers 2010

There are some who would have you believe that time is the great anesthetic. There are those who subscribe to the theory that time heals all wounds.

This is fallacy; conjecture born from the desperate need to convince oneself that someday, the pain will subside.

Closer to the truth would be: the mind is a time machine, a mystic portal capable of transporting you back to places in your past; some wondrous, some best left forgotten. Some wounds are always fresh, some scars never really heal.

There are rooms in the corridors of our minds where we store all of our life’s experience; success and failure, treasure and folly. Some doors remain forever open, as they contain moments of sheer joy, worthy of reliving. Some doors are best sealed forever; you know all too well what lurks behind. Over the course of months and years, you may enter certain rooms less frequently, but make no mistake: every single time you choose to revisit certain memories, you will discover the intensity of the feeling invoked, undiminished.

I have one such room, boarded over, locked shut, keys thrown away, and barricaded with yellow caution tape. Like a broken bone that never set correctly, I don’t actually need to cross the threshold of this particular gateway for the scars to begin to itch.

Those doors open the gates to the Emerald City.

Countless millennia ago, a rudimentary system of whistles, clicks and grunts developed into a proto-language, distinguishing early humanoids from other mammals. Six thousand years ago, a combination of drawing and grammatical standardization evolved into written words. Cyrus the Great, a Persian king from the fifth century B.C., is accredited with exchanging privatized written communication between individuals, also known as mail delivery.

Six hundred years ago, the Guttenberg press revolutionized human communication by making the written word accessible to more than just the aristocracy. One hundred and fifty years ago, Innocenzo Manzetti conceived of a ’speaking telegraph,’ later patented by Alexander Graham Bell as ‘the telephone,’ redefining human communication.

In 1971 Ray Tomlimson sends the first email. The paradigm shifts again, irrevocably.

I like to think of myself as an early adapter. I’d like to believe that, were I born in some distant century I’d have been amongst the first to speak, to scrawl on cave walls with coal, to carve cuneiform into wet clay. As Fate saw fit to have me born in the Age of the Internet, I fully embraced the medium of my day.

In the days before Social Media had a name, early online communities began to gather based on perceived similarities. It was a simpler time; the Twin Towers were still standing, Google was a bit player in the search engine field, and the idea of violating your privacy was still a twinkle in Mark Zuckerberg’s teenage eyes.

It was a pivotal moment in human history; anyone willing to suffer the infernal crackling of a 56k modem struggling to connect, now had the chance to express their individuality. Whole parts of the world formerly inaccessible except by books or planes were now at your fingertips. The opportunity to explore different cultures and interact with people whose paths you would never cross in real life changed the way we saw the planet; the world shrunk in direct proportion to the exponential expansion of communication.

Not coincidentally, this is right about the time the whole world became a haven for hook-ups. Suddenly we were dating, romancing and fucking people who didn’t live on our block, in our city, our state or even in our countries. As has always been the case, cutting edge technology simply served to facilitate ancient mating rituals.

Like the first chimpanzees to use sticks as levers, early online daters gained an almost genetic advantage. An entirely new way of getting to know potential lovers was born. People were forced to connect with words and phrases in lieu of actually being able to connect with alcohol and genitalia. The Grammar Police were born, as it became clear how much you could discover about a person by their (in)ability to spell correctly. I will always fondly recall the woman who attempted to compliment me by saying she did not think she was in my league, except she spelled league: L E E E G E.

Unfortunately, if you can’t spell league you’re probably not in it.

I also recall the young lady who thought I was a genius, except she spelled it: G U I N N E S. While I enjoy a thick head on an Irish stout as much as the next gent, once again either poor spelling or typing deflated the intended effect. Equally fond is the memory of the self-proclaimed Grandmother and CEO, who in the best Kings English, informed me that she was ’sick of seeing my profile, and just wanted to know if I could fuck.’

Ahem.

My instinctive response was to say ‘Ma’am, were you the last woman on earth, and if all lotion had gone the way of the dinosaur, and I had carpel tunnel syndrome in both hands, I still would not fuck you with my dog’s dick.’ What I actually said was, ‘I find your tone unbecoming of a woman claiming your status.’

What can I say? Early adapters are always the first to ferret out the freaks.

Because we always fear what we do not understand, conversing with and meeting people online drew scorn and stigma from the less adventurous. According to popular opinion at the time, the online world was inhabited entirely by sexual predators, liars, social misfits and the hideously unattractive. Of course there was at least some truth to this. The perceived anonymity of the internet brought out the worst of some people, and still does. For a while, I began to wonder if beautiful, intelligent women online were a fantasy.

It was right  about that time Tatiana first emailed me.

© j summers 2010

Happy Mother’s Day!

With the help of the fabulous Gia’na Garel, I’ve prepared something special for today. An original song, words and music written by… me! This is for all of the Moms out there, including a few special Moms I know, and most especially, my Mom!

All vocals performed by the insanely talented Selan. Arranged by Pete Thompson, and Alan Camlet of Hoboken Recorders, and myself. All instruments by Selan, Pete Thompson and Alan Camlet. Recorded, engineered and mixed at Hoboken Recorders by Pete Thompson and Alan Camlet.

Send this to a woman you love and admire today. Happy Mother’s Day!
Jack, From Brooklyn

© j summers 2010

I’m dreaming of bacon.

I smile as I watch tender pink slices of pork turn crispy brown, and listen to the snap crackle pop of fat rending in a cast iron skillet. Eyes closed, I lean forward and feel heat on my face, as I breathe in deep through my nose. Curiously, it smells like shampoo.

It’s then I realize that I’m dreaming.

The sound of bacon sizzling is actually the gentle spatter of rain on her window; the warmth on my face is me nuzzling her neck. My nose in her hair, her back to my chest, our legs twisted like pretzels, and my heavy arm wrapped around her: we’re curled up like spoons in the same position we fell asleep in hours ago.

I bite her shoulder; our wordless signal of my intent to occupy the space inside her that belongs to me. Her response is autonomic; she arches her back ever so slightly and curls herself into me. I hear her stifle a moan as we merge; everything about her is warm, welcoming; receptive.

Her natural rhythms mirror my own as we begin the dance. I feel her inhale me, alternating instinctively between accepting as I advance, and grasping as I withdraw. I feel tension build inside her as her contractions become stronger, more sporadic, and finally involuntary. I pierce her deeply as her entire body spasms uncontrollably, and hold her tightly until the shivering slowly comes to a stop, and then I resume our sensual sonata.

Our duet is momentarily interrupted by the bleating of her alarm clock. Reluctantly I pause long enough to glance over. Annoyance turns to appreciation when I realize it’s gone off a full hour before she normally wakes. I smile to myself knowingly: in her pragmatism she’d set her alarm early, assuring we’d have sufficient time to indulge in slow, leisurely lovemaking.

At least, that’s how it begins. Gentility, having enjoyed her time, excuses herself and makes way for her wayward sister, Frenzy. We’ve rolled; I’m on my elbows now, pinning her to the mattress; my thighs outside hers, whispering filthy things into her ear. Our sweet morning escapade has crescendoed into something more… frenetic.

The harmonious sway of bodies cruising together has evolved into hair pulling, ass slapping, flesh crashing into sticky flesh. A silent wave of her fist brings the crazed contest to an abrupt halt. Pendulous beads of sweat fall from my furled brow, splatter between her shoulder blades, and trace the crease of her spine, forming a pool in the small of her back, as I await further instructions.

She makes an obscene gesture with her hand; I hesitate to make sure I’m interpreting her correctly. Four words confirm my comprehension of her dark desires. ‘Take it,’ she whispers hoarsely. ‘It’s yours.’

Every vestige of civility in me bows to my feral nature. Instinct replaces artistry, as I claim my prize. There is no attempt to squelch the deep, guttural sound that escapes from her beautiful mouth, teeth closed and lips open, as I impale her. The stream of expletives now leaving her lips curdle the air; their intent to provoke further savagery in me, succeeds.

I’m molding her around me, forcing her to accommodate my depth and girth. I relinquish a handful of raven hair, free my hands, and interlock her fingers with mine. Each entry into her prompts her to squeeze tighter; I’m attempting to match the sheer ferocity of her grip, when something in me warns that even one more ounce of pressure from me might break both of her wrists. I regain just enough composure to meter my response; the point where passion and bodies begin and end have become indiscernible. I’m blind deaf and dumb to the intensity.

I feel her begin to convulse around me and I come completely unstrung. She’s led me into her mania and I’ve followed gleefully, with abandon. Now we’re racing towards oblivion, free-falling; every nerve ending ablaze. My final thought before my frontal lobes short-circuit and my devolution is complete is a sense of hubris: I take exquisite delight in the knowledge that, hours from now when she’s attending to business with all due professionalism, my DNA seeping secretly out of her will serve as a reminder of the morning’s episode.

It’s at that moment I realize, I’m still dreaming.

The visceral images that adorned my subconscious mere moments before, succumb to phosphenes; a million fireflies swirling inside my eyelids. I wake, alone and naked, heart racing, out of breath; my sheets soaked in a pool of my own sweat. Insomnia is sitting at the edge of my bed, a trademark Lucky Strike between her fingers, blowing smoke rings.

‘Was it good for you?’ she sniped.

‘Hey ‘Nia’ I yawned, my disorientation quickly fading.

‘Nightmare says “Hello’” she responded, ignoring my salutation. I was wide awake now, sitting up in bed. ‘Do you know why my cousin likes you so much?’ she asked rhetorically. ‘Because you challenge her.’

‘Most people are so easy,’ she continued as she stood, her curvaceous silhouette framed by the pale moonlight shining through my French doors. ‘Monsters. Falling. Childhood memories. Work; my God you wouldn’t believe the amount of people who waste good dreamtime on mundane fears. But you,’ she opined, taking another drag of her cigarette, ‘you insist on confronting your fears, and she keeps having to adapt. I’ve seen the spread sheet she keeps on you. Gruesome images of your own death just don’t work anymore. But talking rhinos? Zombies? Pirate dinosaurs? I mean reeeeally? Clearly she has no idea what truly scares you.’

‘So now you’re helping her, as if she needed it?

A smirk crawled slowly across Insomnia’s face as I prepared for yet another sleepless night. ‘Hey, us girls have to stick together, right?’

© j summers 2010