11 09 pm pst   [ red wine ]

I remember my first glass of wine. I was 17 and working on my third relationship. It was summer time. I had graduated from high school, but not yet begun college. I had met an older man [but then again, they were all older]. He was a small time director, living hand to mouth right off the Boulevard in Hollywood. Is this how I will remember my youth? By the sounds and smells of the film industry as they waft into his apartment.

I like unhappy men. I like showing them how life is good and beautiful. I like bringing people joy.

E. was broken from a long term relationship prior to ours (and were Sam and William and Matthew, but those are different stories). I was so young and so honest. I know now what my appeal was then.

I was in transition (as I am now), quivering with anticipation. And E. was willing to put in that small amount of effort to make me feel special.

We met while I was dancing in a rap video for a television pilot that never made it out of the editing room. He was directing. He asked for my number so I could come to another shoot. He paged me the next day. I was on the Paramount lot at the costume warehouses. I was helping with a student film being shot at USC, but the details get fuzzily mixed with my internship for Hard Copy in their research depatment.

Because I was on the lot, I couldn't make the second music video shoot, but E. said he would call me again. He did, and he invited my to some Hugh Hefner party. I can't remember the details of that either, because we didn't go. Day of he wanted to go see some UCLA film student gala screening. I dressed in an elegant forrest green dress which I dressed down with a baby backpack (they would soon become all the rage). Always, without trying, I was a mix of woman and child. I still am, but I find the balance growing more uneven every day.

I was a little reckless then. I was always in control, but I cared a little less about everything because I knew I was leaving the city in a few short sweet months and I knew I would soon start a whole new life for myself in another city.

E. made me a pasta dinner. He cooked for me. You know that impressed the socks off me. And he poured me a small single glass of red wine. The crimson color is so lovely.

When I finally got that liquid into my belly, I knew the taste of being buzzed. I moved about. I still do. Matthew laughs at me every time because I think it is so wondorous to move about when I have some alcohol in me. But that first glass of red wine...

I remember thinking My god, this is what it it is like to be under the influence. I had never understood before that drungs and alcohol could really truly transform one's senesations. I still wonder from time to time how pot would make me feel -- or coke or acid or mushrooms -- but I really don't wonder enough to try. That first moment of inebriation held enough wonder for a lifetime.

And later that night I learned that eroticism had nothing to do with being naked. I had one of the most sensual evenings of my life and I never even took off my sweater. It was magical.

I only remember one other night of E. with crystal clarity. I have vague snippets of fights and piano compositions wrapped together in my mind, and then the sharpness of red wine...

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