Wednesday, Sept. 03, 2003 - 3:39 p.m.
Chapter 1: Unforgettable

I was to meet my hot date at the Thai place at 8:30 Friday night. I finished my workout—man, it feels great to be back at the gym!—early so wandered over to the big music & video store down the street to kill 45 minutes. I was browsing the DVD sale table just inside the store when there was a tap on my shoulder. “Hey,” he said.

It was Miles. The hot date. He too was killing time, and recognized me as soon as I walked in.

The first thing I noticed was that he was cuter than the very cute pic on his gay.com profile.

The first thing he noticed—or at least commented upon—was the scar on my neck. It mustn’t have shown up as well on the webcam. “Wow,” Miles said, “you told me a bit of what happened, but seeing that makes me feel really bad for you!”

His voice—deep, manly and kind—made my crotch surge.

Miles and I walked through the store, but who were we kidding? We barely paid attention to CDs or DVDs: we were checking each other out, exchanging shy words and coy smiles.

Oh, how I wanted him.

Animated chit-chat over dinner—yummy green curry, spicy papaya salad, garlic prawns—covering some of the same territory we’d explored during two weeks’ of online chatting. Miles is 25, Asian, been in Canada for seven years, most of it here but he’s now working on a university degree far far away. He’s back in town to do a practicum, only until January.

Oh my god he’s so gorgeous! Deep-set, dark brown eyes–actually he says they’re black—framed by sensuous, tautly-creased eyelids. Breathtaking.

We walked back to my place, chatting and flirting up a storm. Miles is as big a flirt as yours truly. He liked my place. Since we’d agreed in advance online that we wouldn’t have sex on the first date, I purposefully did not sit beside him on the couch.

Remembering that Miles expressed a love of Natalie Cole’s songs, I put her daddy’s CD on.

Like a song of love that clings to me, how the thought of you does things to me, sang Miles.

“Oh my god,” I exclaimed. “Your voice is beautiful!” It was. Extraordinarily.

He karaoked the rest of the song. Sang it right to me.

The evening was going somewhere unusual.

“If you’re comfortable,” Miles said later, “I’d like to hear more about what happened. The assault, I mean.”

“Um, sure,” I said.

He patted the couch beside him. “C’mere first though.”

Feeling excited and also unexpectedly tearful, I obeyed, parked my butt a respectable distance from him.

“Now swing your legs up like this,” he continued. I sat there with my thighs resting atop his. He grabbed hold of my hand.

“This feel okay?” he asked. I nodded.

“I know from what you already told me, this is a big deal having a guy in your apartment. I just want to make sure you feel comfortable.”

“I do,” I said, leaning up and into him for our first hug. What a strong back, what bulging biceps!

Then I told him the whole long story. My telling upset him as much as it soothed me.

Soon afterwards, Miles and I were making out madly. He’d told me online that kissing was the most important part of sex, and boy he wasn’t just a-whistling! Oomph.

He licked all down my cheek and neck and soon I felt a singularly scary yet erotic yet deeply emotional sensation: Miles was licking my scar.

“Oh oh oh oh,” I whimpered. “Do you realize you’re licking my scar? No one’s done that before.”

“It’s a part of you,” he said, peering deep into my eyes. “It’s a part of you with a beauty all its own.” His tongue dove back down for another prolonged suck.

“Wow,” I said, as his big eager tongue triggered mild waves of trauma, as, simultaneously, each slurp soothed the memories radiating off that strip of wounded flesh.

'Wounded' and 'healing': two sides of the same coin, eh? Is the glass half-empty or half full? Is the body—the heart, the being—wounded or healing? It's your call. It's mine.

My heart was pounding: my body absorbed—no, sucked up—a whole new memory, a goose-pimpled escape into the present.

Then Miles told me a story, something scarring yet beautiful from his own life. Like mine, his tale didn’t end with happily-ever-afters but with the listener's tongue plunged down the narrator's throat.

The story of who we’ve been—who we might be becoming—never ends, but mouths must pause, must be stopped-up with kisses. There is always time later for the next story’s telling. It’s the moist sparkle of mouth upon tell-tale mouth that becomes us truly.

Equally, kisses can mean so little when not animated by the tug of story.

Let’s just say that Miles and I didn’t quite manage to postpone sex that night. Let’s just say we didn’t quite manage that feat the next day either.

The date finally ended at 4:30 pm Saturday. I didn’t want to say goodbye, even then.

Having now had a second date, with a third scheduled for Saturday, all I can reasonably—moi, reasonable?—say is that I like where this story might be going.