Though clearly not as epic as Lude's, I too had my encounters that November.

Three.

Gabriella was the first. Her body was covered by a terrible birthmark which ran from her collar bone across one breast, over her belly and down both her legs. You could see traces of it on her wrists and ankles. But you couldn't feel it. It was textureless. Purely a visual shift. At first she turned out the lights but after a while it didn't matter. She was gorgeous and gentle and I was sad to see her go. She left for Milan the following morning.

Barbara came next. She'd been spending alot of time at the Playboy Mansion. Said she didn't want to be a centerfold but liked the atmosphere there. When we got on her bed, she tore my shirt open. I could hear the buttons skitter across her floor. By midnight she was saying she loved me. She said it so many times, I stopped counting. By morning, despite numerous hints, she couldn't remember my name.

And then I hooked up with Clara English. For just one night but at least it had started off well. Plenty of drinks, the buzz happy thrum of our newly ingested X-ray vision, lap dances for both of us at Crazy Girls, and then back to her place for a whole lot of fucking, only there wasn't that much fucking before there were a whole lot more hesitations and even tears set off by a series of interior tics I couldn't see. My fault for asking to see. I shouldn't have been curious. Should have left the blinders on. Probably could have made it through the tears. But I didn't. I pulled out the old Question Mark (QM) and Clara English didn't even think to answer with a joke. She didn't even conjure up some ridiculous story. She just took one sentence to tell me about the rape.

That stopped the tears. Replaced now by well practiced meanness. I guess I can't blame her. Who knew how I was going to respond to that kind of confession, though she didn't exactly give me the chance to respond. Suddenly she hated me for knowing, even though she'd been the one to tell me. Though I had asked. I had asked. When I called her the next day, she said she was finished fucking around with guys who belonged in a zoo. She hung up before I could ask her if she saw me with the cats or the birds.

I guess I still think about her. Fixed smile. Those removed gestures. That terrified gaze whenever it wasn't lost to something dull, angry and broken, an image that invariably returns me to the same question: can Clara English ever recover or is she permanently wounded, damned to stagger under years devoid of meaning love until finally the day comes when she stumbles and is swept away?

I haven't seen her since. Maybe she's already been swept away. Now though when I look at Lude's list I don't see what I wrote down back then. I pencil in additional thoughts. They're made up of course. All of them born out of Clara's memory.

Strange.

Back then November had seemed like nothing but fun. The drugs robbing it of any consequence. The sex erasing all motives. Now, however, thorns have surfaced. Sharp thorns. My blissful bower's fallen, overrun by weeds and deadly vines. So is Lude's. Spiked with hurt. Heavy with poisonous bloom.