On a hot late summer day, I waited for him at the corner where my apartment complex was located. I wasn't ready for him to see the way I lived the first time we met. Although a friend had helped me clean up my apartment after I had stopped drinking, the carpet was dirty and stained from all the wine spills. Blake was what I once was--wealthy, respectable, good-looking. I had lost all that but was slowly regaining my looks back. It would take time for the other two, as I had been reduced to begging on the streets.

The state psychiatrist who treated me had told me that the last stages of alcoholism mimicked schizophrenia. I didn't believe him, of course. Then I started losing time; I would awaken thinking it was Sunday and discover it was Wednesday. I would forget where I lived. Since I didn't know where home was, I had started spending more time on the streets. Luckily it was warm that time of the year in California. I refused to believe senility was occurring at forty-three.

Encounters with the police were frequent, although I was never violent. Unknowledgeable in the field of mental illness, they constantly threw me in jail. I was already confined in my mind; confinement of body was an additive to my despair. Each time I was released, I drank more to numb the effects of loneliness and grief.

I realized that one lost all rights when one was drunk, so I had started to drink at home. Understanding that when I was home I couldn't forget where home was, I thought I would be safe there. Then the falls started to happen; I cracked open my skull many times. The last time resulted in such serious pain that I was hospitalized for five days. One of my friends had to cut up my food and spoon feed me whilst I was there.

When I was released, I stopped drinking. I wanted my self-respect back. Remaining at home except for Mass and AA meetings, I isolated. When the phone rang, I didn't answer it; I was tired of creditors wanting me to pay bills with money I didn't have.

Then I encountered Blake on the Internet. I had been able to pay my bills enough to keep that connected. I presented myself as everything I used to be--respectable, presentable, well-educated. I told him my financial situation varied, as I was a writer, so I couldn't always pay for my share of the bills if we went out. I didn't tell him it varied from nothing a month to a few hundred. Luckily, food stamps paid for groceries, and governmental assistance paid for the apartment.

As I waited, I thought of my children. They had been part of my body for nine months. Now they hated me. My twenty-three year old son wouldn't speak to me, even when I called. He lived in New Orleans with his father, whom I had never married. We met when we very young during the sexual revolution of the late seventies. Jim was conceived after a night of carousing and partying in the North Beach area of San Francisco. I now worried about him being in a town where liquor was so freely available, as I never did when I was drinking. I ached to talk to him, but every time he heard my voice, the line went dead.

My eight year old daughter lived in Pacific Heights in San Francisco with her father. After Jim's father left me, I lived in the Tenderloin in San Francisco, but attended San Francisco State. I earned a degree, and went to work in the financial district. I was more of a risk-taker than most people, so I invested other people's funds in start-up companies. I had a particular fondness for coffee, so I invested heavily in Starbucks. When the money started to come in, I repaid my geek friends the favor by investing other people's money in their companies. Little did I know the dot.com explosion would occur shortly thereafter. I moved out of the Tenderloin and into Potrero Hill.

I met Richard at a Democratic fundraiser for Clinton in 1992. It was a lazy summer day, but Richard was dressed in a lightweight suit and tie, although the event was in Golden Gate Park. He wasn't perspiring at all, but exuded charm and grace. The cocaine I had started using kept me thin, and the beginning stages of alcoholism gave a childlike look to my face. I could see lust in his eyes as Richard looked at me--I was wearing a lightweight summer dress without a bra. Except for his clothes, I would have thought he was gay; he was quite muscular and had chiseled features. However, most of the gay men were in T-shirts and jeans; some even had their shirts off.

The night Clinton was elected, Richard asked me to marry him. We were married immediately, and moved into his home in Pacific Heights. Greta was conceived in December of that year.

When Greta was five, my life disintegrated. I had quit working so I could take care of Greta, but now Greta was in school, and I spent my days alone. I couldn't get into the ladies who lunch and fund-raising was not for me. I never quite fit in with the upper crust of San Francisco; the ladies never forgave my hippie days. So I turned to the bottle and weed. Many times I would get high in the summer in Golden Gate Park and think how I wished I had been older in 1967, the Summer of Love. I couldn't have enjoyed it at ten, but I would have enjoyed it at twenty.


I saw a Mercedes coming down the street. Oh my God, I thought, that must be Blake. He docked the car on Indian Hill Boulevard and disembarked. He walked toward me; his gait reminded me of Richard.

I had moved to the sleepy college town of Claremont in Los Angeles County after my divorce. I wanted a new start. However, I didn't fit in there, either. With only a Bachelor's degree, the faculty wives and women professors didn't accept me. The wealthy matrons didn't like how much I drank. So I was again alone.

Blake had told me he hadn't found a good sushi bar in Palm Springs, so I had suggested we go out for sushi that Sunday afternoon when he was on the way from the desert to see his daughters in Los Angeles. He, too, was divorced. I told him I hadn't been paid for my last poem (which was true), so he would have to pay for lunch. He laughed and told me not to worry.

He was dressed in a golf shirt and shorts, the usual attire of men of means in Palm Springs. I had found a designer dress in the back of my closet from my married days. It had a plunging neckline. I thought about not wearing a bra, as my nipples would stand out underneath the light dress clinging to my body in the September heat. I decided to be prudent and wore a black lacy bra which showed through the white linen of the dress. Please, Lord, I attempted a prayer, Let him find me attractive.

"Hello, you must be Cheyenne." The husky voice, somewhere on the scale between a song and a growl, made me moist. I looked into that tanned face and those impossibly blue eyes.

I barely muttered a "Yes."

"Don't be so shy; you weren't over the Internet."

Well, of course, I thought, I'm a writer now. Words are my trade and interpersonal interactions my downfall.

"It is hot, isn't it? Shall we go to lunch?" He undid the one button of his golf shirt and I caught a glimpse of a tanned chest and sexy gray chest hair. I looked at his shorts and noticed he was aroused.

"Yes, that would be nice." Nice? Now he must think I'm a real idiot. Who says "nice"? At least I didn't say "neat" or "kewl."

He went to the passenger side and opened the door for me. He put his hand on my shoulder.

"Relax; you're in good hands."

When we arrived at the sushi bar, I suggested we order omakase. I thought if the chef made the selections, we would have more time to talk. I warned Blake, though, that it would be expensive.

"You worry too much about money. I like the dress you're wearing, but you would be beautiful even in a tank top and shorts."

I felt an ache in my chest as if my heart would escape its bodily confinement.

He tried to eat the sushi with chopsticks. Because of the heat of the day, I expected more salads and sashimi. I asked the chef about it and he said sushi was better during the day. He looked annoyed that a woman would question him.

Blake was retired from the State Department. His specialty had been the former Soviet satellites that were now independent mostly Muslim republics. He knew French, German, and Arabic. He apparently had not been with a woman for a while, as he had recently moved to Palm Springs from Kazakhstan, where the sexes were rigidly separated.

Thank God I had told him I didn't drink. Here was this wealthy handsome man interested in an overage waif like me. I had only been intimate with the bottle and weed for many years and I felt my body longing his strong touch.

Lunch ended a bit too soon for me. I knew I couldn't allow us to be intimate. I would just be another notch in his worldwide belt. I needed to postpone sex, although my body cried out for it.

"I'll call you on the way back from L. A. Are you sure letting you out on the curb is all right? I don't feel right about it."

Such a gentleman. "Yes, you need to get to L. A. There might be traffic coming back from the mountains on a hot day like this."

He nodded. "See you tomorrow!"

See? I thought he said he would call. I wondered if I would ever hear from or see him again.


Monday was the hottest day on record in Los Angeles County. It was still technically summer, but the college students were back in school. I knew I wouldn't see Blake today. He would want to get back to the air-conditioning of Palm Springs and not spend time in broiling Claremont. I dressed in a tank top and shorts and went to work writing. Perhaps if I wrote about this experience, I could sell it to lonely middle-aged women like me.

The phone rang at one in the afternoon.

"I'm in visitor parking in your complex. Where is your apartment?"

"I don't think this is such a good idea, Blake."

"Nonsense. I am a man and I have needs. I saw the way you looked at me yesterday. It's hot as bloody hell out here. Now where do you live, woman?"

"Apartment G in the last building on the east." I managed to get the words out without stuttering.

I went to the bedroom to change clothes. As I stripped off my tank top, there was a knock on the door.

"Just a minute. I'm changing."

"Changing? In this stifling heat? I don't care if you're naked. Let me in."

He was so forceful. I didn't know if I liked that or not.

I went to the door stripped to the waist. I looked out the peephole and saw he, too, was shirtless and dressed in a pair of old cutoffs and sandals. I opened the door to this magnificent almost naked near-stranger.

"Where's the bedroom? I'm starving."