Slow sitar solo, pot and patchouli, sandalwood smoke, the uruguayan poet, a mime acting out ionescu, austrian buddhist laughing at his armpit, he says, "we have a precious collection, ha ha. the energy here... ego." i think he means it. is this the revolution? i know... soon it'll turn into vampire movies and coffee. ten years ago.

i get up and dance and shake my hands in front of my chest in a way that suggests i've lost it completely. accepted unconditionally by people without taste or judgment, i'm ready for my interview. here she comes.

"hi, i'm natalie. it's good to finally meet you! so, where shall we start? um. you've said that architecture is the mind shitting over a hollow mould to seek a soft, new skull in the world... do you still think that's true?"

"i doubt that it was ever true, natalie. i said it thinking it's better to sound clever for a moment than just to sit there at the same party for years, blah blah blah, like now, a dry hole, charred inside from cold nothingness."

"ok, so 'no'?"

"yes: no."

"what is architecture, then?" (she didn't play with her hair. i didn't touch my chin)

"architecture is a weeping-childhood-filling-station-indian-girl-pisces-scared-desert-sunset life. natalie, do you know what insipid means?"

"no."

"sex?"

"yes."

"when?"

"i mean that i know what sex means."

"oh. what does it mean? i'm on four-point-five drugs, now... you?"

"yes, also. it means never having to say, 'i didn't even try.'"

"did we ever even try, together?"

"not together, no. except in the togetherness that the buddhist guy's yattering about."

"insipid means tasteless, bland."

"thank you. do you have any more questions?"

"i don't think this is working out."

"you're right. what do you want to do?"

"would you read to me from some old brautigan novel?"

"sure. let's go to my cabin. bring that water."

she pointed to an empty whiskey bottle. i filled it at the tap and put on someone's sandals by the door. we walked about half a mile to her cabin. the sharpness of the night air was shocking after so many days in the stale-on-stale atmosphere of the main house. after a little while i could smell again, i could smell her, even. it was good. goofy-assed life! in the cabin we lay down exhausted and rolled up into each other to fall asleep. it felt like believing in something. barely remembered that one. didn't want a morning, didn't want a thought in my head, a thought to come between us.

still, when it was morning and this stranger and i were awake, not acknowledging it yet, wondering, still warmly unmoved, i wasn't disappointed. she spoke first. she's plucky that way.

"do you want sex or breakfast, now?"

i felt that it was a meaningful question, the first real question of our interview. how i would answer must determine the nature of my intentions toward her. am i an old-fashioned lumberjack who expects only these options as possible? am i de-liberated enough to accept her actual willingness to slide first thing into either one at this, our crucial moment? anyway, i knew two things, then: that i was both hungry and erect, and that i could not... oh, no, buddy... ask her to decide for us. finally, in a mood to have it all, i asked if she would consider letting me bring her to the gates of paradise while she scrambled us some eggs.

"we have a woodstove... you'd burn your back," and down, down she went. "we."

she makes great eggs.

i know because she got pregnant that day or the next and we have a great baby daughter, now. i got a job as an architect that spring and she teaches chinese cooking sometimes, at home. most chinese food doesn't have scrambled eggs exactly (a little in the fried rice), but she's bi, that way. i cook too, now and again... kind of cajun-hungarian, but not like she does. here's the way she saw it:

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parties are a drag in the first place, but especially with this crowd. what, do they think they're "networking?" a neighbor's, i'm lonely, stupid job at a magazine i used to think would be hot in a month. i'll interview someone... one of these art jerks the rag loves. that guy's a poet from brazil or something. raving, creepy. some freak chatting about the eight-fold path into his armpit, a wheezy ex-firebreather, a mime, for fuck's sake. blah... makes her own venison jerky, blah. then this guy with the utterly desperate dance. he can't stand it and he stands it, but somehow not totally pitifully. "architecture student, i think... i'll set up an interview for you."

after that is all that matters, now. it's just good, what can i say? boring good, even. not insipid or anything (i knew what it meant. it was sex i hadn't had defined so well before), but warm and fuzzy in a comfortably addictive sort of way. no, more like quitting junk food.

oh, so i pretend i've heard of him, say, "i've heard that you defend architecture as the boundary between obesity and howling barbarism," or something like that. "do you still think that holds true in the time of cast aluminum teepees?"

"yes, natalie, i believe that. and i believe in unicorns and mermaids and the baby at the end of the universe."

i don't know what it was, but that made me right there want to get pregnant. i didn't think 'oh, this is the guy!' or anything. it was just a sudden unignorable urge, like needing to pee, but nicer. plus i'd have to get laid to satisfy it... a double yummy. simultaneous long and short term ya ya. i'm bi, that way.

the 'interview' went to hell... we weren't into it. but i liked him, and there were those urges to consider, so i gave him my sandals and he grabbed a bottle of water and back to my cabin we went. and went and went. i love to cook for a man... so what? he ate faster than i did, which i thought might be an annoying habit, but soon i realized that he had somehow intuited how much i would enjoy a good tonguing under the table while i sopped up the maple syrup on the end of a leaf-shaped pancake. he eats more slowly, now that we have a daughter. i like it that way. i think if he keeps his mouth shut at work he could be a hot architect in a month. in this way, slowly, deliberately, we live happily ever after.

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(she loves you yeah, yeah, yeaaaaah!)