Melinda was lying next to me in my bed, half clothed, fully red-cheeked, looking up at me from the crook of my right arm. She buried her nose in my arm pit, ripe with both nervous and sex sweat, a uniquely musty man combination, took a big whiff and smiled, "I love how you smell." Only two women my entire life have been that enamored by that particular style of scent. To varying degrees, others have either liked or disliked my smell, both when freshly bathed and squeaky clean, (with Halston Z14 from ages 21-37 or CK1 ages 37 to present, or au natural,) and when a little funky either by choice or because of a recent work out or yoga class, and have let their feeling known in either case, but only Melinda and one other ex lover have ever been so taken with it... which obviously is deeply excellent. You feel seriously accepted if that smell is not only not abhorrent to your lover but in fact a turn on.

It's all about smell. That's why I sent her the perfume. I wanted to set myself up for the best chance to love her. I love how she smells in the perfume and I love all her natural smells as well. Very important.

"I like that you love how I smell. Only one other girl has ever loved my funkiest smell and we had amazing sexual chemistry."

"Better than me?"

I could tell she wanted the truth in this instance. I respected her enough and knew that while it's not always the case that brutal honesty is the best course to take, (sometimes it's just brutality cloaked in the honor of honesty) in this instance, it was important for me to tell her the truth.

"Yes."

"Was she better because you loved her?"

"Yes."

"And you don't love me yet?"

"No. Not yet."

"Do you think if you did I have the potential to be your best lover ever?"

"Absolutely."

"Okay." She cooed, smiling happily, like she knew if she at least had the potential to win, she would and that made her happy. "You like me though, right?"

"Yes, I do."

"What will make you like me more?"

"Trusting that you're deep frozen and not blast frozen."

"What do you mean?"

"You know when you did the big flip-flop after I left Charleston..."

"Yeah..." She had told me she never wanted to talk to me again that last morning when I first visited her but then called me the next day upon my return to NYC and told me she had made a mistake and hoped I felt the same way and wanted to see me again, feeling our fighting could be worked through and not wanting to lose what she felt were a lot of good things we had and might have. I agreed. That's why she flew up to see me for another date.

"Consistency is really really important to me and that flip-flop kind of rocked my fledgling trust and scared me. I need to get to know you now, slowly, in order to believe that when you say you have strong good feelings for me, you know, a day after you said you never want to see me again, that they're real and not just trying to get me back for the sake of just getting me back. That you're deep frozen as opposed to blast frozen."

"I understand what you're saying but I don't get the difference between the two kinds of freezing."

"When I was in college I worked in the Alaskan salmon cold storage plants for two summers. You could make tons of money... I would bring back thousands of dollars and buy coke to deal at college. My strange duality of old fashioned work ethic and drug addict. I started on the slime line which was the worst job. Freezing cold, standing in water for 20 hours a day. You chopped the heads off, pulled the guts, cleaned the blood line from the spine with a spoon shooting water out of it or threw them in a bin. After doing that for a couple weeks I managed to get in good with this guy who was manager of the back room, which was much cushier. Warm, dry. He was a dancer for some strange reason, but since I was too, we bonded. You can always find like minded souls even in the machoest of environments.

He got me a job with him. I just had to lay fish on a big cookie sheet and put the sheets on these big steel things like you see in hotels that hold lots of trays and then wheel them into these blast freezers that would quick freeze the fish over night. Then we'd send them through a conveyer belt that washed them in a sugar glaze and then box them up and they'd get shipped out to restaurants around the world to be eaten within two days. The excess went into these amazing icy catacombs.... The deep freezers, where they would get frozen hard as a rock.

I wonder if your affection for me is blast frozen or deep frozen."

"Deep frozen... but I understand you need time to trust that."

"I do."

I kissed her and asked her to stay the night. It was already 3am.

"You don't want me to go to my house?" The hotel room I was going to put her in was euphemistically referred to as her house. In an effort to try and date as "normally" as we could and not increase the pressure, I didn't want to feel obliged to have her spend the night or to spend all my time with her even though she was in New York to see me. If it was a normal fifth date and we had known each other a couple weeks, we may or may not want to spend the night together or do things on Saturday.... In all likelihood we would go our separate ways at some point. I wanted to create a landscape of normalcy, much like I did by having my own place in Charleston. She was okay with that idea, not thrilled, but understood where I was coming from.

But I was happy having her warmth next to me.

"We'll figure it out tomorrow... I mean if you want to stay over tonight."

"Of course." She kissed me sweetly.

"Don't be a bed hog."

"Just push me if I do... I won't wake up."

"Okay. I'm glad you came."

"Me too." The first lovely, bitter, icy night wind of the winter whipped off the Hudson rattling the windows, the full moon and clanking radiators serenading us to sleep. There was hope. We'd be at least blast frozen by the morning.

That was day 1. Day 2 tomorrow.

P.S. I'm psyched to report that the link to the page to pre-order my book on Amazon is up as you can see. If you're so inclined, you can get it now. I saw the first galleys (the actual book, not a manuscript) and being the first time I ever saw galleys as this is my first book, I felt as excited as the first time I saw the dailies of my first film. It made it all seem terribly real. I hope you guys like it. I think you will. And thanks to any of you who get it. It's for you.

Posted by Eric Schaeffer at 12:03 AM

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