The Altar of Her Love

"What's bullshit? Are you pretending to be me now? What don't you want to say, Tom, and why don't you want to say it?" She took a big gulp of her Jameson's and drained her glass. Jesus! I thought to myself. Now she's getting serious! Maybe she really does want me to be honest.

"Okay, but it's probably nothing you haven't heard at least a hundred times before, and I'm ashamed that I'm just like the hundred other idiots that thought this same thing before I thought it." I took another sip of my whiskey, and looked at her nervously.

"Pour me another drink, Tom, and then tell me." I marveled at her. I figured she could disarm the most confident guy in the world, and I was so far removed from that description that I knew I was simply putty in her hands. I picked up the bottle, and poured some whiskey over the significant chunks of ice still in her rocks glass. Then, I put the cap back on the bottle and set it down again, and stared at her. Jesus, she was beautiful!

"Look, I'm attracted to you. I think you're really, really pretty, and I'm sorry that I think that, because it's not appropriate for me to put you in an uncomfortable position. You just accepted a job, and you sure as hell don't want some asshole of a boss leering at you all the time. I'm sorry I invited you up here, Erin. I promise I won't do it again. It's just not fair to you. We'll just keep this relationship professional from now on, okay? Just try to forget that all of this happened."

"Who says it's not fair to me? Who says I don't like it? Who says I want to leave? Who says I want to be professional?" Good questions all, and the answer to each one was apparently me, myself, and I and no one else.

I was stunned at what I was hearing, pleasantly so, but shocked nonetheless. "Okay, but if you're not offended by me being the creepy fucker that I said I wasn't going to be, why were you so hesitant to come up here in the first place?"

She looked at me, and a cryptic smile crossed her face. "Look, I kind of have a boyfriend, back in Watertown."

I was confused, but I'd already scared her off once by sounding angry, so I was very careful with how I modulated my tone, even as I was dismissive of what she'd just said. "You kind of have a boyfriend! How can you kind of have a boyfriend? You either have one or you don't have one, right? It's like being pregnant. You either are, or you're not. There's no in between." It was a bizarre analogy -- I knew that, and the two situations were completely different. I regretted saying it immediately.

Still, she didn't seem bothered by it. She even, I think, sort of enjoyed the analogy. That cryptic grin spread across her face again. "Well, it's not that simple. We've sort of been dating since my senior year of high school, but we don't see each other very often, and I don't know if I want to be exclusive with him, okay? He doesn't go to school; he works for his dad. They've got this construction business. They built every one of the Kwik Trip convenience stores in the Upper Midwest. He's rich, Tom, but he's also kind of clueless. Handsome and stupid -- I don't think that's exactly what I want."

"Well, then why do you have reservations? It seems like you've already made up your mind."

"I haven't, Tom. I haven't made up my mind. I don't know. And I don't know what you're talking about with the 'one hundred other idiots!' Ryan, he's my one and only. I've never been with anyone else. How do you know that you don't want something when you've never had anything else? I just know that I can't have conversations with Ryan like I'm having with you right now. He's not capable of seeing a world beyond his own fingertips, and as much as I loved growing up in Watertown, loved that little town and the people in it, loved the river, and our house there, loved my big, huge, tightknit family and the security of knowing and understanding every tiny bit of my environment, I don't think I can ever go back there, ever live there again. That world is just too stifling, and Ryan? Ryan is a big part of what makes it so stifling."

The record ended, and I got up and pulled the vinyl from the turntable and put it back in the sleeve, and then the sleeve back in the record jacket. Then, as I stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling stacks of records that I'd spent most of my life, and practically all of my money collecting, I turned to her and made a decision for both of us.

"Okay, Erin. I think I understand. Look, I think you just need some time. You need to discover what it is you really want. Maybe you know what you don't want, but it seems to me, you don't know what you do want just yet. Why don't you finish your drink, and I'll give you a ride home?"

"Okay, Tom, but there is one, little thing that I know that I want, and I know I want it right now. I'm hoping you'll give it to me."

"What's that, Erin?" I thought she might say something like "Could you put some damn Coke in my drink, you inconsiderate asshole?" or ask for something that she wanted that was painfully obvious to anyone who wasn't blinded by the light reflected in her gorgeous, fucking, Irish eyes or glistening on her pink, puffy, perfect lips.

"Look, Tom, if I ask you for this, I want you to promise me something."

"Sure, I promise. What am I promising?"

I wasn't ready for the request, and though it was modest, it was very nearly more than I could do. "I want you to kiss me", she said briskly. "Just one kiss, and then I want you to take me home, no matter what. No matter what I say or do. Can you do that, Tom? Can you promise me that?" She took a big drink of her whiskey, as if to steel herself against my response.

"Erin..." My head and shoulders slumped. Despite the fact that what she was asking of me was the very thing I had been wishing and hoping and praying for since the instant I first laid eyes on her -- the moment in which I, perched atop that ladder, stared down into the blinding, white light of a cloudless, bitter cold, January afternoon as it poured through the open front door of Hector's, and in the intervening seconds, was gifted with something more beautiful than heaven -- I wasn't sure whether kissing Erin, and kissing her once and only once, was really fair to either one of us. "...do you really think that's a good idea?" I asked dejectedly.

"I think it's a great idea; the best idea I've had tonight!" She paused and, drawing her glass to her soft mouth, made her second whiskey of the night vanish in one fell swoop. "Please, Tom."

Whatever I chose to do, I knew that I was almost certainly destined for trouble and/or frustration, but at least, if I complied, I would have a memory that I knew in advance would last me a lifetime, and that possibility made one of those two choices vastly superior to the other. I didn't say anything, but I leaned forward, put my arm around her slender neck, tilted my head to the side, and moved my mouth to hers.

There are physical sensations that leave indelible marks upon us -- tactile memory being every bit as powerful, if not more powerful, than the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes that we store for a lifetime somewhere deep in our consciousness. Who can forget how it felt as a child to roll around for an hour at a time in a fallen pile of leaves in the autumn, or to have touched the very tip of your tongue to a frost-covered steel fencepost in the wintertime and lost the outer layer of epidermis to that frozen metal?

And once you're older, how can you not remember the feeling of wiping your lover's tears from her face when, saying something indelicately, you made her cry, or holding your child in your arms for the first time when you finally, truly understand what unconditional love means?

But I do not think there is a single tactile memory that I have ever had that was more powerful than the first time I kissed Erin Kemp. Her lips felt like nothing I've ever touched before or since. I cannot conceive of anything in the natural world as soft, and the instant they touched, my own lips became one with the warm, moist suppleness of hers.

Combine those tactile sensations with all of the other sensory stimuli -- the almost sweet taste of her lipstick blended with the astringent tang of Irish whiskey, the heady aroma of her floral perfume, the shiny, lustrous pink gleam of her delicate skin, and the almost imperceptible sounds of our wet lips, roaming delicately together across a heavenly landscape as if they were nomadic strangers wandering some pastoral idyll -- and you can start to understand the power that kiss wielded.

It was polite in many respects. It didn't last for more than 20 seconds, but it was passionate, and when Erin put her arms around my neck and drew my body closer to hers, I had a premonition about where that abbreviated kiss would eventually lead us. I pulled away first -- I had promised after all -- and spoke in barely a whisper, "I think it's time I got you home."

She paused, looked into my eyes, and smiled innocently. "Thank you, Tom. Thank you for understanding."

I said something in response. I don't remember what it was, something that undoubtedly attempted to express some sense of empathy, but the truth was, I didn't understand, didn't have any idea why she desired that from me. How could I understand? I was already half in love with her, even though I didn't really know her, and even if I fully understood her motivations, I couldn't possibly have reconciled them with my own.

We both donned our coats and gloves, and whatever else might ineffectually shelter us from winter's cruelty, and climbed down the fire escape to my Volkswagen parked in the corner of Hector's expansive parking lot.

Once I started the engine, and slowly pulled out into the deserted, downtown streets, we must have had some conversation, but I can't remember what either of us said. All I could think about was that kiss, and quite honestly, I've kept thinking about it for the past 20 plus years.

I dropped her off about a mile away at the early 20^th Century American Craftsman northwest of downtown that she shared with three other girls, and after I returned to my lonely apartment, I undressed, climbed naked into bed under my down comforter, and masturbated while I imagined Erin and that singular kiss.

Over the next few months, I kept my distance. I had enough to worry about -- booking bands, making work schedules, supervising and evaluating my employees, not to mention bartending at least 40 hours a week. I was a little afraid that having a relationship with one of my employees was almost certain to get me in trouble with someone -- who I wasn't sure. Besides, it seemed to me Erin had decided similarly, and that I was, for all intents and purposes, off limits.

A couple of days after Valentine's Day, I named Erin assistant manager, and she received a healthy bump in her hourly salary. John told me it was good decision, and he fully supported it. And so, even though, I couldn't touch her, we worked very closely together. God, that was hard!

I guess I should clarify something. It wasn't like I was a sexual ascetic over that period of time. I had what might be politely termed "an arrangement" with a waitress named Lauren with whom I used to work at The Bike Club Pub. Though Lauren had done enough bizarre things to me during the time we were dating to keep me away forever, I could hardly avoid her if I was horny enough.

To her credit or detriment, depending upon your perspective, Lauren never once denied me if I showed up at her upstairs apartment after a night of work at Hector's and woke her up so I could explore her pussy for, like, the thousandth time. But Lauren and I both knew where we stood, and I think the sport- fucking nature of our relationship was probably at least somewhat healthy for both of us. It kept us from going crazy.

By the beginning of spring, Hector's had slowly, but surely begun to win back customers. Once the weather warmed toward the end of the Spring Semester, we had several hugely successful weekends, where we pulled in well over a thousand people on consecutive nights.

I booked The Phat Larry's about once a month, as well as another local band Red Baron that had a following almost as big as The Larry's did. They weren't nearly as good a band, in my humble opinion, but they did much more commercially-oriented music, and everybody, myself included, knew that shit sold. I filled in the rest of the music schedule with some relatively talented cover bands from Minneapolis or Madison.

Summertime meant that I didn't need nearly as many employees, and most all of the college students on Hector's staff made my life easy by going back home for the summertime and saving me the trouble of laying them off. I kept a skeleton crew on through June, July, and August. To both my delight and frustration, Erin was among them.

She had only one year of school left, and the following year in the spring, she intended to do her student teaching. She told me well in advance that she'd have to resign when that happened, and so she'd probably be done when the Fall Semester ended in December.

The reason her staying in town produced those two disparate emotions in me was pretty obvious. I enjoyed looking at Erin, talking to her, and working alongside her, but that just exacerbated my sexual frustration. Looking, but not touching was really difficult, especially once I'd been offered that tempting appetizer, but hadn't been allowed to finish the meal.

As I said, most of the time, Erin was keeping her distance from me, too. She came up to my apartment a few times to small parties that I had after particularly successful weekend nights, but she didn't come alone again for a long time. I overheard her on several occasions talking about Ryan to some of the other bartenders, so I knew she still talked to him. And every few months, she asked to take an occasional weekend off, so she could go back to Watertown -- I assumed to see him.

Toward the end of the summer, he came up to visit her, and I had the good or bad fortune of meeting him, depending upon how much I thought about it. She was right about one thing -- I have to admit he was a really handsome guy, big and strong and really physically imposing, but he was also dumber and more shallow than she had let on that night in my apartment.

So when she introduced me to him, it was all I could do not to scream in his face to leave her alone -- that he was never going to be the one, anyway, so why not walk away with his dignity still intact? I don't think he would have been smart enough to understand that, and he was so narcissistic that his ego wouldn't have allowed him to accept what anyone else had to say anyway. On the other hand, having seen what I was up against gave me a lot more confidence that someday Erin would see the light and tell the cretin sayonara.

The Sunday night after he left and went back home, I was sitting in my apartment alone, relaxing on my only day off by smoking a little weed, drinking a few beers, and listening to some music, when I was surprised by a knock on the door. It was Erin.

She was looking even more fetching than usual that night, and that had me wondering about her intentions in coming to visit me. I invited her inside, and offered her a beer and a few hits, and she seemed grateful enough. We made some small talk, but after a few minutes of some inane banter, I cut to the chase.

"So, to what do I owe the honor of your visit this evening, Erin? Not that I'm not happy to see you whenever I get the chance, but the last time we were alone together, I thought you had sworn me off."

"Wow! That was blunt!"

"I'm sorry. I'm not trying to be rude, but I've spent over six months trying not to think about you, which is really fucking hard, considering that I see you almost every day." She stared at me with critical eyes.

"Why's that, Tom?"

I gave her a look, one of those looks that said I'm exasperated, and I shouldn't have to answer your questions if you already know my answers to them. "Come on, Erin! You know how I feel about you. You knew it a long time ago, the first night you came up here with me. My feelings shouldn't come as a mystery to you."

"I've been here quite a few times since then, why is tonight any different?"

"I don't know, Erin, why is tonight any different?" I thought it was obvious that coming to my place alone and unannounced was quite a different matter than coming to a party you'd been invited to with a couple dozen other people.

Her eyes gave away an apology. "Okay, I'm sorry for playing coy. I wanted to talk to you, and after this weekend, I figured I needed to do it right away. I have some questions to ask you."

This was an interesting development. It didn't take a genius to figure out what had made that particular weekend any different than any of the other weekends since I'd met her. She knew that I knew that she'd spent the weekend with Ryan. "Well, there's no time like the present. Fire away."

"Well, first, I wondered what you thought about Ryan." The question annoyed me... a lot. It would be one thing if Erin wanted to gauge my feelings about her plan to ditch Ryan so she could be with me, but I somehow knew, knew it as well as my hand knew my dick, that wasn't the case. She was asking my advice and the notion that she would seek my counsel about how to deal with her lover when she knew that I wanted to replace him, but never would, struck me as kind of tactless on her part. I wasn't Dear Abby, for God's sake!

"I didn't think much of anything about Ryan, Erin. I don't know Ryan. Why would I think anything about him?"

"You must have gotten some first impressions of him when I introduced him to you. I just wondered what you thought."

I gave her that look again. "Erin, that's not really a fair question, is it? Why would I answer that question? It would only make me look bad no matter what I said. Look, he's your boyfriend, and I'm not, and I'm not gonna going to let you goad me into acting like some self-serving asshole, so I think it best if I just withhold voicing judgment for the sake of both of us."

"So, I guess you've answered the question without answering the question."

"No, I didn't answer the question, but don't ask me questions if you think you already know my answers."

She gave me that same look from earlier -- the wordless apology. "Okay, I'm sorry. Look, Tom, I'm thinking about breaking it off with Ryan, and I guess I kind of wanted your advice. "

"My advice! Erin, you know how I feel about you. Why would you expect me to offer advice about your boyfriend, when you know how I feel about you?" She didn't say anything. I think she knew that that's was what I would say, but the awkward silence gave me an idea. I wasn't going to do it, but I sure as hell didn't mind if Erin explored her own reasons why Ryan, the Prince of Cinder Block Walls, was wrong for her. Meanwhile, I would just sit back and deflect it all right back at her. "Look, I'll do you a favor. Have you ever heard of Carl Rogers?"

"The psychologist? Sure."

"Then, you know what client-centered therapy is, right?

"Yeah."

"So how about if I play Rogerian psychologist for you? Why don't you tell me how you're feeling right now about your relationship with Ryan?"

She smiled. I think she kind of liked this approach. She took a deep breath and then launched into it. "Okay. Every time I see Ryan, I like him a little bit less. He's really self-centered, and oblivious to the feelings of anyone else, and it was a lot easier to recognize that when he was out of own element and in my environment this past weekend. Seeing him over the last couple of days made me not want to see him again."