MY FAVORITE MISTAKE

Last I heard, she was a $5000-a-night Vegas Escort.
It had been just a rumor, but I had every reason to believe it.

She was just that good. Really.

I had met her when she was 16, going on 25. She seduced me, plain and simple. There was nothing sleazy or slutty about Tressa, She was just one of those natural born lovers, like Aphrodite or Venus; Anne Boleyn or Cleopatra.
And the next four years would prove we had a thing.
I was 19 and she was 16 that first time, and after, as I lay on my back, her propped on one elbow looking me right in the eye, grinning she says:
"That was FUN!"

She may have been my junior, but I was way overmatched.

When ever I tell a story about doing something I shouldn’t have and having it come out right, I think of Tressa.

Whenever I see the ghost of a half-moon in the middle of the day, I think about Tressa.

She was always so natural being out of place...but she was always right where she ought to be, at least when she was with me.
What she did after that, on her own time, I did not know. It seemed to work both ways.
She never asked where I had been, or what I had been doing either.
I don’t recall we ever once said good-bye. It was always see you later; unbinding, tentative on visibility, and pending whenever later might be, presumably at a future date. They say that two objects, once captured into each others gravity, can never escape from it. It was kind of like that.

I remember the end of the summer of 1980. Rita had left late that spring. It had been long lonely summer that had dragged its sixty-nine 100 degree days out far too long.

It was strange the way Tressa had called out of the blue at 3AM.

It was strange that I was so relieved to hear from her, even though she said she was in big trouble. How can you be relieved to find a lover in trouble? Because there are some, those who gravitate towards the edge, that you are relieved to hear from at all.
It was very strange that the stupid movie I had been watching had just finished having Fred Astaire tell Ginger Rodgers that “Fate is a fools word for chance” when the phone rang.

Tressa said over the phone “I am taking a chance you can help me”
I said “Chance is a fools word for Fate”
And Tressa just laughed and said “Are you watching that Fred Astaire movie too?”
Man, that’s Fate for you.

It was strange the way Tressa would call when I needed a friend when she needed a friend.
It was strange that I didn't know then that she didn't call enough, that it would have been OK for me ta call once and a while.
It was strange to see that it was still 102 degrees  at 4AM as I passed the big clock downtown to save Tressa from whatever she had gotten into, that summer of 1980.
It was strange. She wanted to go to the bus station. But my car drove itself back to my house, and we made love the way we always did. We had always, from that first time, moved at the same speed, and our timing was always perfect. Just before dawn I made breakfast, her scent still on my hands and lips, her silage seemed to fill the room, fill the entire morning. I was taking her to a bus that would take her far away, much farther than ever before. The dawn was pink, and light blue, and the radio played "Shower The People" as we pulled into the station.

I can say all that was strange now, 29 years later, but really it wasn’t strange in 1980. It wasn't strange at all.  Just another day that when you check the sky, there it is... the ghost of a half-moon faintly in the noonday sun.

I can still see her face, framed in my car window at the bus depot, grinning her dimpled grin and saying
‘See ya later, Steve”
‘Yeah , Tressa, see ya later”
This time it took 29 years to see her later.
Seeing her again was like seeing a magician perform his tablecloth trick without spilling a single drop of wine.

Because,  you see, the last I heard, she was a $5000-a-night Vegas Escort.
It had been just a rumor, but I had every reason to believe it.
She was just that good.
Really.