This is a tale of beauty and simultaneous beast.

Personal.

I think one of the reasons we share for being here in this class is we’re willing to tell the truth about ourselves.

Can’t ever write engaging or effective if honesty is neglected.  It goes for fiction as well as memoir.  It goes for writing anything.  In the broadest context, taking pen to paper should always be an absolutely honest endeavor.  I’m pretty adamant about that.

Here we go.

Her name was Linda and she was lovely.

Women would approach us out having drinks or shopping just to tell her how beautiful she was.  To compliment her on her skin or her smile.  Her hair or clothes.  This in LA.

She was drop dead in the eye of many a beholder.

First generation African Canadian.  Born and raised in Vancouver BC.  She was an attorney and a fashion designer with her own line; shoes and handbags too.  She actually made a lot of her products.  Painfully bright, talented and like I said, drop dead.  It was as though the sun shone on her even indoors or at night.  I picked her up at least once or twice when she was a bouquet.  I opened the door for her and flowers spilled into my car.  She smelled of gardens and seasons.

She possessed an elegance and composure that I’d really never experienced.  I irritated her once by using the pepper before passing it to her when she asked for it.  Not a low maintenance woman.  I opened every door and ordered for both of us only after understanding her preferences.  But, we had fun.  Drinking and laughing and making out in public.  Falling from the sidewalk onto the street in an embrace.  Pressing and groping each other against cars of strangers in parking lots.  She commanded breathy that I put my hand down the front of her pants or my mouth on her breast while we sipped cocktails in a dark swanky lounge on Ventura Boulevard in front of an elegant glass fireplace.  Gardens and seasons and immaculately put together.  Very little makeup.  A gust of femininity.  A tide of sensuality.  I adored her.

She fascinated me and lured my lust with  billboard smiles and clingy dresses and I’m not here to discount the wit and overt clever.

So vibrant she crackled.  Gregariousness, soft and subtle but insistent, insidious.  She checked into my head like an anvil.  I was smitten.  I was briefly beside myself.

I remember following her home after our first date at her behest and kissing her before she pulled into her parking garage.  Kissing her for the second time and watching her go safely inside.  She turned just before entering and giggled “Good kisser…..” all girlish lilt, almost Irish.

Pecan pie.

She had me.

There was a dress.  New Years eve.  A dress.  It was her brown skin and the brown dress and the way it fit her.  People stared.

Vanilla Swiss Almond.

She was thus far, the most beautiful woman ever to entertain my affections.

Ten or twelve years younger, I can’t remember now.

She drove a black convertible BMW Z3 roadster.  I taunted my Audi TT would embarrass her up in the voluptuous curves of Mullholland or in the 1/4 mile.  I was pretty sure I was right.  She was game.  Chicks can’t drive you know.

We had an excellent time.

I am here to tell you, beauty can merely be, skin deep.

It’s an awful truth.  Trite but still just horrible.

A really hard lesson.  A lot of men have this story to tell, the version varies somewhat but the plot is consistent.  Middle aged man falls into lust and infatuation with some young harpy and and she cleans his clock.

She got me for $10K.  Her name is Linda Antwi and she suckered me.  She played me.  She sucks and I’m stupid.  I hate being stupid.  I’m a man who takes some pride in not being stupid.  I pushed the envelope by fancying myself possessing a modicum of common sense.  Impervious to the wiles and charms of seemingly winsome charisma and benign guile.

We’re having cocktails one night across the street from my place and she mentions she’s got an opportunity to go to the Sundance film festival and get her product in the gift bags of the stars.  Her store on Santa Monica Blvd. is opening in eight or twelve weeks.  I have money.  I’m not rich but I’m no stranger to a six figure salary.  I don’t remember the exact figure but she needs a few thousand dollars.

It was $2,900.

No sweat.

I offer.  I’m pretty well ensconced in the idea of this woman so I offer to loan her what she needs to make it happen.  I’d like to think she didn’t ask but she did.  I want to help.  She is smart and beautiful.  She can do this and I don’t want to regret not helping her when she could really use a hand.  I care and believe in her.

She hoovered it, with a cursory amount of disclaimer and promise.  When I do something like that, I’m prepared to be out the money.  I was ok with losing it.

A couple grand, so what?

I picked her up about six minutes after I said I would to take her to the airport for Sundance.  I left work to do so.  She pissed and moaned at me for being late, despite getting her there in plenty of time.  She told me she was “really angry with me”.  You’re gonna see a pattern develop.

I’m gonna tell you more, but I’m just gonna look even more like the kid who eats paste in the back of the class.

Okay, so she’s getting her wisdom teeth pulled.  I offer to take her and pick her up.  She’s gonna be anaesthetized.  I leave work to do this.  I take her to the pharmacy after being a limousine for the extraction and we wait for her prescription to be filled.  In the parking lot I help with the bloody gauze.  They are blood saturated pillows.  I remind her if she swallows to much she’ll hurl.  I take her home and make sure she get’s in her front door.  I tell her to call my cell or my office if she needs anything and I’ll drop it off on my way home.

Didn’t hear anything that afternoon, figured she was sleeping.  On the way home I stop and get some daisies with sunflowers and chicken noodle soup.  The second I walk in my own door my cell makes it’s noise.  She’s hungry.  I tell her I have chicken noodle and not the cheap canned crap, but from the Ralph’s fresh soup kiosk.  She tells me she likes tomato.  Ralph’s is across the street from my swingers paradise.

I’m like 43 years old and getting this elaborately suckered.

I deliver a fresh tomato gorgonzola and a tomato basil bisque.  I bring the flowers.  There are shoes everywhere.  Not random but neatly paired and aligned along a wall in the living room.  I think about how many shoes must be in the bedroom.  Her place is odd.  Not as girly as I imagined.  Overstuffed and Canadian.  Very clean.  I wave a hand at the shoes.  This could be a problem.  She said no, she didn’t see a problem.

On the way down the stairs to my car I realize she’s never thanked me once for anything.  Ever.

It pisses me off.  I understand I’m an idiot.  I loathe the role of patsy.  It doesn’t fit how I see myself at all.

Outside smoking just now and an owl hooting the same three notes.  No wind, no noise from traffic.  The same three notes over and over so consistent.  I’ll bet it could carry my littlest runt of a feline away and tear it to shreds while eating it.  Beauty can be vicious.

I think she got over me pretty quick.  She was passive aggressive while labeling me narcissistic.  It took me longer so I tripped on my dick and my heart for a while.  I was in therapy at a buck seventy five an hour.  Not because of her, I was already there.  The shrink and I concluded that I had a fair degree of humility and Linda was a bitch.  It was handy to be in therapy during this one but it was still too little too late.

A few weeks before she’s about to open her retail store on Santa Monica, the same week I’m driving downtown every week in a suit and tie to testify in federal court on behalf of the company I work for that used to sell glass pot pipes and glass dildos, and now only sells glass dildos, my cell makes it’s noise and she tells me her investor ripped her off for $20k.  She is distraught.  Tears.

Are we there yet?

Somebody say grifter.

She sends me an e-mail so clever as to be clumsy.  She needs $7500 and she’s desperate.  The tone is unusually humble.  I tell her I have to think about it and I do.  I mean, this woman is kind of a bitch.  Tells me her investor ripped her off for $20k.  We have drinks at Mexicali on Ventura and she buckles for my benefit.  I believe her.

Because I’m a fucking sap.

I do choose to believe her.  I’m wondering just how she’s ripping me off at the same time.  Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.

She promises me for years she’s going to reimburse me.  Ha.

I’d just been with a woman, albeit briefly, who was sweet as pie but a bitch.  She was six foot one and had the most amazing face; it didn’t last long enough for me to get her clothes off.  At least she was sweet as pie.  She dumped my ass thank god.  She was a bitch.

I was just polishing what twenty year old chops I had so…..

Gorgeous though.  Oh my.  Just beautiful.  The sun was in her face too.  Really.

So anyway.

I loaned her the the goddamn money.  I can’t help but picture myself in a mirror with “dipshit” on my forehead backwards so I can read it.

I really can’t believe I did that.

I suppose I should be flattered by the amount of time she invested in making a fool of me and walking away with ten thousand dollars.  She worked hard at it.  Way short of earning it, she did apply her self with considerable effort to steal it.

Work with me here.

We were out one night and she got painted.  Hammered.  Linda Antwi is a good drinking partner.  There were two or three flights of stairs up until her door.  As waxed as she was, I had to make sure she got at least that far.  So I did.  She was able to find her apartment key and hand it to me.  The second we were inside with a light on she began to disrobe.  I paused.  I did.  I paused.  Spun around and raised my voice for her to lock it behind me.  It clicked and I surfed down the stairs with my head burning.  Perfume in my ears.

I don’t recall the circumstances but she needed me too open her store one day.  A Sunday.  So I did.  I thought it an interesting mission. All I had to do was open and close it.  She had an employee to work it who sucked.  She sold nothing the whole day.  The employee was tattood less than artfully.  Kinda dumpy and obnoxious.  She was dumb as a stick.

She checked up on me.  Called her store and I answered to tell her I was here now at five minutes to ten.  I think I bought a really cool coffee table off craigslist that day.

I don’t blame her.  I doubt she knows what she wants but it’s not me and that’s just fine.  I can’t help but be grateful for the heads up.  She just wasn’t that into me.  Fair enough.

It sucks to lose a chunk of  your ass to a woman who treated your heart like a pinata.

She is callow and shallow and she owes me ten thousand dollars.

She’s being very cunty about it and my only choice is to breath relentlessly down her neck.  I’m not sure I have that in me.  I entertain myself sometimes by plotting ways to make her regret and my mother reminds me that I don’t own a mean bone.

I will be dressing in Bear costumes and the like.  Tonight I’m the head of a pony……..Hey Linda……..

Now I’m a cowboy.

Tomorrow I’ll be a bird of prey.

She watched me lose my job and my apartment.  This while she was making money without rent or car.  Last I heard, two or three months ago, she promised to pay $200 a month.

I’ve begun to gather evidence for legal action.  I have other hobbies too.  It is what it is.  Someone who lies so well they are able to lie to themselves and a dumb ass like me who’s susceptible to beauty.  Two plus two = $10k.  Beauty is not necessarily three dimensional.  It may very well be just this tall and just this wide.  Not always.  I know different.

Really I do.

Drinks for my friends.

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