A catty bark sends the city into pity, erasing guardian protections and stewardships which formerly smoothed transitions between Jack and Jill. I formulated certain of the negotiations and strategies that led to this condition, leveraging my useless decades of understanding the Calculus and a woman’s heart to further exacerbate the plague of emptiness swallowing my footsteps behind me. I never loved her. I barely knew her. Yet to this day she tells yarns of the heroic, manly acts I performed to save her from indignity or injury. I never sawed the table in half, as she inexplicably insisted. Such an act would have made no sense under the circumstance. I never intervened when the man I thought was her husband touched her breasts. Should I have know that man was her priest? I learned this many years later, upon the priest’s demise, that his history of fondling and abusing young women was widely known among the circles of friends I left behind. But why does she insist, to this day, that I intervened, aggressively telling the preacher to take his business and his wowed vows to the rectory? I would like to think it does not matter now but it does. The woman still circles my drain, looking around my corners every once in a while. We used to talk about sex constantly, all of the discussion focused on her encounters, which numbered about 5 or 6 a year. After 20+ years of friendship we finally agreed to risk it (the friendship) with a few hours of sex at an hourly rates motel. She became starved for cunnilingus, saying most men today don’t do it well if they even try to do it at all. I told her this statement made my mouth water, that I have had periods of my life where cunnilingus felt like the only thing keeping me alive. Moments later we were on the phone, her masturbating and me just listening. A time and place was agreed upon. A classy shithole on Queens Boulevard where she paid for 4 hours in a room with a bed and I paid for the wine. It was an afternoon-into-evening to remember. She responded to my moves the same as the first women I ever did this with, her face looking like it had been slapped as she turned it sharply to one side, then to the other, like something was slapping her face repeatedly. Her taste made me tremble, and her legs wrapped around me but only after I asked. At first I was on my knees on the floor next to the bed, her legs draping over my shoulders and lightly touching my back. We moved fully to the bed where I had less flexibility in terms of neck movement but giving her more ability to wrap around me tightly. My boner never quit but it also never touched her. I don’t have to cum was a line I think helped convince her that risking our friendship was worth whatever this encounter wrought. I don’t need to continue this story since it’s been written before, and recorded. We barely talk anymore.  We made jokey comments in the days and weeks after, but no suggestions came from either of us that we repeat the encounter. I did feel lonely afterward, and empty. But that would not indicate that I wanted more.