Then there is the matter of my soon to be ex-wife. I see she left a voice mail and I listen to it: “I just wanted you to know, Jack, that if you really want to help yourself I’ll support you. I’m not giving in carte blanche, you aren’t walking back in here and everything’s back the way it was. It wasn’t that good, hasn’t been good for a long time. But there was a time, I think, well, maybe I’m only speaking for myself, I don’t know what you think, but there was a time when it was real good for me. Anyway, it’s late at night, I have no idea where you are: what you’re doing, what you do, and I don’t think I really want to know. I’m probably just kidding myself, thinking how things used to be, how I thought they were, and that I want that again. Heaven help me for saying that, but it’s true. That’s what I’m feeling now, sitting here by myself late at night, and I want you to know that maybe, just maybe, there is a way back for us. I’m babbling, but if you get this, and you want to talk to me about it, call me.”

I had this feeling when I saw her last night, that she had time to get over her anger and reflect, and while our relationship was a little more like Paradise Lost than paradise found, it wasn’t all bad, either. She’s a good woman. That’s the biggest problem. She wants the life most women, most couples want: a house in the suburbs, kids, and a husband that loves her. Therein lays the problem. I don’t love her enough to give her that kind of life. I perhaps don’t love myself enough; or life on this planet in general enough, to give it to any woman, which returns Sarah Delilah to my head and how I’ve lost my heart to her.

I take my pills out, ouch, there is one xanax and two valium left. Here’s yet another fly in the ointment, drugs. I like being mostly straight, calm anyway, thinking clear, okay, somewhat clear, and the drugs give me this. I’m afraid of what will happen if I stop taking them. This brings Rosemary into my head, fuck, and yet another reason I’m not free of her. I feel like the moon, trapped in this orbit around a planet I don’t wish to be attached to, yet unable to break free and start an orbit of my own, become my own planet, with my own life, my own person.

Of course, my own person isn’t perhaps the best thing for me, or anyone, to actually be. Like the earth’s moon, which slowly, a few feet a year, is drifting out into space, its future one day will be as a lonely moon, isolated in the vast empty all by itself, and Earth will be a moon-less planet. Like the moon I am drifting a few feet a year away from everything I dreamed of, planned on, ever wanted to be when I was young, a child, an adolescent, a teenager, a young man at UC Santa Cruz. All of that seems as distant from where I am now I might as well become an astronaut and be landed on the moon so I can drift off into the lonely dark with it. I swallow the three pills I have left and go out to my pickup. I have a pool job lined up for this morning, for which I’m already late, not that it matters, but I’m free for the afternoon.

My phone rings. I see it’s Rosemary. “Hi.”

“I want to see you today. I’ve been calling you.”

“My phone battery was dead,” I lie.

“Can you meet me around lunch time at the stone house?” Rosemary asks.

I’m getting bolder. Maybe I just don’t care about her, not enough to have any decorum. “I can be therenoonish.”

“Okay, I’ll meet you there atnoon.”

“Can you bring some more Xanax, and Valium if you have them?”

“I can bring you all you want.”

“I could use a little money, too.”

“Don’t you get paid for cleaning those pools?”

“Yes, but I have some expenses, I have to live.”

There’s a brief pause on the line. “I can give you some money. Just be there at noon,” Rosemary snaps, and hangs up.

“Love you, too,” I say into the dead phone.

My pool job is inSouthfield, which bordersBirminghamand is close to where the stone house is inBerkley. Rachel Willingham is a black model, and she is home when I get there. She’s a good customer, leaves the money if she can’t be there, and is always good for a laugh. And she’s great looking, angular body with lots of junk in the trunk. She looks good hanging around the pool as I get to work.

“How’ve you been, Pool Man?”

“I be fine, Rachel. How’s everything in the modeling business.”

“Slow. I may have to go to work one of these days.”

I know that Rachel already works, model is a little polite, not that she hasn’t done some modeling, because she’s done the car shows and some ads and even a few commercials. But she mainlines with an escort service. Not that I suspect she prostitutes herself. But, money is money, and want of money can easily become love for money. “I got a gig this Saturday morning at the mayor’s house. He’s having a kid’s pool party, birthday for one of his daughters or something, and then a grownup party after. Carlita said I can take care of the pool and stay for the party.”

“You gonna be the pool clown?” Rachel says, with a laugh.

“Well, maybe. But she means I can stay for the real party.”

Rachel rolls her eyes. “They party hearty there. You’ll have a good time. Just be careful.”

“Careful of what?” I ask with a sly smile.

“Carlita, she can be, uh… be a handful.”

“Handful of what?”

“Trouble,” is all Rachel said.

I finished cleaning her pool. In my head I’m thinking over the invite to the mayor’s party. I already have enough trouble, more than necessary, but I might have some luck with my OUIL by attending. A lot of legal eagles and judges tend to attend, and perhaps I could find a solution to my court problems. Then again, I could make more of them. I pocket my money from Rachel and give her a peck on the cheek. “I’ll see you next Wednesday,” I tell her, and get started over to the stone house.

Rosemary’s red Beemer is already in the driveway when I pull up. I park behind it and don’t see her in the car, so I knock on the door. When Rosemary opens the door I can see she has very little on, actually, just a red thong and a tiny brassiere, that’s it. She doesn’t step aside to let me in, but blatantly steps out of the door onto the porch, in broad daylight, with all the cars streaming down Eleven Mile, for all the eyes in this corner of Berkley to see, and plants a wet one on me. No sooner did our lips touch and she parts her mouth and slides her very large, thick tongue into mine. She tastes good, and she smells good, and in her skimpy attire she looks very good. Some women are made to wear a thong, most aren’t, Rosemary is one of them in the “are” category. She’s got a pair of glutes that would make most black girls envious, and a firm, healthy bosom. And she’s nice looking, okay, her nose is a little big. But she’s got enough positives going for her to overlook a slightly Roman nose.

“I’ve missed you,” she says when we break our embrace.

“Would you like to go inside?”

“Honey, I got a bad case on you. If you told me you wanted to fuck me out on the front lawn, I’m there.”

“You make me pretty hot too, but I think I can hold off until we get inside. Besides, I’d get grass stains on my best jeans.”

Rosemary laughed, then took my hand and jerked me into the front room. We headed past all the marble statues, the garish paintings, the early ruler of some middle age kingdom décor and straight upstairs to the bedroom. Rosemary sat on the edge of the bed, next to a small black case that she put her hand on. This made me just a teensy bit nervous. “You keep your machinegun in the case?” I asked.

Rosemary opened the case and took out a plastic baggie full of my beautiful purple Xanax and 10 mg Valium, an envelope stuffed with bills, and a black riding crop which she set over her knees. My eyes opened wide. “You aren’t planning on spanking me with that thing?”

Rosemary gave me the most evil look I have ever seen in a woman’s eyes, and I’ve seen a few. But nothing compared to the dark, narrow flash of light that came from Rosemary’s sharp, aglow, piercing, stabbing gaze. “On the contrary, it’s for me.”

This is a twist I hadn’t expected, not from Rosemary, who was a very strong, powerful woman, always in command of situations, unflinching in her resolve. At a glance you knew she was formidable and not someone to mess with. “You want to be my submissive?”

Her eyes opened wider. “You apparently have some knowledge of the S&M world.”

And I did. A previous lover, Roxanne, who got off by putting on her high heeled leather thigh boots, stringing up her lover to the basement rafters and whipping him till there was blood. When she was satisfied he had been adequately punished, boots still on, she would take him to bed and have him bring her to orgasm, with plenty of vigor, lest he revisit the basement rafters. When I saw the thigh boots in her closet I asked Roxanne.

“Do you wear those often?

“Only when I’m fucking,” she said.

“I don’t mind you wearing the boots. But that whip hanging there has to stay hanging there.” Needless to say our relationship was brief, although we continued to talk, even lunch once in a while, she was pretty, chatty, and very smart, a department head of a major bank, but our love life was vanquished, over, and vanished.

Rosemary is a different matter, though. For as much as she protests about love, wanting me to love her, I don’t find this whole business of the riding crop that unbelievable, and staring at the baggie full of purples and the envelope bulging with bills, and I could see the corner of one, they weren’t singles, these were twenties, and maybe a few larger, I knew Rosemary was as much about the business of love than the love of love. She knew what she wanted: to be adored. If my granting her a proper degree of adulation came with a price, then that was okay, too. And it was okay with me. It was better for me, soothed my conscience; allowed me to believe in my love for Sarah Delilah, which with all of me, to my guts, I perceived as the most real love in the sum of my experiences. “You want me to use that on you?”

“Yes, and with enough force.”

“Real hard?”

“Not enough to split my skin, but enough to leave some good welts. See the camera over there?” she says, pointing a finger at a hand-sized video cam sitting on the dresser.

“We’re filming?”

“Yes.”

This made me a little reluctant. “I don’t know.”

“There’s a couple of thousand in the in envelope and a hundred xanax and a couple of handfuls of valium in the baggie. But if you don’t think this is something you can do…”

Fuck, fuck, fuck. I have this fuck speech I give myself sometimes, to remind me of my anarchism: I don’t give a fuck. I don’t give a fuck about anything. I don’t give a  fuck about anyone. I don’t give a fuck about anyone that gives a fuck. I don’t give a fuck about anyone that gives a fuck about anything. I just don’t give a fuck. The little speech in my head had me pretty much convinced, but there was one further thought: Then what about Sarah Delilah, fuckhead? It’s bad enough when you talk to yourself, bad when you answer yourself, but it’s really getting bad when you start arguing with yourself in your head. How many of me are in here anyway? Okay, that’s another subject for another day. I know there’s plenty of me in here, and in everyone. Nobody is truly alone with themselves, selves, get it, plural. “I didn’t say that, Rosemary. I’m just a little surprised. You seem so in control. I would never guess you enjoy being made submissive.”

“That’s exactly why I like it, because it isn’t like me. I’m a control freak. I’m used to being in charge, and the everyday normal walking around me is in control. So when I want to relax, unwind, I want somebody to make me submit, that turns me on.”

“You and Ben play these games?”

“No, I don’t sleep with Ben anymore. We don’t even share the same room.”

“Doesn’t that kind of piss Ben off?”

Rosemary shook her head. “Look, I have my own money, lots of it. I don’t need Ben’s money: he needs mine more than I need his. I come from the right end of the social register. My family is well connected, and Ben needs them, needs their referrals for his business. He’s fromChicago, and I don’t mean the Gold Coast. I’ve introduced him to all the right people, the ones he needs to know. He owes me and that gives me independence.”

“I’ve never done this kind of thing. I know about it, but I’ve never been into the S & M scene, never thought about getting into it.”

Rosemary tilted her head, gave me a look of disbelief. “Oh, come on now. Every little boy has thought about it, girls, too, but few will ever admit it. I can believe you’ve never participated. Actually, that’s part of my interest in you, alongside of your looks, and your smell, there’s a certain amount of intellectual innocence about you.”

“My scent? You make me sound like an animal. I’m horseflesh to you?” I ask her, but my gut feels a little more pinched about the intellectual innocence crack, that’s what I’ve always thought about Rosemary: rich bitch getting gray in the crotch, needing someone to tell her he loves her, even if it’s a lie, actually, preferably a lie–that way there’s no real emotional attachment necessary, no real giving, just pure taking, all receive and no give.

“You are an animal,” Rosemary says. “We all are. And yes, I like the smell of you. Actually, I like the feel of you, just touching you and the scent of you makes my clit enlarge. You look all right, you’re okay, but you feel even better than you look. Anyway, that baggie and the envelope and the use of this house are yours. But you treat me the way I want. You give me what I want. It’s time to step up and be counted pool boy, time to get in. or get out.”

I gotta admit, this is right up front, no beating, literally, around the bush; everything is out on the table and in plain view. I look over at the video camera, and then to the bed and the baggie and envelope full of cash. And my eyes can’t miss Rosemary sitting there in the red thong. She reaches up and unhooks the skimpy lace brassiere and lets it drop to her lap, and her breasts bounce free, and they are real, there’s a softness and movement to them, a slight sag, they would fail the pencil test, but they are real, and gorgeous, and Rosemary gives me a wicked smile, the most evil Princess looking smile I have ever seen. I walk over and pick up the camera and look it over. “I’ve never used one of these before. You’ll have to show me.”

The smile remains and Rosemary’s eyes glisten. She picks up the riding crop and slaps her palm with it, hard, then smacks it again, and yet again. “I’ll teach you everything you need to know. You just need to be an attentive student and your teacher will be very patient and understanding.”

“And if I’m not?”

She smacks her thigh this time with the crop, hard, a red welt forming. “Then perhaps I’ll have to give you what all bad boys get.”

This gives me a little chill, and a bit of a tingle. “I’ve never been the best student, that’s why I’m cleaning pools instead of writing ignominious equations on blackboards.”

“I don’t think you were ever meant to be anything but what you are, Jack.”

“And what’s that?”

“You’re a leader, a natural leader.”

At this I break out into a genuine laugh. “I don’t think so.”

“You’re no starchy Republican conservative, no far righty. You’re what I said you are, a natural leader. People just gravitate towards you and want you to lead them, because they like you, and you have an air of confidence about you, you’re cocky, walk with a swagger that instills confidence. I want you to lead me, Jack. I want you to make me submit to you. And I’ll tell you right now, I’m one stubborn little bitch. You’ll have to be firm with me. You’re not gonna sweet talk me into anything. You can get me to do whatever you want, but you’ll have to make me, and I’ll fight you. You can get me to follow you anywhere, but I’ll dig in and resist; you’ll have to drag me by the hair screaming. But I think you can. And I want you to. That’s exactly what I want from you. And I’m willing to pay for it.”

I am a risk taker. I know it. But I’m not foolish, I take calculated risks. But if the reward is there, nothing stops me. I know myself, how I am, how I will reflect, stand at the threshold contemplating danger, weighing what I might benefit from the risk. I will stand there, and then I give myself my, what is certain in life, speech. And what is certain in life, the only certainty in it is death, the ultimate end of all of us, and all we have is the time in between our beginning and ending. And if you let it slip away, allow your chances to be set aside, when your time comes, your ending is at hand, it’s too late to go back. There’s nothing having been gained by your not taking your best shot, your chance, it’s gone and irretrievably lost forever in the eternity. I will stand at the precipice of a certain danger, a risk, and I will council myself on my end, and my time, my interlude between the start and finish of life, and the only possible outcome to life, and then I will take that step. And that’s what I do now: I council myself on the risk, on what I must do to have that baggie and envelope on the bed next to the very striking Rosemary sitting there with it.

“In the closet there’s a tripod,” she says. “Get it out and mount the video camera on it,” she orders, pointing at the closet.

I open the closet and take out the tripod and set it up next to the bed and mount the camera on it. All the while knowing I have taken the step, crossed the threshold and into Rosemary’s abyss, away from everything I said wouldn’t step away from: love, Sarah Delilah, an honest relationship, breaking free of my drug orbit, unhooking myself from my habits, myself, from my own earth. I have taken the step and am in freefall, tumbling through a wormhole, at which at the other end is Rosemary’s world, and now my world.

Short fiction and poetry published in venues as diverse as: The Monarch Review, Detroit News, Alpha Beat Press, Scissors and Spackle, Spittoon, Barbaric Yawp and BULL. He is represented by LifeTime Media in NYC. Alpha Wolves, a novel, will be released in April, 2012.