Hot flashes

"I've been a bad, bad girl."--Fiona Apple

Few experiences in life compare to that first zing between two people, when an unspoken connection is made and you know that something unbelievable is going to happen between you. It's electric, it's chemical, it's intoxicating and unbalancing, and there's no walking away from it. Well, maybe there is walking away from it, but you'd have to leave the country, cut off all contact and wait for the pull of attraction to fade. I remember the first time an old boyfriend kissed me on our second date, and how my brain was so thrown by it that I could barely stand up straight. All ability to concentrate goes flying out the door. Forget being productive in meetings---it's all you can do to pretend like your mind isn't mired in fantasyland, imagination running wild and your body thrumming as it keeps pace. You space out at red lights, in the line at the grocery store, in the middle of phone conversations. It feels like you're giving off an aura, as if everyone you talk to or interact with has to see the flush in your cheeks, the spring in your step, the glassy look in your eyes. How can it not be obvious, at least on an energetic level?

And then there's the calm after the storm, when the zing has done its work and the hormones have relinquished their hold. You can taste the experience on your tongue, in your food, smell it on your clothes, your sheets, your skin. Lips swollen from kisses, hips tender, eyelids heavy with sleep not had. Limbs weighted, catlike and sated, your body holds the memory of the experience in your muscles. The itch is scratched and you wonder how you could ever have considered resisting it in the first place. It was as inevitable as rain, taxes, sleep, sun. The future doesn't exist, only the moment. No expectations, no attachments, no demands or dependency. You have to savor the time before complication sets in.