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LOVE IS BLIND | PAGE 3 OF 3 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - My thirtieth birthday was coming up, and as a preparation for old age I went for a facial. There I was, reclining on a chaise lounge in the semi-darkness under a soft blanket, listening to twinkly, ambient music. The clinician placed cool cotton pads over my eyes so I couldn't see a thing and began to slather my face with exfoliating goo. It was heavenly to lie there and be pampered, blind to the world around me, with one of Stephen's filthy stories going through my head. Then it hit me: What if I met Stephen without actually seeing him?
We made arrangements to meet at his New York City apartment on the night of my birthday. Venus, a close friend of Stephen's and a friend of a friend of mine, whom he described as "stunningly beautiful and quite adventurous," would act as our liaison. Venus would greet me at the door and put a velvet blindfold over my eyes. She would only remove it after my visit with Stephen had ended. The physical risks were the least of my worries. Stephen and I'd had the big talk about our sexual histories. We'd both gotten tested for HIV and knew how to operate latex. The idea that he might try to harm me -- rape me or even kill me -- crossed my mind under the subject heading Anything's Possible, but the chances of it actually happening were less than zero. No, to me the highest risks were the emotional ones. My greatest fear was that we would meet and it would be all wrong, and I 'd be left wondering, How will my heart ever survive this? In our last correspondence before our meeting, Stephen wrote: "And so I close my eyes, and fold my hands and wait to meet you. Here, then, will be the moment when I must confront the possibility of my own death, the collision for me of the sexual and my possible extinction from your world. I have never felt so inadequate, so aware of my flaws, so conscious of things I don't have to offer. And the other women who have loved me and wanted me don't help me now, as it is only you I want to want me and only you who will know whether you want me or not. I'm not frightened, but calm. In fact, I don't know when I last felt so alive." At 7 p.m. on November 4th, I checked in with Stephen's doorman, walked through the long foyer and took the elevator up to the seventh floor. I knocked on apartment 7B. Venus answered, looking like Sharon Stone -- only better. She was tall and muscled-up with shoulder-length blond hair that felt like cashmere and a voice just as soft. She was wearing a black PVC corset and thong, and thigh-high, stiletto-heeled black boots. "Happy birthday," she said, as she kissed my cheek. She took me by the hand and led me down the hall. The front room of Hadley Manor was huge, with pale hardwood floors and one wall of windows that stretched to the ceiling, fourteen feet up. It was empty except for a futon covered in a white sheet, dozens of stargazer lilies and the light of 30 or so cathedral candles. Venus took my coat and handed me a glass of champagne. Then she blindfolded me and left me alone. I stood in the middle of the room, wearing a red plaid schoolgirl skirt, a white shirt and, as instructed, white cotton panties. It was perfectly quiet except for the roar of blood agitating in my skull, hurting my ears. And from my perspective, it was now completely dark. I heard his shoes clicking on the floor. His hand touched my shoulder. I pressed my cheek against it. "You're shaking," he said. "I know," I replied. He took my glass and led me to the futon, where I lay down in his arms. He pressed up against me and stroked my hair for a long, long time, telling me sweet things until my ragged breaths were smooth. I tried to pay attention to his words but his completeness was overwhelming. There was too much of him. Not in terms of his physical size but in the number of details: the smell of his breath as he talked, the thin layer of sweat on the palms of his hands, the fleshy softness of his belly, the way he was touching me. I assessed a few bits of critical, chemical information -- So this is what he smells like. What think? I think it's ... sniffffffff ... it's good -- and, thankfully, gave them high marks. We kissed and his fingers started to influence things under my skirt. Then I heard Venus walk back into the room, kneel down and begin to untie the laces of my shoes. Until that night, I had never truly believed my body was beautiful. Call it insecurity left over from when I was a four-eyed fat kid going through puberty; when my mother dutifully reminded me how far my right ear stuck out and how one day we would have it surgically tucked back. Insecurity exacerbated by a string of old boyfriends who told me I'd look better if I dropped a few pounds, if I did some sit-ups, had my tits lifted. But these two, they ooohed and aaahed with the utmost reverence over every little piece of me, seeing only perfection where I saw a blemish. Our scheduled evening of strict dominance quickly turned lovefest. "Isn't she beautiful? Isn't she perfect?" they repeated like a prayer while they stroked and examined every part of me. About five hours later, I asked if I could make a change in our plans. "Can I take this off?" I said, touching my last sartorial remnant, the blindfold. "Yes," Stephen said, without hesitation. Simply to see after this kind of sensory deprivation put me in a state of amazing grace. Everything sparkled. And to see what I had only known as an amorphous voice and a string of text materialize into a living, breathing human being with eyes that blinked and hands that reached out for me was really, really weird. It was hard for me to tear up the picture of him I'd carried in my mind for so long, but I had to because it was wrong. Watching him speak and move was like watching a movie that kept going in and out of sync and focus. One moment his body was in total agreement with his personality. At last, it's you! How perfect. The next, it was fuzzy and surreal. Am I dreaming? Who is this person? Why does this familiar voice keep coming out of this unrecognizable mouth? But to see, for the first time, after traveling 3,000 miles, the face of the person I loved after we had made love, rearranged my soul. "So this is you," I said. Stephen still had all of his clothes on: a black cotton turtleneck, khakis. His smile was endless and I ran my finger over his teeth, lingering on the chip in his front tooth. I held his hand and examined the shape of his fingernails, tears slipping down my cheeks. I watched his hips sway as he walked into the kitchen to get my birthday cake and thought, You are so beautiful.
- - - - - - - - - - - - Lisa Palac, the author of "The Edge of the Bed: How Dirty Pictures Changed My Life," was a founding editor of Future Sex magazine and produced the virtual reality CD series "Cyborgasm." - - - - - - - - - - - - T O M O R R O W _I N _ S A L O N _ 2 1 s t
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