looks as though she is feeling no pain. We have already said the blessings for the bread . . . “Baruch ata Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha-olam, hamotzi lechem min ha-aretz. Aahhhhhmmeennnnnnn/Amen. This tastes good, if I do say so myself.”
“This is great. You ’re getting better, the longer you’re here. Why, I remember when you first arrived and you fumbled around in the kitchen. Look at you now, a regular European chef at a class-B restaurant. It’s been a long time since those early days when you were just a pup,” she laughs.
We both laugh. I just nod and the old memories start bubbling to the surface. I do remember Anna when I first came here and met her at the Classical Cafe. Some friends, or rather acquaintances, had brought me there. My classical music background was like my cooking, inexperienced and naive at best.
I only remember it was something like Beethoven followed by Mozart, when our eyes met across the room. It was around midnight and I was becoming a bit tipsy and getting obnoxious a la Americanese, and I started singing or humming along, and breaking into a loud, “Oh solo mio . . .” Next thing I knew, I had bought a rose from that dark-haired auslander/foreigner selling roses, a Turk, I presumed. It was a juicy red one, which I brought over to you at around one in the morning. We exchanged glances many times over the next several minutes, as I recall.
“I was just recollecting, picturing as if I were still there, that night we first saw each other. Remember, at the Classical Cafe, where our eyes met? You were sitting with a friend, and you seemed to be laughing at something, and we both seemed to fixate on each other for a few seconds. I remember you said something to your friend, and then you both looked over, as if to assess me and give me a grade of hit or miss.”
“Yes, sweets, I remember. But what you may have forgotten was that you didn’t look at me again for a long time, while I was talking about you, in a fantasy way, with Regina, you remember her? We were making up stories about you. We knew you were an American, that was obvious. You appeared quite devilish and started to hum along with the music, although it sounded not quite right, as if you didn’t know the music, a dead give-away of a newcomer and of someone who doesn’t hold his wine so well.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “You never told me about that, or what you fantasized. Did it turn out to be true? Do I measure up to your expectations and stereotypes, my background I mean, now that you’ve known me for so long? We’re going on five years now. That‘s a long time for any relationship,” I mused.
I had had a series of short-term affairs, quasi-relationships and assorted lovers, one-night stands, etc. I had lived with someone in the seventies, in my hippie days, so to speak, and also in the late eighties and early nineties.
Now, with Anna, I was working on something more substantial, more committed, if that word dared be said or even thought. Aren’t these the days of intimacy crisis, the lack of whatever it takes to sustain a longer, even live-in type of man and woman tete-a-tete? This flirtation, the narcissistic me-first seventies and the money-grab eighties had left us crying foul play, lest anyone thwart any of our desires, and wants, and our many unattainable needs. What did we call the nineties, the pre-millennium post-x generation? And now it’s the Postmodern Whatevers!
We men, I often think, are kept with our mothers too long, and they won’t let us go. We men are babies dependent on mama, and we want the same with a woman, although no one is quite like mama. Our fathers were either too harsh or were absent workalcoholics looking for an axe to grind, and too often taking it out on their children.
Anyway, Anna is steady, sweet, unassuming, real, and quaint, a little like some Austrian stereotype. There is room to move with her, and she gives me all the space I need. She isn’t even jealous if I turn my head gawking at some fox walking down the street. Anna is not pressuring me, nor is she looking to settle down immediately, although she is thirty-five. I am somewhat older (twelve years, is more than somewhat), and maybe she is looking for that father she wanted to be close with, who was really too close with her.
She needs some distance, yet often asks me for advice and looks to me to do the decision-making when we’re together. Maybe she just doesn’t mind, and is easy and not so particular — at least I hope so. I don’t like it when someone is too dependent on me, either. I think she likes me and is just happy to be with me, as long as it doesn’t get too heavy or we end up processing and arguing too much.
After a while eating in silence, Anna blurts out that she has been really surprised about me: that she hadn’t thought I was very deep, in fact thought that I would be shallow, as in “An American,” and that she hadn’t expected this to last.
I reply that I’ve also been surprised at our steady upward climb from friendship into lovers and into hanging out together, to our current expectations, I hope, of spending weekends and some weekdays together. “I think we just come along together. I love sleeping with you. I think you are pretty, and you have a great figure. It’s something I can get into, pardon the pun, but I really love your blue eyes, your hair, and I could really hold onto and knead your tits and cunt though these clothes right now. I like to be together with you more and more. What do you say, sweetie?”
“Yeah, I agree with you. I do like to snuggle with you. You are so manly, dark and virile. You’re easy to be with and not at all as obnoxious as the typical American I had pegged you to be. Why, you haven’t really gotten drunk but maybe two or three times since then. I like that side of you, though, the one that gets assertive and speaks up and says what he wants.
“I wish you would stand up for yourself more, though, not exactly like the slogan of “be a man,” but I think a woman wants to be sheltered sometimes. It’s a mean world out there. Still, I don’t always understand you. There is the language problem, and then there are all those national pride things that you carry around with you, as if holding on for dear life. But I guess you have to do that when living in a strange country.”
“Often, I perceive you as being not really here, but off somewhere in a foreign land, ha ha. It’s as if you are here one minute and then in Berkeley or swimming in the Pacific Ocean the next. I want to confess that I’ve been feeling closer to you lately. Are we really in a romance stage? And what does that mean? Like, I don’t want to analyze it too much. We both have our own separate lives, and we like those parts, also that keeps us independent and still in touch with our own particular interests. You have your tennis, your reading, artwork, writing, music, and the walks in nature, which we both share. And I have my aerobic class, my interest in the arts, like you do, my friends, and of course, my violin.”
“Oh by the way, we’re having fresh strawberries with Schlag for our Nachspiese/dessert. I know you like fresh fruit. Well, are we feeling the wine, or are we just melting into each other’s arms? It doesn’t look like we will see that new film, what was the title of it?” I say, drifting back to those naked breasts this afternoon and now lusting for this luscious body right here in front of me. I am picturing our moving over to the sofa and grabbing for each other in mad, passionate love.
I go to the stereo and put on that violin concerto by Beethoven, I forget which one, but I know Anna will like it. Candlelight, wine, woman, and now music: the basic ingredients for a cozy night at home.
Anna moves to get up and clear the table. I interrupt her and tell her that I will take care of it, that she has the night off, and that we should adjourn to the other room where we’ll be much more comfortable. I make this ever so subtle hint, looking for that warm, receptive, come-on-over-to-my-place-baby gleam in her eye. I take her hand and kiss it with a manly bow, of the sort the Habsburgs used to make, I guess.
“‘Will you be so kind as to accompany me to the next chamber for some after-dinner aperitif, perhaps, or some surprise entertainment?” I inquire, remembering that awhile ago I was promised
