Hello darling, back from my afternoon tryst, I had a delightful time. It is so gorgeous out, just this moment, the sun bright & shiny, so much in bloom -- flowering trees in various shades, plum, white, hyacinths, daffodils, tulips, & scylla all in jumbled bloom at once, lawns greening. I just flew down Route 9J, which hugs the river, which was sparkling & shining in the late afternoon light, with the most gorgeous backdrop of picturesquely undulating blue-gray Catskills ridges. I wish I could have stopped the car... but the road in just that spot seems designed almost to discourage view-stalkers -- there was hardly a shoulder, and it dropped off into a steeply rolling lawned embankment. Ah, another time, I imagine that there will be another...

Afterward, after my tryst that is, I drove a little bit within Albany, and felt so fortunate and happy to be there, what an escape & reprieve for me. The neighborhoods that I passed through & stopped in this afternoon reminded me very much of Brooklyn, which usually I really don't miss at all, but suddenly in Albany, a wave of nostalgic feeling came over me as I admired the handsome brownstone blocks of Madison Avenue, on the other side of which lies the resplendently blooming Olmsted-designed Washington Park. That stretch of town reminds me, perhaps, of Fort Greene. It's funny, it was a bit dreamlike, the resemblance to Brooklyn so palpable, yet it wasn't Brooklyn -- the way, in dreams, familiar places become transfigured, familiar & at the same time strange.

It was "April in Albany," indeed, it might as well have been Paris for me, as I made my way, in my casually elegant skirt outfit (I opted for bare legs & low heels), along Delaware Avenue, where I tore the end of a loaf of Italian bread and interspersed it with bites of savory Trugale, a small wedge of which I bought after sampling a half-dozen teeny samples of various cheeses from a generous, artisanally arrayed -- wood boards, baskets - shop display.

Ah, so my Last Tango in Albany. Well neither of us is young anymore, we're both in our early fifties. And so maybe that says something about anticipation versus actuality. I don't know what to say. I mean, was it hot hot hot -- like what I'm able to whip up with one of my battery-operated not-anatomically correct toys? No. It was nothing like that.

I don't know. Am I too staid? (Well -- what is "too"?) I absolutely loved the intimacy, coupled with the comfortability. It's pretty amazing that he and I met only last week. Because we just fall into each other's arms very easily and warmly -- and stay there. So fireworks were dispatched quite quickly, and the next couple of hours we simply lay in each other's arms while he told me stories, and mostly I listened, and I answered a few questions -- but do you know, darling -- I am not, in person, a great conversationalist, at all. You might think that I would be, from reading this blog. But that's just me, as it were, downloading my mind. I'm not a stutterer or stammerer (actually - at times I am) but my brain is always faster than my tongue, or something gets jammed or tripped up between my thinking it and trying to utter it.

If, without saying it quite so directly & bluntly, we can help each other in this way, just connect physically, and also simply enjoy each other's amiable, accepting, warm company -- a safe haven -- how wonderful is that? And there are issues of ageing involved, he doesn't have the libido he had decades previous -- and that isn't because - I'm 'not all that.' I don't know, it's an odd age, I think, being our age, it's like starting all over again -- our bodies familiar, yet changing, unfamiliar --

The tulips were useless, as was my pretty underwear. No, all that transpired, did so very quickly soon enough between sheets on a bed in a sparsely furnished ground-floor apartment, shades drawn, the place intimate and to ourselves as a spare stage set in a fringe-theatre production -- he & I creating our lines as we moved along, sometimes in bed, other times he'd get up & use the john or grab a paltry snack -- I was full, having lunched on Spicy Sicilian Chicken earlier -- and then he'd lie back down again and take me in his arms and stroke my back and I'd ask him a question & he'd tell me a story & then we'd kiss & try again & give up & acknowledge well maybe that's what Viagra's for -- it's okay! that first time was just fine - I'm not expecting it again, and again, and again.

I think we're going to get together again -- it was the first time, for both of us, in a long, very very long, time, and while it happened quickly it wasn't precipitously, or lightly. I hope we do. I think – do we have to adjust expectations? I don't know what I mean by that. I'm confused, myself. I am attracted to him. Yet, mostly I felt really cozy & comfortable with him. I just don't know.

He told a charming, original story (as we lay naked together on the low bed, in each other's arms, him stroking my back the entire while, as I lay against his chest, closed my eyes, and listened). It involved a grandparent, or great-grandparent of his, from "the Old Country," in middle-Europe... the very old-country, in fact, that I was led in girlhood to believe that due to some alliance between a Polish princess with this paprikash-loving-kingdom king, there is always a natural affinity between the two nationalities -- so -- man, is that what this is about, the instant, if not absolutely exaltantly perfect perfect perfect, rapport?

Do you think in the 'old country', when the likes of our babcia’s and dziadziuś’es got together --- already ancient by the time, in America, we as young children came along -- that they were so concerned, when they connected with each other, about 'performance,' and doing it 2-3-4 times in one session...

and not that I wish it to be sexless, I absolutely don't
I loved that all my exercising & walking have paid off
I had no problem assuming whatever position (honestly - I astonished myself!)
but boy, did I love that we could rest in each other's arms, and just talk, and talk, and kiss, and talk, and listen, and maybe that's a bit of something that ancient ancestors, from millenia back even, from both kingdoms, enjoyed so much about each other