My uncustomary heels clicked up the marble of the courthouse steps, the credentials slapping against my gut. Police officers with sardonic expressions rifled by bag after putting it through the x-ray, which delineated the ghostly shapes of change, tampons and many, many pens with chewed ends. The two men were talking about last night's game, without even a glance in my general direction. And so I clicked down the faux marble squares of the corridor to the information desk, where a bored woman with braided hair was drowning in a copy of Cosmopolitan. As I gently attempted a "hello," she looked up, the dark skin under her chin creased unattractively and the light from the overhead stanchions catching on the flate panes of her glasses. I inquired after the courtroom of Judge Henry.

She pointed, her red-painted rhinestone-flecked nail catching the cold light, and she rattled off directions like a bored breakneck auctioneer. Getting the sense, I slipped into the stairwell, not wanted to share a narrow elevator with the suits. My patent leather heels echoed as they slapped the stairs in ascent, my chewed-nail hand gripping the brown rail, running across some suspicious substances. My wet palm dragged along the wrinkled leg of my trousers before daring to grip the surface again.

A mole, I stuck my head out of the stairwell into a hall, checking the number of the courtrooms. Bored women scratched their noses beside a glass window composed entirely of neo-70s hexigons, sitting on either side of a tear in the leather couch, which spilled its yellow foam guts on the floor, a murder victim. Wrong floor. And so, I pulled my tortoise head back into the well and clicked up another flight to a level with plain old dirt-smeared windows and flat uncomfortable benches of wood slats; a line of plain brown doors stretched into the hall, that could have extended into infinity for its consistent plainness. A red fire extinguisher bled from the plain white wall, an unintentional splash of color.

And so, I clicked down the hall of infinity, gazing at door after door, which had the same window etched with an internal graph of wires, ostensibly to keep the bullets out. Around an unforseen bend, the decor shifted to 1970s dark paneling; the shadows gathered, ominous dust motes. And the officials I knew, white-haired and red-faced, sat on those uncomfortable wood seats with the slats on one side of the hall, as elderly property owners squinted cool blue eyes from the other. Attorneys hovered and wheeled, whispering to each other in pinstriped gray suits. Vaguely, I could tell which side was which, but attorneys, much like municipal officials, look much alike. It runs with the species.

Not knowing where to sit � that would have involved taking sides � I instead chose to take a piss as a recreational activity. Urination, I had learned, could function much like a cigarette break for the smoke-free: pull down those nylons and cheap panties in the sanctity of a stall and straddle that white slab of porcelain as a way to temporarily escape whatever tedious scenario awaits you. The bathroom is as much of a sacred temple as the outside awning where smokers congregate, huddled for warmth against both the coldness of the driving rain and of suited upper management, who have never lit a fag because the nicotine-related health problems would be "inconvenient" for the company. Now, I've never smoked, but I can see the blood-thrill of dropping one's pants and mooning both the absenteeism-conscious management, eager to squeeze every microsecond of sweat out of an underpaid turnip, and the hoity-toity Surgeon General, who has eagerly discoursed on the hazards of smoking, alcohol, happiness, vacations, motorcycles, and Twinkies, but never on the inherent benefits of masturbation. Well, at least not since the Clinton era.

When my buns slapped the seat, the cell shrieked. Sighing, I pushed the evil button that allows others to access me in the process of urination. I'm an unwilling James Joyce. Maybe next I can get someone to take a dump on a glass-top table, my thoughts rambled, flashing back to one of my stranger moments in a graduate school course. The topic of the day: Julia Kristeva and the abject. Translation: a strange Bulgarian woman who turns the English language into some kind of oddly-worded academic masturbation device, and writes about shit without actually saying shit. Shit, you see, is a complex concept encompassing scapegoats and any matter produced by the human body: childbirth as shitting, the female as the ultimate shitter. The anus of God. A grand phrase, that. "The company I work for is the anus of God."

I really need to head back to graduate school; I miss those conversations. Granted, too few of my comrades would join me in them; they were too busy refusing to shave their forested legs and trying to draw personal connections between Tennyson and their lives. More than once, I rolled my eyes when the "therapy women" discoursed on how "In Memorium" reminded them of their own conflicted relationship with their sons, avowed metrosexuals with designer jogging pants and a habit of snorting paychecks up their nose.

My thoughts grabbed, screaming, at any possible subject, in a last-ditch attempt to dissuade my finger from pushing that button and answering the phone. I knew who it would be. But the press credentials, which now dangled between my bare knees, reminded me of my shackled wage-slave status, and so I sucked it up and answered, all while letting the Yangtze gush its yellow rapids into the mold-smeared white maw.

"It's Brenda," she gushed, caffeinated. "Any word yet?"

"I just got here. They're sitting in the hall. They haven't gone in yet."

"Can't you grab a lawyer and ask how long it will be? I need to know."

My eyes glanced at my cheap watchface: 9:30 a.m. Deadline wouldn't be reached until twelve and a half hours later. Yes, I could sense it had been a triple-shot espresso day for the big blonde poodle. Maybe even a quadruple shot. Her neurons were tangoing with the coffee beans which, of course, wore little sombreros and yammered in Spanish. Somewhere, Brenda sang a show tune in a half-animated Disney musical, surrounded by the dancing beans, which sported little legs and arms with white-gloves and moustaches. The beans sang in a high-pitched chipmunk Spanish, but with a stereotyped drawl.

My brain snapped back from the astral.

"Brenda, deadline isn't for, I don't know, twelve hours. I'll tell you the whole thing when I get back to the office."

"But do we have maps of the zone and the streets? The story needs art." Something in the rapid-fire rush of her words gave me the nagging suspicion of the mental crumbling of a dyke, stone by stone, into the encroaching sea. Eyes closed, I reached across the satellite-bounced signal to see her at her desk, twitching manically. Her pale eyes seemed to drown in excess fluid: tears. My eyes cracked open at the unfamiliarity of it. The sense of a man's silhouette in a wooden doorframe, a heavyset man in black, and the scent of stale rum and a rumbling undercurrent of rage. Husband number three? I pulled back, unwilling to know; such reaching is, after all, a violation, although one I cannot often accomplish.

Tragic to think that Brenda and I actually have some sort of psychic rapport. But the woman throws off the psychic signals of a loudspeaker, its nob turned as far to the right as it will go, the teenaged fans thrashing long hair as the lousy guitarist hits the power chord.

"Brenda, I'm on the toilet," I say finally, letting the words drop like, well, something unmentionable.

"Why didn't you say you were on the toilet?" she shrieked. "I'll call you back later."

Smiling, I reflected on every judge's first order of the day: turn off the cell phones in the pews. Just following the courthouse rules, ma'am. Drying my hands on my slacks, I rounded the corner, but the quarry had fled into the thicket of pews behind the door. I followed, slipping beside the weekly reporter, whose lipstick smeared drunkenly, having ultimately little to do with her lips. I nodded, half-smiling, straining to hear the soft words, devoured by the deafening rustle of pages and the odd acoustics of the room. Painted white men in black, pale hands folded, adorned the walls in dusty frames.

The court clerk slipped in, wearing a white skirt that flared in 1950s style, with a tight red top and clunky red heels. Quite a charming ensemble, really. My eyes drifted across the landowners, who were trying to save their strip of businesses from demolition. A frizzed blonde settled in a dowdy 1980s colorblocked dress: the deli owner. The apartment house owner had bound his rat tail back with a rubber band; he ran his hands over the surface of his jeans. An elderly couple who owned the smoke shop and newspaper stand sat primly next to the flashy hairstylist in his black suit. A nondescript dog stylist and a clothes-store owner blended in with the surroundings. A line of lawyers rustled their sheets.

The mayor smiled and made a small wave in my general direction. I waved back, and then adjusted my glasses. The judge came in, round-faced, and bodies rose in a wave then fell, half-assed fans in a stadium. The arguments began.

The litany droned: redevelopment, land needed for a new retail complex that would bring hordes of George Washingtons to town, a poor sight triangle, crumbling infrastructure (my favorite term, much bluster meaning little), fair market value. The counterargument sprang from the development law itself, with words such as "obsolete" and "dilapidated." In clipped tones, suited attorneys read the legalese, and then the facts. None of these businesses, many of which had apartments on top, were dilapidated. Furnaces blared up to snuff, windows stretched to meet specifications set by the fire code official. Facts, numbers, dates of inspections, the right to make a living. And then, grabbing swords, eminent domain and fair market value fenced mercilessly, until highest and best use leapt in, plumed hat swaying in the roaring wind of the zoning world, laying everything to waste with his mighty stroke of steel, forged from a heap of lawyers' fountain pens.

It's no different from automatic writing, you see. Their words, fallen from official lips, simply channel through the ballpoint. My teeth, during pauses, grind grooves into the plastic. The automatic nature of it gives the part of my brain separate from my job a chance to wander and imagine, and ponder the ticking black hands on the round disk of the clock. Tick. Tick. The weekly reporter's lipstick adhered to her buck teeth as she wrote in a looping secretary's hand. She slammed her palm down, realizing that I was absent-mindedly looking at her looped Gs. My eye returned to the stand, where the colorblock woman talked in an alto voice fraught with emotion about the number of inspections she undergoes each year.

My pen moved, possessed, freeing my mind to remember. I could taste the ocean's salt.

***

He hadn't informed me previously that it would be a beach in the raw, full of sunburnt flesh without the customary nylon loincloth. Granted, I took this better than most would, having cavorted sans clothing many a time at the larger gatherings, where naked bonfire dancing is the norm, and merry Pagans painted themselves with swirling body-paint. One year, I painted myself as fire, with red and orange and gold licking my arms in glitter-paint; I strapped bells to my ankle and became pure motion around the blaze, one with the women whose heavy breasts swung like pendulums, and the drummers beating tired palms on the skins. Across the lake, odd lights danced � not the warm gold of fireflies, but the cool blue of will o'the wisp, mirrored by the close stars that smiled down from a blanket of indigo. Each step jingled and clanked as I spun and reached toward the heart of the blaze, where a blue door opened. Soon after, I had settled my bare ass in the sand, reviving when someone brought a jug of water and a handful of M&Ms.

Clad only by the sky: a translation of an old Hindu term. Ash-smeared mystics wandered naked along the Ganges, trying not to crush the ants, naked incarnate souls suffering penance. Clad by that indigo dotted with constellations, or the bristling cold of winter that shines like topaz in the brief hours of light, or by the sky that day we went to the shore: a delicate blue smeared with white, a cataract across an eye. No, I was not unfamiliar with nudity; I fairly grew up at the gatherings, where clothes were shrugged off like a winter coat on a warm day.

"You weren't born with your clothes on," my mom once said to Jill, wagging her finger. Jill begged to stay home with dad who, although tolerant, was still a clothes-wearing atheist. And so, mom and I went, year after year. We called it the "girls weekend out." Other folks called it the Midsummer Womyn's Festival.

He showed up at my door in the SUV, garbed in a blue sarong and, shockingly, a Britney Spears t-shirt. Wearing my wine-red sarong with the gold Roman border, I bit my lower lip before a planet-quivering kiss sucked it out again. The road slipped beneath the tires, a sunbaked ribbon linking fates. As the radio hummed and blared its pop divas, my eyes closed. And there was Hecate, this time as a slender pale maiden � myself as a teen, I recognized � with a disturbing upturned grin, half smirk. Her eyes glowed green as she stood in a field of wildflowers. A catbird landed on her thin wrist.

"Jasmine," it meowed distinctly. "Beware."

And the scene shifted to the sunbaked dunes with the minarets just over the hazy horizon; the woman in the black chador fairly ran to her fate, awkwardly stumbling in the sand, sweat pouring down her veiled face and down her recently-used thighs. And then the field came back, this time a savannah speckled with some trees. Misplaced, a lanky giraffe wandered into the scene, delicately plucking a few leaves with its expressive lips. The field became a yard bounded by regulation fence and regulation condominiums. Somewhere, I heard Christian talking and a woman laugh. Maybe it was me.

"Expect the unexpected," the girl Hecate said as the catbird threw itself into the air. "And expect the expected."

And there I was, the knot of my sarong digging into my neck against the navy blue seats, laughing at his joke. It's the third time he told me this story: when he taught an introductory course in political science as a grad student, he would leave the address of the bar he frequented, in case the kiddies wanted to wander in for a few brewskis and shoot the shit. And so, two young coeds, future political interns with fashionably tight babydoll t-shirts, came to visit at the end of the semester. He bought them liquor, and they invited him back to the dorm room they shared. And somehow, the normally-vanilla girls began to run their hands through each other's hair and then kiss, inserting tongues behind the other's lips, slipping off their elastic pants bands. Manicured hands grabbed him, and pulled him to a conveniently-located bed, underneath life-sized posters of Brad Pitt.

"It was the happiest moment in my life," he beamed as he drove. "Did you ever do a threesome?"

Somehow, I disconnected my teeth from my tongue, pondering the reply. Now, I certainly don't want to seem the cardigan-wearing schoolmarm with the gray bun, rapping the knuckles of horny adolescents. Heck, I've watched a porn video as an undergraduate, eating popcorn at a designated "porn party" and marveling over the actors' abysmal 80s hairdos and zebra-striped musclehead pants. Through the years, my life has been spotted with polyamorous Pagan acquaintances, who forge three- or four-member households with their bisexual partners, a Celtic knot of strange marriages. Hell, I've even dated a guy who wanted me to put a handmade saddle on him and ride him like a pony, complete with horsewhip and reins.

My neck nape prickled. Perhaps this was the first disconnect, the first hint that the brown-haired lanky man with the John Lennon wire frames wasn't a hat rack to hang my hopes on. But he's Pagan and he's sexy and we get along, tangible teen-aged Self said, stamping a foot with pink painted nails. You feel it in your blood; there's a silver tie.

And there was: a silvery net of astral wire, drawing in and bringing us face to face, flesh to flesh, a soul-mate proximity. Perhaps the same silver thread that tethers our astral ankle, binding it to our sleeping body as we aimlessly travel in our dreams, our various lives, balloons released into the sky but not quite free. And I had met him somewhere, on one of those travels, in the sand as I/not-I rushed away from the lover I had sacrificed everything for, back to my merchant husband and the stoning that may wait. Trying to give Allah the slip under that low blue sky that watched my every stumble in the sand. And maybe this is the life that I get it right, that I finally have my tale painted onto the stars themselves, I: the eye that sees everything, the pen that jots down the tales of others.

So I said the casual words, giving myself an aura of postmodernity, that shrugging cavalier attitude beloved of the black-clothed urbanites.

"Can't say that I have," I offered. And then I dove into conversations about socio-economic systems, group dynamics and Witchcraft, and my rare as a jewel childhood as a Witch. He marveled over the concept of my mother, noting that his parents were evangelicals. "I can't tell them much at all," he said.

He told me about Erin � Silvermoon; her mundane name jangled my unfamiliar nerves. Oh, they had gone out. The tie dissolved, a Ganges-mud statue in the ocean. He characterized her: a shrew, whose parents taught her to make arguing a personal pastime. He met them, and they seemed lovely while they bobbed on the family fishing boat, not at all the taloned monsters she made them out to be. But family dynamics can show a different, glossy face to the public, keeping its festering sores conveniently wrapped and aired only at home, he reflected. And she insulted his cat, he added.

"Oh no, that's terrible," I exclaimed, imagining Squashblossom. "That's pretty rude too, if she was at your place."

The ocean gleamed blue-green over the dunes. My cheap green flipflops bit into my toe webbing as I staggered across the uneven sand; the motion left a lovely array of scabs, blood blisters and white skin-shreds. On my back, I toted my meager possessions as I trekked along the desert sands to the oasis, step by torn-webbing step. I tried to flip off the flips, but was greeted by little silicon nodules underfoot heating to flaming-charcoal levels. Christian, unknowing, had pulled ahead. And so I slipped the flops back on and staggered after, until we settled on a bare spot of ground in the back, near the dunes.

He set up a half-tent as I spread the emerald-green blanket on the burning sand. Untying his sarong, he sat in naked glory and then noticed my foot wounds. Whipping out some Band-Aids, he patched me up.

"You're a stallion," he said. "You didn't complain once."

The sunblock then made its appearance, and we smeared each other's pale limbs with the white. The sun dazzled overhead, and he pulled me into the half-tent, draping a towel over the top. Overhead, a plane flew low, roaring as it trailed a banner behind. The ocean rose and fell, an answering roar.

"You're a beautiful woman," he said, kissing the hollow of my neck as his fingers danced along the ladder of my vertebra. My blood roared in my ears, sound caught in a conch.

***

(to be continued...)