I really wish I wrote about the wonderful weekend when it was still fresh in my mind. It seemed so surreal. That smile of hers that could melt the worst days away. The stars in her eyes as she gazed into mine, with a shyness and giddiness she hadn't felt since her teen years, if ever. The surprise presents I gave her one at a time. Seranading her with my singing, my wooden flute, my harmonicas and mandolin. Teasing her with my deep voice, and by walking around after the shower wearing nothing but a shortened towel around my waist. The wildest of wild sex. The truest of love-making. Being woken up by her kiss and that smile again. Just watching her after breakfast in her white bathrobe, a white towel wrapped around her wet hair, as she sat stationed in front of her beauty mirror. Those full lips, that olive skin. Kissing every square inch of her, including the two areas she was so ashamed of because they suffered the ugly effects of major surgery when she was in that near-fatal car accident a few years back.

Falling asleep with her in my arms. The shower. Snuggling on the couch as we watched DVDs in pajamas. Finding more scary and hilarious analogies in the "Devil Doll" book. Watching her demonstrate her graceful spinning bellydancing moves before dinner. Seeing her on the end of the couch in that little white nightgown, and clearly visualizing a pair of giant white feathered wings on her back. And whispering in her ear that dangerous but deep phrase "I love you" to her for the first time, despite it being such a ridiculously short time since we'd first met, but I really had to tell her. She saw her face in those photos we took, and said she wanted to cry, because she couldn't remember being that happy. She called it the best weekend of her life.

Did I feel the same? I want to scream "Yes!" but of course it wasn't perfect. NOTHING is perfect, and I know that. And in all honestly, there were a couple of times that weekend when she made me feel bad. The night I couldn't "keep it hard", probably because it was 3:00AM, I didn't even get enough sleep the night before, I had some alcohol, I was nervous, I was in a new home for the first time, and trying to get into an unconventional sex position while standing. Naturally, she asks "Is it me? What am I doing wrong? What can I do?" And I assure her it's not her. And I hear the same words that I heard the last time this happened in New York, in November 2001, when I was in the hotel room with a biphobic woman I'd only known for a month but fell in love with: "Maybe you ARE gay!" Which is flat-out not true. My joking response to that claim (which I don't say aloud) is "Yeah, I wish I was gay. Life would be so much simpler if I didn't have to deal with women." But seriously, I'd take no shame in being gay if I was, but one look at my porn collection or the testimonies of my other ex-girlfriends and believe me, it's clear that I sincerely want a woman in bed. But then I tell her one thing that would turn me on, and then she snaps back that my fetish must therefore be the only thing that turns me on, and not the rest of her.

Then there was Sunday night, when she went on attacking my religion again, and we got into that debating again. And this new phrase of "emotional cheating", where in no uncertain terms she told me how much she was bothered by the fact that I was still in touch with some of my ex-girlfriends, let alone view them as "friends". And that to call them with what's on my mind for the sake of hearing an outside perspective is somehow cheating on the woman I love.

Still, things were reconciled. The same night of the impotence incident, I made her cum twice just using my mouth. And the morning after the impotence incident I did everything I didn't do the night before, with the "downstairs" equipment. And plenty of more sexual activity followed throughout the weekend. As for the religious attack, we managed to get things calm again, and I stayed with her an extra night. So even with the worst that happened, it was more than made up for in my mind.

I don't even remember how it got brought up in conversation yesterday, but it did. Maybe it's just that I'm not a perfectionist and she is. That would explain why she blows my little sarcastic comments out of proportion, bringing them up weeks after I say them. But this crushed her. It crushed her to hear me say that at some point in the weekend, she DID make me feel bad. No matter how much I told her how I agreed the weekend over all was incredible (and it was) and something I'll never ever forget, and that her hurting me was not a claim that she was mean (just basically misinformed), and that we made up...what I said still shattered this beautiful image and memory she had. The memory of that weekend that put a smile on her face 10 miles wide, and even had her clients at work noticing how she was glowing.

I sat there after hours in the empty conference room with closed doors, listening to her on my cell phone with my eyes shut tight. The crying. "I have to go," she kept saying. But I couldn't leave things like this. She hung up. And I broke into hysterical tears. "No, no, no," I heard my voice repeat. "No, no, no, no, no." And I just had to do it. I had to see her. I ran downstairs and got in my car. I know it was a 3-hour drive, and I wouldn't get back home until a ridiculously late hour. But I had to do it. I just had to see her. I want her. I need her. And I really had to know that she was OK and safe.

I drove, and drove, and drove. Suddenly my phone vibrated. It wasn't her, but "S". I told him I was in the middle of something really crazy. "Look, I have to put it to you straight - I fell in love with a Tarot client. And it's been incredible. But I'm driving out to see her right now." I tried to explain the insanity of the situation without giving away any details or revealing the fact that I'd been crying. And I told him about the angel and devil differences while maintaining a metaphorical sense as best as I could. And he said "Well maybe the two of you were meant to teach each other something. You letter her see her inner godhood, and she teaching you that there's something else out there that you don't see."

I really couldn't believe I was doing all of this. Not just driving out, but acknowledging the "angels". She had prayed the night before for Raphael to look over me. And I told her earlier that day that I felt a strange presence above and behind me before I walked into work that day, but I didn't want to look for fear of confirming the fact I was superstitious. But this time in the car I heard myself say, "OK, angels, if you're out there...I don't believe in you, but I know she does. And I just want to know that she's safe." I drove and drove. I watched the final exit numbers go down and made my turn.

Her car was parked. No answer on the cell phone. No answer on the home phone, though I could hear it ringing from the other side of her front door. No answer to ringing the bell or knocking. And I tried several times. I had picked up two packs of her cigarettes on the way, and left those with a note in a bag on her apartment door's doorknob. I should have just left it at that, drove home, and went to sleep.

She's NOT suicidal. She does NOT have some mental condition. She's a social worker for fucks sake. She wouldn't be able to work with those kind of people if she wasn't strong. And if it's one thing I knew from the first moment I ever laid eyes on her, it was that: she is a VERY strong and dignified person. But I waited in my car outside. And the more I waited, the more my imagination plagued me. Then a cop car came out of nowhere and pulled up to the front of the bulding. Oh no.