In the land of my Cajun ancestors, a crawfish boil is more than a meal. It is a ritual. After we purge the squiggling, juicy live mudbugs in a big bucket of fresh cool water, they're cooked outdoors over a roaring fire in a huge steel pot with corn on the cob, small red potatoes and bags of seasonings that impart heat that can fire up your mouth even while it tingles your taste buds. We layer newspapers six deep across a wooden table that the participants will gather around. We'd never be caught without plenty of beer to laissez les bons temps rouler.

But, the most important part of the ritual is this: family and friends to nestle with you at the table, close enough to "accidentally" knock elbows and rub thighs if you please. At some point, we're pretty sure we'll be shouting at the cook to stop stirring with the big wooden paddle and sling the goodies across the table right now!

That's my favorite part. Even more than that first whiff of the heady seasonings carried on the misty steam roiling up from the boiling pot. It's something from my childhood, I am sure. I can remember being so small that I could just barely get my chin over the top of the picnic table and seeing my uncle coming toward us with the strained pot of crawfish and then - voila! -  the world disappeared before me, hidden behind a towering mound of red. And my cousins and I would dig in delightedly.

It always chases me back to fun times when the cook piles the boiled crawfish onto the newsprint-covered table and everyone hesitates those first few moments before touching the blistering red crustaceans.

But, that day, when it happened, I looked instead at my visitor and wondered how he was feeling about the immersion into Cajun life he was getting that weekend. But he turned and gave me this enthusiastic grin so I was able to enjoy the moment even more.

Cort picked up one of the crawfish and instantly dropped it with a loud whoop. My uncle, the cook, was trying so hard not to laugh that I thought he'd swallow his tongue. "Nonc, stop now," I warned with a little growl. And then my cousins all burst out laughing.

Biting my lip, I picked up Cort's hand and checked for burned fingers. "Sorry, padre. That was my fault. I should have warned you to wait a second for the first flash of heat to leave them. You okay?"

He nodded at me as I blew across his fingers. Like my mom had had to do for me so many times I have lost count. But doing it to Cort ... catching the way he watched me blowing, his lips parting and his eyes focusing on my mouth ... didn't feel quite so innocent. Then again, I hadn't been feeling very innocent since the night before.

Ashamed of me, aren't you?

Don't be. I hadn't actually acted on anything. I'm not that rude and I was still so unsure what I was doing because I was just so new at this and it had only dawned on me after I'd invited him to visit me just how unqualified I seemed to be for this life I was being offered. But, Christ, we're talking Cort.  I may be destined for Hell for admitting this, but that man was made for sin and I don't care how many years of his life he devoted to the good word.

Now, to be entirely truthful, while I'd been both plagued and concerned about the haze of evil thoughts I'd been having from the moment I saw him at the airport in New Orleans the day before, there was also something else about him that had actually made a greater impact almost from the first moment we shook hands.

He was such a good sport.

Yes, you heard me right. Not that touching his hand didn't instantly send sparks flipping inside me, but there was just something going on here that let me see the kind of person he really was. It was like Uma said about Bud the first time she met him - it's one thing to know it intellectually, that these men exist, it's another thing entirely to be in the presence of someone like Cort and know it's - good God! - really him.

On some realm, I expected him to be intuitive, compassionate, spiritual and quietly bold. I just guess this willingness to roll with the punches and take things for what they were was something I hadn't given much thought to.

When he came through the security gate at the airport, I was standing a ways back. I wanted to watch him walk toward me. I chose the spot I did because he would pass through an area where the sun slanting through the new skylights would backlight his moving form. I'm such a sucker for lighting.

Okay, okay. I'm such a sucker for a good body on a man. There, I admitted it. Happy?

"Wow," I said softly and appreciatively as he approached.

"Lord Almighty," said the woman next to me.

"Tell me something I didn't know," said a female voice behind us.

Our eyes met and we all giggled then looked back at him.

He was slowing down, just like I figured he might at this point, looking around, not anxious, just cautious and not wanting to miss anything as he searched for a likely person answering to my name. The lighting? Oh, sweet Jesus, it was perfect. So was he.

I moved to make the space between us disappear and I was sticking my hand out to greet him. Got this twinkle of a smile from him as I introduced myself. "It's ... something else to be seeing you, padre."

"What 'something' might it be?" he asked, studying me without being nasty about it.

"Something nice." And I blushed.

It made him laugh. And I felt a bit better.

Honestly, I wasn't sure I'd feel any better that easily. I was pretty gun shy. Not too sure I knew how to play the game well enough to invite another man to visit me. Well, I mean, come on now. I'd certainly managed to screw things up by this point. Three visits and two of them were ... well, not the best use of the opportunity. The final one had left me shaken to my core and unsure if I'd ever be able to get over that feeling of loss. And not at all sure I even wanted to stay in this group of people involved in this game.

But the more I thought about things, the more I realized I wasn't ready to quit without one try to recapture the fun and excitement I'd felt in the beginning.

It did take some faith on my part to invite Cort. I did it because I thought he was the one man perfect to help me regain my confidence. Of all of them, he wouldn't be bothered by the way I was tormenting myself. And, after all, I definitely had a 'thing' for him. So I hoped I'd fall under his spell easily.

I was taking Cort to St. Amant. We would be staying with my favorite aunt and uncle for the weekend. While it would be just us four that evening for dinner, on the next day my family from that area was coming to their place for a holiday crawfish boil. In the evening, we would go to the town's big fais-do-do, a kind of Cajun communal dance.

We drove two hours west of New Orleans and not a breath of the countryside looked the same.

Bayou country. Greens of every shade imaginable and then some. Verdant, ripe and luxuriant. What can I say? Here was where I breathed easiest. Here was the part of my family who loved me for all my contradictions. Hell, that's the kind of family you love best, isn't it?

My aunt and uncle now lived at my grandpere's old homestead. I was always happy that someone in the family had hung on to the place. Where would I have gone when I needed my roots? Pawpaw and Meemaw were long gone from us in the physical sense. Damn, I still missed them. We drove up the crunch of the oyster shell drive that led to the traditional cypress house and I squinted at the front porch like I always do to see if I could catch sight of their ghosts waving to me from the swing there.

"Something in your eyes?" Cort asked me.

I blushed and glanced at him. "My mother was raised here. See the bayou over there? I learned to swim there. Those oak trees? Once you climb up in them, you can walk between all four of them because the branches part way up touch."

Stream of consciousness. Do you do that? I do. Well, I do when I come here. I think it's because there are too many memories and they all crowd together in my head and fight each other to escape. So they get all jumbled up on the way out.

"You have a different way of talking sometimes," he said.

"Don't I know it."

"No, I didn't mean that in a bad way. I just have to get used to it."

"That's a sweet way of putting it." Looking at him and seeing him grinning at me as he heard the giggle hiding behind my words. "But then, others swear by your sweetness."

"They hold you in high regard as well, honey."

"That's probably because they don't know me as well as they should."

We laughed together. In that easy way that sometimes never comes with other people I've known.

My aunt, Tante Eloise, was approaching at a trot before I ever parked near the back porch. Wiping her hands on a white apron and peering at us over her half-specs. Happy just at the sight of me.

She's my size, which is to say on the short side. But she hugs like she's easily six feet tall. Wraps you up so tight and I can feel my mother in her when she does that. And then Nonc Arthur was slapping me on the back and hoisting me up in his arms. Then - smack down - leaving me and using two hands to shake with Cort.

It was over dinner of smothered chicken that I first thought bringing Cort with me had been a stroke of genius. My aunt and uncle loved him. He was polite, intelligent and a gentleman. My taste in men, my uncle told me, was impeccable.

I know Cort saw the wince I gave before I could recover. He asked me about it later. We were on the porch out front, on the swing and watching the blackness of the bayou.

"No more secrets," I told him.

He misunderstood. "Wonderful. Confession is good for the soul, Ann."

I sighed. "No. I meant, I won't be sharing any more secrets about myself with any of you. That doesn't seem to have worked very well."

An arm slipped around me and I had the sudden sense of warmth. "Telling him secrets didn't have anything to do with what happened."

"No. But it's why it hurt like it did."

"You do realize that wasn't how this was supposed to go? You're not supposed to get hurt."

"I know. But that's just me. I seem to do the unexpected." I turned and looked at him. Smiled swiftly into the concern in his eyes. "It's over now, anyway."

"But you don't seem to be wanting to heal."

That gave me pause. Is that what was really wrong? Hanging on even while I knew I shouldn't? "Maybe so. But that's why I invited you, Cort. To see if I was ready to play again. I just have to forget and find a new place in this life for myself."

Tender words. Therapeutic caress. "He's still there. He'll always be there, waiting for you. All you have to do is ask."

"There. But not how he was for me. What we had has been changed by what he's found with Uma, I'm sure. It's the natural way of things in this game. But, with him, it's more than I'm strong enough to handle. That's one thing I'm certain of."

"But you're so new. You don't really have a lot of experience in these matters. You'll see, I think, that it doesn't have to be that way."

"Padre? I'd rather not talk about any of this, if you please. Can we change the subject?"

So we didn't talk about it. Like all good men who hear confessions, I suspected Cort knew there would be little good gained by forcing me to confront what I had no intention to look at again.

We slept separately that night. Now, I can see you rolling your eyes at me about this, thinking I'm trying to be noble and save sweet Cort's reputation. But the truth is as I told him - we were in the home of my aunt and uncle. Much has changed in the world but such things do not necessarily invade the homes and values of Cajun Catholics of their generation. Sleeping in the same bed, under their roof, and not bound by Sacrament? They would sooner have allowed me to make filet gumbo without any okra.

Inside my bedroom that night, my mind was torn, conflicted. All day, I'd recognized the gathering of the urges I always got when contemplating Cort. I was intensely attracted to him, physically and mentally, always had been. And something had crystallized as we sat on that swing together and he let me relax with him. Yet, in that night, it seemed wrong that my thoughts about him had suddenly turned relentlessly sexual. Did I just want to use him? A spot of sex to test if I could get it on with another man? How fair was that to him? I tried to remember the prayers I'd sent to heaven back when I was a frustrated virgin. It was no use. I still felt like I was in heat.

And then added to this were all those Terry issues I'd been trying to not deal with. As much as I was determined to put him out of my mind, he was always present, always a confusing jumble of emotions. But, if I could be feeling these urges for Cort, did that mean that whatever I'd felt for Terry hadn't been anything more than the same thing?

When had I stopped knowing myself?

The springs of the impossibly old fashioned bed were bouncing with each movement as I tossed and turned. Why had I invited Cort? It was torturing me, to be so close to him and yet feeling an enigmatic sense of disloyalty to the memory of Terry's connection.

I blinked back tears and stared out the window into a night of inky blackness and comforting noises of the nearby swamp. My soul was out there. In the deep mysteries that ruled me. The draw of my past.

Five minutes later, I was dancing next to the bayou. Barefoot and clad only in a long shift of a nightgown. The winter's weepy fog had descended upon the banks, misting the blades of the grass and lending a slippery glide to my feet. I danced the waltz I'd been taught from the moment I'd been able to plant two feet firmly upon the ground. I swirled to the music hidden in my mind and played by shadowed reminiscences. Half dream-state. Half reality.

No one to see. No one to witness. Just me and the moon. Dancing along the bayou. The moon, my partner, stepped its waltz along the surface of the water and glittered a path to lead me. I met the moon's steps as I whirled along the edges of the stream and felt transformed. We were in perfect step that night. And it lit me up with a renewed desire to feel the magic possible in my alternative universe. It was the first time since I'd made the decision about Terry that I'd really felt clean and good.

If anyone had seen ... but that's just it, you see. I'd done this since I was a teenager and no one had ever seen. No one ever saw me out there, waltzing to my own fiddle and swirling in my nightgown. No one knew I danced with the moon to regain myself.

Ah, yes, another secret. But this one I share with only you. Not with them.

I greeted the next morning with relish. A new day. A new vision. A new opportunity. With Cort, I found myself genuinely enjoying the way he made me feel. But cautious to not go too fast this time.

And by lunch, I was deep within the bosom of my St. Amant family: assorted cousins and two more aunts.

Once the little accident with the too-hot crawfish was over, I went about teaching Cort the proper way to eat these morsels. My cousin Hankie tried the old vulgar joke about sucking the head and pinching the tail. Dirty look from my tante and he almost choked in his speed to shut up. Don't suck the juices in the head, I advised Cort. It's an acquired thing.

It only took him two or three of the mudbugs to get the hang of efficiently tugging the meat from the shell. By the end of the meal, we all agreed that we might have to make him an honorary Cajun in testament to his enthusiastic enjoyment of our little rituals.

After most of the family had left, my aunt and I were inside the kitchen, putting the dishes away while my two female cousins washed and dried them. Girl talk time - a wonderful reward for being stuck, as always, with clean up duty. When Hankie came tottering into the kitchen, we barely paused. But suddenly, his sister sniffed the air and we all turned accusing eyes toward him.

"Hankie," my aunt started, going close to him as he tried to back out of the kitchen. "What you been up to, bebe?"

Guilty look on his face like the little boy he'd not been for 20 years and we all started yammering at him together. He put his hands up, pleading with us, "Not my fault. Daddy started it. He wanted to show Cort ..."

He didn't get any further. My aunt shrieked. I shrieked. My two cousins shrieked.

"Sweet fucking Jesus, Hankie! Ya'll didn't ... I cannot believe you two. You're worse than children," I was muttering at him as I hit the screen door. Crossed the back yard, made it to the barn, and I knew I wasn't going to be happy with what I'd find. I stood there. My hands on my hips; looking at the scene before me. "Foutré, Nonc Arthur. You should be ashamed of yourself."

But my chastisement of my uncle was only the beginning of his punishment. My aunt was the bigger worry for him and he was already heading for the house, knowing he had some fence mending to do.

I was just glad the rest of the family had left already. Poor Cort. He was sitting in one of the chairs, tilting precariously, and sucking down clear liquid from a Mason jar. And he was babbling to my uncle even though my uncle was already inside the house.

See, I should explain. Making moonshine was how Pawpaw got the family through the Depression. He passed on the little family sideline to Arthur. And my uncle knew better than to serve that stuff to visitors - they always ended up drunk on their ass with just one snootful. It took a lot of practice to ever get used to the kick of that 'shine.

"Oh, Cort, sweetie, are you all right?" I whispered in his ear as I knelt at his side. He gave me this endearing, besotted smile and reached for me. "C'mon, sweetie. Let's get you on your feet and inside."

"Kiss first," he slurred to me. Puckered his lips, closed his eyes and I thought the sight of him like that was the sexiest thing I'd seen in a long time.

I leaned in, meaning just to give him this little peck but ... I couldn't help it ... I lingered. And it was long enough for him to put his arms around me and draw me in against his chest while he deepened the kiss into something that made my head swim and my heart thud.

"Okay, buckaroo. Let's put you to bed before you fall down," I mumbled as I pulled away from him.

It took forever to guide him inside. He kept trying to meander around the yard while he was getting the biggest kick out of some joke he was trying to tell me. We finally made it to the bedroom and Cort collapsed backwards atop the mattress. I wrestled his boots off and then looked down at where he was, flat on his back with his arms flung out at his sides. He was mumbling and giggling. It was too cute, and even as bad as I felt about what had happened, it did make me laugh.

I left him there to sleep it off. In the kitchen, my uncle couldn't meet my eyes as I told them they'd be going to the fais-do-do without us that night as there was no way Cort was going to be in any shape for dancing.

After they left, I crept into Cort's bedroom to check on him. He was sitting up on the edge of the bed.

"Hey there. I'm sorry my uncle gave you that damned stuff. How are you feeling?" I asked him. Put a hand on his shoulder and bent down to peer into those eyes.

"A bit unsteady," he said, his voice low but unconcerned. "I need to ... I ... uh ... I have a need ..."

It dawned on me pretty quickly. He needed help getting to the restroom. Glad to help, I told him, don't be embarrassed.

"No, that's not what I'm needing right now."

Oh. No. It's worse than I realized - he's going to be sick, I thought. I was turning to rush out of the room to get a bucket, but his hand caught me before I could get far.

"Don't go. You're what I need." Pulling me toward him. His eyes focused on me.

I almost stopped breathing. A pervading chill raced through me. I didn't think I could do this. The moment of truth and I was backing down. I started shaking my head at him and felt tears threatening.

"I want you to be happy in this group again, Ann," he told me, his words clear and his voice so soft. "If you'll let me, I can help you. I promise."

His hand touched my cheek and I startled. He made this soothing, hushing noise and stroked along my jaw with his fingers. Something about that, about the transparency of his desire in his current state of inebriation, it gave me pause.

When he put his other hand around my waist and drew me between his legs, I was ashamed at how wet I was getting at the reality of how close he was. Was I was really heartless enough to take advantage of him while he was schnockered?

"Cort, you don't know what you're ... Let's talk about this in the morning. After you've sobered up."

"Oh, Ann, you shouldn't be so easy to fool," he told me, his voice stronger than before. "That homebrew of your uncle's? It hasn't got half the kick of the swill we had back in Redemption."

I pushed away from him and noticed the clarity of his eyes like I was seeing for the first time. "You're not drunk?"

Shaking his head, licking his lips. "I'm feeling good but no where near drunk, honey. Listen, your family's great but it's not them I came to see ... This seemed like a harmless ruse to get you alone tonight."

We stood there, looking at each other. He smile was gone and the new look on his face had such an impact on me. How many dreams had featured him? How many nights had I wished to know him? He was so close. I could reach out to him and he would be mine. Wasn't this the essence of this new life?

And then he told me something that changed so much between us. 

"I saw you last night. You looked so free and wild." Arms drawing me tight to his chest, tilting his face toward me. "Be free and wild with me tonight, Ann. Show me the side of you that dances with the moon."

My breath stuttered into me. He was there for me, waiting on me, all I'd ever had to do was ask. It could be that simple. I felt tears in my eyes as I reached for his lips.

Oh ... and the response was all I could have hoped for. He let me have what I needed so in that moment from him. Just the feel of him next to me like that. It was the freedom that he handed me - a gift of myself that I would have never thought was available anymore. Do you know what I mean? It's that way we shut off the part of ourselves that's been wounded and we tell ourselves we were foolish to have ever thought it would be otherwise.

I stood there in his arms and kissed him deep. My hands pulled his shirt from his jeans and I touched his skin to find it yielding to my caresses. I pressed against him and he responded by dragging me down onto the bed. My lips sought his neck and he made it easy for me.

There was no frenzy about this. No worry, no fear, no agony over what it meant. It just was. In the sense of a joining that was destined to be right and fulfilling.

"Share my bed with me tonight," he whispered to me, his mouth pausing in its attention to my breasts.

Shivering in his arms and I wanted nothing more than to be with him. "I can't. My aunt and uncle ..."

"... are not here right now, Ann. It's just you and me." He pressed in over me so tight that I could feel every part of his hardness against my belly, and it aroused my senses even more. His mouth began searching my neck for signs that I'd allow the wildness of abandoning myself to him. It didn't take long for him to find them.

We let the moonlight be our only illumination. Undressing each other. Taking some time to enjoy what we were doing yet obviously intent on reaching the point of truly knowing the other.  When our clothes were shed, I made him let me take my leisure in exploring the wonders of his body because in the freedom of my dreams, I'd often wanted nothing more than this.

He purred this deep rumble when my mouth took him. It was the most seductive sound.

"Come let me make love with you," he told me as he pulled me up his body, a husky voice that seemed the perfect counterpoint to the way he trembled against me.

You'd be as powerless as me, I believe, to do anything but give in to his desires when he says things like that to you. I felt myself floating against him and then he was taking charge of me.

It was all so much more than I realized. That's how I think back on this time with him. There was more going on than I comprehended then. It was hands and mouth and tongue and pleasure and fun and ... then he was in me and it felt right. In that way that heightens everything. In that way that you get with a man when you can move together when he's so very deep inside you and you're so achingly tight around him and you both know that it's more than just the physical that you're reacting to with each other. I felt so unmistakably alive in the coming, so captivated. But that was the limit of my reality just then.

I didn't comprehend the rest until after, when I was lying in his arms and the moon winked at me in a glint off my bayou. That was when it came over me. That it hadn't mattered in the end what had gone before; it only mattered what he and I shared when we were together. That he'd gotten me back in the groove when I thought I'd maybe never play again.

He wouldn't let me sneak back to my bedroom in the early morning, until I told him a secret. A way for us to really bond, he whispered. And I knew with that request that he was a longer way down the road to understanding me than I would have given him credit for. So I whispered it in his ear and then made him share one of his secrets with me. We parted with a deep kiss of lasting affection and a promise to nurture our new bond.

And what else had I learned of him? Well, he is a man who is at once capable of accepting the realities of the physical world and of celebrating the purely spiritual world of possibilities. He has a generous heart and he has a way of making love that is entrancing.

He may be many things to the other women, but to me he will always be the one who was able to see me dance with the moon. No one else sees that part of me; he says it's because he's the only one I've trusted with that aspect of me.

I may be no further along the road to knowing exactly what I want in the life I am now involved in. But at least I'm determined to try to do better this time as I play. And I may never be strong enough to see Terry again, but I've reached a level of peace with myself on that. Cort's visit was like an absolution for the sins I'd already committed in the game.

So, what say you? Shall I go forward and commit new sins?