Terry was in New Orleans, flashing for beads - I'd laugh if he had no takers. Some chance. I had a guest for the weekend. Did someone say, "Thought you were giving up sex?" Well, that was last week. A girl has to think of her health.

Anyway I wasn't having a raving sex maniac for a visit.  John Nash was my chosen Brother. Terry thought it was hilarious. "I can just see you and Brains together. You'll frighten him to death or he'll bore you to tears. Bet you are snoring over dinner while he tries to explain the principles of compound interest. I saw your credit card statement. Can you even add up?"

I pulled out my tongue at him. He will be surprised. 

Feb 28th   Friday evening.  Sunset.

We walked along the Esplanade on a warm humid evening, the temperature rising after a bout of heavy rain in the late afternoon. The place was humming with activity; the food stalls busy preparing their local delicacies for the clientele with their constant appetite for hot and spicy local fare. It was good simply to walk by his side and take in the night air, taste the wafting salt on the night breeze, smell the fragrant spices from the land.

"Makes me hungry," John observed all of a sudden.

I laughed. "What? Food, walking or sex?"

He grinned shyly. "I imagine all three."

I took his hand and we strolled some more. "Do you want to eat here on Gurney Drive under the stars and take your chances with the dodgy methods of food production?" I asked with a grin.

"Yes, I would but I won't. Tonight I want to wine and dine you. It isn't often I get to do it properly. As you know, courting women has never been my strong point," he made another rueful grin.

Hailing a cab, we returned to the E and O hotel and entered its cool lofty portals. The hotel was an image of an era gone by, of elegance and opulence, the colonial experience. Along a marble- lined portico we made our way to the 1886 restaurant- and it was akin to stepping back to that era. Formal suited waiters greeted us, long white aprons starched and severe, and led us to the small table by the window that John had reserved ahead. I was a little stunned. It had never occurred to me that he would have paid such attention to detail. He noticed my little gasp of surprise.

"I do get the right ideas. I just sometimes forget I've had them," he added honestly. The waiter settled us down and we perused the menu, so English, so old fashioned, somehow so perfect for both of us that night.

"It's like going through the portal to 1930 or something," I observed as I picked out lobster bisque and roast medaillons of lamb.

"Ah yes... the portal," he muttered vaguely as he selected grilled prawns and roast beef. "That's why you asked to see me, I suppose," he added, calling for a bottle of Burgundy.

"No, of course not. Well yes, that too, but not entirely for that reason. I thought it was high time that we met. I have tremendous respect for you and I've been eager to see you since this whole thing began."

He looked at me with some amusement. "Six months and some stormy encounters later, you get to me. How eager is that?"

I conceded his point. "I let my libido have free rein. Doesn't mean I don't find you attractive. I just went for the obvious, I suppose. The easier options."

"Maximus? You think he is easier than I am?"

I ran my hands down my face. "Actually for me, he is, despite the fact that I made a pig's ear of it all. But that's me, John. Jump in with both feet and then think. Not what you'd expect from a well-trained mind."

He laughed. "I'm a Nobel prize winner. When did I get anything else right? People with obsessions rarely see the whole picture. If there is one thing that I have learnt, that is it. And does jumping in with two feet refer to both crossing the portal and felling a certain LA cop?" He grinned and I groaned.

"God, John, that was a nightmare! I thought I'd done permanent damage - but apparently not. My sources tell me everything is still in working order."

He smiled. "Tell me about the portal. You went back the furthest and probably suffered the most extreme reaction. Explain what you think occurred."

"John, I was thrown out of Physics class for purposely breaking equipment. Dropped Chemistry as soon as I could. Woke up in Biology when we were doing sex education and only passed Maths because my teacher refused to believe a girl as bright as me could be so stupid. She forced me to have extra classes every lunchtime."

"I didn't ask you for a mathematical equation to describe the portal. What do you think happens? I can supply the formula," he stated archly, sounding a little terse.

I took a sip of my wine and swirled the remainder round in the glass, staring out to sea through the large French windows. "I think it both inhibits and frees at the same time. It also restores the Brothers to what they were before they crossed...it makes of them a more polarised version of themselves. Does that make any kind of sense? It is neither real nor fantasy - more like a hazy curtain that obscures the truth but highlights the false and gives it the appearance of a great veracity that one seems to have overlooked before. Sense is heightened but rational thought is dulled."

He appeared to fix his gaze somewhere above my head; his intense concentration was remarkable. "Interesting: parallel normality with inverse responses. It is like a mirror image. The further you travel in time, the greater the effect. Fascinating. All explicable, of course- Relativity allows for it, but only in a theoretical sense. We have never had a concrete way of measuring it before."

I frowned. "I know it might sound presumptuous of me, seeing as I still can't come to grips with the x and y graph in Calculus but...there's more to it than theoretical Physics or Mathematics. What about the emotional response? The sheer breathtaking physicality of the experience? Those facets can't be explained by a set of numbers. I went with a man who wasn't mine. We came to believe we were hopelessly in love - we simply forgot the people that were the real objects of our affection. Iz went back with Cort- they are hopelessly in love - but she ended up ready to leave him behind, so much did the experience disturb her. Ann learnt the duality of love and to accept the things about Jack that she didn't always understand. There is no common bond of experience- all we know is that the last thing you imagine is what will occur. You might as well flip a coin with a million sides and try to predict the likely outcome."

His eyes flared for a moment; I had thrown him a challenge. "Too simplistic. Everything has a numeric notion. You just haven't identified the elements clearly. Three visits is a poor set of data...we would need at least..." He rubbed at his head absentmindely, I could see he was off.

"John! This is not an experiment. We didn't do it just to give you something to theorise about."

As the waiter served our first course, he spun a small spoon this way and that. "Do you all want to know how and what the portal is? Then the only way to find out is through rational thought. No amount of intuitive emoting will define it. You may all write fascinating accounts of an experience but none of you have the first idea of what that experience actually is."

"John, we know what we learnt! That is all that counts. And that we never try to mess with it again."

He shrugged but used the spoon to trace what may have been symbols on the white tablecloth. I could have kicked myself for starting this; he seemed as if he would drift off into some deep meditative state.

"John - eat!" He jumped slightly and smiled shyly, picking up his fork and obliging; but I had the impression that he wasn't really tasting what was before him.

"Would you go back?" I ventured. He looked at me in surprise.

"No, of course not. Never. Arriving here has set me free. I am the only one who can see that clearly. I know the meaning of nightmare; I do not need to test myself against that again. Enough of the portal- I invited you to dinner, not for a metaphysical debate. Change the subject."

I giggled. He was right but his lack of social skills was both amusing and incredibly endearing. I knew that he was trying hard - but it was as if he didn't listen to the words that came out of his mouth.

"OK. Change of subject. How do you like Penang?"

"I don't know. I just arrived," he answered blankly.

"First impressions. Gut reaction?"

"Hot. Humid."

"Well, that's one subject dealt with. John, can you even try to show an interest in idle conversation? That's what people do. They talk drivel most of the time but by using humour and flirting and politeness, they make it fun."

The waiter cleared our plates and filled our glasses while John thought about that. "I do not see the point in empty talk. It is a waste of time and effort."

I sighed. "There is no point, John. It is called giving your brain a bloody rest. You have two choices. You either sit here and listen to me talking a soliloquy all night or you make the occasional grunt and observation. Because one thing is for sure- you won't shut me up when I'm on a roll- particularly if I have had a couple of glasses of wine. Do what Terry does. Just nod your head and say 'yeah' every couple of sentences and I'll be happy."

John suddenly smiled broadly and it was a sight to behold. You could tell he didn't often do it, so it was worth a great deal to be on the receiving end. "I could listen to you all night. Even if you are talking mindless, completely unsubstantiated nonsense," he added.

"Which I never do, of course," I grinned.

So that is how I managed to get John Forbes Nash, Emeritus Professor and Nobel Laureate to listen to my theories about why Eminem ought to be considered as the Byron of his day. Mind you, he didn't know who either of them was. Still, dinner passed in companionable small talk and quite a lot of laughter and he didn't drift off again.

We walked off the excellent dinner by touring the wonderful building. The E and O has been restored to its original glory and is a treasure. High domed rooms with cool marble floors, porticoes and colonnades giving out on to tropical gardens, every window and door giving a different vista of the sea - but none of these wonders can compare with the sheer old world charm of the place. An age of Somerset Maugham and even Rudyard Kipling lies before your eyes, from the khaki short clad bellboys in their topis to the verandas replete with Planters' palms and bougainvillea.

Up a wide red-carpeted staircase to the upper gallery, we stumbled upon the library. It was a large book lined room with several mahogany high shelves separating the different categories. The floors were wooden as were the panelled walls and there was a strong smell of beeswax. The furniture was heavy and leather upholstered; the desks were hard wood with inlayed hide, edged in gold. It was like the study of a Victorian gentleman's home. I love books and adore libraries- and I hardly need add that John immediately seemed at home in what was surely his natural habitat.

"My God, what a treasure cave!" he whispered as he made a beeline for the science section. I decided to head him off.

"No, come here!" I whispered, instinctively quiet in its hallowed silence with only the background hum of the air-conditioner to disturb the peace. "This reminds me of something that happened a long time ago. Sit down here and I will tell you a story about a library."

John seemed intrigued and sat down on one of the comfortable chairs before a desk; I perched on top of the desk and began. "When I went to school, I attended a girls' Catholic convent. Next door on the square was the boys' Jesuit grammar school. For five years the boys and girls observed each other with, at first, a marked lack of interest but later a burgeoning fascination as our hormones kicked in. Finally our reward came- the sixth forms merged and we were taught together. Boys and girls in the same classroom! Can you imagine what that was like for us?"

"I can. I attended a boys' school. My first experience of women was in my freshman year at college and I was both attracted and repelled by them," he observed with a shake of his head.

"John, you do say some stupid things, you know. I digress. One day, late in my Upper Sixth year, I went into the library to research an essay I was writing. Now, you may find this hard to believe, but I was a bit of an intellectual in those days as well as being a crazed hormonal teenager (fortunately I have grown out of both tendencies by now). So there I was in the Theology section surrounded by a pile of texts on papal history, when I heard a voice.

"Thought I saw you coming in here," says the voice. I peered up from my work and there before me was the current objection of my feverish dreams. John Abbott. He was eighteen, as fit as they come, and the stud of the year. You know, the kind of bloke who doesn't do a tap of work, scrapes through most exams by the seat of his pants and bullshits his way into a decent Uni place on the strength of his sports record and his general nouse."

"Nouse?" John asked confused.

"Northern expression. Just having that 'je ne sais quoi', John. Don't worry, you never had it. Neither did I. By the way he was gorgeous, too, even dressed in grey school pants, white shirt and a school tie and blazer. He wore them like he was modelling at a Paris fashion show." I shook my head at the memory.

John raised his eyes. "I think I know the sort of young man you mean: about enough brains to power his sexual organs and no more. Why do women find men like that attractive?"

I grinned. "They just do. Why do men find girls with big tits and fluff for brains so appealing...and don't pretend you're any different, John. You'd do anything to get laid just like the rest of them. So, God's Gift had wandered into the library and plonked himself down next to me. I was dressed in a green pleated skirt, thick woollen tights, a white cotton blouse, school tie, my hair in bunches and a pair of reading glasses. It was one of those 'Please God, let me die of a seizure immediately before I suffer any further embarrassment before the Love God himself' moments. Ever had a moment like that, John?"

"Thousands," he answered. "So what happened?"

"Well...he sits down and says 'Uma, isn't it? Funny name that. You're the girl who shagged David Thistlethwaite in the back of his Dad's car, aren't you? He says you're a right goer."

"Shagged?" John asked.

"Work it out, John. In context.  Anyway, I was really mortified (petrified....etc too). So I replied...I beg your pardon?"

"Dave says he gave you a good seeing-to after the Christmas disco. Says you were nothing like he expected. Thought you were a speccy four-eyed swot."

"I was furious by then. 'Look, smart arse,' says I, "David Thistlewaite is a little tosser. I did end up in the back of his Dad's car only to have the wanker come in his pants before I had even got to first base. However, I can assure you that had he been man enough, I would definitely have given him the seeing to of his life'."

The Love God thought about what I said for a few minutes and made his carefully thought out gambit. "So he was a bit of a disappointment, was he? What you need is an experienced hand. Fancy a bit?"

"Did I ever! So a short while later there I am, sitting on his knee with my hands down his pants and his all over my chest and at the same time we were swallowing each others tonsils, in that explicit way teenagers have."

"And..." John began.

"And Sister Marie- Louise, the librarian, copped us. Talk about coitus interruptus! She marched us down to Sister Superior who then called Brother Gerald and we got the rollocking of our lives. I spent the rest of the afternoon on my knees in the chapel contemplating the Virginity of Mary - and I think Johnny boy got caned."

"Surprised you weren't expelled," John remarked.

"Well, it was threatened but as I had a place at Oxford and they wanted the kudos of that,  they just ranted and raved and came out with things like: "And in the Theology section too!" but I was reinstated. Now... why do you suppose I have told you this story?" I asked him.

John looked confused and then I pointed to the brass plaque on the shelf above his head. It read 'Theology'. Without a word, I slipped from the desk onto his knee. He opened his mouth to speak, but I said:

"John, I believe you have heard of the Game theory? Well, here's a little theory of my own about games. Let's re-enact my theory...OK, your name's John. Good start. We will have to imagine the uniforms but you are wearing a tie... so, let's just loosen it to a jaunty schoolboy angle. Now, as I recall the front of my school blouse was open...do you mind doing the honours, John? You see...when working out a theory, you have to ensure that all data is consistent and unchanging or the end result might be affected. Is that not so?"

"I believe that is so," he agreed, nervously undoing the buttons on my silk shirt.

"My hand was...do you have any objection to me unzipping your fly and thrusting my hand down the front of your pants? Only in the pursuit of knowledge, of course..."

John swallowed hard. "I would accept the necessity of that in this case," he opined.

While John began to move his hands over my breasts, I eased my hand into his pants and found a very welcome surprise. "Johnny, you have grown! Quantum Mechanics sure does have its benefits!

He didn't let me postulate any further. With a sudden movement, he captured my lips in his and we kissed. Oh boy, did that feel good! It was like being a kid again with the added advantage of the knowledge of a man and a woman. We kissed and kissed until I swear we nearly did extract each other's tonsils. It is years since I have had a session of real heavy petting - and I had forgotten just how thrilling it can be.

But a man and a woman want more than a feel. John was clearly getting to the limit of his endurance and I was sure that I had left a damp patch on his knee already. Slipping back onto the desk top, he pulled up my long batik skirt and eased off my panties with rather more skill than I had expected. Then he lowered his pants and I got a full view of his magnificent cock. I whimpered and shimmied back onto his knee.

Rubbing himself against me, John gasped when he realised how wet I was; I realised that he was biting his lip and wondered if I had driven him a bit too far- I wasn't sure how long it was since he had been in this position.

"John...hold on...just a little while," I muttered.

"Not sure I can. I am so close to ejaculation that if I enter you...I'll simply..."

"Think of something else. Don't think about coming."

"And what may I ask do you suggest?"

"Do some sums in your head," I whispered as he began to slip himself inside me.

"Sums?" he muttered and thrust hard; I groaned at the feel of him filling me.

"Maths. Add up, multiply...something that will occupy your mind," my voice ended in a squeak as he pulled back and pounded again.

John groaned and started to blow out rhythmically. "Too easy. I can multiply eight digit numbers in my head with ease...not going to work..."

I grasped at straws. "Fermat's last theorem. Solve it in your head."

"No one can solve it," he gasped back.

"Perfect challenge. From the top, John..." I have never known anything quite like the experience of making passionate love to a man who is intoning a complex series of calculations; with each new element, he thrust some more and raised the speed. It was oddly arousing and I realised that we were going to bring it off- he was going to make me come and in a wild scream, I threw back my head, he supported my back, and I simply shuddered in his hands.

"John, Oh God, John, come, baby...come on....please, I want you to come..."I moaned.

He carried on thrusting, his breath now in short, ragged grunts..."I've had a breakthrough..."

"JOHN!! FUCK ME AND STOP THE MATHS!" I screamed and at last he did, ramming me against the desk as he kissed me and shot into me with a shiver.

We sat holding each other for some time; me slumped on his shoulder and he nuzzling my neck. "That was a unique experience," he murmured. "Did it really happen? I haven't imagined this, have I?" he wondered aloud.

"John, if that was an hallucination then all men would aspire to your condition. Women too. No, John, that was definitely a real fluid exchange. Imaginary fucks don't drip like this..." I giggled as we surveyed the damage to his pants.

"Good point. But I should have written it down...I had a key integer just then and it has slipped my mind..." he returned to the nervous mannerisms, his right hand waving in the air as if to complete his thought. Better intervene before he loses it again.

"Hypothesis interruptus. Progress, John. That is a brilliant sign when you lay off the obsession and just get laid," I laughed.

He nodded and zipped up his pants as I rearranged my clothing. "The trouble with obsessive patterns of behaviour is that one substitutes one mania for another. I suspect that I may find myself as compulsive in my approach to sexual game play with you, young lady, as I am in every other aspect of my life. I do hope that you understand what you may have unleashed in me," John stated with a glimmer of a cocky smile. He suddenly reminded me of someone else.

"John, then my life's work is complete. Shall we repair to our room where we might try out a few more of your theories? What was that one about finding the most accommodating solution for either party? Does that apply to positions and techniques? Would you like to test another hypothesis? Any chance of reaching equilibrium? Does that mean simultaneous orgasm?"

He grabbed my hand and we dashed out of the library. Running up the stairs, John suddenly stopped. "So you never got to do it with the Love God?"

I snorted. "John...I have had the pleasure of quite a few love gods in my time but if you mean young Johnny whose lecherous intentions were thwarted in the school library, well I have to come clean. We did it the next Friday night in his Mum's car. And he was good. But then I was even better!"

He shook his head and pulled me close. "I believe for once that I have fulfilled all the necessary preliminaries of courtship, Miss. Let's just go get laid."