"I had a dream last night."

"Wait."

"Wait?"

"Yes. You've never told me a dream before, Dino. So ..."

"So?"

"So ... I want to do this right."

"You're doing awful well so far, honey."

"Really?"

"Yes, really. Have I not been clear enough with you? About how you've charmed me?"

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"That means so much to me, that you would say that to me."

"Good."

"Wouldn't you rather tell me this dream you had when we're together? Are you sure you want to do it over the phone?"

You see? This is what makes her different to me. That she knows this. That somewhere instinctive inside her just knows that a man like me sharing a dream he's just had ... that it means something. And that she treats it with such respect?

No wonder she takes my breath away and I've only known her a month. I think this may be one of those women who come around so rarely in a man's life that he has to do something about it.

"No. You're right. I'd rather tell you in person. But I'm so far away from you."

"Yes. You are. Did I remember to tell you that I miss your goofy smile?"

"What about my stupid socks?"

"Oh God. I was trying to forget those!"

"No, you weren't."

"Yes. I was. I even went out and bought you a whole new sock wardrobe."

"You really don't like my socks?"

"Dino!"

"You don't?"

"I keep imagining you in some jungle somewhere unpacking your gear only to find that the only socks you packed were the ones with Mickey and Minnie Mouse kissing on them."

"Have them right here, as a matter of fact. The boys all love 'em."

"You didn't!"

See, it's also the way she laughs at me. Not with me. At me.

It's so refreshing. A woman who understands what's funny. Someone who gets me even if she laughs at me. 

I can picture her right now. That strawberry blond hair tossing in the wind as she lowers her chin and simply laughs right in my face. The way her hazel eyes light up. The way her tongue comes out as she's sobering up from the laugh ... how it bends up to tickle at her upper lip.

"Okay, I didn't pack them this trip. I've got a bunch of boring black socks with me."

"Not a thing about you is boring, Dino."

"Yeah?"

"Oh, yeah."

"You know when you say it like that, you make me want to climb through this phone and get to you ... show you just what I've been thinking I'd want to do with you if I were there ... right now ... with you."

"Don't."

"Catch your breath, honey."

"Dino ..."

"Yeah?"

"I miss you. I miss how life is with you here. Do you miss me?"

"I do. So much."

See? I like how she can just ask that right out. Like she needs to hear it as much as she knows I need to say it.

We met at a wine tasting. It was one of those charity functions. You buy a few tickets, send them to clients, then go there to schmooze, bid on the inevitable silent auction, see if your clients introduce you to company execs they know but you don't know ... same old same old.

This one wasn't the same. Not from the first moment she started trying to outbid me for a necklace by a local artist. I knew the artist; I wanted the piece to sell at a good price. It's funny how something like that at an event like this can really put an unknown artist on the map for the wealthy who are always looking for the next new thing.

So at first, I was adding my name and upping the bid prices just to drive the bids up. But I started noticing that only one other person was really bidding against me. And she noticed only one person was bidding against her.

She stood there in front of the little clipboard that held the bidding sheet for the necklace and frowned. And then wrote a new bid. She lingered around, waiting. I knew she figured she wanted a good look at whoever it was that was bidding against her. So I sauntered over as soon as she finally gave up and wandered away with two friends who wanted to go get a drink and dance. I upped her bid by only $5.

Okay, so I amused myself with that maneuver.

I walked away but stood nearby talking with a client and her husband; just watched and waited. When she came back to check the bid sheet, she bit her lip and considered this. I could tell it pissed her off ... that if she hadn't checked, she might have been outbid by a lousy $5 by some smartass too chickenshit to really up the bid. She narrowed her eyes as she entered another bid.

She walked a short distance away and stood watching the bid sheet. When her friends came by to drag her away to dance, she waved them off. I got this impression that what she really wanted to do more than anything was to get a look at this Dean O'Leary dude and size up her opposition. I was betting that she was just getting geared up, that she was now determined to not let him steal that necklace from her with some lousy $5 outbid.

So I bribed a waiter into distracting her by standing directly between us as he took a new drink order. We waited until her glass was empty and she was just standing there looking around, determined to hang in there and see who this asshole O'Leary was.

It took me no time to slip in and up the bid another $5 over her new bid. She never even noticed.

As soon as the waiter left, I walked right up to her. Smiled. Made a bit of small talk. Asked her to dance. She said she'd have loved to but she was really trying to keep tabs on an item she was bidding on. I said, well, I'll keep you company on the condition that when the bidding ends, you'll dance with me until the winning bids are announced. I figured it would take another thirty minutes until bidding ended, then thirty minutes for them to tally the bids and announce the winners. That gave me an hour to amuse myself with a woman who simply made me want to know more.

It was that simple.

Is it ever that simple? In this case, there was just something about the way she carried herself, the way she smiled at her friends, the way she took the bidding with a combination of humor and determination, the way she was stubborn when she wanted something.

In that hour that I came to think of as my 'grace' time, I discovered a woman with a wicked sense of humor, a sharp opinion about world affairs and the best damned smile I'd seen in a long time. Okay, it wasn't only the smile. It was ... something else that to this very day, I have not really been able to put my finger on.

Oh. And she could dance.

Indeed she could.

I love a woman who loves to dance with me.

Jesus.

Did I say that?

Did you catch what I said?

She would have.

And if she had, I would have looked her right in the eye and said, "I am in love with a woman who loves to dance with me."

I wonder what she would have said?

"Do you know what I'm wearing?"

"I think I'd rather picture you not wearing anything."

"Don't be so predictably and shallowly male, Dino."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Okay then. You're wearing the necklace."

"Damn. You've been gone so long that I'd almost forgot how good you are."

"And nothing but the necklace."

"Well, now you're just bragging."

"What man wouldn't brag when he's got a woman like you talking to him on the phone and telling him she's sitting there naked, thinking of him?"

"I'm not naked."

"The necklace."

"The necklace."

Oh, yeah. The necklace.

We were dancing when they said the winning bids had been posted on an electronic tote board near the auction tables. She rubbed her hands together and described the necklace she'd bid on. She knew she had the winning bid because she'd kept watch over the bid sheet that last half hour and no one even approached it after she'd put down her last bid. I smiled at her and said, "Well, let's go see your name in lights, Carey."

I was standing right behind her, watching her body language turn from excitement to consternation to fury.

"What's wrong, honey? You look upset."

"That cheap bastard ... he outbid me somehow! He raised it only five bucks and snuck in there ... I can't believe it! I was watching. How the hell did he do that?"

"Who? Who outbid you?"

"Some fucker named Dean O'Leary. C'mon. I wanna go see him collect that necklace. The bastard."

"But he won. Fair and square."

"He only upped the bid by five bucks. That's just mean. And it was for charity!"

"That's how these things work, honey."

"Well, damn, Dino, if you're not gonna be on my side no matter how unreasonable I am, what good are you?"

"I like your laugh, Carey."

"Don't go getting me in a good mood. I'm kinda enjoying being all hot and bothered."

"Well, it's a good look on you."

"Yeah? Well, all I can say in answer to that is ... I think I'd love getting to see you all hot and bothered. Something tells me you'd be quite a sight."

"Well ... yeah. But then I got this red hair and all ... and I'm a mixture of Irish and Italian blood ... so I'd say I've gotten the natural ability to get hot and bothered to quite a fine-tuned art."

"And yet you strike me as the kind of man who channels that. And rarely lets it get the better of him."

I think I lost the fullness off my smile when she said that. It must have been the sudden realization that she was reading me a lot better than I was used to being read. I think that's when I first realized that putting something past Carey was going to be a challenge. In fact, I was thinking, this might have been my one and only chance to do that.

"Let's go see who this bastard Dean O'Leary is," I said to her, dropping my voice into a growl.

"Mmm. I like the he-man voice, Dino. Do it again."

We were laughing when we got to the table where the winners paid for their bids and collected their pieces. She got distracted when I mentioned I was leaving in a few weeks for Honduras and it turned out she'd gone on some eco-tourism jaunt there the month before. So she never noticed that we were actually in line.

When we got to the head of the line, I said, "Dean O'Leary."

She didn't catch on at first. But when I handed over my credit card and they handed me a red beaded bag in exchange, I turned to look at her and she just didn't quite know what to do.

I stuck out my hand. "Hi, Carey. My name's Dean O'Leary. My friends call me Dino."

Her mouth opened. Her hands went to her hips. Her eyes narrowed. Finally she closed her mouth before licking her upper lip and then leaning right in to say, "You. Are. Such. A. Bastard. And you're cheap on top of it all."

But she was laughing when she said it. I don't know how to describe it any better than that.

"This is for you," I said softly, presenting the bag to her. Her eyes studied me. "On one condition."

"I cannot take this from you, Dino. You won it fair and square. Like you said. So don't be a dope."

"No one's ever accused me of being a dope."

"No, I can't take it. Honestly, I am a good loser."

"You haven't asked me the condition."

"No, I haven't, have I?" She backed away from me. I sincerely had this momentary twinge that I'd lost my opportunity with her. But I followed her anyway. She stopped, looked at the bag and then smiled at me. "What's the condition?"

"That you'll wear it when I take you out to dinner tomorrow night."

I got that laugh of hers. It always has done things to me. Good things.

"You are too much, Dino."

"I have been accused of that before, Carey."

"How about this? I'll go out to dinner with you. But I really can't take the necklace unless you let me pay you the amount I was bidding on it."

"But then I'd be out $5."

"Well, there is that. So you have to ask yourself this ... is a date with me worth a $5 investment and all this effort you've put in to make one hell of a fantastic and memorable impression on me?"

"I have a counter offer. You allow me to make the necklace a gift in honor of the best evening I've had in longer than I care to admit."

"I just can't. I wasn't raised that way."

"I only bought it to give to you, Carey."

"No, you didn't."

"Yes. I did."

Her eyes in that moment did this complicated dance. I used to say that about a friend of mine ... that his eyes could dance between emotions so fast and so sharp that it was hard to watch him. She was like that. But when I saw that in her, all I really wanted to do was kiss her.

"So ... you've got the necklace on ... what'll it take me to get it off of you?"

"You'll have to be sitting right here in my bed with me. And as you lean in to whisper your dream in my ear, I'll let you take the necklace off."

"You always have driven a hard bargain."

"That's odd, don't you think? And here you're the professional negotiator. Yet I seem to always have the upper hand in our parleys."

"So I get the necklace off the moment I'm there to tell you the dream?"

"Do you have any idea how much I want to hear about your dream?"

"I do now."

"Good."

"I'll be there tomorrow."

She wore the necklace the night I took her out for our first date. She couldn't make it the night after the auction; but she was free the very next night. When I saw her walk in the front door of the wine bar we said we'd meet at, I saw her and thought, "Man, there's someone I'd like to meet." And then I realized it was her ... Carey. I rather smugly congratulated myself on having been brilliant enough to have met her at the auction.

The necklace? It is green jade with clear quartz crystals interspersed with garnet. It is supposed to represent a martini. Green olives, clear gin, red pimentos.

An unusual piece with a story for a unique woman with a history.

Not that I know all about her yet. I don't want to rush it. I want to savor it.

I was home for two weeks and in that time, we saw each other nearly every day. It's not nearly enough time to do much more than form a deep infatuation for each other.

Well, except for the fact that I'm in love with her.

"You're really here with me."

"Yes, I am."

"Tell me your dream."

"Soon. First I want to just make sure I haven't forgotten how you like to be touched ..."

"Oh."

"Are you cold? You've got goose bumps."

"It's you, Dino. You touch me and I ..."

"Do you know the sexiest thing on you besides your mind?"

"I want to hear your dream ... but I don't want you to stop what you're doing either. How can I have both?"

"I'll lay down. Now come over here."

"I see. You're so smart. I like that about you."

"Well, this way, I can fondle your breasts while I tell you my dream. We both win."

"You have to take off the necklace first. Right?"

"Right."

"Yes. That was very nice, Dino. Very nice indeed. That earns you a kiss, don't you think?"

"Definitely."

I always have thought that you can tell a lot about a woman and her kisses.

It's not just how she kisses, mind you.

It's more about those moments she chooses to initiate a kiss that tells you about her. And I'm not talking about kissing as a prelude to sex or as a component of making love. I'm talking about the little things like her meeting you at the airport and waiting until you're about to walk out of the airport and she just drags you to a stop and then she moves right into your chest and kisses you feather soft. And finishes with this little murmur of how happy she is just to be near you again.

That's what she did tonight. She came to the airport to get me. I don't know when the last time is that someone came to get me at the airport for some reason other than because she wanted me to have sex with her as soon as possible. But Carey came all that way, fought all that traffic, just because she hated the idea of me having to drive home after that long flight.

I watched her as she drove me to her place. I just rested into the seat and watched her drive. Every time she shifted up to fifth gear, she'd reach out and squeeze my hand.

This was a woman who loved dancing with me. A woman who wanted to hear my dream.

About a year earlier, I had been dating this woman who professed to really care about me. I thought she represented something I was missing in my life. I thought she was giving, nurturing, kind and stable. Not that I was ever looking for a Suzy homemaker type, but I was at this place in my life where I thought simpler was better and that she might be good for me as a counterbalance. Opposites attract, right? But she turned out to be shallow as well as simple. She was the kind of woman who would let me fly in to see her but would meet me at the airport only if we were going to 'do it' in a nearby hotel. She was the kind of woman who made me take the lead on every encounter we ever had and every encounter, no matter what, always had to be about sex or she'd just get impatient and lose interest. Like I wasn't really good enough if I wasn't servicing her. No matter how I encouraged and supported her, she just never seemed to care enough to look inside herself and see what it was that I alone might have been for her.

That's not the kind of woman a man like me needs in his life.

I need someone who sees me as the reason she's been living all these years. Someone who can be the reason I've been living all these years.

This woman, I took a last ditch chance on her by telling her about a dream I'd had. It had been a dream I wanted to tell her only because I thought it would matter to her that I was letting her delve deep into my psyche.

She never got that. It's the last time I ever really made an effort with her.

She thought it was some sexual fantasy. All the time I was telling her that dream, she kept making sexual innuendo and trying to get me to hurry to 'the good part' where she thought I'd be tell her I had been dreaming of screwing her. She never got that I was more than that, more than some sex toy.

That was really the end for us. When we said goodbye that time, I knew I'd never talk to her again. She turned around and looked at me ... I could tell she thought she had it all going on. She just never did get me.

I was really disappointed in myself over that woman. She just hadn't been the kind of person I'd thought she was. This woman would give me a blowjob at the drop of a hat but she never ever gave me any kind of little kisses designed only to make me smile when we were out with my friends.

So, yeah, I made a mistake.

And then I met Carey about a year later. You know what I think? I think that earlier mistake was setting me up to accept nothing less than what I really was looking for in a woman.

And then I met Carey.

Oh, I said that already?

Well ... then what else can I say?

"The dream?"

"Yeah. The dream."

"Tell me how it begins, Dino."

"I'm in a tower. It's stone. I'm up high. There are windows but no glass ... like in medieval days except the tower's too light-colored and clean to be that old. Wind blows in. White curtains are blowing from the windows."

"How are you feeling in the dream?"

"Patient."

"How fascinating. I've never heard anyone say something like that before."

"I know I'm in a dream. I know the dream means something. I want to see it all, understand it."

"Yet it has lingered with you. Did it disappoint you? Or did it excite you? Or did it just not turn out like you'd anticipated?"

"A woman was there with me."

"Did you go there to meet her? Or did she follow you in?"

"Now, that's a question. A good one."

See, I like that she asks questions that I don't expect. Sometimes they are such a challenge. But I like that about her. I like the way I don't yet know how her mind works. Yet the fact that she can probe areas of me with what must be some real instinct for what she needs to know, for what's there under the surface if she looks in the right places ... I love her mind already.

It's incredibly sexy to me to encounter a woman like this.

The sexiest thing about her besides her mind and her eyes? Okay, I'm a man so give me bonus points for at least not listing her breasts as the first thing, although she does have nice breasts ... but in this case, I was about to talk about something a lot more specific than that as being the next sexiest thing about her.

It's that she's got this specific way of holding her body when she's above me on all fours ... on her knees and leaning in on her hands. She arches her back, lowers her head to nip at my neck ... and I can run my hands along her body from her breasts drooping over my chest, down her little belly that trembles ever so when I do that as she's swiveling back and forth up there ... and then my hands go around to her spine and I can just slowly smooth them down into the concave of her lower back, over her hips, around the swell of her butt and down to the back of her thighs.

There's just something about a woman who holds herself that way. It drives me mad.

I read an erotic poem once that described a woman in all these obtuse terms and allusions to classical literary motifs. But the one line that stays with me longest describes how touching a woman when she's just this side of full abandon is the moment a man must not lose his way.

A man has to stay in charge, aware, in control of himself and her. It's innate in a man. I think most men want more than a screw. I believe most men find their satisfaction is dependent on their ability to give her the experience of abandonment.

"She was already there, inside the tower room. She was standing by one of the windows. The curtains obscured her. But within the dream, I knew she was the reason I was there."

"Was she dressed in white?"

"Yes, she was."

"Were you?"

"Yes, I was."

"Was she your lover?"

"She was."

"And yet ... something else was going on, wasn't it?"

"I was afraid."

"Were you? Of her?"

"No. Not of her. For her."

"In a room full of white, high in the air, with the wind surrounding you ... and you sensed danger to her?"

"Not really danger. It was more like ... like ..."

"Like?"

"Like maybe she hadn't really understood what it meant that I was there."

"Were you afraid you'd hurt her?"

See, that's the thing about Carey.

She paid attention. She probed. The same kinds of things that mattered to her, they mattered to me. Yet she had a different approach.

If someone had told me that dream, I would have zeroed in on what the woman represented and what she was doing. She zeroed in on why I was there. She knew I was the key to her understanding my dream.

"I don't think I would have hurt her, no."

"I actually think it's deeper than that. Don't you?"

"It bothered me. I am not entirely sure why."

"Does anything happen in the dream other than your awareness of being in a white tower?"

"A bed appears. One minute there's nothing in the room except me, her and the white curtains. The next time I look, there's a bed hanging from the ceiling on ropes."

"On ropes? And are they white as well?"

"Yes. And they have bunches of white flowers on them."

"Do you make love to her on the white bed?"

"Yes. I do."

"Does the bed swing on the ropes?"

"Yes. It does."

"So the bed is independent when you make love. I mean, it's not on a foundation. It's simply floating freely."

"I never thought about that."

"Maybe it unnerves you that neither of you care about the lack of foundation."

"I do know making love to her in the dream was not detailed. It was a sexual dream, I won't say it didn't affect me that way. But ... it sure wasn't only about that."

"When you make love to her, are you in her arms or are you watching yourself make love to her?"

"Man. You ask the tough questions."

"It's not the questions that are tough. It's giving the answers."

"Well ... yeah."

"Do you want to answer that?"

"I'm watching. From above. I can see her react to me."

"You can also see yourself react to her."

"That's true."

"Don't just shrug at that, Dino. I've always felt that when you make love to me, you are genuinely observant about how I'm reacting. Do you have any idea what that's like for a woman? It's such an amazing thing ... seeing your reaction to me."

"I'm glad you notice."

"That feels good."

"Yes, it does."

"Does this?"

"Yes."

"About the dream ... I wonder if the reason it bothered you was that you think she's not aware of what she's doing by having invited a man like you into a white space."

"Carey ..."

"You think that if a woman doesn't respect your darkness she's missed you ... but maybe you're too worried about the woman."

"I do have a dark side."

"And it's certainly attractive."

"It is?"

"Yes. Because you fight it so hard. You keep it in balance."

"I worry about that."

"You should."

She floors me when she says things like that. She's just capable of being brutal ... but she does it with such understanding and clear eyes that I don't blink in the face of her assessment of me.

I wonder why she never asked me who the woman in the dream is. Maybe she doesn't want it to be all messy ... like it'd be messy if the dream wasn't only about me but also about her and how I see her.

But, as for me? I rather like messy.

I operate better in the shadows where it's not about black and white but where it's about shifting shades of gray. I told a friend once that where he might have been a samurai, I would have been the ninja. Samurais had to live by a code of honor. Ninjas just had to find the way to get the job done. Samurais had a prescribed method of conducting their duties. Ninjas looked for the ways least expected, most devious. Samurais operated out in the open. Ninjas should never be seen. Yet, one was not superior to the other. They were both needed in feudal Japan.

In the shadows, life is messy. It's complicated.

A dream can mean anything in the shadows.

Something that worried me about this dream was that I don't remember the face of the woman. And while I appreciated how clean it was in that room, being in all that white only made me wonder just when I was going to track muddy footprints through the middle of her white tower.

But what bothered me most of all was how I'd reacted when the bed appeared like that. Because I didn't just pick her up and carry her over there. Instead, I'd gone to where she'd been standing only she wasn't there anymore. She was on the bed, naked. Her white skin against alabaster sheets. Like she was floating on a cloud.

I never did see the woman's face.

"Now, tell me something really important about this dream, Dino. If you could decide what happened in it, what would happen?"

"You'd be that woman."

"Then let's say I'm her. I'm not afraid to be her."

"No?"

"No. I'm not afraid that you are uncomfortable with the balance you have between your dark and light sides. I'm not even afraid of the fact that you might have picked me as a woman who wants only your light side."

"Is that what I'm doing in this dream?"

"I don't know. They say the dreamer always really knows what the dream means because he's the one who understands what chords it strikes in him."

"Is that what they say?"

"You're getting distracted."

"How can you tell?"

"Because you're only asking questions that parrot my statements. And because you have done nothing but stare in my eyes and grind me over your hard-on for a while."

"You feel good to me. Easy to get distracted."

"Yes, it is. You feel good, too."

"And yet you're not distracted."

"Oh? Then you know nothing about me."

"Then you'll have to teach me about you."

"On one condition."

"Make it a good one. Because you're in a mighty favorable bargaining position."

"I'd have to say I'm in a mighty good position period, Dino. But then being this close to your body? You don't need to keep me in some ivory tower to make me happy."

"No? Then what condition were you going to impose before you start teaching me all about you?"

"You have to return the lessons. You have to teach me about you. I want that more than anything."

See, that's what I want. A woman who's come along in my life willing to teach me about who she is. A woman who's lived her whole life waiting for a man like me to come along and take a chance at love again.

I'm in love with a woman who loves to dance with me.

I'm in love with a woman who doesn't assume that in the messiness of my dreams, it is her I'm making love to but who blushes with genuine pleasure when I say that were I in control of my dreams, it'd be her in my arms I'd be watching react to me.

I'm in love with a woman who does more than egotistically listen to my dreams to catch whatever snippets inside them can let her hear it as if it's all about her and how I feel about her. No, not this woman. She gets inside them with me and helps me figure out why they matter to me.

I'm in love with a woman who understood what the tower represented. She was never the woman in my dream. She never needed an ivory tower.