Deirdre Guthrie

Block says this is largely because she’s
a passionate subscriber to what she
terms the “bonobo way.” Like the
chimpanzee, the bonobo, which look a lot
like the chimp, share 98.5 percent of
their DNA with humans, making them
roughly as close to us as a fox is to a
dog. These apes, also known as pygmy
chimpanzees, appear to function under an
egalitarian matriarchy in which the
highest-ranking males tend to be the
sons of respected females.

In fact, it’s been observed that when
female bonobo share a meal, lovingly
feeding each other bits of sugar cane or
banana, they calmly ignore the charging
displays of males anxious for a bite.
Instead, when the ladies have had their
fill, they generously leave a portion
for the hungry, humbled male who waits
until they leave to claim his share.

The female bonobo’s self-possession is
believed to come from a strong sense of
sisterhood, reinforced daily through
sexual petting and grooming rituals.

Still, should food sharing or virtually
any conflict arise, the bonobo know how
to avoid violence and apply a little
sexual healing to alleviate a tense
situation. Indeed, some observers have
witnessed the apes alleviating their
libidos in some form of hetero, homo or
self-sexual activity as frequently as
every 90 minutes. (Granted, their average
copulation lasts 13 seconds.)

As Block says, “They know how to give a
blow job for a banana or communicate
‘Don’t be nervous, honey; come sit on my
face.’”

Frans De Waal, a primatologist at the
Yerkes Primate Research Center in
Atlanta, has noted the profound
implications of the bonobo upon
evolutionary theory. “The art of sexual
reconciliation may have reached its
evolutionary peak in the bonobo,” he
writes. He has predicted “after 20 more
years of research the bonobo is going to
change the whole picture of human
evolution.”

As early as 1954 primatologists at
European zoos observed that the bonobo
mated like people, that is, face to
face. Yet, since the late 1970s, the
patriarchal chimpanzee with its penchant
for warfare and power politics, has
served as the chosen evolutionary model
for human behavior. It took until the
1970s,
for the first
researchers, a team from Japan, to
venture into the bonobo’s sole
habitat: the Salonga National Park in
the dense equatorial Congo River
basin of Africa, a region ranked fourth
in the world for plant and animal
diversity.

Today, some researchers claim that had
primatologists studied bonobos earlier,
models of human development may have
challenged assumptions about the
supremacy of violence-prone males.

Block says she was elated to discover
her “French-kissing cousins” because
they authenticated the paradigm of her
life’s work: a concept she calls
“ethical hedonism.”

“Ethical hedonism supports the
egalitarian pursuit of pleasure and the
repression of violence,” she explains.

Block says she and her “bonobo gang,” a
mix of co-workers and friends, practice
the bonobo way every day, inspired by
the apes’ bisexual appetites. Her href="http://www.drsusanblock.com/">Web site features photos of the pygmy
chimps “goin’ downtown,” “bun grabbing”
and masturbating with a big, red ball.
Elsewhere, a click of the mouse reveals
humans body-licking and massaging one
another with equal enthusiasm.

Block sees other parallels between Homo
sapiens and our hairier counterparts.
She assures me that “penis-fencing,” a
phenomenon De Waal observed among
captive males he found hanging face to
face from a branch twiddling their
diddlies together, is “the macho man’s
best kept secret fantasy.” She also
observes the female bonobos’ tight-knit
cohesion among her own human girlfriends
who host href="/people/feature/2000/04/21/lifestyle/index.html ">swinger parties.

“Women dominate these settings,” she
explains. “And why do the men submit to
that kind of power? Because they’re
getting laid. And like the male bonobos,
who reap the benefits of being around
confident, horny females, these sexually
satisfied human males don’t feel as
driven to assert their dominance. Then
women can enjoy the freedom to explore
their sexuality with each other,
unencumbered by fears of being judged,
raped, impregnated or catching disease.”

Block isn’t blind to her shameless
anthropomorphism. But, she argues, “a
little anthropomorphism never hurt
Flipper.” She says sex will offend as
much as it will titillate and no matter
how unscientific her perspective is on
the bonobo, it’s impossible to overlook
their overt sex appeal.

“And guess what,” she quips. “Sex sells.
Why not tap into my shows’ audience to
help save the bonobo?”

In response to her critics from
academia, Block admits she’s an inspired
businesswoman who is looking to them for
leadership. She claims her
href="http://www.blockbonobofoundation.org">Dr. Block Bonobo Foundation
serves to help protect the bonobo
through educating her audience and
encouraging donations to the Bushmeat
Project, the Bonobo Conservation
Initiative and the Bonobo Protection
Fund.

Block says her first fundraising event,
an erotic art show entitled “Sexual
Evolution,” is scheduled for fall, and a
percentage of its proceeds will be
donated to the initiative.

Sally Coxe, who researched the bonobo
for seven years after leaving National
Geographic, created the nonprofit
initiative to help promote information
sharing and collaboration among
international teams of scientists and
conservationists. Coxe could care less
about Block’s occupation and plans to
involve her in an upcoming Peace Concert
Benefit.

Tony Rose, director of the
Biosynergy Institute and its Bushmeat
Project, which aims to stop the
increased trade of ape meat; Richard
Wrangham, author of “Demonic Males: Apes
and the Origins of Human Violence;” and
Hope Walker, director of the Primate
Conservation and Welfare Society, have
also shown enthusiastic support for
Block’s efforts.

But her self-promotion of the “bonobo
way” has not always been well received.
Georgia State University’s target="new"
href="http://www.gsu.edu/~wwwbpf/bpf/left.html">Bonobo Protection Fund has
published a magnum opus online that
dismantles the premise of comparing
human and animal sexual behavior as
depicted in the “popular movement called
‘the bonobo way,’” and accuses Block of
exploiting bonobo by associating them
with her porn.

And de Waals, who concedes his book has
appeal to special populations, largely
gay and feminist, who could be targeted
for fundraising, still says he fails to
see why someone who has never been “in
the field” would be interested in saving
the bonobo.

Rose does. He’s written extensively on
how conservation can become a “global
social movement based on a deepening
discovery of primate kinship.” He writes
that scientific epiphanies rarely move
laypeople, but “biophilia,” the belief
that humans, urbanites in particular,
are endowed with an innate fascination
and need to relate to other living
things, can. He cites the case of an
Internet chat with Koko the gorilla that
ranked the fifth largest in
online history.

Claire Richardson, president of the
Diane Fossey Foundation, seconds Rose’s
contention that anthropomorphism goes
along with the human condition. “You
have to bridge the relevance gap. When
you talk about biodiversity the eyes of
the general public tend to glaze over.
So what we have to do with a charismatic
species like the great apes is use them
as a flagship species. What we know is
that it’s about habitat, not individual
species. So if you educate the public
about our close kinship to the bonobos
and get the message out that if these
protected places disappear, so do the
species, maybe people will be more
motivated to act.”

However Gaye Reinartz, coordinator of
the Bonobo Species Survival Plan for the
Zoological Society of Milwaukee, who has
just returned from the Congo where she
met with government officials about
reaffirming their conservation
commitments, gets a little fed up with
talk about “biophilia” and habitat.

“I don’t sit around pondering my
interconnectedness,” she says, “Let’s
not put this in the abstract. Hell, the
Grand Canyon isn’t habitat, it’s the
grand old USA!” She recognizes, however,
that public pressure is needed to induce
U.S. foreign policy leaders to take a
more active role in bringing peace and
preservation to the Congo.

“Our government has certainly proved it
can hold a carrot and a stick,” Reinartz
insists. “And believe me, the Congo
makes Kosovo look like Disneyland. At
some point it will become a security
risk.”

The Milwaukee Zoological Society has
implemented a survival plan that focuses
on the training of native Congolese to
carry through their own conservation
efforts. “This isn’t about white guys
counting monkeys,” Reinartz says,
arguing against Western imposed
solutions, like telling hungry, war-torn
Congolese not to eat bushmeat without
offering up an alternative source of
protein.

Reinartz is also quick to note that in a
region where vibrators have less appeal
than a bowl of rice, the selling point
among Congolese will not be the bonobo’s
sex appeal. Yet she feels Block’s
efforts are fairly benign and could even
be helpful. “But if she’s serious about
saving the bonobo, she can get me a
plane ticket back to Africa, which runs
around $4,000. I don’t care if the money
is dripping in blood. At this point I’m
close to selling my soul.”

The cranky desperation shared by
Reinartz and others in her field is
understandable. While Block and the
bonobos’ sex life continue to provide
saucy headlines, the apes’ survival is
extremely tenuous.

As Block points out, swingers are
primarily a middle-class phenomenon,
thriving in times of plenty. And some
researchers attribute the bonobo’s
peaceful matriarchy to the Congo’s ample
food supply. How will a species’
behavior change in a climate of war,
hunger and desperation?

Reinartz is clear that we have much more
to learn about the bonobo than their
sexual habits. More pressing at the
moment is finding out whether
sustainable populations even exist in
the Salonga.

Fieldwork has been stalled since war
broke out on the eastern side of the
park in August 1998. Deforestation, the
natural barriers of the Congo, poaching
and over 30 years of dictatorship,
unrest and colonial exploitation have
deprived the bonobo of their habitat. As
few as 5,000 may exist in the wild and
only 125 exist in captivity. It’s
estimated that 300 to 400 are needed in
order to sustain genetic diversity.

And Reinartz brought back more bad news
from her recent trip to Kinshasa:
evidence of thousands of baby orphans
taken on as “pets” by rebel soldiers.
“That means the parents were killed and
most likely the babies will be sold for
meat,” she says.

She tries to focus on the positives:
There’s a great ape bill pending in
Congress that would make funds
available, the United Nations recently
declared the Salonga a World Heritage
Preservation Site and African
policymakers are recognizing the
benefits of ecotourism.

“We’re just trying to stay alive and
wait out the war,” she sighs. “We’re
still committed to working with whatever
government exists and just hope we’re
not too late.”

Meanwhile Block continues to aspire
toward the bonobo model. “I’m an
imperfectionist, not a utopian. But I do
think violence spawns from frustration,
loneliness, bigotry and ignorance and if
we can mobilize an effort to save the
bonobo it will go a long way towards
saving ourselves.”

Like an erotic Mary Poppins, Block
believes a spoonful of sugar helps the
medicine go down in a world seemingly
besieged by harbingers of environmental
Armageddon.

Let’s hope so. Extinction is definitely
not sexy, and losing the bonobo would be
a bitter pill indeed.

I flopped down beside it, weary from the bumpy ascent from the San Josi airport by jeep, lurching over boulders slick with mud. As the road, overgrown with jungle debris, had narrowed, my driver Enrique had cursed the plantation owner who’d refused to pave it.

“Course why should he fix a road for his coffee pickers who will never travel beyond the boundary of this plantation?” he’d shrugged.

When our journey had ended in front of an iron gate rimmed with barbed wire, Enrique had smiled at my surprise.

“This is the yoga retreat?” I asked.

“Sm,” he’d said, pushing the button of a remote control that opened the gate of this medieval fortress with a tortuous groan.

Now nestled in bed, I picked up a book sitting on the wicker nightstand. It was signed by the retreat’s owner. Scanning its jacket for a bio I discovered my host had once enjoyed beautiful women, “more money than God” and had just put the deposit on a new Citation II plane — “so he could fly even higher, faster and further” — when he was arrested for manufacturing and distributing organic ecstasy.

Learning I had sought spiritual refuge at the residence of an ex-con was oddly reassuring. I had seen my share of devout yogis who had launched off on vision quests to India only to return shell-shocked from the burning bodies in the Ganges and the stench of shit in the streets. Trying to overcome their post-traumatic stress, they’d insist that from the darkest mud grew the unspoiled purity of the lotus flower. Then they’d book their next trip with Club Med.

As spiritual seekers we had left the caves and monasteries. Hell, some of us were eking out our existence in the urban sprawl, meditating on roaches scuttling across the sink, exhaling the OM seed of all sound as the tenant in the basement screamed obscenities at her man for bringing home a whore.

I’d known that any lasting sense of peace would have to be culled from the eye of the storm. So I’d wanted to teach those immersed in chaos: the mentally ill, convicts, beaten wives of cops. I settled for Chicago’s downtown day traders, who I figured were teetering close enough to the abyss. But I began to feel myself numbing to the city’s frenetic pace; seeing myself as a facilitator of stress management rather than an inspired yogi; increasingly overshadowed by the stark skyscrapers that reduced the sky to a two-by-four patch of gray November.

I opened the book to a random page.

“I see through the apparent suffering now as a balanced equation of freedom and limitation in which Consciousness is amusing itself,” it read.

I drifted to sleep watching a millipede scuttle across the blaze of orange paint.

In the morning I awoke early, padding onto the porch in bare feet, stunned by the panorama of miles of cloud forest descending into the valley 5,000 feet below. My own front yard was a teeming micro jungle of feathery ferns and red-splotched begonias sagging heavily under the morning dew. Several species of orchid exposed their furry tendrils and leafy lips accented with hot pink or spotty leopard from satin petals.

I pulled on my jeans and boots and ventured into the outer gardens where golden Buddha statues dotted the landscape, and grapefruit, oranges and mangos rotted into a kind of citrus ambrosia underneath my feet. Peeking into the other guest houses I noted a definite ’70s drug decor: white leather couches, mirror crisscrossed with gold lame, Jacuzzis, rice paper screens.

A few feet away a woman with a bob of dark hair entered a mesh-covered enclosure and gonged a bell from within. She came out and laughed when she saw me standing near.

“Well that means it’s time to eat,” she said, her voice husky and playful, motioning for me to follow.

Paz was the Tican cook who would take me under her wing and predict, from her hand-painted tarot cards laid out in a crucifix, that I would find sexual healing in the jungle. Smoking a joint we’d nibble on pickled palmito and pejibaye, peeled mini-coconuts, dipping the nutty fruit in mayonnaise, then sink into the hot tub, tracing the glistening gold-tiled OM symbol on the bottom with our toes.

At 50 she was wild, dating a Rasta from San José whom she’d let hand-feed her sweaty little beef-and-plantain empanadas he sold in reggae clubs. She teased the virgin coffee pickers who waited for her to drive by in Akim’s Mercedes — they, in their shacks baring the plantation owner’s black numbers on their corrugated metal roofs. She seemed to have no sexual inhibitions, in contrast to my current experiment with yogic celibacy, which, incidentally, had taken its toll.

My last dinner companion had remarked after my fifth consecutive kiss-on-the-cheek goodnight that dating me was like eating Chinese food. But I was bent on conserving my kundalini — my yogic life force, for beginners — its snakelike form coiled so tight at my crotch it was bound to give me a hernia. A spiritual retreat would conceivably realign my flagging spirit with la vida pura. In retrospect, it may have been more appropriate to choose an arid desert or secluded mountaintop for such work. But here I was, on a jungle property owned by a former drug dealer, my closest friend a female reincarnation of Pan.

We entered the dining room and Paz winked and pinched my arm before disappearing behind the kitchen door. Akim and his wife, Elena, were already seated at the table.

“Welcome sweetie,” purred Elena, a tanned, catlike woman, extending her arm.

“Thank you. It’s gorgeous here, although I had expected more guests,” I said, noting I seemed to be the only guest.

“Expectations get you nowhere,” she interjected with a yawn. “Keep yourself open.”

These two were a wordly pair. They’d spent 25 years in ashrams being vegetarian, training in bodywork and meditation, until they finally rejected the whole idea of disciplined ascetic practice. Elena smoked and drank coffee, said it reminded her of her cafe days traveling among the intelligentsia of Berlin where she’d studied psychology and the rebirthing movement.

Akim had been a high school teacher feeling the pressure to move to the suburbs and get a cat. But they’d met the ex-con peddling his book to New Agers abroad and described him as a playboy powerhouse and entrepreneur. At the parties he hosted, guests were said to lay their guns on the table before sipping their cognac.

“The perfect personality to deliver to the West a mass-consciousness wake-up call,” Akim said.

The couple had agreed to oversee the spiritual center, targeting yogis as a receptive audience that could ensure a steady cash flow.

“But don’t you meditate anymore?” I asked.

Akim sighed and Elena shrugged and began to set out plates of tamales wrapped in banana leaves, sopa negra, bean gravy soup with hard-boiled egg and slices of brown bread with guayaba jam.

“We spent five miserable years in India,” Akim began, “because despite all the fevers, the misery in the streets and the flies that swarmed in with the monsoons, we were enthralled by the enlightened souls that place gave birth to. And we endured it all for Satsang, just being in the presence of such company.” His voice trailed off. “But that’s an awful high price to pay for Satsang.”

The next morning I sat in the center of the yoga studio, dutifully waiting for Pablo, the instructor. My impatience softened as I gazed at the butterflies flitting about their garden at the studio’s rear. The owl butterflies, named for their piercing iris painted on each wing tip, were like tiny birds, graceful even as they voraciously grazed on banana leaves and plates with succulent bits of melon, mango and heads of fish. Others were tiny and delicate, sprayed with streaks of dusty blue. Earlier Manuel, the butterfly farmer, had pointed out to me the most gorgeous chrysalis; one glistening like a metallic raindrop, the other hanging like an earring of jade.

When Pablo arrived I was pondering a dying moth in front of me, its wings already disintegrating like charred paper.

“They stay winged only 12 weeks before they lose their scales,” he said softly.

I looked up at a stocky, bearded man in his late 30s regarding me with a sleepy koala bear smile.

“Their behavior is fascinating. For example, when a male smells the pheromones of a female he desires, he follows her scent until he meets her. When she notices him he begins to dance, swooping and diving in an elaborate ballet and then brings nectar for her to suck upon with her straw-like tongue.”

He stroked the wings of the moth absentmindedly as he spoke and its spasms ceased.

“She drinks until full and if pleased lifts her abdomen …”

“What if she’s not interested?” I shot back.

He looked up with golden eyes.

“Then he has to try harder,” he shrugged, reaching for my hand to pull me to my feet.

“Shall we begin this morning’s practice?”

Later as I helped Paz prepare the vegetable soup for lunch, cutting up plump pieces of pear-shaped chayote, yucca and eggplant, she assured me Pablo wasn’t some sort of mellowed Don Juan.

“Oh God no,” she said, eyes wide, as she mixed a pitcher of horchata, a roasted rice drink, tasting it with her finger, then adding more cinnamon.

“I’ve known him and his wife for years. She’s the wild one, running off with her guru while he stays home with the kids. He’s quite serious about his spiritual discipline and has never strayed as far as I know.”

After eating ice cream with blackberries, Akim rather reluctantly handed his Mercedes keys to Paz and we began our descent to the market in Alajuela. We parked in front of La Agonia Cathedral and wandered into the market crammed ceiling-high with produce, beans, rice, corn meal and flour. Immediately boys surrounded us, trying to lure us to their stands with pouty lips and sweet phrases.

“They think I’m the rich one,” Paz whispered, taking bills out of her satchel and handing her list to the handsomest who shot back a mischievous smile.

Afterwards we waited in a decaying courtyard filled with cats for her dark lover to answer his bell. A slender, dreadlocked boy came out on a balcony and, waving coyly to Paz, buzzed us in.

Almost immediately Paz disappeared behind a curtain of beads with skunky smoke wafting through it, leaving me with the pretty Rasta, Renee, who Paz had assured me was a fascinating figure, being both a photographer and local soap opera star. He crooked my elbow affectionately and escorted me to the kitchen where his skulking roommate, Tio, sat hunched over the Formica table snorting coke with a mustached sneer. Renee, hand on hip, poured me a shot of amber-colored liquid and turned back to the stove to fry up mashed green plantains with curry.

“Sit down,” he invited, twirling a matted lock.

I sat stiffly across from Tio who lifted his sweaty, bloated face and regarded me with pig eyes.

“Como estas?” I ventured.

He just coveted his stash with his right arm and gasped a few punctuated breaths.

I stood up and accepted another drink from Renee who turned off the stove and led me upstairs to see his latest show. Climbing a creaky, winding staircase, I entered a room with black walls lit by a single fluorescent bulb. Photos of naked girls in gilded frames glowed from all sides.

“What, do you think them pornographic?” Renee asked, seemingly concerned, his pinky finger dangling off his lip.

I studied one in the corner of a woman with hooded eyes, a thin mustache over parted lips, a faint smudge of pink lipstick on her front teeth, and a stringy blue boa.

“You seem to have exposed a kind of sadness in them that is quite endearing,” I remarked.

Satisfied, he admitted the girls confessed their fantasies to him like a priest. Gradually Paz’s smoky voice drifted upstairs, backed by guitar. She entered the room, eyes glazed like marbles, and placed her hands on my hips from behind. We swayed as her Rasta crooned a Burning Spear tune.

“Take their photo for your porn,” Tio scoffed from the stair’s landing. “Especially that pale, freckled one. Tanto inocencia!”

We ignored his dark rumblings but suddenly he sprung up the stairs, grabbed my hand, and slid his slimy tongue in between each of my fingers.

“I want to suck out all your juices!” he spat on my face.

“Cabrone!” Paz hissed, cracking his face with a strong open hand, and yanking me down the stairs and out into the street.

“Would you believe he is lead violinist in the philharmonic?” she exclaimed hotly, opening the car door.

“A male butterfly never would have done that,” I considered as we drove back up the mountain.

“What?” Paz said wearily. Her mascara was smeared into the creases that edged her eyes. “Did they give you anything to drink?”

“I only had a few of those little cups that taste like licorice,” I said.

“Ay, Dios mio,” she sighed.

My eyes felt heavy. It was a labor to unroll the window so Tio’s slime could air dry between my fingers. By the time we closed the heavy gate it was past midnight.

The next morning Pablo listened to my recapitulation of the night’s events without his characteristic smile.

“Ah, the allure of the damned,” he finally muttered.

“So pious!” I returned.

“Not really,” he said, laying out our purple sticky mats. “Just beware of leeches who drain your energy.”

He folded his hands in prayer and bowed to me indicating we were to begin. As we held the postures in the warrior and sun salutation series, my muscles quivered.

“Breathe prana into them,” he said gently, placing his hands on the area of spasm. “Breathe into my hand.”

As I concentrated on the warmth of his touch, the release brought renewed strength. Pablo brought my attention to my subtle anatomy, the musculature expanding between my rib cage as I stretched my arms over my head, the wings of my sacrum in my lower back spreading when I contracted my abdominals. Afterwards he left me to meditate alone, a horrifying prospect. He suggested movement meditations for my brand of American neurosis and put on an Osho CD.

“Writers especially need to meditate,” he smiled, shaking his head. “Always masturbating on some imaginary thought process. Just close your eyes and allow yourself to experience the music.”

“What if I hit the wall?” I asked.

“Feel the wall,” he answered, this rain forest Yoda.

Admittedly, at first, I sashayed about, peeking under my eyelids. But after a couple days I began leaping and twirling with such fervor I got a standing ovation from the locals working construction around the studio.

Two days before my departure, Pablo and I were returning to the retreat from running errands in town when he drove down a dirt road and stopped at a wooden bridge lined with railroad tracks. I followed him to the bridge but hesitated at the edge. Between rotting slats of wood, bits of space loomed and collapsed in my mind’s eye.

“I used to play there as a boy,” he mused, walking halfway across, pointing down the slope. “I’d spend hours just climbing trees and inventing stories.”

“You mean masturbating on imaginary thought processes,” I teased.

He smirked, then noticed I wasn’t moving.

“Close your eyes and walk across,” he urged.

“No thanks,” I said, sweat beading on my brow.

He came close.

“Hold my hand and keep your balance,” he said with that familiar gentle light in his eyes.

I shut my lids and took a baby step forward, shifted weight, then slid the other foot in front where it wobbled slightly …

“Breathe,” he hummed, releasing all but one finger.

After three more steps I felt secure and he let go. I exhaled and strained my foot forward but felt nothing but open space. My eyes flew open but immediately Pablo snatched me to his chest and I gripped his forearms, my heart pulsing in my neck.

“There was nothing there,” I whispered.

“But I caught you,” he said, holding me tight.

I inched back holding his hand, gasping inside, and we drove back in silence.

“I think that was my final lesson,” I said curtly, and abruptly turned away.

The next morning Akim interrupted my packing to tell me Pablo was waiting in the aviary down the hill to give me a massage.

“A massage?” I asked.

“He said you wanted to skip practice today. Overworked those muscles, eh?” he teased, and strolled on to greet the construction crew.

My muscles did ache, I thought, closing my suitcase and heading down the path. I knew this secluded spot surrounded by fruit trees was Pablo’s favorite hideaway from the tourists. I opened the screen door and found him mixing peppermint oil and lotion.

“Lie down and take off your clothes,” he commanded, and left the room.

I undressed and watched him sniffing a bush of the slick cherry blossoms known as labios de puta, hooker’s lips.

“Listo!” I announced, letting the light cotton sheet float over me, my fingers curled into my palms.

For the next two hours he unraveled the knots of tension in my body fiber by fiber. I flinched when he traced the slight curve in my lumbar spine my father used to tease would degenerate into a witch’s hump. He hovered there, probing the misaligned vertebrae and easing the muscles on the right side of my back until any lingering shame evaporated. Likewise he traced the scar tissue on my forehead that remained after a drunken driver hit my car three years ago, pitching my skull into the windshield, and the tattoo on the small of my back that bore my dead mother’s favorite flower.

“Strange how he finds each nook of trauma,” I thought, drugged with his presence and the rhythmic movement of his fingers kneading my skin, surprised to find my eyes leaking little damp spots on the pillow. Finally I rolled over and our eyes met. He rested his hand, pulsing with heat, on my belly and the other firmly on my temple. We remained like that, suspended.

Gradually I heard a faint humming above me and followed his smiling eyes to a ruby-throated hummingbird hovering inches away, sipping the essence of an orange blossom. I felt the beat of its tiny wings on my face. We laughed as it spiraled off in a winged stagger, drunk off the nectar.

It was almost unbearable, his shining tiger eyes and the deafening silence so pregnant with possibility. Losing hold of my body’s borders I closed my eyes, unafraid to fall.

“New York City is my dream!” she exclaims, when she hears that I’d moved there from Montana’s big sky country. She insists we go to Shakespeare and Company to search out a magazine that has published one of my stories.

Later we return to her farmhouse, and I pull up my quilt and recall the steady, chugging train of events that provoked me to cross the Atlantic onto foreign soil, decidedly away from the dream of New York.

There was an emotionally vacant lover to come home to every night, obsessed with scratching out designs on paper for architect Richard Meier. But it wasn’t really home, it was a two-room flat in the East Village located above a dicey Mexican restaurant. I squeezed in with two humans, a cat and a host of bean-fed roaches, which we took turns setting aflame on the gas stove. My glamorous writing career was supported by a stint as a cocktail waitress, serving Wall Street tycoons whose drunken blatherings I simply could not stomach anymore.

No, the ballerina didn’t know how one night everything ground to a halt during the peak of a Thursday night shift when a barrage of drink orders flew from my mind and my manager, noticing my catatonic expression, pulled me aside.

“Sorry, I’m a little low on energy,” I’d mumbled, downplaying the full extent of my sleep deprivation.

“Follow me,” he had said. And we went downstairs into the bathroom where he proceeded to cut the lines. I joined him, crouching over the counter, snorting the snow-blow, quickening to the clean pulse of life that shot through, sickening and wonderful. I made $300 in tips that night, then threw up in the cab on the way home, fortunately, just as my manager was unzipping his pants.

The next day I sold my car for $1500 and bought a one-way ticket to Paris.

“Yes,” I say to the ballerina in the cafe, “New York’s very glamorous.”

In the early morning I stroll across frosted patches of field dotted with giant hay tootsie rolls and take in the pastoral setting that inspired Van Gogh. Back in the farmhouse, over flaky croissants and Nutella, I let my hostess convince me to take a ballet lesson with her back in Paris.

We drive to the city and are warming up in the studio — which for me consists of vigorously flexing and pointing my toes — when the instructor barks something at me in French. I assume she’s noticed by now that I can’t bend my leg around my neck. But when I don’t respond she snaps at me again, hitting her walking stick into the ground for emphasis. All I can think to say in protest is, “I’m American.” It does the trick. The instructor looks at me in mock sympathy and repeats to the class “Ah, an Amarikeen,” while they giggle.

I politely excuse myself and end up sulking in the cafe downstairs, chain-smoking with the rest of the ballerinas who’ve ordered nicotine for lunch.

I decide it’s time to leave Paris.

Day One

I am the only one on the bus as it rambles through yellowing vineyards to Civita de Bagnoreggio, the smallest, most obscure town in Italy I could find in my tourist book. The driver chats pleasantly with me (at this point I consider a few sentences “chatting” since I am speaking only broken Spanish) as the bus rumbles a mile out of its way to the door of Angelino’s Inn. I check in and Angelino himself takes me down into the cellar to sample his port wine and stick a coin into the clay ceiling for luck.

After settling in, I wander through the Tuscan hills and encounter a flock of sheep. I step through the wood fence and am wrangling out my camera when I hear a noise behind me. A teenage boy and his father are sitting atop the fence watching me. I point to my camera and gesture “photo.”

The older man responds by hiking up his suspenders, catapulting himself over the fence and herding the sheep into a corner as they resist in a cacophony of bleating. When the sheep are pressed into a wild-eyed, condensed, fleecy cube, the man, sweating and panting through his efforts, looks to me to take a shot.

“Grazie,” I manage, holding up the camera and releasing the shutter.

Back at the inn I’m invited to sit in an empty dining room for supper by a light-skinned, slightly nervous man named Jean-Franco. I can hear the bawdy growls and hearty laughter of men playing cards in the tavern next door while Jean serves me salad, bread, wine, fettuccine with rabbit and biscotti with a disquieting attentiveness.

At last I push away my plate and muster the nerve to enter the tavern.

“Poker?” I say cheerily, pushing up my sleeves while one swarthy mountain of a man bellows with laughter beneath his handlebar mustache. The other card players regard me with silent amusement, clenching cigars through their grins.

Jean-Franco reappears to break the ice, “Liberale femme, no?” he says, as they scoot their chairs over to make space for me. It is after midnight when I finally drag myself upstairs and collapse into bed.

Day Two

I awaken early, refreshed and eager to explore the village and surrounding countryside. I’m lent a rusty bike and I roll down the dusty road past my sheep herding friends who press sweet figs into my palm. But later, coasting down a hill, my front tire begins to hiss, forcing me to a skidding halt.

I am dragging it along when a car pulls over, its passengers looking straight out of “Drugstore Cowboy” with their longish hair and flared pants. Bob Dylan is groaning from the car radio. Two of them speak broken English: Andrea, a wide-grinning blond, and Giorgio, a lanky, olive-skinned farmer.

I trust their smiles and end up in their company for the remainder of the day. They both work in the vineyards picking grapes. Andrea is training to be an engineer, but Giorgio tells me he dropped out of school because the professors in Italy are too traditional and rigid.

We drive to a farm belonging to Andrea’s grandmother. A few grunting pigs and a scrawny rooster roam freely about the crude interior of a modest cabin. A fat, wrinkly woman runs out of her bedroom, long gray hair loose and disheveled, and begins to rail at Andrea. He keeps grinning, speaks a few words to console her, then looks at me and explains, “She little crazy.”

Seemingly pacified, the woman pads back into her bedroom on her bare feet, muttering to the hapless rooster. Andrea leads me down into the wine cellar and strains some pulpy fluid out of barrels into a dirty glass. I sip the unfermented wine, licking cool and sweet drops off my lips.

Back on the road, we head toward town to celebrate a neighbor’s birthday. I enter a flat full of strangers and smoke hash with a honey-skinned girl with silver bangles up and down her arms until the stars through the window liquefy into brilliant streaks of light.

Giorgio is on the porch playing his guitar. I join him and sink to my knees, still dizzied by the stars that have begun to spiral in the night sky.

“I prefer the old songs of my country,” he says, and begins to sing softly in the shadows of the porch. When he finishes he looks at me with an arched eyebrow.

“Not bad,” I answer shyly, slightly hypnotized, my voice sounding like a caged bird in my throat.

Suddenly he grasps my hand and urges, “Come, let me show you my city!”

A faint whisper of protest escapes from my lips, but soon we are standing outside in front of the old, stone tub where the women of his village still wash their clothes. Like children we wander through the cobblestoned streets, past the sheep snoring in the grass and the skeletal remains of an amphitheater near Viterbo. Finally we pause breathlessly in the purple night and Giorgio points over to a shadow rising above the hills in the distance, the ancient city of Civita. He tells me the city is accessible only by a narrow walkway, that its 15 residents get their daily supplies by donkey.

“Tomorrow I take you,” he promises.

We enter a pub and order two pieces of cheesy flat bread. It has been easy with us all night but suddenly I am aware of his discomfort. I look around the restaurant and notice, with confusion, those seated at tables nudging each other and looking our way. They seem to know something about Giorgio that I don’t.

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Day Three

Giorgio returns to the inn at lunch time as promised. He greets Jean-Franco who conspicuously lingers but, giggling into his palm, refuses my invitation to join us for the afternoon. Outside Giorgio tells me Jean has been a “little strange” ever since his wife died last year during childbirth.

I ponder Jean-Franco’s past while watching a movie without subtitles. Giorgio whispers in the darkness that the film is about a journalist’s moral struggle working within fascist Italy. I wonder what cause Giorgio would fight for.

Afterward we begin our steep ascent to Civita, stumbling over cobblestones. After 20 minutes we reach the summit and pass through a stone archway supporting a bell tower. I lift my gaze to the clusters of bats, shrouded in cobwebs, shrieking from atop the tower. Within, the dusty stillness of the piazza encloses us. It is ghostly.

A small weed tumbles over my shoe as I listen to the low moan of wind passing through columns of rock. I feel I’m in a Gothic western and try to convey this to Giorgio, but he doesn’t understand. So I draw a line in the sand with my shoe and tell him to press his back to mine.

“Now uno … dos … tres …” and I begin to walk forward and he, comprehending, matches my pace. At “10″ we both spin around and shoot each other to ribbons. He feigns death and collapses in a heap. Gingerly, I approach his motionless form, noticing how velvety his eyelashes appear against his fastened lids. Suddenly he leaps forward and I scream like some cheerleader at a drive-in horror movie.

“Not funny,” I say, composing myself, leaning against the cool stone tower.

He sits next to me smiling, but after a moment he seems to catch himself and stares hard into the distance. After a lengthy silence I learn of the fiancie. He seems relieved when I sympathize at the distance between them — she is studying in Paris.

There is a chill in the air now, and he offers me his mother-made sweater for warmth. The cinnamon-colored yarn is flecked with white and it reminds me of the Irish cable-knit sweater my father wore, smelling of Old Spice and with corduroy patches on the sleeves. Giorgio starts to hum one of those old folk songs. The song sounds sad and lonely, and his voice is so hushed I have to lean in to hear him. Sometimes I lean too close, feel his breath and draw away with flushed cheeks.

Day Seven

Today I walk to a cafe to write. Yesterday Giorgio had showed me the rough slivers of his chafed palms, the black stains on his hands where the grapes had bled through the gloves.

“From work,” he had said and then took my smooth hands and laughed, “No work.”

But then he ran his thumb over the callus on the side of my index finger, stained with the blue blood of my pen, and murmured, “Ah, here.”

Attention is oppressive today. I can’t walk without men in cars or on scooters insisting they give me a ride. They don’t seem to understand that I want to ramble aimlessly about.

“You like to walk?” they tease.

“To see the boys?” says one.

“So boys see you?” leers another.

I feel weary and spend all day searching for some private space. In the cafe I cannot concentrate because I feel eyes boring through the back of my head. When I turn to look, a green-eyed man licks his lips, raises his glass and cries out, “Bella!”

Where are the women in this town? I have seen the nonnas knitting sweaters in cafes and clucking their tongues as I pass. Giorgio has told me that most young women here are Catholic and don’t have sex outside of marriage (or at least not openly). In fact, an unmarried or even divorced woman is rarely seen without an escort. My lone wanderings must appear somewhat suspect to the women of this village.

I leave the cafe and enter a church, and am admiring the pastel frescoes when a man rushes upon me hissing “No look good in church,” waving a hand over my dress.

People turn to stare and I glare at him as I leave. Walking back toward the inn I pause before a statue in the piazza, of a woman on her knees grasping the bleeding hand of a man who shields his eyes away from her as if in shame.

I trudge on and sigh wearily when I hear the slowing of a car behind me.

“Me gusta caminar!” I mumble grumpily for the hundredth time.

“Why are you speaking Spanish?” returns an English accent. I turn to face a handsome man in a Mercedes. Welcoming the opportunity to speak English, I accept his offer to share a drink back at the inn.

His name is Christian and his mother is Scottish, father, Italian. For two hours we talk of local politics. He says, contrary to what the locals say, people can find work here. They don’t have to be poor.

“In fact, gypsies live quite well off their robbing and begging,” he laughs. “Yes, the government is corrupt, but so is everything.”

Suddenly Giorgio arrives and I invite him to sit. The two men regard each other stiffly. Christian abruptly rises, kisses my cheek and says he has to see to some business. Giorgio ignores Christian’s departure and flips noisily through a newspaper.

I stare at him a moment and then ask him to translate the local headlines.

He folds up the paper, “You know Christian?”

“No, he just gave me a ride home. You don’t like him …” I say, stating the obvious.

“Christian is rich and arrogant,” Giorgio spits forth with a vehemence I haven’t yet seen. “He doesn’t work yet looks down on us.”

He scowls, then waves his hand. “No matter, I don’t like to speak bad of people.” He lights a cigarette. “So what to do today?”

I feel a surge of warmth for this moody man.

“Well, Jean-Franco told me about a swimming hole nearby …”

“Wait, I have better idea,” he says, exhaling a stream of smoke.

We drive an hour over bumpy roads, scaling the dark hills. Finally, in the middle of nowhere, Giorgio parks alongside a small cluster of cars and leads me to a steamy pool. In the moonlight I see several springs with shadowy forms hovering around them, moving like monks, exhaling humid breath.

“Ah, perfecto,” I say, peeling off clothes in the protective darkness, stepping into an empty pool and sinking into the rich mud.

Giorgio follows, playing shark, blowing bubbles, until I’m cornered and squirming away from his tickling fingers. I collapse with laughter, but suddenly he is holding me tight, kissing my dripping neck, between my shoulder blades, licking salty sulfur off my skin, pressing against my thigh. I feel his heart beat wildly beneath his paper frame.

“Who are you?” he says, looking pained, holding my face tight between his hands. With a miserable, misguided sense of honor I shove him away.

Afterward in the car, we are wrapped up in towels and silence. He is staring hard through the windshield. I think he is feeling guilty, but then he puts his hand gently on my knee.

“Tienes hambre?” he asks.

Famished, I nod, so we drive to a nearby town where no one knows us. Only one restaurant is open. It is cramped, dark, and everyone is drunk. Our waiter, an elegant old man with a big belly, red suspenders and a neat mustache, fingers his pockets for 10 minutes before he finds some paper to take our order. But then he is distracted by a Spanish bard in the corner who has begun to sing with tremendous bravado. Everyone is singing now, with closed eyes, hands on their hearts, even Giorgio. An enormous man stands up with his glass lifted and expounds something with teary eyes.

Giorgio laughs and tells me, “He says the soul of that song must be a woman for it is so beautiful.”

This, he whispers in my ear, is the real Italy, the way it used to be.

Our food (that we never ordered) eventually arrives and we eat gratefully: potato ravioli, red pepper spaghetti, white wine, crusty bread, a flan and cherry tart. The fruity dessert wines bite like whiskey. The Spaniard stops his music to give me a rose, and it is after midnight when the owner, snapping off his suspenders, ushers us out with tired amusement.

“Food, wine, flowers?” Giorgio says, teasing me for getting so much attention.

“It’s the novelty of being American,” I say.

“No,” he touches my face, “it’s because you are beautiful,” and again I feel the rush of blood stain my cheeks.

We return to Civita and climb the steep path once more to the place where the bats fly and the orange moon hangs low. But he is distant.

“Your girlfriend,” I begin, but he puts his finger to my lips and begins to speak in unfettered Italian. Then he stops, exasperated by the language gap.

“I have much to tell you and you can’t understand,” he sighs.

“Try,” I whisper and let my own caged words tumble out; that I will miss him and am sorry I trespass on his heart, that I am drawn by his tenderness, his conscience, that he has opened up this joy in me that had grown so very dim.

And he answers, like music, in this ancient hill town in Italy. He explains that he too will miss me and uses a word he says he cannot translate, but it’s “like love.” And this is the truth, this “like-love” intimacy we share.

He takes me back to the inn, sneaks past the ever-watchful Jean-Franco and into my bed. His kisses are everywhere, like blessings, so, for a few moments, I drown and surrender nonetheless. But then I resurface.

“Sometimes you are like ice,” he says, “and then you smile.”

I smile.

“I don’t understand you,” he sighs. He takes my hand in his own, which is trembling, and says, “I think this never happen in my life again … It is strange … I feel strange … for you.”

Day Nine

A lonesome day. I miss his company but know it’s better not to see him. Tomorrow I return to the United States. I am playing cards in the tavern when Jean-Franco asks me to get cigarettes with him. I decide the air will relieve my melancholy and walk outside. In the garden Jean-Franco abruptly opens his wallet and gestures to a thick wad of bills. I look at him dumbfounded while he stammers on about why I should stay with him in Italia.

“I can teach you the language,” he says, “and you can work in the inn.”

He pats his wallet again hoping for a reaction.

Saddened, I point to his money and say only, “Es bueno para tu,” and turn back toward the inn, marveling at how loneliness can create its own mythic passion out of anything, and wondering if my own sudden passion for a stranger was spawned from my loneliness.

There has been a blackout at the inn. The tavern is lit with candles and Christian is there with a glass of wine for me, which deepens my weariness. Christian’s eyes are bloodshot tonight. He looks like a wolf, draining his glass of blood-red wine. I don’t trust his smile and decide to retire early. In the lobby, one of the card players, a man with no teeth, insists on helping me climb the dark stairway.

“Emotivo!” he exclaims halfway up, and impulsively places my hand on his heart, which I snatch away, rushing to my room, locking the door fast behind me. The absurdity of my status with men in this town has passed its peak and left me numb.

That night I dream of meeting the singer, Madonna, on a bus leaving Bagnoreggio. We bond, finding common ground as American sluts. Two old Italian signoras with dark rosaries around their sagging necks are shaking their heads at our scandalous presence when Madonna looks at me, shrugs and cracks her gum.

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Day Ten

I bolt awake to the piercing buzz of the phone at my bedside table. Giorgio says he’ll be over in 10 minutes to take me to the train station. After a quick shower and haphazard pack job I stumble down the stairs. Giorgio is already waiting in the bar, nervously drinking a cafe and smoking. Angelino and the card players kiss my hand goodbye. Jean-Franco is conspicuously absent, but I push the poem I wrote in the cafe underneath his door, of a dying mother’s eyes that haunt me less and less.

Giorgio and I drive in silence to the station and discover my train is delayed a half hour. He buys pastrami sandwiches and tells me of his grandfathers, a philosophy professor who went crazy from thinking too much, and a fascist. Giorgio says it was scandal when his parents wed. After a while his face grows long and he begins to expound that he wishes I had met his cat, that my smell was on him all day, that he doesn’t understand why we met, and finally, he laments ever meeting me.

I suggest we are two ships passing in the night but the image falls flat. He stills my lips with his fingers and we just stand there, suspended in the confused silence of our hearts. He looks away first, and coughs out a dry laugh, telling me to wave a white hanky from the train like the old black and white movies. The train’s muffled explosion announces its arrival into the station.

I am struck by a quickened panic. We clutch each other, kissing deep before breaking apart. My last glimpse is of him looking startled and dazed at the miles of steel track lengthening between us.