It started so romantically. He was a handsome, nattily attired stranger who said he had seen me from across a crowded room, lost sight of me and searched until he found me again. Even more poetically, we met in Eden.

Lest you think I'm in a fantasy world created by illegal substances, let me assure you this is a true story. The Eden of this tale, however, is not even close to the peaceful jungle that, as I recall, is depicted in a book called the Bible. For one thing, we were both clothed. Snakes and apples were nowhere in sight, and nary a fig leaf could be found. Temptation, however, hung thick in the air between us. And the nightclub Eden is all about that.

It's a place my friends and I visit infrequently because it requires a specific style of dress, and the right frame of mind. Eden is housed in a converted church. Aside from the stained glass windows and beautifully angled ceilings, little remains to suggest its original use. It is still a place of worship, but of the human form, sexuality and pleasure. The walls in the main bar are painted in shades of deep red, some covered with purple velvet. Lighting is low. Downstairs, the seating choices are limited to barstools and beds. On video monitors behind them, the silhouette of an obviously naked woman's body writhes in an endless dance. Entering the women's bathroom at Eden (named best in the Springs by some newspaper or another) is like stepping into a Victoria's Secret catalogue. It is a blur of pink and gold, over which sparkling chandeliers hang. White leather couches and floor-to-ceilng mirrors line the walls.

The employees are almost all women with strong resemblances to Playboy bunnies. The owner, we're told, buys their outfits and by the looks of them, he shot his wad on Eden's decor, leaving him with only enough to buy child-sized shreds of clothing for his waitresses.

Now you see why we don't come here often. For women in their 40s, this place can be wicked in more ways than one. But we had planned for it, and on this night, the three of us were well turned out.

I had reached into the blackest depths of my closet to find the only dress I own that has never been touched by the sun's rays. It's also the only dress I own that has a name. The Second Husband Dress is electric blue, with vertical stripes racing down each side, and a third zipping straight down the front. It is short. It is sleeveless. It is polyester/rayon with 3 percent Spandex.

The Second Husband Dress has never failed to attract men. Unfortunately, it has never yet attracted men of husband quality. Perhaps because it does not make me look much like Carol Brady.

Our goals for the evening were to dance and flirt. We checked out the club's various rooms, having a cocktail in the Syn Lounge and testing the mattresses on a downstairs bed. Well-rested and well-buzzed, we found our way to the dance floor. The three of us merged onto it together, and were quickly paired off with men.

I danced like I had not since college, when dancing was my favorite past-time and one I engaged in two or three times a week.

We took a break, sitting on the broad windowsill of the tall church windows. And then he approached, walking across the dance floor, hands tucked casually into loose-fitting black dress pants. He was wearing a pale pink, open-collared dress shirt. He looked to me like Don Johnson in his Miami Vice days. Casual, confident and cocky.

"I saw you downstairs," he said, moving in close so I could hear him. "When I turned around, you were gone. I've been looking for you ever since."

That was the first of a few dozen perfect lines he threw my way. He waxed poetic about my face and figure, touching a light hand to my waist to illustrate how small it was. He brushed a hand over my stomach, too quickly for me to stop him, and said, "I love this. Do you work out?" Warning sirens sounded somewhere in the back of my head, but the music was loud. I pretended I couldn't hear them. Somewhere along the line he introduced himself, but I don't recall his name. I do remember his profession: car salesman. The sirens wailed. Again, the music squelched them.

He asked if we could move somewhere quieter where we could talk and he could buy me a beer, and escorted me back to the bed level of the bar. We leaned against a footboard to talk. And that is where my rosy glow began to dim.

"Listen," he said. "I'm looking for someone to go on Sunday drives with, maybe go to dinner with sometimes, a movie or something. You know, nothing serious."

He paused, then plunged ahead. "What I really want is a fuck buddy."

The words were so crude and unanticipated, they landed like a mini slap in the face. I backed up a step, prepared to make my exit. But he kept talking, and refused to give me the verbal space to say goodbye.

"I know what you're thinking," he said. "But that's not all I want to do. I want a companion. Just not a serious relationship. I want someone beautiful to hang out with."

He looked me dead in the eye. "I want you."

I said nothing. I was disconcerted by his physical closeness, but I was thinking. Maybe this was not such a bad idea. Most of my friends had had so-called fuck buddies at one point or another in their lives, friends or casual acquaintainces who'd agreed to a temporary, purely physical relationship. They talked about it in playful, affectionate, sometimes even wistful tones.

It worked for them. Maybe, I thought, it could work for me, too. And frankly, it had been a long time between relationships. What did I have to lose, besides maybe a smidgen of self respect?

He was watching my face, moving closer to it as he did.

"Kiss me," he said.

It had at this point been about six months since I'd kissed a man. This one was cute, close and wearing pink - a daring deviation from the male fashion norm that for me, ratcheted his attractiveness level into the extreme range.

So yes, I kissed him. And yes, it was good. And not short.

He pulled away slowy, and grinned.

"See?" he said. "This would be fabulous."

I was standing on the edge, ready to swan dive into something new and take the chance that it might later land on my long list of male-related regrettables. Life, at that moment, seemed short. My stars had seemingly aligned. And I was buzzed.

He looked just below my neck, and I prepared myself for another head-spinning compliment.

"Small titties? We'll buy those," he said, smiling lightly.

This is where my friends say I was too polite. Because I did not slap him. Much less inform him that I am a B cup - surely nothing to sneeze at.

Instead, I smiled easily and said, "Didn't you say earlier you had to go to the bathroom?"

"Oh yeah, thanks. Do you know where they are?"

I pointed down a nearby hall, and the instant he turned his back to me, I was gone. This time, he did not come looking for me.

I almost posted this blog entry Saturday, but somehow, the ending seemed, well, flat. Instead, I set it aside and met my friend Joani out for drinks. I got to Old Chicago before she did, sat down at the bar to wait for her, ordered a Laughing Lab and glanced down the bar. A man in a pink shirt sat there, next to a loudly laughing blonde woman. He was looking at me.

Two thoughts flashed through my mind: I was wearing a push-up bra, and he needed more shirts.

I returned his look with a long, cold stare of which I am quite proud. Firstly, long, cold stares aren't my specialty. Secondly, I desperately wanted to laugh.

When Joani arrived, she took a quick study of the blonde woman and happily told me her breasts were smaller than mine. "And that," she said, "is not an insult.

"Plus, she's at least 10 years older than you are."

But I didn't much care. His words had saved me from what would have been an emotionally untenable situation with a man whose maturity level will never match his age.

Meeting him was, however, more good than bad. I got a nice kiss, and a needed reminder that I am desirable. Better yet, I got a helluva story.

My son has two girlfriends. He is 10.

Two of the girls in his fourth grade class asked him to be their Valentine. He is proud of this, but he doesn't want me to know he's proud. He wants me to know about the girlfriends, but he doesn't want that to be obvious either.

He was in the car with me Friday, sitting in his booster seat, when I asked him about his Valentine's Day. He stared straight ahead, silent, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

"Did you get any Valentines?" I asked.

He nodded, and looked out the window, away from me.

"From who?"

"Maggie." He paused. "And Kara."

He was looking forward again, holding back a grin.

"Did they both ask you to be their Valentines?"

He nodded. "And one of them said it straight up."

"Said what?" I asked.

"You know."

"What? That she loves you?"

The grin broke free. He put his head in his hands to stifle a laugh, looked back up and tried again to close his lips over his teeth -- to no avail. His face was flushed. My son was blushing.

He would not tell me what he said in response. But he owned up to the fact that he now has two girlfriends. Kara, he said, has been hanging around him more since Valentine's Day. Maggie hasn't been around as much, he said. I suggested that perhaps Maggie was a woman scorned who had retreated to lick her wounds. I asked - with a deeply buried grain of seriousness - how he planned to avoid hurting one of them.

He tried to look annoyed with me, but grinned again. "Mom! Stop!"

Of course, I did not stop entirely. Just momentarily. After all, I had an entire three-day weekend ahead during which to spread out the teasing.

I also needed time to figure out how I felt about it. I was, and am, a jumble. Part of me is proud - after all, he's the fruit of my loins and a cute little fruit at that. Part of me is happy that he's popular. That he won't suffer the pain of being an unattractive child and an almost too-late bloomer. Hopefully, if he gets an early handle on relationships, he'll make fewer mistakes in that area of life than I have.

Another part of me is alarmed, and a bit sad, as though he's turned some corner and is standing at the starting point of a road down which I cannot follow.

The logical part of me dismisses it as a fourth grade crush. Or two. They start these experiments of the heart earlier, I remind myself, than we did.

But later that night, when he fell asleep, I studied him with different eyes. Looking down on him, I saw the rounded forehead, long, dark eyelashes, freckled nose and flawless skin. Asleep, his face softens back into that of a toddler. His cheeks are soft, round, without definition.

His body is slight, and likely to remain so. The only hair he has is on his head. Shirtless, his shoulders jut out from his back like two featherless bird's wings. I can count almost every rib.

He uses a booster seat, though he's long since past the age at which the law deems it necessary. He can see better, he tells me, with the extra few inches it gives him. I don't argue.

He still sits on my lap. He likes to lay beside me, spoon style, to watch TV. He falls asleep with his blonde head in my lap. Sometimes, in public places, he still reaches for my hand.

He is, to me, only a larger version of the diaper-wearing boy who, after I put him to bed and returned downstairs, pulled himself up and out of his crib in a nightly quest to find me. I would find him on those nights asleep in the hallway where he had wearily surrendered.

But he's changing, as he should, evolving away from the dependent child to a young person with opinions, interests and yes, secrets. Fond as I am of the days of young childhood, he becomes more interesting with every year.

He has initiated conversations with me about evolution, slavery, solar power and the value of friendships.

He's gaining his own taste in music. Green Day, Tom Petty, Bowling for Soup, Eminem. He rejects, with increasing frequency, the clothes I choose for him.

He's funny, and loyal. Recently, he made an observations about one of his friends' occasional bouts with exaggeration. He overlooked it, he said, because "he needs me" as a friend. The statement both touched and concerned me, but they now seem to have passed safely through those rough waters, back to almost nonstop laughter and in-depth discussions about PSP games.

I believe his compassion extends to me, something I have not yet figured out how best to handle. He laughs at my jokes, but last week, shook his head after a particularly lousy one.

"Mom, sometimes I worry about you," he said.

"Why?" I asked. "Because my jokes are bad or do you just worry about me generally?"

He paused for a split second. "Both," he said.

Like any mom, I think my child is a wonder. I am awed by my good fortune.

But he's in some sense on loan to me, I know. Already more than halfway to legal adulthood. Already looking excitedly toward college, which he is convinced - based on my censored accounts - will be the best years of his life. I hope they are instead just the beginning, an extension of what he remembers was a happy childhood.

I hope these two girls are just the beginning of a long string of friends and admirers he'll find along his way.

Irrationally, I hope that he breaks no hearts. Even more so, that his heart is never broken.

Joel, Part II

I threw back the covers, put on my bunny slippers, grabbed my car keys and stepped out into the night with Joel. So weary of his endless cries that I didn't care if my neighbors - certainly by this time awake and writing hacked-off letters to the HOA about my over-the-limit pet ownership, saw me in my oversized sleep shirt.

Joel hopped into the back seat and I slammed the door, started the engine and roared out of the parking lot. I drove deep into our neighborhood, up long, curving streets to the very highest point. Houses there are mini-mansions whose back decks overlook vast swaths of the city. (The views are beautiful at night, not so nice by day when you can see the twinkling lights are part of the security systems for the industrial warehouses below.)

Here, I stopped, reached back and opened the back door for Joel. He jumped out without hesitation and I hit the gas hard. I saw him in the rear-view mirror, giving chase, tongue lolling happily at what he seemed to think was a jolly game. Then he disappeared into the dark night as I zipped around the corner and down the hill, not going back the way I'd come but completing a circle that plunged me deep into the valley, past the neighborhood park and up a steep hill back to my door.

I was not proud of myself. But I was too tired, at that moment, to care. He was a friendly dog. Someone would find him. And it was a cool, but not freezing, night. If he had to stay outside for the few hours that remained until dawn, he'd be just fine, I told myself.

I rolled into bed, tried to put aside the image of his white body hurtling down the street after my car and closed my eyes. I began to drift.

There was a scratch at the front door.

I stiffened. It was a dream, I thought.

Four more scratches, in quick succession.

A pause.

Three more, accompanied by a soft cry.

I felt like a character in a Stephen King book as I stumbled to the door and opened it. Joel came running in, dancing across the tile and smiling up at me with eyes that clearly said, "I'm home!"

I was completely defeated. And soundly freaked out. If I believed in a Higher Power that directs every moment of our lives, I would have simply accepted that this dog was meant to be mine. It was almost enough to make a believer out of me. But not quite.

I invited Joel into my bedroom and closed the door. He sat down facing it and began to whine. I squatted next to him, swatted him hard on his spotted behind and said, "We will not be doing this! We will lay down and sleep!"

Joel did not utter another peep the entire night.

The next morning, I was awakened by the sense that I was not alone. I cracked one eye. Joel sat on the floor next to my bed, staring at me, looking as though he'd been waiting there for hours. He wagged his tail. I closed my eyes. Gently, he placed his front paws on the bed rail and licked my nose.

My heart softened. But I thought of George, and realized the four of us could never be a happy family.

I dropped Joel off at the animal shelter on my way to work. He pranced happily away with the attendant, and never looked back.

Disloyal, I thought. Just as well.

I jotted down his identification number in my checkbook and went to work.

Two days later, I called the shelter and inquired about #729026.

"Oh yes!" the attendant said. "He just went home this morning."

I thanked her, and as an afterthought asked, "Just out of curiosity, can you tell me the name of the street his owners live on?"

"Sure," she said. "It's Bluffside Circle East."

It was the very street upon which I had turned him loose.

I felt a pang of guilt, thinking that if he fled from his own house he must have been entrapped in a very bad domestic situation. Perhaps he had sensed my rescuer complex and come to me for protection. Maybe he had looked out the window one night and seen me walking by his house with Ally and George in tow. Maybe he'd thought, "My family is bad. That little family looks nice. The dog is unleashed. The lady is singing. The cat is fat and would be fun to chase. I will find them, and make them love me."

So he had. And I had yelled at him, turned him out into the night, pushed him out of my car and sped away, thwacked his bottom, yelled some more, then left him at the shelter. Maybe I'd shattered his faith in humankind entirely.

But I later unleashed those shameful thoughts. Because in retrospect, Joel seemed a little spoiled, a little overly certain of his appeal. He seemed like a dog well loved.

I search for Joel during my night-time walks around the neighborhood. I look into windows upon which the shades have not yet been drawn, hoping to see his blocky white head framed there, small brown eyes peering out at me. Most likely, however, I'll never see him again, since I had never seen him before that night anyway.

But maybe some day, he'll escape again and come scratching at my door. This time, I'll have no choice but to keep him.

Joel, Part I

I'm distraught at my absence from this site, which makes me realize I'm a blog addict. Be that good or bad, I'm resenting my primary employer for sucking the life out of me this last week. I've had no time to grocery shop, clean house or watch "Friends" reruns. In short, I'm a mess.

My first issue of Yoga Journal sits on the table where I threw it five nights ago, silently admonishing me to read it. The woman on the cover, standing with her back arched in a reverse C, head dangling to butt level and hands in prayer position is, I think, following me with her one visible eye. "Breathe deep," her eye says. "You've allowed your life to overtake your spirit. You've lost your Dristhi (a spirtual sounding way of saying 'focus'). Come back to center."

I silently tell her and her wandering eye to fuck off, that I don't have time to find my Dristhi. But I realize she's right, and that part of my Dristhi comes through this blog.

Nevertheless, the hour is late. An employee evaluation that I do not expect to be all wine and roses is set for tomorrow. A weekend story is due. So I'll post as best I can for the moment, by telling you half of the following story. It's a good one, so come back in a few days.

But I wonder, if I think hard and find my focus, can I write it upside down, in the throes of a backward bend like the Yoga Journal model? And if so, the bigger question: Will it make my boobs look bigger?

Joel

Joel didn't just come into my life. He slammed into it with all the force of a fire hydrant on legs. He made his entrance on a cool November night, a shivering bundle of white charging confusedly into the pool of light cast by my car’s headlights.

Joel - real name unknown - is a small, white terrier. He was running down the middle of my neighborhood's main drag. He ran straight and desperately at my car, as though it were a life ring.

I stopped and opened the door, and he leapt onto my lap, a solid body of about 30 pounds. He was mine, and I was his. I heard this in the unspoken determination he projected toward me.

From the backseat, my black Belgian Shepherd Ally leaned forward and sniffed loudly at the surprise passenger. She wagged her tail excitedly and did not growl as she normally did with strange dogs. The shaking young terrier, she quickly surmised, was no alpha.

He had a sturdy body, white with a couple caramel-orange Jack Russell-variety spots plopped randomly on his back, a block-shaped head, face covered in tight, white curls from which earnest, brown eyes peered.

His smooth white neck was collarless.

I would take him home for the night, I decided, and drop him by the shelter on my way to work.

Cute as he first appeared, I knew I could not keep him. I lived in a townhouse with a two-pet limit that sheltered my smelly shepherd, cat-dog George and two gerbils. Maybe the gerbils didn’t count, but another dog would definitely put me over the limit.

Naming him was dangerous, of course. But I couldn't block the thought that he looked like a Joel.

Joel, one of the assistant city editors at my office, is short, tightly wound, hyperactive and often brusque. His appeal emerges in unintentional flashes. Dog Joel was likewise compactly built, tightly wound and hyperactive. But he was determined to appeal. You would like him, damnit, no matter how much you resisted.

He walked into my house liked he owned it, the fear gone. I’d liked him initially out of sympathy. Now I liked him for his pluck.

Maybe I could find a way. He was, after all, a smallish dog.

But Joel squashed his chances in a nanosecond. He saw George, paws curled underneath his body, eyes slit in kitty bliss, relaxing on the doorside bench. Terriers are bred to hunt and chase small animals. George, who slaughtered full-sized rabbits and left me their entrails as morning back-door prizes, was decidedly not anyone’s prey.

He also did not offer a chase. He stared at Joel, eyes growing wide, but moved not a hair. Joel would have nothing to do with George's peacefulness. He jumped onto the bench, and George, with equal parts annoyance and alarm, ran across the room and onto the back of the couch - a place big dogs like Ally wouldn't venture. Joel did, leaping onto the cushions without pause.

I ran to the back door, opened it and set George free.

No one messed with George. Joel had sealed his fate. To the shelter he would go.

It was already late when we arrived home, past my usual bed time. I started my night time skin care routine, with Joel whining unceasingly at the back door. I asked him to be silent. He accommodated me for about 15 seconds.

I crawled into bed. He continued to whine. I read for a while, turned out the light, all the while accompanied by Joel's whines.

I was throughly annoyed. He now had not only upset my cat, but threatened to do the same to my sleep. Clearly, the gratitude he'd first shown when I'd saved him from the mean streets of our neighborhood had vanished.

He whined, whined, and whined some more.

I got up and opened the back door. Joel flew out into the night.

Problem solved, I thought. Some other neighbor would take him in. Lacking a cat, he would peacefully sleep in their warm home.

I began to drift toward la-la land. Joel yapped from outside. Once, then three times, then in rapidfire succession. They were the sharp, excited sounds that only small dogs can make.

Still, I waited. I live in a townhouse complex. At least a dozen people live and sleep within yards of me. Surely, one of them would awaken, step outside to tell the dog to hush, see his sweet face and invite him into their abode. In the next few minutes, I could wash my hands of him.

Ten minutes passed. My neighbors surely were all awake by now, but apparently no one thought the dog was homeless. Instead, they likely were lying there, fuming either to themselves or their bed mate about whomever had let their verbose dog out so late on a weeknight.

I got up, opened the door and let Joel back in.

I went back to bed. He resumed his post by the back door, and also resumed whining.

I tossed. I turned. And then I did something for which I am still ashamed.