Phaedra, Mike, and scouting the photo shoot

One week left before classes start for the year. Phaedra is up from LA, sleeping in my spare room and visiting friends before she leaves on a trip to Costa Rica.

I got up, did a little extra cleaning, and drove to Kresge. Had to make a couple passes by the front gate because I wasn't sure if it was the front. I'd never been to the Kresge sub-college of UCSC before except to see Spike and Mike's Festival of Animation years ago. Odd how the campus is sectioned into these little kingdoms.

I parked in the lumpy too-small lot and began walking in. About 200 yards up a wide cement walkway channeling between rows of dorms, I ran into Mike and Phaedra walking arm in arm. Mike, a big man with curly hair, greeted me with a handshake and "Aaah, my Frank!" He had a toothy grin and I could tell he was in a good mood - broadcasting his usual kind of nimble intensity that tended to catch people's attention and make them think that something interesting was happening, or that if it wasn't, Mike would soon make it happen if they stuck around. Always the person most likely to follow through with creative plans, it made sense that he was in charge of the Rocky Horror performance this season.

Hearing his greeting, I thought, "It seems like I'm a shoo-in for the role of Frank. Wow!" It felt odd that he trusted me so much to do a good job, but I was eager to perform, and even though I had very little experience I definitely had clear feelings for how I wanted the character to come across. Those feelings would guide me; I was sure of it.

I hugged Phaedra hello. Short and curvy, with more swing in her hips than a whole Bollywood studio, Phaedra naturally drew attention, which she managed to hold lightly such that people fell into her orbit without colliding. A neat trick that she seemed to pull off by instinct alone. Case in point: I was here at Kresge to pick her up because I'd had a vision of her in a dream a while back, and wanted to recreate the vision by taking some semi-naked pictures of her in the woods -- and though Mike was her boyfriend, and my co-photographer Ken was close to her too, everyone was cool with this. I haven't met very many women who - without seeming to try - connect their boyfriends, ex-boyfriends, and potential boyfriends together into a group that hangs out on its own. Maybe I'm giving her too much credit, but ... even if she didn't deliberately make that happen, it would have been trivially easy for her to prevent it from happening. So some credit is due.

Mike walked us back to the van, gave Phaedra a final kiss, and watched as we drove off. Phaedra and I decided that our very first order of business was to check out sites for the photo shoot. We went around campus to a dirt turnout on the east side and I changed into my hiking shoes, and we began the walk down through the forest that would bring us to the park area known locally as Pogonip.

We passed around a gate that barred vehicles, and down a leaf-strewn road pressed into the hillside. Near the bottom we turned off the main path onto a switchback, and arrived at a charming natural spring. Water crept over the lip of a mossy cement pool and meandered along the ground between the redwoods, then over a shadowy ledge. Various people had fostered a menagerie of plants along the clingy shore, semi-local flora that I could recognize but not name.

I sat Phaedra down on a nearby bench made of logs and told her I was going to check the area out. Then I ran off into the woods, tromping around like a curious dog let off a leash. I hadn't done any forest tromping in about half a year, and it was fun to be back in the woods with a purpose. I looked in a million difference directions at once and found a couple interesting glades and angles. Kicked at the leaves a bit, in search of the right shade of ground. I was beginning to suspect that the right shade of ground didn't exist outside my dream.

When I got back to Phaedra she made a few suggestions for shot locations, including a root formation that she rather liked. We walked slowly out onto the fields beyond the forest, and found a hollow between some bushes that looked promising. We sat down next to each other and enjoyed the view, and talked casually about our relationships and relatives.

I told her I had something on my mind. She told me that she worked best when people were frank around her, and presented her with their thoughts directly. "Well," I said, "in the interest of being frank - har har, pun intended, because I'm going to be playing Frank - I should tell you that I'm a bit edgy. I kind of don't know where my limits are. Well, I mean more like where I want to put my limits, with you."

Phaedra understood immediately. She said, "Well, what I told Mike was, that if anything happens while I'm gone - I mean, if he does anything with some other girl - he shouldn't feel guilty about it. ... I don't want him to feel like he has to suffer and be lonely for my sake. We've both been in situations like this before, where the other person goes away for a long time, and I don't want him to be unhappy while I'm gone. So I said he should follow his urges and if anything happens we'll tell each other about it when I get back. Full disclosure; no guilt."

Her subject change was both clarifying and mystifying. I took the general feeling of her words at face value, and said "Well then. In the interest of avoiding guilt, I'm going to follow this urge then."

I stood up and moved over to her, then knelt down and laid on my side in the grass behind her, curling my body around hers with my knees on one side and my shoulders on the other. She smiled and pushed a hand into my hair.

We talked for a bit longer, more closely than before. I felt glad that I could still be as intimate with her as I'd been last quarter, and on a one-to-one basis instead of in a group setting. This was about where I wanted things. I got up when the grass became uncomfortable, and we brushed ourselves off and walked meditatively back to the van.

On the way out of the campus I popped in my Rocky Horror soundtrack tape and we sang along to the music. In Watsonville, I showed her the room she would be staying in, a large attic space running most of the length of the house, and she was delighted by the sloping roof and the large bed. There was no door on the room connecting hers to mine but that didn't seem to bother her.

In the evening we made beans and franks, and talked on. We'd had pretty good discussions through online channels before, but this was the first time we really met face to face in a room and just talked. It was great fun.

Since Mike was busy the entire next day, we decided to do some tourism and I suggested we drive down the coast. Before bedtime she sat on my lap and checked her email. We went to bed at the same time, her in the spare room, me in my own. I kept ranging slowly between calm and excited. Would something more intimate happen between us? I honestly didn't know. But it didn't have to happen the first day. For now we could go at any pace. I pushed my mind forward into sleep.