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Page 18.
Chapter 8. The Story of H
 Probably the most exotic looking (and beautiful) woman that I dated among my older women was H, a 34 year old daughter of refugees from Tibet. She was fairly tall, and thin, and had this incredible face with high wide cheekbones. Her eyes were slitty and raised at the outer corners. Her mouth was small, her face flat, her skin like honey. She had a narrow, flat, high nose. I met her while working as a research assistant for the summer to an Asian professor of management and business. My job was to take in paragraphs and chapters of research results, organize them according to a sort of boilerplate model, and format them in Word in preparation for the printer.
H was a graduate student with degrees in Marketing (B.S.) and Business Administration (M.B.A.), working on her doctorate (D.B.A.). Like G, she was one of those misunderstood Asian-Americans who causes people to yell to be understood, or to speak in fake accents in the hope that someone they think has an accent will understand them. When H opens her mouth, pure American idiom comes out, and she can speak either Valley Girl or Harvard-Smart or the usual imitations of New Yorkers porking their korrs or Bostonians pahking their cahs.
H was kind of shy and quiet until you got to know her. She was born in Chicago after her father, a yak broker from Lhasa, and her mother, a housewife from a mountain village, had fled the Red Chinese. Both parents had made enormous sacrifices, living first in India, then in the U.K., and finally in the U.S. By dint of hard work, H's father had earned degrees and insinuated himself in the university system, where he became indispensible as an expert on carpets and textiles. Corporations paid him handsome sums for his knowledge, which involved Iranian and Pakistani goods more than Tibetan ones.
H had been raised in Catholic schools in Chicago and Canada, and now she was a 30-something woman with a divorce and a small child of mixed Tibetan-Italian-American blood. She was a sturdy, cautious woman, and it took her a while to warm up to me, but I sensed her interest in me. She would pass in the hall, while I worked at my terminal, and I could see her looking at me with interest. Maybe she didn't realize I saw her reflection in my computer screen, and she passed more often than one would normally expect. After a while, her lovely eyes had a certain wounded or vulnerable hunger, maybe just a curiosity like a huge itch, and eventually I decided to make contact. I did this one rainy spring day, when everything was that delicate spring bud green, and the rain rattled gently outside the windows. I maneuvered myself into a place of talking with her while we waited for a coffee pot to perk. A bit of casual banter, and she agreed to lunch sometime, and later a movie. Her violent ex was pretty much out of the picture, and her baby was safe with grandma, so for the first time in years she had some freedom and breathing room to explore the world for herself. At the same time, school was putting huge demands on her, even with the fact that her parents provided a monthly stipend. I think H needed a part-time, safe playmate of the opposite sex. Someone who had no agenda, was not threatening, was nice to her, and made her feel good. I was that playmate. As always, for me it was a port in a storm. I was choosy, yes, so not any port. This port, that H offered, was exceptional.
There were the usual lunches, dates, movies, flowers, bonbons, all the things people do to charm the opposite gender. H lived in a small house in the suburbs, funded by the university because they were chronically short of housing. Somewhere in that house, whenever she had me there, was a room with baby cribs and things, but the timing was always such that baby was absent when I was there. That suited me fine, because I was nowhere near ready to be a parent. First, though, we met out of town, secretly.
Intriguingly, H made good money on the side as a model in New York. What they wanted above all was the Kachina doll beauty of her face. She was in several perfume ads and some other things. I got to suck on her oyster. That was more than the rest of the world had from her. Her beauty, when skilled photographers applied makeup and lighting, was almost other-worldly. She was a true exotica. And yet the H I personally knew was a quiet, shy, vulnerable woman who had been maimed by an angry, violent divorce.
She liked to be held. The older woman is not always the nurturer. Sometimes it is the clumsy pup who is the nurturer. She had me meet her at this friend's apartment in a nearby city one day, when we had gotten to know each other a bit and she trusted me. (She thought I was too good to be true, but admitted later she was wrong in that sad little assessment. She said she didn't know men could be so nice.) She wanted me, for a lot of reasons, but was afraid of herself, her desire, the consequences, the violence of her ex, the disapproval of her parents. That was the reason for the secret assignation.
We had this nice apartment to ourselves. "Honestly," she said while spreading her long arms over my shoulders on the balcony at dusk, "I haven't been able to sleep well thinking of how this would be."
I put my hands on her fine waist and kissed her. "Listen, I've slept like a prince, thinking of what a wonderful fine woman you are and how privileged I am to have a little time with you. Do you have any idea what that means to me?"
She appeared a little dazed. "Does it mean that much to you?" Her tiny mouth hung slightly open with surprise, and her eyes signaled confusion (Tibetans' eyes don’t slant up, but tend to be narrow slits straight across).
I sat her down on a blond Dansk stool in the modern kitchen and explained the reasonable realities of life to her. We had a pan of steak, potatoes, and string beans in the oven. The skyline outside was just marvy, with stars over it, and a full moon to make us nuts. "I don't know what part of the Tibetan schema lingers in your brain," I said, "but this is America, and everyone is supposed to be free. I know we have a fascist pig for a president, and a bunch of criminal swine in Congress, but let's cling to the illusion or delusion of freedom, shall we? Baby, I demand that you be drunk with freedom."
She held a wine glass between her hands, and twirled the glass slowly on the thick glass counter. "I don't feel like much."
"Okay," I said, "the holidays are almost upon us. I have to help you feel better."
"Thank you," she said sincerely. After dinner, she said to me in a quiet moment when our heads were close together, "It means a lot to have you here, and just being nice to me."
"I feel the same way." It was the quintessential moment in my career as a lover of older women. There is a terrible truth at the heart of such relationships, which it is wise for both the woman and her blithering young stud muffin to understand. Almost every single one of these things is a fleeting moment in the great river of love that rushes unseen through the big city.
A wise Summer knows that she is but a port in a storm, and that her youthful movie star will in time settle with a girl his own age or younger. That fortunate (maybe) girl may even be less attractive. It can be the difference between having ten grand to spend on a car—do you buy a tiny new compact with rollup windows, ratty radio, and that new plastic smell? Or do you look around for a five or ten year old luxury car with electric windows, power everything, and a wrap-around sound system?
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