Table of Contents

Jaz

Under her spell. When I moved out of my marriage the first thing I did was to go dancing. I was physically and emotionally exhausted from the move, but something in me could not rest. My wife had lost interest in dancing years before and I had not been allowed to go dancing by myself or with anyone else. So I was absolutely starved for dancing. I feverishly craved dancing at that moment. Falling in love was nowhere on my agenda. But Leela had other plans. I moved out on a Friday. Saturday night I went dancing at The Little Red Hen, north Seattle's token cowboy bar. Very low on my venue list, with a jammed dancefloor that drunk rednecks often spilled beer on, but I was in heaven. I danced with anyone. I just wanted to move to music with a girl in my arms. At the end of a song I was walking off the floor and I saw dark eyes flashing at me. If that sounds like something out of Scheherazade you're onto something.

Jaz had been watching me and the way she looked at me as I walked off the floor was hypnotic. I was transfixed. Now I know she was just giving me her best mirada. I asked her to dance like a moth to the flame. I was under her spell from the start.

Close and slow. She nodded yes and we waded into the crowd. Wouldn't you know the next song was a buckle polisher and we were dancing close and slow. She danced like I never felt anyone dance before, alive and fluid in my arms. Jaz was an elite tanguera, and the way she moved her body was new to me. By the time I left that night I had her first and last name on a scrap of paper, along with her email. That was not at all her SOP, as I found out later. She had a pseudonym she used for dancing. No one even got her first much less her last name. No one got her email. She had chosen her next victim, and he couldn't be happier about it.

Getting lost. Jaz and I became lovers and it was a bad idea. I wasn't looking for a lover that night. Neither was she. Jaz was looking for a fling. She had a history of flings. It was a bone of contention in her marriage. To Jaz a fling meant getting lost with someone. Her poster boy for getting lost was Chet Baker. Who else?

Chet sings Lost in each other's arms. For Jaz that meant dancing and hanging out in dives like Lake City's Back Door Pub (click through the photos to get a real feel for the joint) listening to blues or jazz. Sex was more something hinted at than enacted. Maybe making out in the depths of a dark booth. I was the one who insisted on sex, not knowing any better. Our sex, what little we had, was harsh and painful. There was no tenderness. Drugs were the other key element in getting lost. We all know what Chet Baker used to get lost. Jaz used booze. Between the booze and the dives and the crappy sex she wore me out. But she woke up my desires so long dormant in my loveless marriage. That's why Leela got me out of the house that night and made sure the two of us met. Now I was really ready to fall in love, and when Cindy came along it happened just like that.

Stood up. I hooked up with Cindy while I was still awkwardly struggling to keep my affair with Jaz going. Jaz wanted us to go get lost together in a dreamy alcoholic haze in some dive, but she absolutely did NOT want to be in a relationship. She was married with kids, and she'd had an affair with a dance partner before; it was a bone of contention. Our non-relationship was driving us both crazy. Newly freed from my miserable marriage, I was starved for love and I had fallen for her hard, and I felt a strong response from her that I interpreted as love. But she was conflicted because of her history, and it made her run hot and cold: she was totally unreliable. The crowning moment came on New Years Eve 2008. We made a date and it was all worked out on her end; she was free to spend the evening with me. She was going to meet me at Highway 99, our favorite dive. I arrived a little early to save us a table, totally chuffed. I was going to have someone to kiss on New Years! She never showed, she just stood me up. Never called or texted, never responded to my increasingly frantic calls and texts. I didn't hear from her for several days after, and even then she refused to talk about it. New Years Eve was the culmination of a whole series of similar episodes. When she felt conflicted, she ghosted. New Years was the final straw for me. I was done, ready for this to be over. But when I tried to break up with her she freaked out and showed up outside my window in the wee hours even though she had a key. She wouldn't break up. So I went looking for Cindy.