When we talked the first time, she quoted, or sang, a line from Mike Doughty’s song Rising Sign.

I’ve seen 

The dangers of your rising sign, 

But I swear 

I’d like to drink the fuel straight from your lighter

It’s all inside the wrist, 

It’s all inside the way you time it 

I resent the way you make me like myself

She said it was how she felt when we started an email dialog.

She mailed me about a story I wrote, which she’d been asked to approve for publication on a site she managed.

She read it with low expectations. But when she mailed me, it was with entirely something else. I’d made her feel something, both as a writer, and as a person, which she hadn’t expected. I got to her, inside the armor, an arrow to the heart feeling.

We exchanged a dozen or more emails over a couple of days. And then she said she had to stop, that it’d gone too far already. Not sexually, but emotionally. She’d gone from liking my writing, to liking me, to something – something more than just liking, which she wasn’t ready to have happen.

I’m good at this. I backed up, told her I could stay in safe territory, but I liked her, and didn’t want to stop talking. The dialog was too good to just end.

That was it. My knowing how to stay outside a boundary, allowed her to extend, then retract, certain self-protections. By honoring the boundary, I removed it.

She wanted to call me then – she was a phone girl. always, phone first, writing second. She’d done voice work for a living, did for many years.

I looked forward to a call, even though I’m not a phone guy. She was too funny, too clever, I knew a call would be fun.

I expected a tough broad voice, not the velvet teen seductress I heard on the phone. Not that she was young, but she had what I always think of as an ‘is your mother home’ voice – the one where callers always used to assume you’re the kid, even when you’re a grown adult.

Her name was Pam. If you knew her, you may have known her with some other name. She went by PJ, only friends and family knew that.

She made me awkward, at first. I liked her so much, I was afraid I’d say something stupid, or start to take the conversation in a dirty direction, though as it turned out that would never, ever have been a problem. 

She quoted the line from Rising Sign then, told me that’s how my writing made her feel. 

My nerves jump like a boiling pan, 

Like a skillet full of oil spits rattling on the burner, 

When I stumble onto the thought 

Of the match you lit and dropped 

And set the dial to slow yearn

Can I spell it out? 

Should I spell it out?

I’d asked her, earlier in email, about those strange places that are unexpected erogenous zones – she’d said the inside of her wrist. The line from Mike’s song, It’s all inside the wrist, was where her brain started down that track, connected the song to me and my writing.  

It’s all inside the wrist. It made me want to touch her hands, to kiss her palms. I still want that. 

That was 25 years ago, that first conversation. Our email exchange started in late November 2003; I still have those emails, saved every one. Three days later, that first phone call. 

By the middle of December she had my heart, and I had hers, both of us knowing that was forever, no matter that she lived 3000 miles from me and that for far to many reasons to write here, she couldn’t ever meet face to face.

It turns out that forever meant 7571 days; she passed away, of some surgical complication I have no details of, on April 20, 2025. 

That’s how long she loved me. 

How long I’ll love her, is a number tallied only when I am in the ground, so we don’t know how long my forever will be. 

The story that started this – a novella about a girl who was unattainable, a man whose desire was so intense it almost killed him, and in the end, did kill her, and and an ache that will never go away, was written before I met her. That novella, and the girl at the heart of it, was named Wanton, because I had a dream where I met a girl with that name. 

A year or two ago, I re-wrote much of that story, but there’s one more change it needs now, which I’ll make as soon as I can do it without tears. 

It will be a dedication:

For PJ. 

You will always be my Wanton