I was thinking I had it all under control, my surprising magnetism with Nooshin.  We could maintain this cool friendship vibe, slaking my need for connection and the kind of conversations you think about long after you’re done talking.  I envisioned crossing the border that would separate my dissertation research in Tijuana from her marital denouement in San Diego.  We’d hit museums and go on hiking trips and do a lot of just hanging out.  Somehow she’d find a job and a better place to live than the Wagon Wheel Motel – with my help, since that’s the kind of friend I’m going to be.

Now it’s Monday morning in Koreatown, and my sardine can of a studio apartment feels half as big with twice the people in it, and this gets burned into my libido:

Nooshin with one hand on the curtain pull, suddenly transformed into my initial vision of a girl who belongs on the wall of a pharoah’s tomb, her sleepshirt rendered gauzy by the dawn.  She’s a willowy silhouette with narrow hips and the most exquisite legs, slightly flaring into muscle at the calf and upper thigh.

Then she pulls the curtain closed again and snaps into opacity, her pink sleepshirt a flat drape of fabric punctuated by the twin bumps of her nipples.  She covers the distance from the window to my futon in a single stride and crawls in from the foot of the bed, flashing pantylines – not the narrow dents of a thong, or even the asshugging outline of tangas or boyshorts or whatever Victoria’s Secret is calling them now, but just plain old hiphuggers, which somehow makes it even more erotic.

She sits cross-legged, bunching the covers around her waist, running fingers through her hair since I’m too bald to own a comb.  I’ve never seen her bareheaded before, never seen the way she looks with inky tresses spilling over her shoulders and down her back.  It’s a poignant intimacy – especially for her.  She’s too modest to meet my gaze, but she doesn’t turn away either.

This is my first chance to study her face since we met on Avenida Revolucion and she stared impassively at me across the DMZ of a concrete bench.  She’s been losing weight – not eating because of stress or finances, I suppose – which gives her the cast of a supermodel on cocaine.  Those cheekbones are steeper, that jawline sharper, and tendons stand out like piano wires in her neck.  But her lips are still as full as I remember, her skin as caramel smooth except where tiny scars ghost across her forehead.

Beautiful.  Nooshin is beautiful, there’s just no other word for it.  Even with that crooked wandering eye.  Especially with that crooked wandering eye.

I’m wound in my sleeping bag on the floor.  I screw my eyes shut.  I try to think about how much I hate the Los Angeles Lakers, now that they’re comprised of Kobe and his ego and not much else.  I try to worry about my personal safety in Tijuana’s drug war crossfire, a double dip recession-slash-depression, healthcare reform.  I try to zone out into nothingness.

But my libido is replaying that translucent sleepshirt scene, and every blood cell in my body is cramming itself into my dick, and I know I’ll be miserable until I can beat off in the shower.