Seattle – 1993

Gina slides off the bed and moves to Ash, running her hand up Ash's leg, collecting the big smear of semen across her fingers. We watch in amazement as she jumps back to the bed, resumes her seat and begins licking and sucking my jizz off her fingers like a girl eating cotton candy at the fair.

Our frozen tableau could not be stranger. Ash's foot is up on the arm of my chair. I am seated but bent over, look through her crotch at Gina. Ash above me, hands on hips, staring gobsmacked at Gina as she finishes her snack.

Gina giggles, "You two seemed to enjoy it, so I thought I might as well try some. It's kind of tasty, very smooth............."

Her laughing stints over the past hour have had slightly manic tone to them and this most recent action is not consistent with the woman I have come to know. I seek some sort of reaction from Ash........but Gina continues.

She becomes very serious, instantly jettisoning the giggling come gobbler persona.

"Okay, we all know I only have one tattoo and it's nothing compared to you two. Tom, I know you are curious, so come on over and have a look. And when you are done, please know that I wanted you to really see and know me better."

I have no idea what she means and while still enthralled by this woman I have become a bit concerned with her mood swings taking place since we initiated our triad an hour or more ago.

I get up and walk over to the bed and look down at her. Her predominantly bare, un-inked skin such a contrast to Ash.

"Go on, you can get close, I trust you, I want you to see."

I am now kneeling between her legs. I can smell her fecund richness, it stirs me, but is overridden by her change in demeanor and the knowledge that there is something special about to happen. Something more than I currently understand.

While just one piece, her tattooed fire covers a vast area surrounding her vulva. Across and through the seam of her thighs, it then roars up in a wall of flame. For a first and only tattoo, it involved some real pain. Her labia are tattooed all the way around the curve of her lips to where they fold into her. Like Ash and I, it continues down around her cleft and onto her perineum. The flames then rise and spread up to a point just below her navel and across her entire pelvis.

What I originally thought was Japanese hand work is most definitely all machine work, but by someone very familiar with the Japanese tattoo ethos.

The grey work that I previously thought were smoke and wind, reveal themselves to be faces of torment and anguish. There are least two dozen of these images. The machine touch is obvious in the details that hand work could not achieve at this size.

It's like a tattoo amalgam of Edvard Munch and Hieronymus Bosch and deeply disturbing. I take a deep breath and continue my examination.

As I start comprehending what I am seeing, I feel Ash's hand settle on my shoulder........... All the images are of Gina. Some are young, some current, some are her as an older woman, but they are all definitely her. There is one halfway between her mons and navel that has a glimmer of color........blue........ in the grey washed eyes. That one is not in torment or anguish, but radiates a sorrow that catches in my throat.

I don't know what to say and say nothing.

Ash's hand squeezes my shoulder.

I look up at Gina, leaning back on her elbows, tears quietly streaming down her face. The same face, same sorrow in the face I just saw in her ink. There is a silence around her and a distance. She seems to have departed.

Ash urges me to my feet and somehow, I know to simply follow her lead.

We help Gina to her feet and the three of us walk to the open shower area where Ash turns on the faucet. Ash and I wash Gina, Gina and I wash Ash, the girls wash me. Not a word is said.

We towel each other off in the same way. When we are done, Gina walks up to me and says "Tommy thank you so much and I am so sorry. I hope this doesn't hurt you and I am sorry we never got to your issues." With that she walks over to the bed and curls up in a fetal position, holding a pillow.

I look at Ash and she shakes her head. The two of us dress in silence. Ash drapes a blanket over Gina. Then we head out the deck door and down to her F 250. It's perfect Ash, jacked up onto offroad Fox competition shocks and springs. She cranks it over and we crunch over the gravel as she three points us around and out of the drive, heading back to the city.

I want to scream out 'What the fuck was that?' -- I want to accuse these women of being head fuckers to the extreme -- I want to unremember watching a joyous goddess melt away in front of me. But I hold my tongue, because as much as I don't understand it, I know it is real and not some game. I saw real pain.

"She has never shown herself to anyone else that way before. Three people have really seen that saddle. Me, you and the artist who did it. You can't read her fire unless right up on it. That is the true G, that is the weight she carries. She has been through more shit in her lifetime than anyone I have met and yet she remains the bravest person I know."

"But she seemed fine, even more free only moments before."

"Tom, she is bi polar and the peaks and valleys can happen in an instant."

"Is she safe back there alone?"

"Yes. Self harming is not an issue with her. I think tonight she went so high that she simply ran out of gas. You really made an impression. You are all right!" Ash punches me in my bicep hard enough to knock me into the door, it's going to leave a bruise for sure.

"So what else is this about, especially the male thing."

"She told you about Japan?"

"Yeah, she ran an ad agency or something."

"She ran an ad agency and was making stupid money and wielding a lot of power for a woman. Especially a round eye woman in Japan. And she was having a good time doing it. We would go out at night in Roppongi and pick up boys and girls and it got pretty freaky. Yeah, she was still trying out men a bit at that time. A lot of that was my fault. We weren't in a committed relationship yet and I have my own issues."

"Anyway, the scene we ran in was pretty deeply underground, and we were super discreet. You know Japan. I would cover up completely and we both had beards. But somehow, local boss found out and was turned on by it all and wanted to join in. She was polite and sweet, but firm with her NO. You should see her in a business suit, she is really something. We thought it was all done and sorted."

"Ash, this is starting to get dark."

"No shit, he essentially kidnapped her. Apparently her refusal was so emasculating to his fucking Japanese male ego that he kidnapped her and held her for a week. She had no meds and went on a boom zoom roller coaster while being raped by him and his two man security detail."

"He told the agency staff she was on a business trip in Korea. I was back in the states and began freaking out when I couldn't reach her. After four days, I jumped on a plane and got back the day before they dropped her at her flat in Shibuya. It took five days for the lithium to balance her and her anti psychotics had to be re-evaluated as she couldn't stabilize."

"She was pretty raw. They worked her pussy and ass really hard, no visible bruises outside her genitals. The worst part was they broke her. They broke this fucking chimera of a woman. Those fucking assholes broke her. Someday, I will kill them, I promise you."

"Did she press charges?"

"They douched her before dropping her off, and I could not get her to make sense for days anyway. I thought it was stranger rape for over a week. This guy's brother has a seat in the Diet, no one was going to touch this or help us. They quietly released her, she got a substantial parachute and moved back here with me."

"Tom, that was three years ago. She has been doing a lot of writing and she asked to join me for a live sex show in San Francisco about 6 months ago. The first time she got really drunk and I had to bring in another girl and plant her in the dressing room. The second time, was pretty cool and she seemed to enjoy it. But I didn't and stopped it. That's when she accepted the offer for an article on me and the other girls."

"She's a quick study and could see that most of us are A personalities and truly control the men on the other side. I think she thought she could use that to get past what had been taken from her. She goes down and works the afternoon shift where the saddest, lamest, customers show up -- sorry, Tom -- and has been trying to claim it back. I know this must sound fucking insane, but she's a complex gal and I support her trying."

"There are a lot of faces in those flames, I am sensing there is more."

"Yeah, there is a lot more, this woman is like a pack mule of sorrow. She made a lot of money in New York, made a boatload in Japan and we easily pay the bills between her writing and my work. But she doesn't need any of it. Our Gina is an heiress and never has to work again if she doesn't want to."

"She inherited a fortune when her parents passed away in a plane crash. It was before Japan, before me. And the cost of that was far more than her Japanese boss. Her father abused her from the time she was 8 years old. It continued until she went away to college. She has had a lot of therapy and that's how they caught the bi polar condition. Her therapist told her she was probably looking for Daddy in the Jap boss and that's how she let him get too close."

The little differences in what Gina told me and what Ash is now recounting speak of someone deftly hiding their wounds, their anguish.

I sit there, watching the headlights cleave the blackness as we head north, the skyline of Seattle, shining brightly in the summer night. I am stunned, infuriated and consumed with caring for this woman, knowing all I got was this brief window. Ash driving me home is the end of the story for me, I mean, where would it go? Where could it go?

Ash leans over and rubs my left thigh. "Hey man, don't be sad, you got to meet her and she really let you in, all the magnificence, all the light, all the warts, all the weakness, all the wounds. Most people just see the brilliant, radiant woman I seated next to you at the restaurant. Everyone falls in love with her. How could they not!"

"That stone piece in the shop, that's her isn't it?"

"Yeah, the pieces are a pair and part of an installation I am doing for the Bank of Canada. It's my biggest commission to date and I am so stoked that she and I will dominate a plaza in downtown Vancouver."

"You?"

"That metal mess is going to be a sea eagle, about to light onto her outstretched hand............. Yeah, I know, a bit presumptuous of me...........

"Not presumptuous at all. I can't wait to see it one day."

We drift into talk about working with stone, which I know nothing about. Ash comes alive describing the differences between stone work and metal work.

With her metalwork, she can define the outcome in absolutes and go back and re-phrase something if it does not suit her.

With stone, it dictates by color and strata what she can achieve and there are no do-overs. She re-qualifies the do-over statement and acknowledges that you can but it always diminishes the size of the piece and frequently the voice.

I can't help but think of the parallels in the media used for her expression of each of them.

Ash, the tough, resolute raptor. Adaptable to her core.

Gina, goddess, but formed from complexity and worn away by the forces surrounding her.

We pull up at the Olympic, Ash's jacked up 4WD in absolute juxtaposition with the Mercedes and Ferrari sitting at the valet stand.

Ash has already gotten out of the truck and waved off the valet before I can get out of my seat belt. She comes around the front of the truck. I jump down to join her.

She reaches up and puts her palms on my shoulders.

With our height disparity of nearly a foot, we look a bit ridiculous. She looks at each arm and curses, "Fuck It" and jumps up wrapping her arms around my neck and legs around my waist.

She then turns her head back to the two valets whose mouths are hanging open "This is not what it looks like."

Turning back to me and holds my face in her hands, while leaning back into my arms, my hands clasped behind her back. "And you and I know that better than anyone else, don't we. You can't judge a book by its cover. I am going to stop making assumptions about folks by what they wear."

Laughing, I respond "And I'm going to stop going to peep shows."

"Good idea -- But when you get the urge to perform, because you will.....hire a dom instead."

"Ash....................."

"Don't............. this was a truly special evening, but let's keep it sacred, we both know it can't be anything more." Her eyes are brimming with tears but she won't let even one roll free.

She pulls herself against me and squeezes me tight.

Then she unwraps herself from me and hop drops to the ground. "Show's over boys." She cracks to the valets as she heads around the front of the truck. I watch the top of her head bob along the hood and then the door opens. She climbs up on the running board and looks over at me one last time with a grin.

Putting on her faux British accent at full voice, she sends it booming off the windshield and the glass porte cochere of the hotel entrance

"You're a bloody good bloke, Mr Tom Davies and let no man jack say different."

With that, she swings into the cab, shuts the door and drives away.

In my room, a dozen transcriptions of phone messages have been slid under my door. I throw them all onto the desk and lie down on my bed feeling unbearably lonely.

I begin crying for the broken woman I fell in love with and whose path back to any light is going to be long and arduous.

"............ because we haven't even gotten to that broken part of you yet................. I hope this doesn't hurt you and I am sorry we never got to your issues."

Her final gifts to me.

I realize that free of a crippling mental disorder and a horrid past, my path into light, is simply up to me.

Later that night, I discover that I left The Monkey Wrench Gang at Gina and Ash's home. I figure I'll pick up another copy one day, but for now, Bella, Doc and Seldom Seem are no longer the most unique trio on my horizon.