Five Days of Winter.

The streets were quieter than they would have been a few months ago. That is the effect the winter has on our home. Everything goes silent. The infant's howl is replaced with the wind. The rustling of the leaves is replaced with the flapping of coats in the wind. People are more empathetic too, I feel like winter makes us realize we're all in the same boat, living the same lives.

Diana and I were sitting on the side of the street that goes down towards the Museum of Tibetan History. Diana was my most favorite of accidental friends. She had a little shop where she did something ridiculous with crystal skulls and encouraged people to join this cult that she called guided spiritual enlightenment (complete with a swami and everything). Her life choices would not have been mine but she was fun. She braided my hair and helped me dye them ridiculous colours, and she had an amazing sense of wonder. Whatever you wanted to do or believe, Diana would help and encourage. Even enthusiastically. She was twenty years older than me but she's probably still younger than I am.

She used to say I was terrible at rolling joints and it annoyed her so much that even though she didn't get high, she did it for me. That's what she was doing then. We were sitting together on a bench, each wearing one glove because I hadn't bothered to put mine on that morning, when I told her that I was bored. She looked up at me with a cocked eyebrow and then she looked up at the street. A man was walking down the street. He seemed like he had just come out of the book store but he had nothing in his hands. He was tall, and looked boyish even though it was clear he wasn't young.

"Go kiss him," Diana said without any enthusiasm and then she kept on rolling.

I don't know what happens to me sometimes. The power of suggestion is really easy to wield over me. Apparently all it takes is for it to be mentioned once. Or it did. At the time. I was young and nothing mattered except the next thing I could do. Didn't matter if it was a man or an art project. So I sprinted over to the tall boy and stood in his path. I gestured that he bend lower because he was too tall for me to be face-to-face with and also he was standing uphill of me.

"I'm going to kiss you," I said and then I did.

Just a peck. Just a little thing you do with friends.

"You taste like pot," he told me and then started to laugh, "Why did you do that?"

"You want to come meet my friend?" I told him holding his hand and pulling him as if I had known him forever.

When I got him to Diana I found out that she already knew him. Every goddamn person in that one kilometer radius knew Diana. I don't know how she did it. Maybe because she had been around so long. She knew more about those mountains than I did. She was already living there in the year that I turned five.
Diana introduced me to the man I had just kissed. I loved her, she was never appalled by absolutely anything. You could start fingering yourself in front of her and she wouldn't bat an eye.

His name was Jeremy and he was escorting his grandmother on her honeymoon. I was frozen solid because I never layer my woolens properly but hearing that melted me. Sometimes you find a little warmth in the winter instead of all the insulation we prefer. He told the shortened version of his grandmother and the love of her life who she met at 72 and the warmth in my heart melted the snowcaps. This is why I love my home. It equipped me with the skills to have nothing surprise me anymore but to expect amazing things from everyone. Every single person I met on those streets was ridiculous, and amazing.

There was the guy with two PhDs who repaired scooters for a living and harbored an extremely serious India fetish. When I was younger this scandalized me, I couldn't understand how someone could fetishize some seriously oppressive aspects of an entire country's culture, but for some reason I have met so many indiaphiles (a colleague taught me that, possibly made up, word a few months ago and then we played a game called "spot the indiaphile" for two weeks) that I've started to understand the allure of a mystical culture you're detached enough from to still be able to see the beauty in it. Indiaphile guy was married to a girl who was not Indian (but I have no idea where she was from), but she wore some pretty hardcore Indian jewelry all the time. She looked really pretty too. I think she was an escort and I think they didn't tell me these things because they saw me as a child still, or maybe they were ashamed because they thought I would judge them. I wouldn't because I was just happy to hear their stories. They were great people though. All of them. And so many more of them.

But Jeremy was the sweetest.

He asked me if I wanted to meet his grandparents and then he took me to the café where they were resting. He was so excited about them being there, and for some reason even excited that it was all so close to not happening but did anyway. Jeremy was goofy. He was a tall, lean, fit cuddle bear. I'm just trying to say he was hot and i already knew he was a nice guy, and i hoped he wasn't carrying anything dirty in his genitals so I was excited to meet his grandparents because I intended to fuck him later. I didn't expect to be emotionally overwhelmed though but I promise that you would be too if you saw two 75-year old newlyweds on their honeymoon with their grandson.

"I was married for 30 years before," his grandmother told me, "But until I met him, I didn't even know how amazing love can feel."

Jeremy adored her so much I could see it in his eyes. I don't know what he saw in mine but it must have been the right thing because we went back to the cottage they were renting almost immediately after that story. I don't know why but it all felt so loving. The passion of strangers combined with the comfort of two people who had been together forever. It was winter magic. Jeremy was the kind of lover you become after spending many years at a time pleasing the same woman. He was considerate. It was different and not even something i tend towards physically, but it felt right. Everything about him felt so right.

The next day we had a picnic and then met his grandparents at the monastery. They wandered off to see the doll museum which is equal parts beautiful and creepy while we played hide and seek in the open forest. Eveytime he found me, he made me cum. The last time one those little cones they use to collect resin from trees got stuck to my shirt and we got our fingers in all that dirty ancient resin and pretended our fingers were magnets. Later I tried to teach him how to use all the dry pine leaves to make a fluffy bed and he said the bed was pokey and that I sucked at making the bed. It was pokey. It always is. Even if you put a sheet on top. But it was still fluffy, which was all I promised.

And five days were all he promised.

I showed him my secret corner of the forest from where you could see the entire valley. The small stretch of flat land where I was going to build myself a house someday. There's a spa on that spot now. But Jeremy and i just made plans about what kind of house we would build. An entirely wooden structure that would wash away each monsoon. He'd go out to hunt, the animals would beat him up so he'd come back with food from the restaurant that was a few miles away. I would heat the food and tell him about my day of staring into the abyss while pondering the meaning of life. Then he'd put on a goofy woolen hat and we'd have sex to keep warm because we would be too poor to be able to afford heating.

It even rained while he was there and to date he's the only person who didn't hesitate to join me in the winter rain. Even Diana's whimsy ended at, "The rain will never make me sick," but Jeremy said it didn't matter if I got cold because he'd warm me right up when I did. And he did. We cooked together and he accused me of trying to kill him with chillies because I'm a con woman who was trying to rob him of his five sweaters and one woolen hat. I stole the hat and left a note posing as a con woman before he flew back home.

"We could keep in touch," he said as I was leaving.

"We won't," I told him, "You know that."

That conversation was a little heartbreaking, like the tiny house we were never going to have, but we had five days of magic in the winter.

A few days later Diana and I were sitting on the side of the street again.

"He had a really beautiful aura," she said to me, "I can't believe you just let him go."

"I'm supposed to throw away my real life for.. beautiful aura, Diana?" I asked her maybe even rolling my eyes a little.

"No, for happiness" she said shaking her head, "But we all know you prefer the pain, don't you?"

That was the great thing about Diana. She always understood. She thought beneath the winter magic there was the crushing blow that I was doing it for. She was almost right, but the pain of heartbreak is part of the magic. It's like the tiny bit of salt you put in the chocolate brownie. All the pleasure in the world is nothing unless tainted with a dull pinch.

Winter is a harsh time of year, but you learn to love it for all it takes away from you. And remember it, as magical