We are walking down the street to my house, our first BART ride together successfully behind us. We are glad to see each other - we've both been thinking about today for the last month - and even if all we could have done on our BART ride was sit close together and clasp hands silently, we would have been perfectly happy.

We cross the street and pass the Vietnamese restaurant on the corner. I say, "look, honey, Tay Huong."

She says, "Ooo."

I do not say, that's where we first met; we both know it. Later tonight we'll probably come back and get some takeout clay pot rice and lemongrass chicken to eat in bed but right now we want to get to my house. We are glad to see each other and intend to do a lot more than just sit close together and clasp hands silently, which actually is pretty much exactly what we did on the ride over.

Other things we've already done today:

Now we're back at my house and the light of the day is fading and it's just the right time to light a few candles so I light them. I ask her, how about some music? She says, OK, if you want. I stand in front of the CD rack and think and look and think and think and look some more and she says, fiddling with the second button on her sweater - she's already undone the top one - What are you doing?

I'm trying to pick just the right thing to put on, I tell her.

Why does it have to be just the right thing? she asks.

I turn to face her fully and say, It's not really our first time, but it is. And I think, we've made love before, several times, no, many times over the three-day camping trip where we got together and I remember the first time we did it and it was OK and I remember the second time and it was great and it was pretty damn good every time after that and then I went away on my trip and she came back home to wait a month for me to return and this really is the first time. Our first time in a real bed, under a roof, in a place that one of us can call home, but more than that this is the first time it's real, it's more than just a couple of people connecting randomly out in the woods, it's now Us and we've been away from each other and thought about each other and we want with each other, we know we want each other, we know we want to be with each other tomorrow and next week and after that and we didn't know that before I went away but every time we talked on the phone while I was away we knew it a little more and we know it now and that makes this the beginning, really the first time. And instead of any of this I just say, I want things to be perfect this time.

She says, Well, that's no pressure, and laughs. She calls me a goddam perfectionist and fiddles with her sweater button some more.

So I look back at the CD rack and I think about the morning I crossed western Arkansas and how I stopped at a rest area and called her, the first time I'd done that from the road, and we'd talked for a half-hour at crippling long-distance rates and when I hung up I felt so good I could just about kiss that glorious Ozark sun. And I'd gotten back in my car and driven further away from her, and put in a CD that perfectly echoed my feelings that bright humid morning and sung along with every song on it, even the ones I didn't like. Now I take out that same CD and put it in the stereo and press Play and walk over to the bed and with the third or fourth note she sighs and says, Oh god I love this album.

Well, I say, kneeling next to her on the bed, I made the perfect choice then.

She doesn't say anything but gives me a small, open-eyed smile that seems to say: I don't know who this man is but I think he'll do pretty damn well, all right.

The candles have burned a little lower and we've kissed and kissed some more and she starts to take her sweater all the way off and I say, Stand up. I want to see you do this.

So she does. Slowly. And I watch her for every second. Over the last month, I've thought about her body, viewed my memories of it in my mind from every angle, so thoroughly that it seems her body is no longer so much part of my memory as something I've seen only in my imagination. Like I never actually did see her naked before but wanted to so much that her glorious rosy-fleshed form somehow became real to me as I ticked the miles off, first going away from her and then coming back.

Her panties drop to the floor. I tell her, You're beautiful.

She grins and says, Your turn, handsome. And hurry up.

And then we are lying next to each other, just us and our skin, and we are kissing and touching, and then she is on top of me and then I am in her and her face is a mixture of pleasure and joy and sadness and pain and waiting and disbelieving the wait is over. I think she is going to cry. I think I might. I know in that moment what I want to say to her but I cannot say it the way I want. I am too afraid to say what I have felt all this last month, to tell her how I feel now. This is our beginning and I want to make it both of ours, neither mine nor hers but ours - this is what I tell myself to push away my fear.

And, as she slides all the way down on me, her eyes closed, I say to her, We love each other, don't we?

She nods at me, nods her head hard, her eyes still closed, like it would hurt too much to speak the truth but she has to say it in some way nonetheless. And she leans forward and puts her head next to mine and we are still for a few seconds, listening to our breath and our pulse and silently agreeing: no more words just yet, not like those last ones, they were the truth and they did hurt and we don't need them again, it's enough for us this first time, this first real time, to have barely spoken them once. What they mean, what they will come to mean, will follow later; this time is for our hearts to do most of the talking. This is what we say with no words, with our breath and our eyes and our delightful wet friction and our sighs.

Things get kind of hazy after this. We make love; I guess we come; we do it again and then we go out for the Vietnamese food and we make love again and then we get in my car and we drive back to her house. I already know exactly where it is and how to get there; I have put her address on postcards mailed from Nevada, from Kansas, from New York.

She says, yawning, It's cool that you know where to go without me giving you directions the first time you drive me home, and falls silent again.