"Get an ice cube, Annie," Sam orders me half way through our long-distance telephone conversation. He's in luck, I have my ever-present glass of Diet Coke on my desk and there's fresh ice in it. Otherwise I'd have to unlock my door and leave my office, and somebody would be bound to want to talk to me and thus distract me from the deep sexual space Sam gets me in through his voice and his words.

"I have it, Sam."

"Lift your skirt, Annie."

To surprise, to excite, to believe in; these are the things a good lover must do. Sam knows. Some days I think Sam is the biggest surprise of my life, though I may just end up being the same to him.

"What are you wearing underneath your skirt, baby?"

I'm a grown woman, yet he can make me giggle like a schoolgirl. I have a client coming in half an hour and he knows I'm dressed for work, but he's right, I'm never straight underneath. I lift my long black skirt.

"Red lace, Sam, darlin', only my short red lace slip. No stockings. My black lace-up espadrille sandals. Nothing else."

"Perfect. Put your feet up on your desk and spread your legs."

I always do exactly as Sam asks.

"Close your eyes, Annie. Now touch the ice gently to your pussy, yes, yes...now move it up to your clit and tell me what it feels like."

I've waxed off all of my curly black pussy hair for Sam, which makes me incredibly vulnerable to every sensation. The ice feels sharp. Cold. Intense. Fantastic. "Oh, Sam, it almost feels hot. Intense, too intense."

"Good," he says. "Now, slide the ice down and slip just the tip of it inside of you and hold it there."

I raise my skirt a little higher so I can see this. The ice cube starts to slide in so easily, wet on wet, and it's starting to melt from my heat and—

A knock on my office door.

"Oh god, Sam, there's someone here." I pull the ice away and try to gather myself.

Nobeko, who works down the hall, is at the door asking to talk with me. I tell her I'll be right there.

"I wish I were rich," says Sam, "and then I'd hop in my Learjet and be there tonight to finish you off right, Annie. As it is, I have to fly coach to Seattle on assignment. I'll call you later. I love you, baby."

We say our good-byes, I rearrange my skirt, plop the ice back in my Diet Coke and wonder why it's so hard to find enough time and space in my life for the things that matter, for magical sexual moments that may never come again. I think about Sam wishing he were rich. What's rich? I know a few things, and I know that real worth is only found in love and friends and laughter and the art of living for today. Being rich is not any better than having great sex, in my overheated opinion.

On the other hand, poverty sucks. It says so in every single edition that I own of the Kama Sutra, not far from the chapter on sucking cock. Poverty is an obstacle to great sex, to ethics, to virtue, and to having Big Fun, it says, sort of. "Morality is a luxury which poor people can rarely afford" is closer to what Vatsayana actually said, and if this guy could come up with sixty-four different combinations of oral sex, I'm pretty sure he knew the score on most everything else.

Nobeko wants me to come downstairs, where we're working on the plans for my secret dream of a sexual space, which we both think beats talking about work most any time.

"Annie," Nobeko says to me as we browse through one of my twelve translations of the Kama Sutra, "don't you think remodeling this whole room the way you want will be too expensive?"

I look around at what used to be the huge, bare, white basement room of our offices and I laugh. "This kind of ugliness shouldn't have existed in our world, darlin'. Especially when there's a stairway up to the beautiful walled garden. Keep going—make it a pleasure room built to the letter of the Kama Sutra."

I can't help it—I need to have a serious erotic space of my own, and I might as well make it a space I can open up to friends when I want to. Sort of my own little Sin Den right here in Boulder. There are sixty-four arts for living right and getting sensual described in the Kama Sutra, but none of them ever mention how to get away from your kids and your work in the first place. I need to find more big empty white spaces around the edges of my life in which to play and laugh and love and dance and focus on the things that matter. And, I swear I'm going to put a private line in this room and label it "for phone sex only."

People often think that the Kama Sutra is just about sexual positions, but it encompasses all the sensory pleasures of daily life—good food, silken clothes, perfumes, music, painting, gardens. Somebody should revise it for the twenty-first century—how to live a sensual life while staying in the thick of everything that matters; how to make each day voluptuous from start to finish. Of course, we'd have to update instructions like Art #48—decorating chariots with flowers.

"I can't wait to start having parties here. And to find out what your idea of this 'Better Than Sex' party might be," Nobeko says.

I laugh. I've worked with Nobeko Graham at the East/West Boulder Health Center for three years now. She's a masseuse and a fourth-degree black belt in aikido but a wanna-be architect/designer. It seems that all the people I know over the age of thirty want to be something other than what they are. Even my tax-lawyer told me the other day that he wants to move to Hollywood and become an actor. Personally, I just want to memorize the eight ways to suck cock from the Kama Sutra and then try them out all night, slowly, on Sam. That's me, Annie Braverman, naturopath and mother, but wannabe casual courtesan.

Casual:
The casual touch of fellatio is Method #1—Nimitta. Clasp the cock with one hand, bring the lips close, cover the end with your fingers collected together like the bud of a flower, press the sides of the cock with your lips. Casual is the touch on the tip of your tongue, but "casual" should not be a word anywhere near the tip of the tongue of the suckee.