I was about to leave her apartment when she took off her shirt and wrapped something around one of her breasts. She used something like a belt or a scarf. Or maybe a string, or a key chain with a snap.

She lay back on her wood floor, lifted her shirt and drew all attention in the room to her chest. See, I wasn't the only other person present. There was another man, a friend of ours, sitting nearby.

Anyway, she rolled up her shirt, grabbed the wrapping, and used it to define a soft circumference. Her effort didn't last long, though, because the circled area was basically conical, and no binding could grip it.

Even so, the other man freaked. He looked at her, then looked at me, then said, "I'm leaving."

"Don't do that," I said. "Stay and read us some more poetry."

We had been reading our journals aloud, see, before our friend had gone shirtless. The other man had read a poem examining "a single turd of the albino sea bat." The woman had expressed a yearning for leather, in the form of a motorcycle jacket worn by a stockbroker.

My journal entry had gone like this: "I was sitting with some boys, and we decided to compare our 'things.' The boy next to me took his thing out first. It was much larger than mine, but there was something wrong with it. It looked more like a lobster tail than a regular thing."

Anyway, on his way out the door, the sea-bat poet said to me, "Well, she's not pointing her nipple at me ."

"I see," I said.

I shook his hand good-bye. "I guess I'll stay," I said.

But I wanted to leave. "I can't stay," I said to my host, the woman with the breast.

"Why not?" she asked.

"I can't say."

"What do you want me to do, take a shower?" she asked.

"No," I said.

We were sitting on opposite sides of her tiny room-she on her fold-out couch, I on her computer chair.

"Why aren't you a programmer?" she asked. "Asians are supposed to be mathematicians, or scientists."

"To me," I said, "your computer monitor is nothing more than a smooth stone in a clear river under a blank sky. "

"I used to hang out with football players," she said. "Why am I spending time with you?"

"To hike and scrimmage?" I asked.

"Are you sure you're not autistic?" she asked. "I don't mean retarded, just mentally disabled. Lots of people who look and sound normal are actually impaired."

I picked up the wrapping she had used on her breast and grasped her wrist. Her forearm's pliancy, coupled with its convexity, sent a rush of enzymes to my brain. But instead of fainting, I began tying.

"Is this your idea of fun?" she asked.

I went a little dysfunctional with the wrapping. I calculated the length I needed for maximum security. I mapped the most efficacious topology. I engaged all of her extremities for radical strenuosity. Then I went back and double-checked my binding morphology.

"I have no thoughts, feelings or emotions," she said. "But you don't have to leave."

I ignored her nervously. I forgot about her unsuccessfully. I tried to be affectionate intermittently. Later, I slept fitfully.

Morning light woke me. I left as soon as I could do so discreetly.