Gautami was neurosis personified. She wrote me unfinished letters filled with failed excuses, one about sitting in a plane, waiting to taxi - feeling like an anxious teen fumbling, feeling wrong, not about the flight, but about being, Itself. That letter is in a box somewhere, like everything else past.
She was into the Sciences, like I was into the Arts. The architecture of her world was framed with the I-beams of Depeche Mode and Cure lyrics.
She was spidery. I don't know if I've ever known anyone else who was. I guess that's one of those descriptors one can only use with any certainty about another person if one has shared a bed with said described. Actually, I've known another spidery person, but I'll save that for another time.
Gautami lived in Condoland, just down the hill from the university and up the hill from town, with Negin and Eli, two other Stevenson Kids.
There was this one time that they had a party; it may have been Gautami's birthday. I ended up naked, on Ecstasy in Gautami's bed, in handcuffs, Gautami placing me in compromising positions, Negin snapping photos. That was one of more than ten or twelve times during those four years that I found myself in situations that would forever extinguish any possibility of a future in politics. Mainstream politics, anyway. Cicciolina got away with the other sort, after all.
As soon as we started sleeping together, she became obsessive. She'd strategize and plot with Negin. I don't know what the master plan was, but the missions involved covert surveillance and seemingly haphazard (though strategically maneuvered) meetings in out-of-the-way places with Gautami or one of her operatives (usually Negin). I think the girl knew my entire Monday to Friday schedule, including my traffic patterns between home and campus, from class to class, bathroom breaks. I would do what I could to throw her off my trail at times, just to test her skill. She usually won.
Our planned meetings generally occurred at the Barson Street House, my place. She'd arrive, we'd hang out in the front room for awhile, smoke cigarettes, a little pot, talk a bit about nothing important. Maybe Mitch, one of my many housemates, would be around. He was into the Sciences, like Gautami, so sometimes they'd chat it up about topics like the molecular structures of psychedelic compounds.
The drinks would be flowing, as they always were. I probably would have had three or four before Gautami had arrived . Perhaps while she and Mitch caught up on the intricacies of the psilocybes, I would mix drinks or play dj or take notes in the House Journal.
Inevitably, several drinks and several bowls later, Gautami and I would end up behind closed doors. She was always on the sexual offensive, so she'd have my pants down and have me in her mouth before we'd been in my room two minutes. She used to say things like "Just because I can give head like a vacuum cleaner doesn't mean I love you."
There was a good month or so there where we never even had intercourse. It was just this strange arrangement. By the time she had at me, she was high and I was drunk. It was always late and we were on the verge of passing out.
We never saw each other alone during daylight. She never even betrayed that the way things had turned even bothered her. Then, one night, I was over at her place playing truth or dare with her and Negin and Eli. Gautami dared me to suck on a water bottle between Eli's legs for five minutes, timer going. The girls giggled knowingly, probably got some more pictures. Negin said something under her breath to Gautami like, "Now he knows how it feels." I heard.
We stopped seeing so much of each other after that. Things never really ended, but I stopped checking my back on campus, the late night phone calls tapered off - that sort of thing. | 
