I had known her years before. She was the class slut long before we knew the word slut, in an age when words like that were disappearing as a slumbering society awoke to new possibilities and began thrashing about aimlessly at all that smelled of tradition.

Her parents were swingers, a distinction also disappearing as group sex becomes a standard part of American life, but at the time it was new and daring.

I'd never forgotten her, even after almost thirty years. I didn't recognize her of course. From nine to nearly forty people don't age in ways that are obvious. Well, not most people anyway. Everybody recognizes me, but that's a different story.

I was sitting alone at the bar, some bar, any bar, after yet another failed job interview, not wanting to face the wife and kids, staring at the long lanky blond who was most decidedly not just any bartender, trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life, trying to figure out why the bartender seemed so familiar, thinking of all kinds of nasty things I could do with her.

Every time she turned her back I thought about how well her ass would fit back into my hips, and how cleanly my cock would slide up into her cunt as she bent over the bar in her starched white shirt with her long tangled blond hair spread out on the dark wood, fucking hard and fast out of sheer enjoyment, relief from boredom, and a temporary reprieve from the unforgiving future.

I must have been sitting there a long time, and my staring must have been obvious, because I suddenly realized that she was right in front of me, facing me, and staring back.

"Don't I know you from somewhere?"

Which was supposed to be my line, not hers, and coming from her it threw me, left me in the odd position of being without words, feeling naked. Damn. she was the one supposed to be naked. I hate it when the characters stray from the script.

OK, so maybe the fact that everybody always recognizes me isn't another story. Maybe it's this story. Maybe, finally, being recognizable after thirty-one years was about to prove itself useful and get me laid.

"I don't know," I finally answered. "Do you want to know me from somewhere?" Answer with a question. Answer with a question. The one truly good rule of flirting.

"I think I'd better" she smiled, "as much as you've been staring at me."

"You're kind of hard not to stare at" I answered, smiling back.

Which made her smile all the more. She almost tried to hide it. Thought about it. Didn't see the point. Gave me one of those little head toss, tongue-point, nibble on the lip numbers, turned her back on me and started rearranging glasses in the racks on her tiptoes, her tight ass wiggling temptingly.

It was the ass wiggle that did it. I remembered it from long ago from an age when girls weren't supposed to know such tricks, remembered her sashaying across a school yard toward me with a macramé sweater tied around her waist over her shorts like a long skirt, her legs emerging from under the sweater and then disappearing again. These were those legs.

I said her name then. She turned. Looked at me hard. "OK. So you do know me. Why the evasion?"

"No evasion," I answered. "My first thought when I saw you was that I wanted you bad. My second thought was that I'd wanted you before, a long time ago, and as we've been doing this little flirtatious dance I've been working on my third thought in the back of my mind, trying to remember what the first time was and what your name was because you didn't seem to be volunteering and I didn't want to kiss you before I knew your name, and that last little ass wiggle bought it all back with a vengeance."

She didn't answer that speech. Not verbally. Not at first. She just finished racking the glass in her hand, sashayed out from behind the bar, locked the front door, and walked to me, her hips swaying and her eyes ablaze.

My fourth thought was about the way our lives play themselves out in spirals and concentric circles, always returning to the days of our youth, ashes to ashes and dust to dust but never exactly the same in the reliving or the retelling, about the way her ass fit back into my hips, and how cleanly my cock slid up into her cunt as she bent over the bar in her starched white shirt with her long tangled blond hair spread out on the dark wood, as I fucked her hard and fast out of sheer enjoyment and relief from boredom and into a second childhood where employment was not required.