I am lying in his bed, sprawled Marilynesque across the sheets. I want to stay in this moment. A naked moment.
But then he says the words that blur my nakedness into invisibility.
“You are so hot.”
Hot. The one word that makes my skin turn cold.
I take a deep breath, and my heart furls up like a scroll. I remember we have only been dating for four months. Of course, he only sees the casing and not the meat inside.
“Hot is not a compliment,” I tease. “Nothing in life stays hot. Even fire eventually turns into cold, lifeless ashes.”
He silences me with the look he always gives me when I am acting too philosophical. But the philosophers knew how to ignite passion.
Plutarch called the mind “a fire to be kindled.”
I want to burn brighter than hot.
It’s a Saturday night, and we are dancing at our favorite salsa club. He tells me again I look “hot.” I bristle and deflect with humor.
“Beautiful,” I can work with. But “hot” is beauty’s whorish sister.
Later in the evening, I am at the bar taking a break. A well-dressed man approaches me.
“I love how you dance,” He says. “I can tell by how you mirror your partner…you can read people.”
I thank him for the compliment, and the usual small talk follows. Then he smiles, raises his drink, and tells me to have a wonderful evening.