Going with Clarissa was like teaching yourself to parachute. Exhilarating, but also very unnerving. And darn complicated.

A friend of mine set me up on a blind date with her, saying I was moping around too much, six months after I'd ended my first "grown-up" relationship -- you know, the first one where the main reason we broke up wasn't that one of us had gotten sick of "our song." Bobbi and I had been together for three years and we'd split when I got tired of asking her to marry me.

Clarissa, this friend said, would be the perfect antidote, someone who would get me out of my oh-my-god-I'll-never-get-married funk. I thought he meant I'd realize I could still be attractive to women.

On the very first date, all my friend told me was that Clarissa was about my height, raven-haired, and would be wearing red.

So I'm standing in the lobby of the Chastain Hotel, which looks like every one of the five diamonds it gets, scanning the lunch crowd nervously. I see berry-red pantsuits, blood-red jackets, brick-red blouses, and even a crimson sun hat. And all of them with dark hair.

But like they say in the old war movies, you never see the one with your name on it.

I had just about convinced myself that one of the pantsuits was my date when a hand flew out from behind and spun me around. I barely had a second to notice the fire-engine red vision -- from 4-inch fuck-mes to micromini to spangly tube top to blazing lips -- when those lips were plastered to mine and my tongue was going best two falls out of three in a wrestling match. Whoever this woman was, she certainly seemed friendly. Her body was pressed to mine tightly, nipples poking my chest, one leg wrapped around my thighs. Her hands gripped my head, pulling me into the long, long kiss. There have been boy bands whose entire teenybopper-blessed careers haven't lasted as long as that kiss.

When she finally let me gasp for air, she shoved one hand onto my crotch and checked out my burgeoning hard-on.

"You'll do," she said, pulling me by the belt toward the hotel restaurant.

"I'll do what?"

The woman in red looked exasperated. "It's a first date," she said. "I won't know that until dessert, at least."

"But you don't know who I am, do you? I sure don't know you."

"I'm Clarissa," she said. "And if you're not the guy I was supposed to meet, who cares? You still give good tongue, and the rest of you seems glad to meet me."

It quickly became apparent that my buddy had not been concerned about anything as pedestrian as my self-image. He had diagnosed me as too boring and had a precise prescription: sex and thrills. At the same time.

Clarissa all but raped me that first day. I was pulled along in her wake into a torrid affair. Meals and the theater and such were just things to do in between fucking. And it was indeed fucking. No pretense of "making love" for Clarissa.

Nor was simply falling into bed good enough for her. At first it was things I could handle, like hot kisses in the theater lobby at intermission and the missionary position on her kitchen floor. But more and more, her passion for public displays of affection intersected with her passion for passion.

We took a flight to Hawaii: She blew me in the bathroom. We got to our condo: She had me pump her on the patio; I was actually grateful we'd gotten stuck on the top floor. Late one moonlit night she found an empty stretch of beach: We had sex on the sand.

Increasingly, sex on a bed was too mundane for her -- unless the bed was set up in a furniture store at noon on a busy Saturday. (No, we didn't -- but she did give me a handjob in the religion aisle of a Barnes & Noble one slow Sunday morning. I swear you could hear the gates of heaven clanging closed.)

I am not a prude, and Clarissa was definitely worth the risks. But I started to balk at some of her more flamboyant ideas. Yes, I crawled under the table at my cousin Eddie's wedding and chewed Clarissa's cunt -- Eddie's mom never liked me anyway and she'd stuck me in the back of the hall with the bride's stepfather's second wife's nephews and two couples who vaguely remembered having known Eddie at some summer camp. And yes, Clarissa and I did do the horizontal rhumba on a gurney in an emergency room after she'd cut her leg slightly trying to climb out onto a rocky ledge overlooking the local monastery.

But I drew the line at tit-fucking her in a rowboat at the park lagoon. (I tried to use the excuse that I can't swim, but she pointed out that the lagoon's only two feet deep.) And I absolutely refused to do a 69 in the glass elevator of our big local mall on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

"You're no fun anymore," Clarissa said with a frown. I was afraid I was losing her, and I wasn't sure if that would be a bad thing or not.

Because Clarissa's penchant for public pubic activity was getting awkward, and we didn't have anything in our relationship but sex -- but that sex was amazing.

Clarissa had a body that would have made the Pope sweat. She's the only woman I've ever seen who had a figure of Barbie-doll proportions: long, long legs, a tiny waist between moderate hips and big tits that defied gravity. Her oval face rode atop a regally long neck. Throw in bee-stung lips, doe eyes and a halo of sun-blonde hair and that's her.

As if her natural attractions weren't enough, she had a pro's touch with a makeup brush. Sapphire eyeshadow, blushing cheeks, a high gloss on those sensuous lips. And a wardrobe that could get arrested for prostitution just hanging in the closet. Never has so little cloth done so much for mankind. Tiny skirts that would barely have covered her panties -- if she ever wore panties. For more demure occasions she could slip into a pair of black leather pants that fit her tighter than the cow they were skinned off, so tight you could count the hairs of her bush -- if she didn't shave herself back to virginal smoothness.

She didn't have a single pair of "sensible" shoes. Nothing but spikes and platforms.

Her tops came in two types: tight and tighter. No, I lie: She also had an array of men's shirts (I presume her version of notches on the bedstead) which she wore unbuttoned and knotted above the navel. They flapped open so much they would have shown most of her bra -- if she ever wore one of those, either.

For the most formal events she did have clothes in reserve -- silk dresses that looked like they'd require paint remover to get off; chiffon and lace concoctions more transparent than Macy's windows and with a much more interesting display of goods inside. Once she took me to a funeral -- I don't know whether she knew the dead guy's family or just wanted an excuse for our post-burial fuck among the tombstones. Anyway, I was in a suit and tie (I never did get the grass stains off the knees). Very proper. Clarissa showed up in black. As in a black leather bustier that did, indeed, make her bust bustier. A black lace skirt that let everyone see the results of her below-the-belt barbering. Strappy black heels. In short, she looked so hot that if they'd opened up the other half of the casket they'd have had visual proof that she could make a stiff stiff.

On top of her looks, on top of her clothes, Clarissa in bed -- or anywhere else -- was a wet dream come to life. Emphasis on the "come."

She sucked cock like a Hoover with lips. She could and did take me down to the root -- I'm no stallion, but, I mean, she didn't gag or anything. I think her throat was double-jointed.

And she fucked even better than she sucked. Lying down, sitting up, standing, squatting, on all fours, or any other position you could name -- and several that I'm pretty sure have no names -- Clarissa gave as good as she got. She could flex the muscles of her cunt like a boa constrictor and pound her hips faster than a hummingbird flaps its wings. Yeah, she fucked like a bunny -- like the Energizer bunny. Except he keeps going and going. She kept coming and coming. I swear she could have an orgasm if you just touched the tip of her nose. Do you realize what it does to a guy's ego when he's gotten a woman off six times in one night? And for Clarissa, that would just be shooting par. She made me feel like the greatest lover in the world.

So she was perfect except for the one teeny, tiny, infinitesimal flaw: She was stark raving crazy about exhibitionist sex.

I couldn't tear myself away from her, but on the other hand I'd gotten kind of used to not being jailed on morals charges. It was a dangerous line I was walking.

So when Clarissa came up with her next bright idea for, as she put it, "livening up our relationship," I was very aware what was riding on my answer. Saying no would almost certainly send her off to find someone more adventurous. The sane part of me had no problem with that. But the sane part wasn't in charge. I had a Clarissa addiction and all I could do was say yes.

She wanted to have sex on the subway. At rush hour. Anonymous sex, she said. And when I asked what that meant she said the rules were I couldn't speak to her. Had to go along with whatever she did, no questions, no hesitation. All she would promise me was that she thought we could get away with it -- and that I would be surprised.

In fact, it was all going to be like a secret rendezvous. We would get on the train separately -- she had the timing down to a science. It was supposed to happen like a chance encounter. Beyond that, Clarissa would only smile mysteriously.

The last time she'd pulled one of these play-acting stunts, she'd met me at a park dressed in a Catholic schoolgirl's uniform and made me walk through the park with her, hand in hand, with everyone staring at me like a babysnatcher, before pulling me into the bushes and into her bush. I was not a little afraid of what she had in mind this time.

The next afternoon, I rushed out of work and checked my watch carefully. At the appointed time I wormed my way onto the second car from the rear of the northbound train. I hadn't spotted Clarissa, but she had to be around somewhere.

The subway was as jammed as ever that day. Some blonde almost removed my spleen with her elbow as we jostled together. It was Easter week, so besides the regular work crowds there were lots of schoolkids. I tried to find a spot away from them as much as possible. Clarissa was not likely to worry about whether there were any minors around when she pounced, so I had quick nightmares of some little kid yelling "Mommy, Mommy, look at the funny way those people are kissing!"

I excuse me'd and sorry'd my way through the car without seeing Clarissa. I finally had my progress completely blocked by the packed passengers at the far end of the car. Almost at the same time another surge of passengers boarded at the next stop and I was trapped like a sardine -- and believe me, the crowd was almost as smelly -- in the aisle between two sets of doors. Only the pressure from all sides kept me upright when the train lurched into motion; there were metal half-walls forming the sides of benches on either side of me, but several layers of standing passengers kept me from grabbing either wall for support. We were packed so tightly that I couldn't raise my arms from my sides without elbowing at least two people. It was so crowded that your "personal space" -- the zone other folks had to stay outside to avoid discomforting you -- shrank and shrank to avoid overloading your brain. I could feel it contracting. It had started out at the normal foot or two, but quickly zoomed inward. I thought it was stabilizing somewhere around the outside of my clothes, but it kept going. In seconds I was so adjusted to conditions that my brain wouldn't have objected if someone's finger sank three inches deep into my flesh. Which wasn't that far-fetched; there are Siamese twins who aren't as close as we all were.

Gradually, though, I began to notice that someone seemed closer than everyone else. Someone behind me kept brushing the back of my neck.

With no small amount of difficulty I spun around. The annoying rubbing, it turned out, was the flapping of a veil. A brown veil of heavy cloth. A nun's veil.

Oh, she had outdone herself.

Though she kept her back turned and didn't say a word, I knew it was Clarissa. Right height. Right build, from what I could tell under the habit, a loose, bulky robe that fell all the way to the floor. And just the right degree of outrageousness to the whole idea.

But how was she going to do me? I figured a hand job, with the oversized sleeve of her habit covering it up.

But I was underestimating my Clarissa.

As the train bounced and heaved, we were all being tossed against each other. Only I noticed that one person kept bumping me in what you might call a most intriguing way.

Standing as we were, Clarissa's ass was perfectly aligned with my crotch. Every lurch had her butt bopping me. In no time flat I had a hard-on that pointed straight at her.

I could have waited for her to take the initiative, like I always did, but I figured I needed to prove I wasn't a wimp after backing out of her earlier suggestions. And I realized part of the point of the nun's habit must be that she was playing the innocent.

If that was how she wanted to play it, I thought, fine. This really could be my chance to prove I was no prude.

The next time the train's motion brought us together, I was ready. I met the bump of her ass with a little extra zing. Her shoulders flinched.

After another bump or two, I kicked up the heat a notch. I not only met her bump for bump, I pressed forward, riding her ass for a moment before I backed off. Gradually I increased the time we were in contact until we were virtually joined at the hips. I kept rubbing my crotch into her, going with the rhythm of the train.

I was actually getting into it, without any qualms. This whole sex-in-public idea was turning me on.

If anything, it wasn't enough. A dry hump is bad enough, but the heavy cloth of her robe and the zipper over my cock were making this like kissing through glass. I wanted more. Hell, I needed more.

First things first: My zipper was definitely in the way. With the noise of the train, no one noticed when I eased my fly open. But a few experimental rubs against Clarissa's rump proved it wasn't much help. Without a lot of thought, I reached down again. This time I brought my rod out into the open. It was a delicate operation because I was as stiff as a girder, but I eased my rod out.

This was getting risky, and I hadn't completely lost my mind. In the subway, especially one as crowded as this, people don't look down. And the side of the car we were on was going to be against the tunnel wall for a long time; no worry about the doors opening and spilling us out onto the platform. Still, better safe than sari, as the woman said while she walked around Bhopal in a chemical protection suit.