There was something I wanted to know…How did the fact that she and her girlfriend had drunken threesomes with older, fatherly types have anything to do with their so-called freedom as women in today's corporate, male-dominated world? {cue: Sonic Youth’s Kool Thing in the background}

We use the power of our love and lust to get what we want, she said. We’re seen and worshipped.

And for that you need a third, I said, sarcastically. Some 'goddesses' you are! Why do you need someone else if yr both so powerful?

Ha! She flicked a cigarette out of the softpack. Her fingers were long, like a mannequin’s.

There’s ALWAYS a third, silly, she said, quite unironically. Her accented, imperfect English seemed to broadcast a certain earnestness or lack thereof—like an untuned organ, played by uncertain hands, she was unable to add the layer of semantic finesse that I was used to from the ex-pats.

What do you mean? I said.

There’s always a third—every time you fuck. It’s like an imaginary mirror appears over the couple as they, you know—do it.

And as she said this, she stepped to one side in a half-curtsy to light her cigarette, and as she did revealed a standing mirror that had been hidden behind her the entire time we'd been speaking. I gasped as I saw my own reflection—elongated like a figure in an el Greco painting: I was taller and broader—like a man…a man who was watching me.

There’s always a third…