It took Vivian about a year to teach me the ten places she likes to be tickled. I'm sure I could have learned them all in one session; but she enjoyed building gradually, by unveiling her special places one at a time, every so often.

"Now you know them all," she whispered one night, around the time of our first anniversary. She had, on this occasion, guided my hand to the nape of her neck, solicited about one second's worth of tickling from me, and then ended the exquisite moment with a lusciously-mouthed "Perfect. Stop now." As always, she had a precise self-awareness regarding how much was exactly enough.

When Vic Braunson came home from work on his birthday, he was met in the hallway by his lover Matt diLorenzo, who wore nothing but a pair of leather shorts with a breakaway crotch, his arms hopelessly tangled in the straps of a leather harness. He greeted Vic with, “Help.”

In a world full of vogue-conscious beauties, Miriam was unique. Her sense of style was the product of a combination of raw instinct and a somewhat quirky taste for the offbeat and startling. This applied to her ideas of fashion as well as her behavior and of course made her controversial, no less than provocative, the sort of woman whose image ranged along a spectrum from brat to enchantress depending on whose point of view.