J Lo, Prounounced JELLO

I share an office with Juan, my Peruvian amigo. Juan is about 36, married and has two children under the age of 3. But we are in love. Not the kind of love he shares with his wife, who, I am sure, is lovely. And not the kind of love I share with anyone else, be it friend, family or fetish. Ours is an innocent, non-threatening romantic love. As my very special buddy, Juan has earned the dubious honor of spending more than 45 hours/week with my cranky, silly ass. He laughs at my jokes and calls me princess, and yells at me when I burp. He reminds me that I am a young, atrractive piece of ass in his own subtle way. "Don't bend over and show me that ass. I am a man. I am a Latin man. And you......whew! Ay!" And you know what? It feels great. I have someone in my life who pony pets my fragile self-esteem 5 days a week. (Once, I let him touch the tattoo on the small of my back because he thought tattoos felt like scabs. I thought he was going to pass out. He got all flushed in the face and I have never seen a grown man retreat into the shell of a 4 year old girl in record time.) In return, I have taught him how to over-use the word "bitch," a la Dave Chapelle as Rick James. He employs the phrase in questions, mostly. "Are you hungry, bitch?" "Have you finished your presentation, bitch?" "Is it cold in here, bitch? Or is it me?" And every day at 5:30 p.m. he says,"Good night, bitch," as he leaves me for his real family. The pronunciation alone kills me every time. A huge "B" sound, lips all pressed together in preparation for the pop, followed by the distinctive "beeeeeeeeech." He makes me so proud.

Juan has seriously changed my life. He's added this dimension to my personality that I never knew existed. What it is exactly, I do not know. But I do know that it's good, it's sweet, it's protective and I'm happy to continue to cultivate it.

This morning my man had me in tears laughing. The innocuous office radio station was playing Jennifer Lopez's "Waiting for Tonight." Unconciously, he starts sining along, as he is often prone to do. However, he's making up lyrics, bless his heart. It went a little something like this:

Jennifer Lopez, everyone wants a piece of that big ass

From the looks of it, they've all been successful

Why not me, bitch?

Fucking beautiful, right? Tender, heartfelt and smooth as hell. Bernie Taupin eat your heart out. One more thing, bitches, don't discuss inventions of any kind with Juan, unless you're prepared to accept that the Incas are responsible for every development in the history of mankind. Oh yeah...and Hitler was an alien, bitch.