A few months after V and I broke up, I got entangled with my yoga instructor, a woman in her early-40’s named Hana. Dating older women wasn’t my specialty, but it was the aughts and I was on the cusp of 30 myself. I wasn’t into TikTok and everyone in their 20’s seemed alien to me. Hana made sense. She had obsessions I understood. She was into wellness and desperation, and she was dedicated to stretchy pants.

I walked into her yoga studio after having read The Gita. I explained this to her, and we spoke for a short time during the onboarding process about India, which neither of us had been to, and about different kinds of yoga, which neither of us really knew about.

Hana’s version was the “hot” kind. It was supposed to make you sweat. You were going to be filthy, disgusting, and vile to the touch, and this was supposed to feel liberating.

I was the only male pupil in the class, surrounded by moms and older ladies I had nothing in common with. I suspect I was also the only one who talked about things like “Nirvana” or “Enlightenment”, as if these had anything to do with the stated mission of the class.

I was searching for inner peace. V stopped replying to my calls and texts. My best friend FCNI (that’s pronounced “Fettuccini”) and I found this immaculately groomed Japanese Spitz outside a bar. We adopted the dog, who we later named Q-Tip. Q-Tip was living in my apartment. It was a weird time.

The affair with Hana didn’t last long, but after being in love and coming that close to tying the knot and then not—sex with strangers wasn’t as fun as I’d remembered it. I still enjoyed the part where we would slam our bodies against each other’s and make weird noises, but I found myself getting very sad after sex. I still wanted to make more noises after about ten or fifteen minutes of rest, but I would want to keep on having that feeling too, of sadness, as if only that feeling could replace the extinguished lust as something to fill the container of my heart.

Hana had a body that could absorb a certain degree of passionate violence. She could reciprocate my need for sadness with her need to rebel against an irretrievable youth, of a former slimness and delicateness. She associated this former self with weakness, and the cause of her own heartbreak. Her younger, wispier silhouette was replaced by a proud physique, well-earned through perspiration and odd positions held for extended periods of time.

Hana had a hunger for exhibition, though the only audience that I knew of was me and Q-Tip, who watched with perked ears from the corner—much as I wanted to cover his puppy eyes—and perhaps herself in the black reflection of the windows, which she often took in as she trounced my pelvis between her bone-crushing thighs.

Hana was thick. Toned. Which was perfect since my fetish revolved around thighs and the thought of dying during sex. I was probably depressed, but sometimes as I kneeled beside the bed with my face in her crotch, I would feel her squeezing my head like a vice grip. My ears covered, I’d hear sounds of the ocean, and I’d imagine my skull cracking and crumpling like paper as my body grew limp at the bedside.

After sex, there would be the sense of a shared solitude in bed. We never grew intimate enough to discuss our pasts in any detail. We also had the decency not to pretend to be with each other in the future. “How much longer are you going to play with me?” she asked me once in Korean. Na eonjae kaji noralkoya? Then she held my hand, holding it up as if to see what it would look like if we actually did hold hands from time to time, or perhaps to see if she could envision a ring there.

I tried to reassure us both by spooning her and staring at the back of her head for longer than usual. It made no difference. In the mornings, she would get up to brush her teeth before I could attempt to kiss her. She was not going to let me watch her pee, and I did not want to assume that she ever had to.

Despite the number of times we would make love, or have sex or whatever, Hana remained a wanderer in my house, an observer of things, like she was visiting a showroom in a department store, window-shopping my life. She loved the rain faucet in my shower. She adored my collection of herbal soaps and the porcelain and glassware from Austria. She spoke of these items with more exuberance than I care to describe—and not just once—but upon each visit, as if they were treasures which would never get old. When I tried to press a couple bars of lemongrass into her hands, Hana refused. She said she was simply happy knowing there were people like me, without a care in the world.

The last time I saw Hana, I offered her breakfast as usual, but she said she had plans for brunch with a friend. I took this to mean that she would soon leave me for someone who also had exotic bars of soap and nice porcelain—but would also love her. She would replace me with this more qualified friend and never speak of this time again.

I was happy for her in a way. I shouldn’t have felt so defeated. I didn’t even know her real name.

Hana played with the dog while I hid in the bedroom and smoked OxyContin in my closet. Even when it was just me and Q-Tip at home, I kept the sight of flame beneath tinfoil carefully hidden. I didn’t want the dog to know that I was on drugs.

I’d started smoking Oxy around the same time I’d started yoga. It was like a race to see which activity would bring me inner peace first. I quit yoga after a month and would continue smoking OxyContin for about three more years. Good times, mostly. Except on the days when I would lie on the floor writhing in pain, desperately phoning my dealer and wishing that I was dead.

In a few months, I would lose all interest in sex and in things that were not opiates. That winter morning, with Hana in the living room getting ready to walk out of my life, I felt sad, and then as the drugs absorbed into my bloodstream, calm and detached, and this feeling would replace the emptiness that usually welled up after sex. This would even replace the sex. It would replace everything.

I entered the living room, and I saw Hana on the floor with Q-Tip’s toy bone in her teeth. She was convincing in this role as she growled on all fours, playing keep away with Q-Tip. He was just a puppy, yipping with delight at the challenge. I felt a pang of regret, knowing I’d missed the opportunity to get to know her better, instead of just being amazed at the fullness and emptiness of the container that was her Spandex. There were so many opportunities for us to do yoga together, to be on a shared wellness journey, supporting each other. But all we did was have sex.

I watched the two of them romp around, playfully growling at each other, and I felt a sense of wonder. She was going to be a great mom one day. I just knew it.

We left the apartment together and I wished Hana a good day as usual, but we both knew this was goodbye. After feigning toward the direction of the subway station, I took an alley and cut back in the direction of my glass tower. Then I sat in the café on the first floor for a few hours, thinking about my life. Or maybe I wasn’t thinking at all. I was probably just high.

Finally, I wondered what Q-Tip was doing and decided to take him for a walk. My coffee had grown cold, and it was time for another hit.