She took a deep breath and said “Okay” before she lay back down. I took a minute before I laid down myself. But I still couldn’t sleep. I forced my eyes shut to convince myself to rest, and to sleep it off.

Thirty minutes later, I was still awake while Judi was snoring.

“Shit,” I mumbled to myself through the dark.

I climbed out of the bed to use the bathroom and got to thinking about taking a walk around the hotel. It was four o’clock in the morning. After handling my business in the bathroom, I decided that I would take that walk. So I tossed on the complimentary white bathrobe from the room, with white slippers to match, and I snuck out with my key, headed for the lobby.

“Crazy,” I mumbled to myself as I rode the elevator down.

My photo shoot at Miami Beach was in less than five hours, and there I was, walking around in a bathrobe at my hotel in the middle of the night, without getting a wink of sleep.

As soon as I reached the lobby and walked off the elevator, there was a lone black woman waiting to go up. She nearly walked into me trying to get on.

“Hey, are you sleepwalking?” I joked to her. At four o’clock in the morning, I was liable to say anything. I was also happy to see someone else still up.

She mumbled, “I wish,” and walked onto the elevator.

I turned to face her. She was wearing night clothes, a long, pink nightgown. Pink was making a comeback for women; pink, orange, and bright green.

On instincts, I grabbed the elevator door and asked her, “You wanna talk about it?”

I could tell she had something to get off her mind. So did I. I needed to talk to someone about my unfounded sexual urges. Strangers were good for odd angles. I found that a lot of your friends thought the same way you did, or completely opposite. There was a whole lot more going on than simple black or white when it came to views on sex. Or at least I thought so.

Who knows what this woman wanted to talk about. I was guessing men. Women always wanted to talk about men; men, bills, and career aspirations. The order would change depending on what they already had going for themselves.

She looked at me and paused for a minute. She wanted to talk, sure she did. But it was awkward for a stranger to ask her to do so in the middle of the night at the elevators.

Finally she said, “Talk where?”

Good question. She didn’t know me to invite me anywhere, or for me to invite her.

I said, “Right down here inside the restaurant. There’s nobody there now. And it’s nice and quiet in there.”

She wasn’t bad-looking either. A little plump compared to what I was used to, but she was cute in the face with reddish brown skin and jet black hair.