Friends and lovers

I had a long talk two nights ago with R. He lives down in DC with his partner Z. The two of them are on my short list of friends whom I love with the love of a chosen family. I think R is probably one of the few people I’m still in touch with who knew me when I was a teenager. One of the formative experiences of my young life was a summer program for the gifted. I went for two years: the summer before my freshman year of high school, and the summer after. That first summer, I’d just discovered kissing boys, and proceeded to find and kiss as many boys as possible in the three weeks I was there. My RA (Residence Advisor, or, in this context, glorified babysitter) gave me the “Most Likely to Be Late for a Hall Meeting Because She’s Off with Some Guy” prize at the end of the session.

The SATs were not the only thing I was precocious about.

The second summer is when I met R. He was a teaching assistant, which meant that he actually got to develop the minds of the insufferable brats who took college-level courses, instead of having to deal with their hormonal drama. My first memory of him is giving him a hard time while he tried to drive us out of our dorm rooms and off to the afternoon program of “mandatory fun.” I was laying on the grotty carpeting in the hallway, my feet up against the opposite wall, and I think I said something smart to him as he came walking toward us.

He looked at me, and he spoke to me like a fellow human being instead of a child. I was both, of course, but when you’re 14 years old and no longer a virgin it’s vitally important that no one remind you of the fact that you’re still a child. It was that, more than anything, that motivated me to get up off that grotty carpeting.

Later, R took the time to teach me theatrical lighting, something I’d begged our stage manager back in high school to teach me all year. He was always very appropriate with me. But the skater dude I’d been trying unsuccessfully to shag all summer (they scheduled us to our eyeballs just for that purpose!) dumped me because I was spending all my spare time in a dark theater with a grad student. There was, in fact, another teaching assistant who was not as scrupulous as R. He grabbed me once during the weekly dances and made my little 14-year-old knees go weak during a slow song.

I kept in touch with both R and his unscrupulous colleague for a while using this now-obsolete technology called pen and paper. I also corresponded with classmates. But these friendships eventually went the way of all pen pals. Someone forgets to write, someone moves, a letter comes back undeliverable.

When I was in my late 20s, I got an email from R. He’d found me via a website I ran under my given name. Fifteen years later, it was like we’d never stopped being friends. At the time, of course, I was living with Angie, who kept me on a very short leash. She eyed my renewed correspondence with R with suspicion, but Angie eyed almost everything I did with suspicion. Later, I left Angie. And dated Badger. And split up with Badger. And eventually, R and I finally saw one another in person again. The first time, I was down in DC for a weekend sailing trip and we met up in Annapolis. Over dinner, he told my friends what I was like at that summer program. His description was so drastically different than my own memories of the summer, it was like he was talking about someone else. It was very flattering, though.

The next time I saw R, he came to visit me. I was rather lonely, and asked him to cuddle with me. Cuddling turned to kissing, which turned to what kissing usually turns into in my bed. Sex with R was amazing. He’s one of those rare kinds of men: sweet and kind and giving and well-hung to boot.

R and I had already corresponded about his open relationship with Z, but I still blushed and cowered when he called her afterward. My own forays into the world of polyamory had almost always ended up with heartbreak or guilt–although I’m not sure how my forays into the world of monogamy have really differed. She thanked me for making her partner feel so welcome. Later, I went down to visit them both in DC, which is where I confirmed what I’d assumed would be the case: R’s partner Z is bright, articulate, sexy, and sweet. I felt really honored when she invited me into their bed together. Threesomes are a rich treat in my experience, like caviar. They’re delicious, intense, and rather hard to come by.

Everything happened so quickly that year. I’d begun dating Kristen just a few months prior, and after that weekend in DC I came home both glowing from my time with R and Z and guilty. Kristen knew what would likely happen during my visit. But I could also sense it wasn’t what she wanted. And sure enough, she laid it out for me over dinner that night. She never told me I couldn’t do what I wanted, just that if I kept sleeping with other people she wouldn’t take me seriously. She wanted the picket fence and all. I wanted a picket fence with a gate in it. But I thought I’d try to be a good lesbian again.

Three years later, Kristen isn’t speaking to me, but R and Z stood by me through the rough months of the breakup. Last night, R told me he’s been happy to hear me talk and write so openly about my adventures in kink. We got to talking about early indicators of sexual predelictions. “You were always pretty alpha,” he said.

I’m going to see him and Z again in April, and possibly March. I don’t know if sex will be on the menu. If it is, it’s not likely to be kinky. I hope I remember how to be soft and sweet. I hope I get to cuddle with them both. They’re a very special couple of people and I’m glad to have them in my life.

I love it when you call me ma’am (Pt 2 of 2)

I don’t remember exactly how we get from you across my lap to you on top of me on the sofa — you still naked, and me still clothed. I’m sure that it involves my bodily pulling you up and pushing you around, and I remember that at one point my head and shoulders are off the couch, and you wrap your arms around me to pull them up so you can keep kissing me. Your arms were one of the first things I noticed about you when I met you — I touched the tattoo on your right shoulder, and when I did, I felt the definition of the muscle. Even men who don’t pump iron have that definition, and it makes me jealous that, with all my time at the gym with the free weights, my arms will never look quite like that.

That’s why I like you above me, because it makes your muscles pop. And then you’re biting me, and pulling my hair, and I’m the one making the noises.

-You like it too, you say, delighted.
-Yes, I do. I like it.
-Do you want to be a slut for me?
-Yes, yes I do.
-What do you want to do for me?
-I want to suck your cock.
I can tell by your reaction (or lack) that this isn’t the right answer, but it’s the truth. And you tell me you’re too tired to top, which I’m fine with. It’s Friday night, far past the hour that would make this anything but a booty call, and we’ve both had long weeks. And now, with the spell broken, we stand up, and I tell you to put your underwear back on.

We spoon for a while in your bed. You’ve lit candles all over the house, and when you greeted me at the door I smelled your aftershave. These little preparations make me happy, say that you looked forward to seeing me enough to make these small gestures. We tell our stories in the bed, heads on shoulders, skin on skin. I love touching your skin, the feel of your chest hair under my cheek. We talk about our tragedies and our triumphs, our escape from failed relationships. I run my fingers over the tattoo of Ferdinand the Bull on your shoulder.

You’re not the one. Something you say, I can’t remember what, or maybe it’s the way you say it, makes me realize this. I see you clearly. I understand. I’m here for the sexing, for the companionship, but not for love. It won’t be love, not that kind of love, between us.

And I still want the sexing. Which is easy to do with you. You’ve told me the two things that will always get you in the right frame of mind. I pull your nipple ring, hard, and it changes your face. I slap your face, more lightly than I did the first time you asked, and your face goes slack, ecstatic, ready.

-What do you feel when I slap you?

You pause. I can’t describe the way your voice stops while you’re looking for the right words, but it’s one of the things I like about you. It’s evidence that you are a thinking person who cares about words.

-Anticipation. Surprise.

I wait. I know there’s more.

-It makes me… go deeper.

And I understand.

Later, I’ve taken off my shirt and bra and skirt, and I’m naked and you’re telling me that my body is beautiful. It blooms under your words. What do you love about it, I want to know. I can ask you these things because you’re my boy and you have to do what I tell you. It’s strong, you say, and you’re caressing me from hip to shoulder and then I’m turning on my stomach and you’re saying that I have a beautiful ass and you’re kissing it. My poor, maligned, neglected, fetishized, worshiped ass. It becomes beautiful under your praise and your hands and your kisses. I clench you between my cheeks, and I can tell by the sounds you make that you really like that. So do I.

Later, you’re kneeling at the end of the bed with the toes of my right foot in your mouth–that lovely, soft eager mouth of yours–and you’re rubbing yourself against my left foot. I can count on one hand the number of times my feet have been loved like this, and every time it’s turned me on. The last time we saw each other, you made me come just by licking my feet. You say that you want to come on my feet, but I won’t let you. I don’t want to let you come yet.

Later, you’re on your back with your legs open and I’m kneeling above you, teasing your ass through the fabric of your boxer briefs, rubbing the tip of your cock with my other hand.

-Would you like me to fuck you in the ass? I ask
-Yes, you say, in that way, that begging way, that open way.
-Why should I? Why should I waste my time?
-Because it would make me yours.

I thrill to hear that, even though I know I can’t own you, not really, can’t even keep you from sexing someone else.

Later, I’m saying nasty things to you and making you say them back to me, but differently, and the words get tangled up in your mouth and we both collapse in a fit of laughter.

Later, I ask if you want to kiss me on my mouth, and you say yes. I make you beg for it, and you do, so very prettily, as I sit with my back against the wall and you leaning toward me.
-Please, please, please let me kiss your mouth.
-No.
-Oh please, I want to kiss you.
-No.
-Please let me kiss you.
-No.
-Oh please I love your mouth you have such a beautiful mouth.
-No.
-Oh please, your mouth feels so good, I want to kiss it.
-No.
-Please please please I want to make you feel good too.

With each No, you push closer and my hands holding you away give a little more, and my No’s get weaker, until finally No turns to Yes. When I decide, when you’ve pleased me with your groveling, made me hot with it.

That kiss is amazing.

Later, I have you get three towels to cover the bed because it’s clear I’m on my way to coming, and it’s clear it’s going to be a gusher.

Later, you’re kissing my breasts and I’m rubbing my clit and we’re saying all kinds of nasty perverted things to each other I can’t even remember, because whatever it is that’s said is what makes me come finally, once with clenching, once with the burning in my ankles, and then I’m really coming, all over your bed, so hard that I can hear it. And when I do, I hear your own moans and I know I’ve found someone very special. You like it when I hurt you, and you love it when I come. You’re not afraid of me, of my hunger, of my push.

Later, you walk me to my car and kiss me in the empty street. I told you I wouldn’t call you, would wait to hear from you, because after almost a year of dating men I’ve remembered that they’re not like women. They have different rules. I know that you’ll call me, but I don’t know when, and when I drive away I know that the hell has begun:

the desire.
the waiting.
the remembering.
the letting go.
the moving on.

I write this all down so that I can let it go and get on with the rest of my life.

I love it when you call me ma’am (Pt 1 of 2)

I slap your face and it changes. You go to that other place, the place where I can tell you to take your clothes off and you will, without hesitation. You grab the collar of your T-shirt and pull it over your head, unbuckle your belt, step out of your jeans and place them next to me on the couch.

-All of them, I tell you, and you look at me a question. We haven’t been naked together before. You haven’t been inside of me. You’ve never seen me with my pants off. Right now, I am fully clothed. But that’s the point. I want you naked in front of me, naked and on your knees. I know you’re eager to get there yourself, and that, in part, is what makes me hot. Hot, and scared. What do I do next? I wonder, as you look up at me, good boy, so naked and low and ready for me to do whatever I want to you.

Am I doing it right? I wonder, as I pull your belt from your pants, throw it across the room.

Earlier today, I told you I was going to beat you with your own belt, make you crawl naked across the room to pick it up and bring it back to me in your mouth. That is so sexy, you said, and even through the keyboard and the screen I felt the heat rising through my own body, a slow boil, my body burning and aroused and all alone on a chair before a computer. Yes. Yes it is, I said.

And now I’ve got your hair in my hands and I’m pulling your mouth toward my own, your mouth so eager and ready, so open and ready to please.

I pull you forward between my opened knees, your bare shoulders touching my thighs beneath my skirt, and I’ve got my hands on your back, and I’m raking my nails across your shoulders, up from your waist to your neck, and you make that noise, a hiss of inhaled breath and a moan together.

– Go get your belt, I say, and I don’t have to tell you to do it on your hands and knees. You crawl across the room to where I’ve thrown it and you pick it up with your teeth, carry it back to me, still with that look in your eyes that tells me you’re in that other place.

I take the belt from you.

-Good boy.
-Thank you. You say it with relief, the release of desire.

I should push you backward now, turn you to the side and stand above you so that I have the proper angle for the belt. But I like the feel of your bare skin against my thighs, your naked back stretched out before me like a promise and your head in my lap, where it belongs.

I slap the belt across your back, not particularly hard, but you cry out, and again that moment of fear — you’re not doing it right, he’s had better, it’s not good enough, you’re inept, you’re a terrible top, it’s no good — but I put that aside, push it down because there’s a wave that will carry me if I just keep going. You’re not a blank slate, you’re alive and so am I and what we are doing is perverted and wrong, but it brings us so much joy, so maybe it isn’t really.

So I beat you with your own belt, just like I promised you I would. I do it badly, ineptly, and you still like it. I put you over my knee, and with you over my knee I can’t resist spanking you with my open palm. I’m so wound up I smack you hard, very hard, and your reaction makes me realize it’s causing you pain, not the good kind of pain.

-Whoa, you say. You really go right to it.
-I’m sorry. I know I’m supposed to warm you up first (and here I slap your bum lightly, repeatedly, delicious, remembering the delicious feel myself, how it softens you up, makes the nerve endings ready for the big, hard slaps to follow).

-But may it’s not about your pleasure, I say. Maybe it’s about what I want.

You moan as I say all this, and I’m spanking you at the same time, building up from soft to hard and then running my fingers over your warmed skin. That light touch on my own skin, red and warm and sentitized, always drives me wild.

-It was very selfish of you to think that this is about you, to expect me to be serving you, I say, and I’ve got your belt, and I’m using it on your back and you begin to undulate across my knee.

-I’m sorry.
-Why are you sorry?
-For being selfish, ma’am.

I love it when you call me ma’am.

>> NEXT: What do you feel when I slap you?>>

Enormous cock, box of rocks

There was a boy I dated briefly in the summer of 2007. He had a very nice body: tall, high cheekbones, washboard stomach, enormous cock. He also either had Aspbergers or was just your garden variety asshole. Whatever the reason, he had the emotional vocabulary of a box of rocks. Excerpts from my journal:

I fall in love with him in the lazy afterglow of lovemaking, after I’ve cried out and clenched and shuddered more than once, after he’s bellowed and fallen against me. Our bodies curl around each other and we fall in and out of sleep. I feel my heart unfurling like a fiddlehead. I know it’s not really love, it’s just that trick my body plays on me after orgasm. I can never tell him how I feel.

It’s not important that I do. To love is my sole purpose in this life. To cut the channels of love, to navigate the currents of love, to set the boundaries of love. All the different kinds of love there are:

The love of letting another driver in to traffic
The love of sending a postcard to a friend
The love of sucking a man’s cock and doing it well
The love of showing up to a meeting on time
The love of expressing displeasure at unacceptable behavior
The love of calling my friends regularly
The love of feeding people

The next time I saw him was the beginning of the end. I made the mistake of doing something other than having him over for dinner and sex.

We actually went on something like a real date. We saw Paprika at the Kendall–this bizarre anime about a technological breakdown that blurs the line between dreams and reality. Japanese attitudes toward female sexuality are always somewhat disturbing to me, but one scene in particular made me cringe: a man plunges his hand inside Paprika, this sort of spritely dream-visting character, the alter ego of a very buttoned-down scientist. His hand sinks into her at crotch level, then pulls his hand upward, splitting her in two to reveal the real-world scientist, but naked. My date watched it all with an impassive face.

When we got back to my place, we were both wiped–me from a busy day of social engagements, him from his retail job. We sat on the couch, his head cradled against my chest, and it was nice, very nice. Eventually off to bed in a very unromantic, unpassionate way. I stopped to take my medicine, take my contact lenses out, brush my teeth.

“I was beginning to think you forgot you had a boy in your bed,” he said when I finally came to bed, straddling him in his white undershirt, white briefs.

“Not just any boy,” I replied. “My favorite boy.”

He’ll be losing his Most Favored Nation status pretty soon, though. Yes, he has one of the longest, thickest cocks I’ve ever had the pleasure to take into my mouth and other orifices. But his lack of enthusiasm for cunnilingus is beginning to show.

Sigh. What a sad state of affairs that I can’t find a man who is both well hung and skilled and enthusiastic with the munching of the kitty. I know they exist — I dated one in college.

Poor me.

The coitus last night was surprisingly brief. This is a pattern I’m recognizing. First, the sex is enthusiastic, creative, varied, prolonged. Then, eventually, habituation sets in. One or the other of us gets tired, makes other things the priority. The sex becomes perfunctory, a chore. God, sex with Kristen felt like mowing the lawn by the end of things.

The morning’s performance left little room for complaint, though. I think that I will always love the groan he makes when he comes, a bearlike sounds deep in his throat. And the look on his face–his eyes open wide–the drowsing that follows, the falling asleep in each other’s arms.

His heart will remain ever closed to me, though. I know I will never really know who he is–never really know him, no matter how many times our bodies collide and clench and pleasure each other.

Even as my heart does its inevitable uncurling in the aftermath of orgasm. Silly, illogical, lovable heart. I will take you, heart, to a well with water in it. Don’t confuse pleasure, orgasm, bare skin on bare skin, with love, with intimacy. He has no love to give.

I was right. Things ended abruptly about a week later.