amaranthine border

by Sophie

In the last month my entire life has been upended, strewn about, thrown into boxes and moved from one place to another. In the process of moving I have found artifacts of a more active life: a very used yoga mat, two pairs of worn running shoes, weightlifting gloves. As I shoved these into a box I swore I would put them to use again…someday.

I am a very strong woman, able to carry a lot of weight. I am also very flexible, able to throw my legs over Jamie’s shoulders or pull my knees to my chest. My legs are toned and muscular and there is evidence of the same in my arms. Jamie, when asked recently what I feel like “under my skin,” replied “solid.” He’s right; I’m not a fragile flower. Despite this, in the last few years I have lost a lot of muscle. Jamie and I have spent a lot of time lazing about the way happy lovers do, our only real exercise coming in the form of vigorous sex. It is both a blessing and a curse that Jamie loves my curves, having said nothing but sparkling praise about the composition of my body. He is appreciative of my softness, even the swell of my stomach which often makes me ever-so-slightly insecure, but in his glowing appreciation I have become more lazy about physical self-care than I have ever been. In the past I have been a gym rat, a makeup-wearer, rigorous about a facial care regimen, a regular tooth-brusher. In the last two years I have become, in some ways, “a dirty hippie,” and let those things slide while enjoying Jamie’s judgement-free embrace.  And while it has been fun, things have to change, if only so we can more healthfully enjoy one another.

Jamie agrees. We have been joking about 2020 being the “year of the body” for months now. Ironically, while I could stand to tone up a bit, I am currently at one of the lowest weights I have seen as an adult. In my former life as a lady of ill repute I was at the gym all the time. I worked out probably about ten to twelve hours a week, endless amounts of cardio to keep extra weight at bay though I was never a tiny little slip of a woman. I am moderately tall, busty, prone to gaining and keeping extra weight, so I will never be “skinny.” But in my escorting days I was as close to skinny as I will ever be. It was the name of the game. The aughts were not as friendly to women of size as the last decade has been, and in order to make the most money possible, you had to be marketable, and (generally speaking) men want to pay for what they’ve grown accustomed to seeing in pornography. To that end, for a couple of years my free time was spent on ellipticals and stairmasters and rowing machines; salads were the dinner (and lunch) of choice. The money made it hard to be miserable, but for a hedonist like me, I craved cake as much as I craved cock. 

As I moved into a long term partnership and the end of my days as a high end hooker I fell into “bad” habits and gained the weight that comes with a happy relationship. My love didn’t mind. I didn’t mind. I ate all the cake I missed, and then some. By the time he proposed to me, I was at the highest weight of my adult life, and I realized how unhealthy and miserable I had become, physically speaking. A personal trainer was hired, Weight Watchers was joined, and by the time I married I had lost sixty pounds. Somewhere along the way I realized that being thin wasn’t what was causing my new happiness, being strong was. Every day I entered the gym and lifted some sort of weight. As I picked up the pounds, weight was being lifted off of me. I really found myself in physical activity. The years post-wedding went on, however, and I fired the personal trainer, my weight began to shift back and forth again. This was also the time my relationship opened wide and I started fucking other men again – one in particular, one who profoundly damaged my previously unbreakable self-esteem. Despite my size I have always been a vain woman with a reason; I am particularly beautiful and I know it. This guy wrecked my sense of self-worth with one conversation, one that repeated itself over and over during the time we were “together.”

It was Christmas time, a few years back. I had realized that we had a connection that was deeper than just “fuck buddies,” or so I thought. Standing outside his apartment, shivering in a velvet dress in which I had just attended a Christmas party, my head reeling from champagne, I told him that I had feelings for him. He invited me inside, to sit, and took a deep breath.

“When I divorced,” he said, “I told myself I was never going to ‘settle’ for what I didn’t want. And, well,” he gestured to me, waving his hand towards my stomach, “you’re not what I want.”

“What do you mean?” I was stunned. We had been having hot sex for months. I mean, sure, it was a little one-sided, with a lot of him coming on my face and calling me names and pulling my hair, but I’ve always liked a dominant guy. “I thought.. I don’t know, I thought you felt the same way.”

“I do.. I mean, I like you a lot. I really, really do. You’re funny, you’re smart, your face is gorgeous.”

I felt like my gorgeous face had been slapped, hard. Heat began to creep up my chest and my cheeks. “My face?” There it was. 

Every fat girl has heard this. “You have such a pretty face!” I’d heard it before. I didn’t think I was going to hear it from this guy. I was ashamed in a way I haven’t been about anything before and I don’t think I have been since, except to admit that after this fateful conversation I continued to let this asshole fuck me for a few more years. 

“You’re just not… physically what I want in a long-term partner.” 

There are so many facets of this conversation that I could go into, so many things he got wrong when I admitted to him that I had feelings for him. The misconceptions he pulled from my simple sentence had ramifications that managed to further ripple the choppy waters of our misguided pairing for years. Those aren’t germane to this story. What is important is that I sat on that asshole’s couch and cried, ugly cried for an hour. “What could I do to make you want me?” I asked. “I can lose the weight,” I remember blubbering. “I will lose the weight.”

I didn’t lose the weight. In fact, I gained some more. I think I almost did it out of spite. I couldn’t believe I’d made a promise to change myself for a guy who would have the audacity to ask. 

He apologized a few days later, but the subject came up time and time again during the time we saw each other and every time it did it hurt just a little more and cut a little deeper. By the time I finally told him I couldn’t see him anymore, my perception of my strong, solid, able body was torn apart. The confidence I gained through the years of escorting and weight lifting and yoga had been demolished. My cheerful, happy-go-lucky nature was minimized to nonexistence. 

I licked my wounds for a couple of months before getting back in the saddle. Turning to Craigslist for validation helped a bit. Pleasing partners has always been a comfort to me. I guess I’m just a people pleaser. Over the next six months or so I met men who were interested in me despite my “flaws,” and I had some – a lot – of fun. Leaving that asshole behind became the catalyst for me to actually lose the weight, and I began dropping the extra pounds without much effort – but I still hadn’t gained the confidence to go back to the gym. Still haven’t. 

Then I met Jamie. Jamie is a guy of average weight, but he has the same solid musculature under his skin that I can feel in mine. His legs are ropy with muscle and his ass is shaped perfectly from a few years of sport – a few years ago, just like me. His chest hardens when he is working above me and I love placing my hands on him to feel him straining to please me. I love his furry torso and his smooth shoulders. For the first time in years, when he touches my soft stomach – which he does, he makes a point to do so – I don’t feel insecurity. In fact, I feel powerful and beautiful and strong. Except.

We are sexual olympians, as Jamie likes to say. And we have been remiss. The stubborn extra weight I still carry is starting to bother me because I want Jamie to fold me like a pretzel, more than he already can. I want him to fuck me against a wall. I want to meet him with my hips like we are making a bridge, I want to be on top for hours, I want to do everything with him that I know we can. I want to reinvent the very act of sex with him and part of that reinvention requires physical prowess. 

To that end 2020 will be the year of the body. I am going to do yoga naked in his living room, teasing him until he plows me in plow pose. I am going to take up weight lifting again so I can strengthen the back that has been weakened by my physically demanding day job. Jamie and I are going to quit smoking (oh, how I love smoking, I am going to miss it so much.) Our health demands it. Our sexual pleasure demands it.

I want to be the best I can be for him. I know he feels the same way. We are both a little apprehensive to take the plunge, mostly because will require commitment and we have carefully curated the commitments we have made to one another. Just as he has helped me heal from the psychological warfare that asshole waged against my self-worth, he is going to help me get back on the wagon toward physical health, and I am going to do the same for him. These are the things you do for someone you love regardless of commitment, and I love him. 

More importantly, I love myself, and it’s time to get back to the business of actively treating myself well. I deserve better. 

By Jamie

Recently there was a knock at my door.  I opened it to find a friendly, attractive, and impossibly young woman outside.  Turns out she was my new neighbor. This puzzled me somewhat as I had observed two other impossibly young adults, a couple, move in a few months prior. Even the mom helping them move in was younger than I am.

Age is something that comes up from time to time.  My age doesn’t bother me.  I have enjoyed where my feet hit the path all along the way.  Age difference is one continually stimulating aspect of Sophie’s and my ongoing conversation.  We enjoy the spark that jumps across that gap.  Clearly, and I can say this without hyperbole or delusion because our blog provides ample evidence, she has no complaints.

I bring up age only because it was one topic in my brief conversation with my new-new neighbor.  I confided to her that, unlike previous occupants of that apartment, her roommates seem to want to be left alone.  More than that, they seem to go out of their way not to speak or make eye contact.  I wondered out loud if I, who enjoy my quiet time on the balcony we all share, was projecting a negative vibe.  If this were true, I would be upset.  I feel I’ve always been a good neighbor.  Years later I’m still in touch with Ellie and Rob, who made that stain on the deck while using coffee grounds to darken a bookshelf.  I shared professional war stories with Jane and Mike, who moved to Dallas for work.  I watched Collin and Mona’s dog while they traveled back home to visit family.  The current situation, so far, is starkly different.

For the first time, I wondered if age had anything to do with it.  I voiced this concern to my new neighbor. She quickly reassured me, saying her new roommates were simply shy.  But she did acknowledge a “creepy older man” cultural default from her perspective.

The reason my friendly, attractive, impossibly young neighbor stopped by was to let me know they were throwing a party that weekend.  Very courteous of her.  And during that party, while indulging my nicotine habit on our shared balcony, I got to hear other uses of the word “creepy.”  The term seems to have risen to an umbrella level, covering a wide variety of foibles and potential awkwardness.  I was going to compliment your dress, but I didn’t want to be creepy.  Or I thought I saw you on campus, but I didn’t want to be that loud creepy girl who shouts from a mile away.  And so on.  Speaking the word is a talisman chasing away the possibility of self-fulfillment.  Creepiness is banished, even as the compliment or acknowledgement gets delivered.  The desire to connect deftly, or at least successfully, appears to span generations.  Perhaps it, and the courage required to push through, are universal.

Close quarters

I complimented my new neighbor on her courteous foresight.  I know the need for it, having received a noise complaint earlier this year.  It would seem that Sophie’s and my late-evening activities have not gone unnoticed by my downstairs neighbors.  I already knew there might be a problem, based on their stony silence as we passed in the parking lot.  My winter project, adding legs to my bed, was done for numerous reasons: to create more storage, to lift the mattress to a level more suitable for sex, and to minimize the bed’s contact with the floor.  But it was not enough.  The office informed me that I need to be more considerate.

I’ve done research.  The government of Canada, that national bastion of politeness, has actually published a document about soundproofing a shared space.  All it would take is to strip my aging building down to the studs and, using some complicated engineering magic, detach the floor from its noise-transmitting supports.  I doubt the office will make this a front-burner project.  So in the meantime, I have reached out to my downstairs neighbors, and Sophie and I are more selective about the noises we make.  The effort seems to be paying off.

Despite one’s best efforts, it’s hard not to know what’s up with the neighbors.  My new-new next-door neighbors, blinded to some extent by their own youth and beauty and energy and creativity, think they have invented experiences that are timeless and universal.  I could smirk, I could condescend, I could indulge some sort of misplaced jealousy from my vantage point halfway down the timeline, or I could pretend not to notice and let them find their path.  And then there’s the guy across the way downstairs, who has had a string of female roommates in the years since we became neighbors.  He’s been the source of much balcony speculation during nicotine breaks.  The truth, as I learned when he and I volunteered to help some elderly neighbors move, is that he is helping childhood friends from another state move to Austin and get settled.  But that does not explain why he chose to hook up with his upstairs neighbor some months ago, creating a confusing tangle of intimacy and privacy they are still struggling to unravel.  Our new friendship gave me the opportunity to tease him about his choices, and he could only hang his head in playful acknowledgement.  The object of his occasional affection is herself a good neighbor, kind and friendly to others, quick to smile and wave.  I hope the two of them get their business sorted in a mutually agreeable way.

Against all odds, Sophie and I have found a kindred spirit through these random interactions.  Veronica has a deceptively mild demeanor, an active sex life, and a taste for BDSM that complements ours.  We have enjoyed chatting by the pool and on the balcony.  We’ve discussed a trip to Hippie Hollow, Austin’s clothing-optional beach.  We exchange text messages, saying hi and checking up.  The friendship is platonic and destined to stay that way.  I don’t see Veronica often, but I like knowing she’s out there.  Life is sweeter when you find your people.

I know there are others.  The evidence is as obvious as the Wifi servers that show up on the “nearby” list.  Some haven’t been named, still a jumble of proprietary letters and numbers.  Some are simply funny: ThisIsNotTheWifiYouAreLookingFor, NotaCIAsafehouse, Your mom.  Some are wishful thinking: Need243some.  But sometimes there’s intrigue: Poly Love, Poly Love 5. Duplicate servers for the same residence because…well, polyamory can be complicated.  I think I know which neighbors these are.  Maybe someday the topic will come up in person.

The sport of intimacy

Toward the end of Pride and Prejudice, in which gossip plays a starring role, Elizabeth Bennet’s father offers this observation: “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?”  Mr. Bennet didn’t live in an apartment, but the sentiment holds true.  I am sure my new-new neighbors, as well as everybody in the courtyard, wonders what’s up with the guy on the second floor who enjoys frequent nicotine breaks and observes everything.  Perhaps they spin stories out of Sophie’s presence beside me or, before her, that of other guests.  Some of them have had the courage to come up, to introduce themselves, to sit and chat.  They are no longer strangers.  They have the details about me, about Sophie, and in some cases about this blog.

According to my friendly, attractive, and impossibly young new neighbor, she and her roommates also have a blog.  Or a creative endeavor.  Something.  She called it “love and chaos,” based (I assume) on the landscape they currently explore and think they invented.  My research reveals only a well-established local band by that name.  I have debated whether or not to introduce them to the idea of copyright and brand infringement.  I have debated whether to tell them they have a neighbor with a similar project.  But I think I will wait.  I will let them decide where their path leads and whether it crosses the balcony to my door.  In the meantime, no matter their impressions, whether they know it or not, I’ve got their back.

 

“Do you see where that tree branch used to go all the way over across the stairs?”

 Her eyes rolled upwards, dry and swollen. A branch floated in the dark grey night sky, its end abrupt, crude and blunt. Her day had started with car trouble, turned into work trouble, strayed off the path into domestic trouble and now had turned into personal trouble. She had opened her mouth when she should have kept it shut. But of course he would argue that not talking about the difficult things would have the same outcome as a conversation that went poorly.

“I see it.” Her voice was thick and nasal, pathetic sounding to her own ears.

“That branch used to go all the way over to the stairs, cast shade, shelter. They cut it down to let the grass grow underneath it. And now there’s no branch and no grass. But I remember.” He flicked the cherry of his cigarette carelessly on the concrete. “The problem with having a good memory is I remember when there was more. Now there’s less and people just shrug and move on. But I remember.”

She sat in silence, the conversation that had happened inside replaying over and over again in her memory. She had tried everything to talk to him in a way that she thought was non-threatening, in a way that she thought would lead to understanding, but he had blocked her at every turn. She desperately wanted to convey her lack of judgement but also convey her need for connection. Every angle she tried to get around the corner to the matter just made him angrier and more obstinate, and his words cut deeper and deeper as she tried harder and harder to get to the heart of the matter. Finally he asked “What’s the real issue here? What are you actually trying to say?”

She composed herself somewhat and tried to steady her voice. “Earlier in the evening we were laughing and having fun and talking about things we have in common and enjoying ourselves. You were flirting with me. You slapped me on the ass and told me all the things you were going to do to me. Then you had that one last drink and you slipped into yourself, and you came to bed and immediately passed out, and I felt ignored and rejected. I feel like I’m not important. I feel like you don’t feel for me the same way I feel for you.” There it was, the shit she wasn’t supposed to say.

His face almost immediately softened, just a touch. “Well, that was… easier,” he said. She struggled to stop crying, hating herself for doing it. “I’m sorry,” she squeaked, “I’m just trying to stop crying.”

“Why?” He looked puzzled. “If that’s how you feel then that’s how you feel.”

But what she felt at that moment was betrayed, confused, hurt, pushed aside for what? To make more room for misery? Anger? Resentment? Fuck that. She didn’t want to even convey emotion to a person who would make her feel those things. She had already done this before – not even that long ago. She wasn’t about to put everything on the table to be utterly heartbroken again.

“You don’t belong to me,” he said, “You belong to someone else and that’s okay, that’s the way it’s supposed to be. But it means you can’t be the one to save me, you can’t be the one to help me.” 

How was he supposed to know about the four nights a week she spent staring at her bedroom wall trying to mentally fix every physical and emotional problem he had? How was he supposed to know about the money she was squirreling away every slim week for the drought she knew was coming, money that had been depleted by unexpected expenses? How was he supposed to know about her worry-filled, chain-smoking nights spent trying, trying, to make something out of nothing? It had worked for her a million times, she had gotten herself out of a million jams, why couldn’t she do this for him, the man she loved, almost more than anyone else on earth? 

She had been keeping secrets. 

His words burned in her stomach and nauseated her. Her tears were hot and embarrassing, especially now that she wasn’t sure she was comfortable enough around him to shed them. She felt even more naked than she actually was. “I just don’t know if I want you to see them,” she said, and that’s when he stood up. “Okay. Well, you do what you’re gonna do, and I’m gonna go outside and smoke.”

Her insides twisted as she sat on the edge of the bed. Her breasts were soaked with tears and she could barely bring breath through her nose. She felt silly. Unattractive. Ineffective. All things she wasn’t used to feeling and things he had never made her feel, not until tonight.

Finally she sat up, wiped her face with aching hands. Fuck this, she thought. I’m not letting this shit go, and I’m not letting him get away like that. And I’m not going away like that. 

That was when she stepped outside to sit down and he started talking about the branches.

++

“I have a long history of failing at this kind of conversation. It’s a turning point.”

“How so?”

“Well, how do you measure change?”

“I’m still not following you.”

“Well, something has to have already changed for us to be having this conversation.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, that’s good then.”

Her slim fingers snubbed out her cigarette against the metal walls of the coffee tin kept explicitly for this purpose. “Can we try something?”

He looked at her. “Yeah?”

“We have to go back to the bedroom for that.”

She stood up and walked past him, her hand grazing his on her way to open the door. He gripped her hand lightly as he stood up, almost for support. After they entered she closed the apartment door behind her and turned to him. Her hands wrapped around the back of his head and brought him closer for kisses he didn’t deflect. They were there for mere minutes before she padded back to the bedroom with him in tow.

They stripped their clothes unceremoniously, her at the end of the bed and he at the side. She climbed in first, he followed, their heads touching, their whole bodies touching lengthwise. “What are we gonna do?” he asked.

“Try harder.” she replied.

Then there was kissing, insistent and purposeful. She had already decided that she was going to get something that she wanted. Their tongues rolled against each other and his hand made a familiar path down to her, plunging into her almost immediately. She gasped – quietly, they weren’t alone in the apartment – against his forehead and cleared her throat. “You’re going to do something for me,” she said. 

“What?”

“You’re going to go down on me,” she said, and he didn’t move or make a sound. No nodding, no acquiescence, just the firm and persistent pressure of his fingers against her clit and slit. She shivered once again at his touch. But that’s not how I want to come, she thought, and grasped his arm to roll him over on top of her. 

He used that moment to push her legs high against her chest and bring his head to her pussy. His breath was hot on her clit and she had to bite her lip to keep from moaning. She was honestly surprised that she was as aroused as she was, she expected not to be able to come back from the conversation that they had had earlier. But maybe he was right – maybe things had changed a little. And what she needed to be at that moment was something more like the woman he had met, before they fell in love, before things changed – unattached, unconcerned, selfish. 

“I know you don’t like the drinking,” he had mentioned a few weeks ago in passing. “But right now I want to drink, and I am being selfish, because I know it puts distance between us.”

Fuck your distance, she thought as she tangled her hands in his hair. I’m putting you here now. I’m making you be here now. I’m fucking selfish.  It seemed as if he could read her thoughts, his tongue swirling around and cupping her clit like it was the most natural movement. She couldn’t stop her hips from bucking up to meet him and he responded in kind by pushing her down and taking control of her, blowing gently over her wetness. She grabbed the headboard and came then, with force and no small amount of movement, almost savagely holding his head against her crotch. He then plunged his fingers into her pussy, into her ass, his other hand grasping her thigh so hard she could feel the mark she would see later. She came again and again in breathless succession, trying unsuccessfully not to make a sound. It was several minutes before she noticed he no longer had both his hands on her – he was touching his cock, trying to will it into service. 

“Oh, you think any part of this is about you?” she smirked, pushing him away from her with a sweep of her thigh. He fell onto his back and murmured something about no, not really. She bent forward and kissed him deeply, tasting herself on his lips and tongue, teasing him with her own. 

Mere minutes after she pulled away from him he was snoring, dead to the world. She was alone with her thoughts, and now they were focused solely on herself.

I just have to try harder, she mused. I just have to do more. I just have to invest in something…gym time, seducing him, date night, something. I just have to try.

It was a refrain that kept repeating as she opened her computer. And maybe I need to be a little selfish, too.

The cursor only blinked in place for a moment. It was going to be easy to write.

by Sophie

Hi, I’m alive, I exist, I promise.

Life happens, or at least that’s what I tell myself every time I start to feel guilty about having not done more for this blog. I want to tell you, dear reader, about all the things that have happened over the last month, the travelling I have been doing, the things Jamie has done to make my life easier, but to do that would be to reveal myself and I want to keep as much of my anonymity as possible as long as possible.

Suffice it to say, I am alive, as is Jamie. Life has intervened but now I am back at my computer and ready to write again, starting with this little love letter masquerading as a thank you note.

Jamie has had a lot on his mind the last couple of weeks. Some of life’s interventions haven’t been the kindest to either of us and it weighs on him. I can see it in the slope of his shoulders and the worried line that appears between his eyes. Even though we consider ourselves sexual superheroes, even we are felled by the kryptonite that is stress and worry, and we’ve been sidelined by both in the recent past.

However, while I was out of town for my yearly jaunt to the west coast, Jamie did a few things for me that made my life tremendously easier than it otherwise would have been, and he did it all while balancing work stress and domestic responsibilities. He didn’t let on how much life had worn him down when I returned – at least not immediately, but he can’t keep much from me nowadays – and received me with a smile and open arms. We slipped into our regular routine as easily as we slipped out of it, and I was reminded again how lucky I am to have found him. The simple breakfasts and quietly passionate evenings, the music playing throughout his apartment as we go about daily life, the smiles and private jokes shared when we are in the company of people who aren’t privy to the content of our blog or our life in the bedroom.

All of this is to say thank you to Jamie, for staying true to us even when life gets hard and for getting hard even when life gets decidedly unsexy. Tonight, as I rode him, I felt the exact joy and release I felt the first time we met. When he turned me over and held my shoulder as he slid into me, everything outside the bedroom door melted away despite best efforts to shatter our defenses.

When I came, and he came, all I could think was, I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive.

Jamie and Sophie attended their first Bedpost Confessions in January of 2018. Their curiosity was piqued by one of Jamie’s friends, who knew about the blog and suggested there might be some synergy. Not knowing what to expect, Jamie and Sophie wondered if they’d be bored.

Um, no. As they have discussed repeatedly, Jamie and Sophie were blown away by the courage they saw on stage, by the joy and pain revealed, by the feeling of connection to presenters with whom, at least on the surface, they sometimes had little in common. As Jamie said at the time, it felt like they were in a lifeboat with equals, keeping each other safe while heading for shore. It felt like community.

Not to mention the fact that Jamie’s anonymous confession, written on a whim during intermission and added to the stack of cards, was one of the first ones read out loud to the crowd by BPC co-founders and emcees Miranda Wylie and Sadie Smythe. Ah, recognition — the writer’s drug of choice.

Jamie and Sophie attended their second BPC armed with knowledge. They arrived early enough to get better seats. They knew how strong the North Door drinks would be (holy cow!) and to pace themselves. They knew that one of the best things to do at BPC is people watch, and so they indulged.

Jamie spotted her first. He wouldn’t say he has a type, but if he did, she might look like the friendly, petite, silver-haired, tattooed badass he saw across the room. Jamie nudged Sophie and nodded toward the woman, smiling sheepishly. Neither petite nor silver haired, Sophie responded with a knowing grin and a wry eye-roll. Words weren’t necessary; Sophie already knew what catches Jamie’s eye, and in a blog post she has described how, at an event like BPC, even the usual innocent things feel heightened. Besides, she’s got the friendly tattooed badass part covered.

But when that friendly, petite, silver-haired, tattooed badass took the stage, to Jamie and Sophie’s mutual surprise, all idle fantasies went out the window. Spike Gillespie has the keen insight to see the beauty, the humor, the poignancy, and the pain in everyday things, along with the writing talent to bring those everyday things to compelling life. Like Hunter S. Thompson, her narrative default is autobiographical. Like Kinky Friedman, she shines a spotlight on the unique flavor of Texas found in the Austin area. Like Molly Ivins, her mind is a whip that can, with a single flick, separate an ego from its coating of protective bullshit.

Spike’s topic that night was a recently ended toxic relationship from which she is still recovering. Jamie was moved by the raw honesty of her narrative (and maybe a little envious of her mad skills, as creative types can sometimes get). Sophie felt a much more personal connection, having recently ended a toxic relationship herself. All in all, it was another great BPC experience.

Fast forward to January of 2019. Jamie and Sophie were outside during intermission, enjoying a smoke break with the friendly North Door bouncer, whose main job is to tell BPC attendees which door to use. (Helpful hint: It’s in the northside alley.) Jamie noticed that a nearby clump of people included Spike Gillespie, who was having a vape (her “Bilbo Baggins look,” as she later self-deprecatingly called it). Taking this as a nudge from the universe, Jamie reached out via email and began the conversation leading to this interview. Spike helpfully provided background material gleaned from her multitudinous online outlets, including a link to her BPC presentation. Sophie was even more deeply moved by watching it a second time, as the interview questions will show.

Speaking of which, let’s get to them.

Jamie: Let me start with a confession. While doing some BPC research, it dawned on me that I “met” co-founder Julie Gillis more than a decade ago. On a dating site. We figured out we were looking for different things, so it didn’t go anywhere. But it’s fun to say I “almost dated” a BPC co-founder. I reached out to Julie, half-joking that I hoped I hadn’t said anything at the time to stimulate BPC commentary. Thankfully, she cannot recall any #metoo-worthy comments.

How long have you been attending Bedpost Confessions? Was that your first time to present?

Spike: I’m a little embarrassed to say I didn’t make it to my first BPC until summer 2018. My friend Simon was sharing a piece and he invited me as his guest. I was so taken by the readings, by the audience energy, by the whole thing that I was kicking myself for not having attended all the others.

Jamie: We had the exact same reaction: “Why didn’t we do this forever ago?!”

Spike presents, and SOULumination’s Austin Andrews interprets, at Bedpost Confessions on October 19, 2018. Photo by Jack Darling.

Spike: When I presented a few months later, yes, it was my first time. Miranda and Sadie had invited me so many years before, but I think I misunderstood the event, thought the scope was limited and at the time of that invitation I think I said no because I didn’t have anything sexy to share. I’m glad I figured out how broad you can go.

Jamie: The format seems to dovetail well with your narrative style.

Spike: Yes, their format is right up my alley. I often perform first-person pieces that are edgy in shows that I put on at Hyde Park Theatre. Though I did feel a little bit nervous, mostly I felt right at home.

Jamie: You keep a lot of rotating irons in the fire. One of them is Keeping Austin Austin, the sentiments of which (like anybody who’s been here a while) I share. Bedpost Confessions certainly counts as an Austin treasure worthy of promoting and preserving. Any direct connection between the two?

Spike: I think the connection is that both represent what I refer to as Old Austin, a term that surely annoys some people and which doesn’t really have a fixed point on any timeline. To some folks Old Austin might mean the days of the Armadillo Headquarters. To my generation I see the Electric Lounge as a physical location representative of “my” Old Austin. But I hope we all know — I really think this is true — that what the phrase really refers to is a certain kind of attitude and energy that is welcoming, whimsical, and yes, okay, weird even if the term “weird” got totally co-opted. I haven’t posted in Keeping Austin Austin in a long time, but I still put posts up on Facebook whenever I have what counts for me as a classic Austin experience. I have those all the time. I’m talking about hugging my cashier at Wheatsville, walking the streets during SXSW just to people-watch, observing people helping each other without a second thought, endless ridiculous fashion statements, coming across Mariachi bands in the dairy section at HEB, that sort of thing.

Sophie: It took a minute, but eventually I remembered where we might have met before. A few years ago, you officiated a wedding for two of my friends and did an absolutely fabulous job. You definitely brought your unique sensibility to their ceremony. Your wedding officiant work is obviously a labor of love. How did that come about?

Spike: In 2004 I read an article in The New York Times about a growing need for officiants willing to perform non-religious and/or non-traditional and/or mixed culture/mixed religion weddings. I mentally bookmarked that and thought it might be something to pursue. Two years later, some friends asked me to perform their wedding. I agreed, loved it, and found someone to train me into how to turn this into a business. Pretty soon I had a little side business going — I was still writing for a living then. Then in 2010 the writing contract I had to write a blog for JetBlue about Austin got canceled. By then I was exhausted from trying to hustle for paying work. The bottom had fallen out thanks to so many “writers” (read: amateurs) willing to “create content” (ick) in exchange for “exposure.” I looked at my life, noted that the wedding business had grown steadily, and made a decision to jump into that full-time. I’m very entrepreneurial and I hustled my ass off, beefed up the marketing, and the business really took off. Eventually I added funerals and sometimes baby blessings.

In 2015 someone sent me a link to a tiny chapel that was for sale. I fell in love with it. It’s a long, long, long-ass story, but right around this time I reconnected with an old high school friend I’d only seen one other time since we graduated in 1982. The short version is that he and his wife were looking for investments, they knew I wanted the chapel, they encouraged me to sell my Austin house and buy the chapel, promising to finance a piece of property to put it on. I found this abandoned ranch twenty minutes from South Austin that had most recently been used as an unofficial junkyard and meth lab. I fell in love with it and so we bought it, we bought the chapel, and I busted ass (and still bust ass) to turn it into a venue.

This place is a little kooky and I’m a little kooky and the kookiness attracts clientele I almost always love working with. It is so rare for me to have a hard time with my clients. It happens but 99% of the time I just love my work. I do ceremonies here at the ranch and out in the Hill Country. To be clear, just because I’m kooky doesn’t mean I am doing circus weddings. I do get the occasional odd request — wear a unicorn mask, dress as Elvis — which I accept. Really though, being kooky has informed my goal to be non-judgmental, which allows me to super customize ceremonies. I’m not there to proselytize or force my ideas of marriage/wedding on them. I’m there to represent their wishes and desires and, only if they want my input, to guide them.

Sophie: I haven’t gotten a chance to read absolutely everything out there, but I love your work. I look forward to reading your newest book, The Tao of Bob.

Spike: Thanks so much. I’m so grateful people read my work. The Tao of Bob has two main themes. About a year into living at the ranch, Bob moved out here. He was the father of my good friend Ellen. He wanted to leave Indiana and move to Texas to be close to her, but not in the city. He was a farmer and so I said he could live with me. Of course I saw it as me doing him a favor, and also of course it turned out to be the opposite. Because the other theme is that I was involved with an incredibly abusive partner at the time, I was living in the black hole of toxicity, and Bob could see this. He guided me back into the light. We only had fourteen months together before he died, but this was one of the most profound relationships of my life.

Sophie: I have read all of the Red Flag Society blog material that is still on the site. Your stories track very closely — if much more seriously — to some experiences I have had in my own life. I also have a narcissistic abuser in my past, one who still occasionally pops up to ruin random days or attempt to connect with me now that I am no longer around to abuse.

Spike: I’m so sorry you went through this, too. Being involved with a Cluster B — NPD, Sociopath, BPD — is one of the most traumatizing experiences one can have. Another very long story (I don’t have any short stories) is that eventually the trauma led me to Twelve Step work. I quit drinking in 2000 (with a few one-day trips back to drinking, but I have been sober fully since around 2009). But I did not go to AA to quit. I didn’t want to be around a bunch of recovering drunks. Then I hit a real, true hard bottom emotionally in 2017, not long after the breakup, and I was desperate for help. So I tried AA and then I added ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunction) and this helped me to see more clearly than even therapy and meditation not just how entrenched I was in the pattern of seeking out chaos and getting into abusive situations, but also, fucking finally, WHY this was happening and HOW TO STOP. Now I already knew some of the reasons — namely, my dad abused the shit out of me and I just kept going out and finding different versions of him. But something about how the ACA literature puts it got through to me. I have been healing by leaps and bounds since I started Twelve Stepping.

Jamie: The #metoo movement has put this sort of behavior, among others, in the spotlight. Do you think there is anything unique or era-specific to it, or do you think it’s a timeless dysfunction that is only now being called out?

Spike: I’m going to go short for once and say: timeless dysfunction. I’m a hardcore feminist. I read feminist tomes. I write them. I try to sort out gender stuff and understand behaviors. I am never going to figure it out. These days I try to take folks on a one-by-one basis and be open to get to know them. I do think/hope we are all greater than the sum of our parts, and I believe many men have done really stupid shit that they later went on to not do, to make amends for, to live better. This is true of me, too. I have been the drunk predator at a bar in my youth. I have made inappropriate remarks and gestures. I don’t live like that anymore. I hope we all are learning from the #metoo movement.

Sophie: I was aware of my abuser’s narcissistic tendencies during the time we were “together” and while I never hoped to “heal” him, I hoped many times that he would see a different path forward through our interaction. Were you aware during your relationship with your abuser that he was a narcissist, or was it only after the fact that you became aware of his inability to change?

Spike: I did not realize he was a narcissist. He was a Covert Narcissist. Once I asked one of my therapists if she thought he was. I guess I described him poorly (with my blinders on) because she said she thought not. Only when I started posting publicly about what had happened did I figure it out. SO MANY PEOPLE commented that what I was describing was by-the-book narcissistic behavior. Weirdly, though I’d been with other narcissists, I totally missed all the signs. This is, I know now, in part due to aforementioned blinders, and also an extremely high threshold for pain, and having imprinted on my mother who lived in constant servitude to my father, which required superpower denial skills. Once I got clued into it, especially the work of Kim Saeed (www.LetMeReach.com), I devoured articles on the topic to try to heal. I was aghast at how cookie cutter narcissistic abuse is.

Sophie: You write of “falling into bed” with him even after the abuse you suffered. Was the “make up sex” a cathartic experience, more exciting in spite of (or maybe, in a sick way, because of) the dysfunction in your relationship, or was it a way for you to show him compassion and love in hopes he would change his ways?

Spike: Honestly, much as I hate to admit it, I’m pretty sure that having sex with him was only ever about external validation, some “proof” that he loved me. Which, considering his idea of sex — including non-consensual hitting me in the face — is really sad and really telling. I didn’t know he was a porn addict — again see “blinders” up above. Plus I remember very early on, when he first started insulting my body and voiced disdain for my pubic hair, he announced, “I’m not a pedophile or a porn addict,” followed by something about wanting better access. That was bullshit. He wanted control. He wanted to test my boundaries (or lack thereof) and he wanted to plant the seed of doubt — simple reverse psychology I see now, announcing he wasn’t a porn head so my mind would head that direction. Writing all of this makes me cringe.

Sophie: If he were to pop back into your life now (as mine has several times over the past few months; it seems he has a sixth sense that I might be happy) and showed you that he has in some way changed, would you show him compassion or continue to keep him as far away as possible? Or is there some state of emotion in-between, one that simultaneously honors your healing process, boundaries, and the place he had in your life — for good or ill? I know in my situation there is no way to maintain civility even if my abuser had become a saint.

Spike: If I got word that the Empire State Building had been on fire while it was full of kittens and humans, and that he had single-handedly saved every single kitten and human in there, and that the only reward he wanted was a chance to say hello to me, I would not see him. If he cured cancer, took over where Mother Teresa left off, and spent every moment of every day trying to make amends to me and the world, I would not see him. He can fuck off. Now just the fact that I wasted however many seconds I wasted typing all of that suggests that maybe I haven’t reached the ideal healing place, which is total neutrality. But it’s kind of a catch-22. I rarely think about him anymore except when I share my story (as I am now) in hopes that my story might wake up someone else going through it, help her to get out. When these interviews prompt me to mention him, I still get a little triggered. But it’s tiny compared to how it once was. I used to wish he would drop a hot meth pipe on his balls, and that they would catch on fire, and that he would die a slow death, and that someone would post the footage on YouTube so I could watch it and laugh. Then I planned to wipe my ass with his obituary after which I would immediately get an anal bleaching. Hahaha. That sure took a lot of energy just to think about. I don’t waste my energy like that anymore. Some days a hint of compassion comes through, thanks to the work I do in my Twelve Step groups. I understand in part why he is like he is, which is not the same as accepting cheerfully what he did to me. I have a lot of friends now who are recovering meth addicts and I have gained a lot of insight into this guy’s violence — wait, did I mention he had a secret meth addiction, too? — but I don’t ever turn the volume up on that compassion because it was compassion for him and the sob story he peddled to me that sucked me in in the first place. So I don’t need to revisit that. I just keep working on me, on my healing, on fixing the things inside of me that were so broken that I could not see what a horrible idea it was to get involved with him in the first place, the parts of me that inspired me to stick around.

Jamie: You said in email that “it’s been a long time since I engaged in the activity” of sex. Is this a direct result of your experiences with your abuser or the group work you’ve mentioned? Sophie wondered in passing if your meditation practice might include the Buddhist idea of putting aside attachment and desire.

Spike: Yes — completely a result of my experiences with my abuser. I already had PTSD before I met him. After the breakup my PTSD was in such high gear that I fended off suicidal ideation constantly. A huge part of the fallout was that I was unable to easily receive physical touch. I don’t mean sexual touch. I mean ANY touch. I have some close friends in Austin who decades ago used to gently tease me about what a crappy hugger I was. Then I learned how to be a great hugger. But after this relationship ended, it was hard to receive hugs from even my close friends. Physical touch is a vital part of living a healthy life. I would work to receive hugs and I sleep with my dogs, so that helped. I also got a lot of massage. Still, the idea of physical intimacy with a partner seemed so far beyond reach. Because as I woke up from the hell I had been through or allowed myself to stay in or however you want to put it, the horror didn’t recede, it intensified. I thought about how he had hidden a meth addiction and a porn addiction and I also found out he’d been cheating for who knows how long with a woman he went public with on social media 19 days after he broke up with me. My mind saw this as… well, I now felt like every act of sex with him had been rape. That might sound extreme, but the way I explained it in a blog post is, imagine identical twins and make one of them evil. You start dating one but the evil one, unbeknownst to you, takes over and stands in for his brother without revealing it. Okay, just typing that sounds really ridiculous now, but it’s how I felt then. That guy misrepresented himself constantly, and so I was having sex with (or being raped by) a stranger. Also, once I was free of him, I could finally see, with more clarity and more horror still, how he had specifically used physical stuff to humiliate and control me. Calling me “too fat” and then, when I lost weight (from anxiety) “too skinny” and “too saggy.” Telling me I had sex all wrong. Yelling at me in bed. Hitting me in the face during sex. So much crazy shit. What this has left me with is fear, which thankfully is shrinking, but it’s not gone yet. Such violence and abuse happened in a place that one is the most vulnerable and literally naked — how could I ever, ever again put myself in that position, take the risk? At first I was enraged. It is one thing to choose for oneself to take a break from sex. But it didn’t feel like a choice. It felt like — it is — direct fallout from extreme trauma.

The good news is I can hug again. It’s wonderful! Also, yes, as Sophie guessed, my meditation practice along with my Twelve Step work has helped me so much to get to a place of acceptance. Not having sex hasn’t killed me. I had another period in my life — also after a narcissist — where I took a seven year break! Seven years! During my alleged sexual peak. Now I know a term I didn’t know then: relationship anorexia. Where you avoid all intimate relationships, “reasoning” it’s a way to not get hurt. That was true of me for sure. These days I pray to my higher power (that would be Bob) to release me from unhealthy attachment, desire, and craving. It’s really useful. I like the idea of maybe having sex again one day — I like to joke I would please like just one “vaginal palate cleansing” before I die, so I don’t die having had my last sex be with my abuser. Anyway, right now my fantasies run along the lines of what a friend of mine calls Bert & Ernie. I am heterosexual, I love men, and this fantasy involves me and a loving man side by side in single beds, wearing matching mens’ pajamas, parallel playing: reading cool books, drinking coffee, snuggling our dogs, and from time-to-time reading aloud to one another. Maybe there can be some brief handholding. Hahaha. I am joking-not-joking about this. The most important thing I think is that now, nearly two years after getting out of that situation, I am finally feeling lighthearted again.

There’s more good news, too. I have so many men friends. I mean, I have a ton of great women friends, too. But as far as getting my Man Energy Fix, the yang to my yin? I have some deeply, deeply intimate platonic friendships with men. They are all brilliant, kind, compassionate. They adore me and I them. I think I always knew, or have known for a long time, the truth in the observation that there’s nothing more sexy (or, as I prefer, attractive and enticing) than a great mind-meld. If I had to pick between ever getting laid again in exchange for giving up good conversation or keeping good conversation but never getting laid again — well, firstly, yay! I don’t have to make that choice — but I would pick conversation any day.

Sophie: You ended your Red Flag Society blog last year with an extensive page of resources for survivors of emotional trauma. Are you still hosting your Red Flag Society dinners, or did they end along with the blog? Are there any more recently discovered resources that you would recommend?

Spike: I finally stopped the Red Flag Dinners. The better I felt and the busier I got I vowed to taper them off. Then I’d get some email from someone in the beginning stages of waking up asking to come to a dinner. So I kept them rolling. But now I’m more focused on my own needs and my own time and keeping as much of it for myself as I can. That might sound selfish. And it might actually be selfish. But it’s something I really learned to engage in as I did all my healing work — self-care is crucial. I am so fortunate to have the life I have, to have a part of me that is recognized publicly pretty regularly. This in turn brings a lot of people to my doorstep and my inbox. I want to be as helpful as I can be, but I was stretching myself way too thin. So no more dinners. But my blog is there and the resources I list over there are still great.

Sophie: Thank you so much for sharing your story. You are definitely an inspiration to me. Your presentation and writing have been a revelation for me, as I’m sure they have been for many others.

Jamie: Yes, thank you for finding time to talk with us, and also for finding the courage to share what is obviously a wrenching experience. I would wish you better days to come, but I think you’re already making that happen while helping show others the way. Good work.

Spike: Thank y’all so much. I’m honored you wanted to hear my story.

To learn more about Spike Gillespie, click on the story links above. To learn more about Bedpost Confessions, click here. To buy tickets for the April 24-26 BPC show, titled “Kiss and Tell,” click here.

“Kiss me. Or do you not do that?”

“Kiss? Sure. But it’ll cost you extra.”

“Seriously?”

“No.”

He leaned down then, sandy long bangs falling in his grey-blue eyes, and kissed me. It was pleasant and almost chaste at first before melting into wet, soft foreplay. This is what the British were doing when they came up with the word ‘snogging’, I found myself deliriously thinking – the drinks were definitely having their way with me. I almost never drank on the job, but this one was a little different. This guy was already a lot of fun.

Once upon a time I was a professional fucker. Men would book my time – and that’s what they were paying for, my time, a distinction made very clear on the simple website where we “met” – and I would go to them, night after night, and make their fantasies come to life. Guys would click through a gallery of photos of artfully posed, faceless women. They would read the descriptions posted underneath our images and make choices. Someone who chose me would have seen a pale redhead sitting, cross-legged, on a wingback chair, back arched just so as to set off my reasonably small waist and unreasonably large breasts – all real, as my description boasted. They would have clicked on the photo to see other photos of me, one of me lying on my back, crimson mane cascading down the side of a white-sheeted bed, breasts barely held by black lace and cupped by my manicured fingers, shapely legs again crossed but this time in the air. They would have read my short bio, which I tried to make as honest as a paragraph about a woman using a fake name could be, and would have found that I liked well-read, educated men with a playful, adventurous streak. My stats were listed, all the usual stuff like height, weight, bra size, and a list of sexual acts I would and would not do.

My list of “won’t-dos” was much shorter than my list of “will-dos.” Maybe that’s what caused me to have as much success as I had. And – since we’re being honest – I was very successful.

Nowhere on the list of “won’t-dos” was kissing, though, so this guy’s request was strange. Maybe he was just the kind of man who would ask permission before attempting anything, which I knew would bore me before the end of the evening. But maybe he was just being polite. It was hard for me to tell. We had just met, only an hour before.

It was March, specifically the week in March that South by Southwest begins in my fair city. SXSW brings with it a certain energy. Thousands of people travel to Austin to take in presentations, panels, shows, movies, and soirees, all under the pretense that they are partaking in some sort of professional development, when in fact half of it is just an excuse to party at a high-tech Mardi Gras. The weather has usually begun to swing toward beautiful and wildflowers are starting to push their way through the soil in abandoned lots and sidewalk cracks downtown. The alcohol is usually free and abundant, and every hole in the wall bar becomes a showcase for some serious musical talent – in short, the second week in March, in Austin, is the place to be if you make your living in the music industry. Obviously this means that the city is swimming in music professionals, all elbowing their way into showcases to find – or become – the next big thing.

For women like me, the influx of wealthy visitors meant there was a lot of money to be made, and I was booked solid that year. That particular evening I was meeting Peter, an A&R representative working with a smaller yet pretty well-known indie label based in the Northwest. We were to rendezvous at one of the hundreds of downtown venues set up for SXSW. The line of hopeful attendees wrapped around the corner as my driver dropped me off. I was nervous about being allowed into the club, having no badge or other credentials on me, but when I told the man at the door my name he unhooked a chain and nodded me in without a word. It occurred to me that I had no idea how I would find Peter, but he knew what I looked like – well, mostly – and I was right on time, 8:00 pm on the dot.

It turned out he was waiting for me near the entrance and it was easy to pick him out of the crowd. He was shifting back and forth, looking at his watch and then looking up at the entrance, obviously waiting for me. When he caught a glimpse of my hair, vibrant red under the occasional light – his face lit up like he was meeting an old and anticipated friend. “Sophie?” he half-yelled over the din of the room, and I nodded. “You… don’t look like I expected you to look, I guess.”

I glanced down at my outfit. Clutch, fitted jeans, heels, tee shirt. Simple makeup. My lacy bra was ever so slightly visible under the v-neck of my top. “What were you expecting?” I asked, my husky voice straining a little to be heard. “Thigh-high boots?”

His grin dropped a bit. I could tell he was afraid he had offended me. I laughed and touched his shoulder, leaned in and took a deep breath. His cologne was woody and musky and mixed with the smell of booze. “If I looked like a hooker, then everyone would know you hired a hooker, and that just wouldn’t be discreet,” I murmured into his ear. I could see the hairs on his neck stand up slightly as I pulled away. “And just so I’m sure I’m talking to the right guy – Peter?”

“That is me, yeah.” We started to weave our way through the crowd to the bar. The band playing stopped just as we went to order, and we had about fifteen minutes to talk without the crashing sound of cymbals or amplified vocals. In that fifteen minutes I learned that he was actually the assistant to an A&R rep, trying to move up the ladder on his own, and that he actually hadn’t hired me – his boss had. I cocked an eyebrow at that one. “What, your boss decided you needed a night off?” Peter suddenly looked like a much younger, much less confident man. “Well,” he gestured around at the crowd, “we travel a lot for work, and,”

“Not much time to date, huh?” I finished both his sentence and my first drink, signaling to the bartender for another. “Yeah, no,” he finished. “But I love music, so it’s a sacrifice I don’t mind making.”

“I know you’re gonna think this is some sort of cutesy ‘whore’ talk, but I love music too,” I replied. “I have some background.”

“And how did you end up doing…this?”

“Dating?”

“Yeah.”

“I enjoy the job. It’s easier to get into than music. I’m bad at writing lyrics. I don’t play an instrument that fits easily into a rock band. The list could go on.” I eyed him suspiciously. “Why, do you have an issue with my job?”

Again he looked sheepish. “No, no, I just don’t have any experience at all with… is hooker rude?”

“Some would say yes. I don’t really care.” My drink appeared, along with another for him. I hadn’t even noticed him ordering. His slight embarrassment was amusing me greatly. He decided to slip out of the awkwardness with the most obvious question in the world.

“So, what kind of music are you into?”

I could bore you with the details of our lengthy hour-long half-shouted conversation about a million different indie bands, but I won’t, because that’s not what this story is about. This story is about what happened after he interrupted my rattling of arcane musical knowledge to ask me if he could kiss me.

After he pulled away from the supremely satisfying kiss, he asked, “Do you want to leave? I don’t want to be here anymore.”

“Neither do I, really.” I fished through my purse to send a quick text – you can’t leave a location without letting someone know where you are, in this line of work. “Where are you staying?”

The answer to that question turned out to be a rental condo in one of the now-old-school-but-then-fancy buildings downtown. It was a long walk from the venue to the condo, one on which we continued talking about music and SXSW and traveling for work and all the small talk we both knew wouldn’t be important in the next fifteen minutes. He held the door for me when we arrived – such a gentleman! – and we pressed the button to call the elevator. 12th floor.

You can probably guess what happened as soon as the doors closed, but I’ll elaborate for color. Peter had been studying me on the entire walk, his face almost blank – I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Apparently he had been thinking about being finally alone with me. As the elevator started its rapid rise, he reached over and grasped the back of my head and brought me in for more perfect kisses. I found myself hoping that the sex was going to be as good as the making out – but his earlier demeanor gave me pause. He had been almost overly polite. In my experiences that usually led to no small amount of timidity.

I shouldn’t have worried. Before the elevator made it to its destination he already had his hands on my waist, under my shirt. I vaguely remember making it down the hall to the condo, expensively appointed in the best of early 2000’s modern furniture. We fell onto the uncomfortable couch, pawing at one another like teenagers. Once we were out of the venues and streets of the city, Peter was a completely different guy, supremely confident and skilled with his hands. He must have sensed my surprise – while he was pulling my shirt over my head he murmured that he was excited to get what he paid for. Despite the fact that every guy who hired me “got what he paid for,” this explicit mentioning of it made me want him even more. I expertly pulled his belt out of the loops and his designer jeans down over his ass, looking up at him before getting a glimpse of the goods.

And what goods they were. “Wow,” I breathed, “You must be popular with the ladies.” His cock was ample and heavy in my hand, stiffening even more than I thought possible. He looked down at me with his blonde hair in his eyes again, his eyes begging me to suck him before he had the chance to. Who was I to deny him? He tasted heavenly, clean sweat and skin in my mouth as I swirled my tongue over the head of his cock. Even with my eyes closed I could see the expression on his face – I’d seen it a hundred times on a hundred guys. I take pride in my blowjobs, and this one I was especially enjoying. His hands crumpled my hair as he took control, holding my head still as he thrust himself into my throat. I opened my eyes then and looked up at him, my eyes watering a bit with the force. He seemed not to care and even that excited me – my pussy was slick and starting to swell with desire for him.

Peter fucked my face for a few more minutes, me on my knees on the couch, his pants around his. Finally he had had enough and he reached down to pull me up by my underarms, pulling my shirt over my head, pulling the straps of my lace-covered bra over my shoulders. My bra started to buckle without the support of the straps, my nipples spilling over the lace and into view. Peter pinched them assertively and roughly told me to stand and I complied, but not before pushing my finger into his lips and telling him to wait a moment. I fished through my purse for a condom before we continued – I could tell we were heading into reckless territory, and mine was not a reckless occupation, if done right.

He led me to the backside of the couch and bent me over it, unzipping my jeans and pushing them and the scrap of lace that was my panties down over my thighs. I heard him rip the condom open, felt the slight pause in the air as he rolled it over his beautiful penis. And then I felt that penis press insistently against the entrance to my pussy as he held my shoulder. “You’re ready,” he said, and I felt myself get even wetter as he drove himself into me with one perfect thrust. God, I thought, This guy is a fucking beast.

With one hand on my hip and one hand on my shoulder, Peter began to fuck me – really there’s no other word for what we were doing, he was so thoroughly turning me inside out with his enthusiasm. “Sophie, fuck, your cunt is marvelous,” he exhaled as he slammed into me over and over again. My breasts bounced against the back of the couch and I squealed appreciatively as I opened my eyes to see the city through the open windows of the living room. I imagined someone in a neighboring building looking over and seeing us and it made me smile. Peter slid his thumb into his mouth and then circled it around my asshole, causing me to shiver with pleasure. He pressed it into me with no pause in his rapid thrusting, and my knees went weak as I grasped the back of the couch.

This went on for what felt like both a minute and an hour, both of us becoming damp with exertion. I pushed back onto him as he pressed into me, I reached back to grab his ass and he leaned over my back to whisper into my ear. “I want to do something to you,” he growled into my neck, “and you’re going to let me.” My head bobbed in assent as he pulled out abruptly, pushed me onto my knees onto the hardwood floor, my jeans still around my ankles and my breasts fully erupted from the cups of my bra. “Look at me,” he commanded, and I did, my blue eyes flickering to his face. He looked more satisfied than anyone I had yet fucked, like he had turned some corner or done something he was truly proud of. “Open your mouth,” he commanded. “Tell me how badly you want me to come.”

I smiled, nodded. “I’m not going to beg, but I am going to say please,” I purred, “Please come for me?”

Peter had slid the condom off of his pretty cock and was stroking its impossible length, and the minute my words slid across my lips he moaned powerfully. He began to come almost violently, bucking his hips and shooting across my lips, cheeks, breasts – everywhere. I could hear it hit the hardwood floor, even. It was warm and I had to close my eyes to protect them from the strength of his climax. After what seemed like another eternity he finally finished with a low moan and shook the last of his come onto my breasts. When I opened my eyes he was looking down at me with the expression of a man who wasn’t quite done. I cocked my head to the side as he lowered himself onto his knees and pushed me to the floor. “You haven’t come yet,” he almost commanded, pulling my heels and pants off with purpose. He lowered his head to my clit as he slid a finger into my puffy cunt. I immediately writhed against him on the floor, sighing with pleasure and trying to hold off my own orgasm before giving in to him. I came like I was on fire, bucking my hips into his face, his come drying on mine. I remember thinking I might black out from the feeling.

When I finally did come to and open my eyes, he was sitting back on his heels, his cock still hard. “Um, color me impressed,” I managed to rasp. Peter laughed and looked toward the still closed door to the bedroom.

“Ready for round number two?” he asked, nodding towards the bedroom.

I grinned. “Sure – you gotta get what you paid for.”

(fiction)

It was the kind of night you experience only at South by Southwest.  On the heels of a million hipsters, spring floods Austin with its sweet, humid scent.  The air is charged, like lightning is about to strike.  Your skin tingles and your hair stands on end.  Anything is possible.

Tina was saving me a spot in line by the time I got to the Austin Music Hall.

“Where have you been?” she demanded.  “The doors are about to open.”  She lifted the rope and pulled me next to her.  The bouncer pretended not to notice, and our fellow “laminates” didn’t seem to care.  My Morning Jacket was this year’s hot band, but those of us with badges around our necks would all get in, we knew.  Not so the poor wristband crowd, the little people off to one side in a long winding line that stretched to the street.  The fire marshals were out in force, and no amount of wheedling would convince the organizers to sneak in a few extra souls.  The wristbanders were wasting their time at a showcase this popular.

Tina had decided to go Goth tonight, sporting electric blue highlights in her raven hair and a black and white polka-dot dress that cut her like a corset.   Me, I wasn’t about to leave my cowboy boots in the hotel closet.  I had my black-and-white striped socks pulled up to my thighs, leaving a gap between them and the oh-so-short denim skirt I had fashioned out of jean shorts.  A careful watcher would catch a flash of red between my legs, but this was hardly the time to worry about that.  In an even more deliberately trashy twist, I had chosen a matching, and flattering, red bra to go under a white sleeveless collared cotton blouse tied at the waist.  A crushed straw cowboy hat topped my brown shoulder-length hair and set off my green eyes nicely.

Hey, when in Texas….

Our line had just started to move when I spotted him.  Tall, not too skinny or beefy, dark eyes smoldering under his shaggy bleached bangs. He hadn’t primped for the event — no, he was a true believer, there for the music, wearing what seemed practical at the time: faded black t-shirt and jeans, canvas sneakers, wide leather watch band.  As our line snaked next to the rows where he waited in vain, he smiled and gestured.

“Can I cut in line too?” he said to Tina, but his eyes were on me.

“Sorry,” said Tina, smirking.  “Quota’s all used up.”  And then we were past.

“He’s cute,” she said.  “Too bad we’ll never see him again.”

“Yeah.”  The sight of him had thrummed up my spine like a long bass note, almost too low to hear.  Too bad, indeed.

But the line turned again, and he had us one last time.  “What about you?” he said to me. “Your quota’s not used up.  Can I hitch a ride?”

“I wish you could,” I said.  “Really.  You have no idea.”

And then we were inside.

We had it all to ourselves for a few moments.  Tina strode toward the bar.  “I’ll buy.  You grab a spot up front.”

I was front and center when Tina caught up, but I waved off the drink.  “Gotta pee.”  She rolled her eyes, said, “Hurry,” and sipped from the glass she had offered to me.  I headed up the right aisle along the stage, where I knew the ladies’ bathroom was.  The line in the bathroom was blessedly short, and I praised my foresight once again.  The badges paid for themselves in little and big ways.

I came out of the bathroom in a rush and almost bowled over a roadie with an amp on his shoulder.  A closer look gave me a shock; it was the cutie from outside.

“How did you—”

“Shh.”  He managed to put one finger to his lips without dropping the amp.  “Wait here.”  And he took off confidently, as if he actually were a roadie.

“No,” I said, but he didn’t hear me as the swelling crowd noise filled the hall.  I stood there uncertainly, blocking the path of a half dozen people, before I came to my senses.  The show was about to start.  I was not going to miss it.  Tina had my drink.  Nice try, Mr. Hottie.

A hand came to rest on my arm just as I was turning to go back into the hall.  At his touch I knew, without a doubt, that the lightning had finally struck.

“Follow me,” he said, taking my hand into his warm, strong, slightly sweaty grip. Soon we were threading a maze of backstage crap.  He stopped in front of a low door.

“In here.”  He held it open like a gentleman, waiting.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Come on.”

“I don’t even know your name.”

“It’s Terp.”  He smiled.  “Nice to meet you.”

“My friend—”

“…will forget to worry as soon as the music starts.”

He was right about that, I knew.  Before I could protest further, voices approached from around the corner.  That settled it.  I planted a hand against the small of his back and pushed him in before me, crouching under the low ceiling.

In the dark it was hard to tell for sure, but the space seemed surprisingly tidy.  Occasional beams of dusty light streaked down from cracks in the wooden ceiling.  A bunch of amp blankets were thrown in one corner, and he pulled me toward them.  We found a place to sit. The crowd roared from what sounded like a thousand miles away.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“Under the stage.”

“No way.”  As I settled in next to him, I could hear footsteps in various directions above as the band, assuming it was the band, took their places.

“Holy fuck.”

“I hope so,” he said, running a gentle hand up my leg.  And as the music exploded into what could only be “Evil Urges,” I grabbed Terp’s hand and guided it further upward.

By the time the band finished the first song to raucous applause, my thong was somewhere on the floor, my shirt open, my bra unsnapped in front and dangling down my arms. My hat had rolled off into the shadows somewhere. My hips were bucking in time with the tongue between my legs.  And when “Off the Record” started, he grabbed that rhythm as an anchor and took me with him.

“So fast,” I moaned, “I’m coming so fast,” as my head tilted back, my back arched, and my hips shivered in quick time.

I fought with his belt and zipper, and then I sucked his cock feverishly while “Gideon” soared and roared above us.  Terp might have been moaning, but nothing was going to drown out Jim James belting out those lyrics.  The air around us vibrated with passion.

I felt him begin to twitch before he eased my forehead back.  Taking advantage of the quick break, he pulled out a condom, ripped it open, and skillfully rolled it on with one hand.  I nodded approvingly.  I was in the hands of an expert.

At the end of a lovely date, with the whole night before us, we might have had time to linger and laugh, to fumble and find ourselves.  This was not that night.  He braced himself over me while I lay back, digging my heels into his ass to pull him in.  When he plunged into me, I felt as if a white-hot spotlight had pinned me to a stage.  He ground the loose, low riffs of “What a Wonderful Man” into every cell of my body.   And when we came, writhing together, I closed my eyes and thought I could see everything — the stage, the crowd, Tina with my now-empty glass, and the angelic face of Carl Broemel staring over his guitar, through the cracks in the floor, into my eyes staring up at him.

“What a wonderful man,” I murmured into Terp’s neck.

We found our clothes and scrambled into them.  “Ready?” he said, and I nodded.

We opened the low door and found ourselves staring into the sour face of the club’s stage manager.  Long gray ponytail wagging behind his shaking head, generous paunch, tired eyes that had seen everything twice — he knew exactly what was going on.  So much for a discreet exit.

But there was only one of him, and two of us.  In a chivalrous outburst, Terp confronted the manager while I managed to slip past.  The strains of “Thank You Too” rendered me conveniently deaf to anyone calling after me.

I found Tina still at the front of stage, swaying with the masses.  And yes, my glass was empty.

“Where the hell have you been?” she yelled over the music.  “The show’s half over.”

“Long line.  Don’t worry, I could hear it just fine.”  The lips between my legs were still puffy and slick.  I didn’t know if my thong was up to the task of keeping it all in, but this was hardly the time to worry about that.

As the set was ending, Tina leaned over to me and said, “Want to sneak into the back?  I think I know that guy over there.”  She had spotted the sour-faced manager, whose eyes were directly on me.

“Um, we’d better get to the next showcase,” I said.  I dragged her through the nearest exit before she could protest, feeling those eyes on me all the way.

We made it to Pangaea in record time and got in line behind the other laminates, who were already starting to file in to see Perry Farrell.

“Look over there,” said Tina.  “Isn’t that the cutie we saw in line at the last show?”

Terp was standing with the other wristbanders behind a cheap yellow rope, hoping in vain to get in.  He had already spotted us, and his grin was huge.

“Stop stalking us,” said Tina, grinning back as she passed him.

“What can I say?  I have good taste.”  I wasn’t sure if he meant the music or us.

As I passed him, he touched my arm again in just that way.  “Hey.”

“Hey what?”

“What’s your name?”

I thought a moment.  “I’ll tell you inside.”

“See you there,” he retorted.

“I hope so,” I said.  “Really.  You have no idea.”

And then I was in.

 

As I’ve said before, “Jamie Stayhouse” is not my real name, but it is a real name. This story is one of the reasons. It appeared about a decade ago in a now-defunct online publication called cleansheets.com. At the time I was an established writer just tiptoeing into erotica. My background included music journalism, which inevitably led me to the world’s biggest stage, South by Southwest. “Write what you know,” say the gurus, and it seemed reasonable to tap into my knowledge of SXSW to give this sex fantasy a plausible shape.

I’m not the sort of person who finds it easy to flirt and seduce in person, so maybe this story was an attempt to exorcise some frustrations about never having had such an adventure. Maybe my main character is the partner I never found but wished I had. It’s fun to imagine what might have happened if Sophie and I, whose active times at SXSW are roughly parallel, had crossed paths back then.

Today the clubs mentioned in this story are long gone. The musicians are on hiatus or pursuing other projects both in and out of music. SXSW has changed and grown radically from the days described here, which already reflected radical change compared to my journalism days, which were themselves far different from the event’s inception. But the energy is the same. The air still tingles with possibility.

When this story first appeared, the response to it encouraged me to believe I could write about sex in compelling ways.  Material success remains on the horizon, but thanks in part to this blog, we’re now striding toward that goal instead of tiptoeing.  This story is a nostalgic paving stone on that road.

“South by Southwest is right around the corner.”

“Around the corner?! It has officially started! Where has the time gone?”

“Well, crap. I have not begun to adjust my traffic expectations.”

“SXSW always makes me nostalgic for my first couple of years in Austin. When I had my favorite job.”

“SXSW also connects to my favorite job. Interesting that for both of us the road from SXSW to this blog is fairly direct.”

“Well, for different reasons, obviously. You weren’t fucking for money. Though you totally could.”

“I’ve always felt that writing is a form of prostitution. Actually, every form of work is prostitution. But writing is my favorite kind. And thank you for the compliment. I’d say ‘likewise’ but you already know it’s literally true.”

“But seriously, do you think you could do it? Take advantage of the influx of wealthy strangers to our fair city, please some of the ladies, make some fair cash? Or no, not for you?”

“I actually looked into that once.  Decades ago.”

“What?! I want to hear this story.”

“Not much to tell. The interviewer thought I was an undercover cop, so it went nowhere.”

“You do not look like a cop.”

“Thanks.  What I gleaned from the experience is that if I were a male escort—”

“An escort who happened to be male.”

“—sure, if I were, then my clientele would be pretty much male.  My personal experience at SXSW, in spite of my occasional best efforts, is that the world is not full of ladies coming here wanting to be fucked well.”

“Well, then, ladies should open their minds.”

“I heartily agree in principle.”

“You know, last year during a show, I got recognized by a former client.”

“I remember you mentioned it at the time.”

“It’s so hard to believe, because that part of my life was…almost two decades and a hair color ago, but he knew my name. It really sent me down memory lane.”

“I thought by now we would have discussed that and your former profession in much greater detail.”

“I know. Up until I met you it was one of the more interesting pieces of my sexual history. But you give me so many more topics to discuss.”

“Such as last night. Which maybe we’ll get to someday.”

“Last night was unbelievable. I keep thinking we’ll hit some sort of blissful plateau that I would be more than happy to hang out on, but you keep surprising me.”

“We’ve talked about our upward spiral, so maybe it’s time to talk about the past. I think one of the reasons I haven’t talked about yours is one, it’s your experience, and two, I recognize the difficulties built into the topic. Not that you lived them, but sex trafficking, exploitation, the very reason Craigslist disappeared, etc. I would hate to be glib about all of that. You were blessed to have a hassle-free and perhaps relatively rare experience.”

“I was. I entered that world by suggestion and choice, not force or desperation. And I was taken care of by my employer, not exploited. I of course wish it had been legal — that would fix a lot of the issues that surround a black market — but even then it was still fulfilling. I loved making men feel good. I still love making men feel good. Well, two in particular.”

“For which we’re grateful.”

“I was well suited for sex work. That job made me feel like a goddess. A very hard-working goddess. I miss it, sometimes. Especially during this time of year, when I remember meeting new people here for the conference, knowing that they would never be any sort of regular client. Not that I didn’t have a repeat performance or two.”

“The allure of novelty. Are we delusional? Or just lucky? I seriously ask that question from time to time.”

“Delusional how?”

“I mean specifically about being realistic, or not, about sex work. Thinking of it as a healthy occupation or partnering option. As my Valentine’s post illustrates, sometimes things can get out of control. Judgment can get catastrophically skewed.”

“It’s easy to want to pick apart a good thing, like we don’t believe it can happen to us. But it has and here we are. The life I lived was as good as it possibly could be. But no matter how good it was, it didn’t allow for much of a personal romantic life. There’s also the fact that it wasn’t necessarily the safest — it was as safe as possible, but not the safest. There’s always a downside.”

“This blog also highlights how good we are for each other. So three cheers for the upside.”

“I’m starting to think about telling some stories. Starting with a SXSW one.”

“Lacking any personal stories, I do have a SxSW-themed piece of fiction I wrote a while back.”

“I can’t wait to read your story.”

“Likewise.”

Attending Bedpost Confessions is a sort of pact.  Those who present their stories are baring their sexual souls.  The lives they live, the choices they make, the pain and joy they share, may bear little resemblance to yours or mine.  But by being present, by listening and responding, we offer our respect, our support, our acceptance and love.  The feeling may last no longer than the applause or the ride home, or – as it has been with Sophie and me – it may feel as if something bigger has happened.  You’ve joined a community, a group of people trying to keep each other safe and get the lifeboat to shore.

The BP format encourages audience participation.  From there it’s not hard to make the big leap, to ask yourself, “If I were up on stage, what would I talk about?”  From that impulse was born this belated Valentine’s story.  In retrospect I can’t say I’m proud of it, but I can say I did my best then, I’m doing it better now, and I’ve told the unvarnished truth to the best of my ability.  –Jamie

There’s a perfume out there in the wild.  I gather the name has changed over the years, as it gets recycled and remarketed to different social strata, but the scent is fused to my spine and my soul.  When it hits me, I can’t finish a sentence.  Social decorum goes out the window.  The world stops and I’m gone — suddenly transported 25 years and a thousand miles away.

Back then and there, I was a newly married, newly minted graduate student.  I was also a new homeowner and a new parent.  If you read that and say, Jesus God that’s a load, you’d be right.  But back then I didn’t know any better.  It was simply life, a series of events and choices, links in a seemingly logical chain.

I was also a cheater.  At the time I wouldn’t have copped to this.  I didn’t want to believe the facts added up, but the evidence was there.  The background, the reasons, have been discussed in prior posts and no doubt will be explored in the future.  I have no wish to gloss over those less-than-flattering details, but for the sake of brevity let’s accept that given the right conditions, a seed will sprout.  The combination of my relationship history, my new life adventure, and the ensuing stresses proved fertile in that way.  My cheating seed bore fruit.  A patchwork schedule of school, work, and parenting provided ample opportunity, assisted by easy communication through the university’s fledgling computer network.  I met entertaining and sometimes intriguing people, and we chatted on the university’s glorified dial-up BBS system.

I had numerous affairs.  I was upfront about my situation – if not to my spouse, at least to the potential partners I courted.  Yes, I readily admitted, I was a heel, a cad, a jerk, a sneak, call it what you like.  I wanted to have good sex on the regular, but I wasn’t going to change my situation or, to the best of my abilities, put my family at risk.  I’m sure that at times I abused the freedom and relative anonymity technology provided, in a way all too familiar to uninterested women in our #metoo era.  I didn’t always make the best choices in terms of my or my family’s privacy and safety.  But in general I tried to respect boundaries, mine and others, and it wasn’t too hard to find partners interested in me and comfortable with my limitations.  At times I marveled at how easy it was. At times it frightened me.  At times my hypocrisy was an unbearable weight.  But I kept chasing…something.

Valerie was a staffer, a local who found a good job helping run a university department.  She did her job well, and in her spare time she played on the network.  She was bright and witty and occasionally naughty – not much, she was at work after all, but now and again something flashed from behind that veil.  I am drawn to bright and witty and occasionally naughty, so over time we began to talk regularly.  Then daily.  Eventually our purpose for being online was to reconnect.  I learned that she was much like me – married, a parent, her life a linked chain of choices and events that no longer seemed to add up.  She was also nothing like me – trailer-trash (her words) upbringing, family chaos of the grittiest sort, never traveled or lived far from home, no schooling past high school except what she cobbled together through shrewd insights and voracious reading.  We commiserated, we spilled our guts, we flirted, we played a game of sexual chicken.

When reading a screen was no longer enough, we agreed to meet.  I remember a pleasant afternoon on a quiet back street on the way home.  I found the small red pickup parked where she said it would be.  I climbed into the passenger side and looked at her for the first time.  She was pretty, clearly blessed by the family genetic lottery, undoubtedly showered with more male attention than she could want.  (Which begged the question, why me?)  She wore typical office attire – white blouse, modest skirt.  Her hair was long and wavy, sort of a Farrah Fawcett look, and dyed blond to hide the silver streak she’d had since middle school.  She sprawled comfortably around the steering wheel, her knees up on the dash.  The almond eyes she turned toward me radiated amusement – amusement at me, my desire so clumsily obvious in person; at herself for playing along even this far; at the whole comically stereotypical scene.  She lit a cigarette.  At the time I didn’t smoke, and I wondered idly if the smell would betray me when I got home.  At some point we held hands, just to see how it felt.  Later I laid a hand on her knee.  She was as strong as she was svelte.

I don’t remember what we talked about.  Something along the lines of, What the hell are we doing?  And I was lost.  I didn’t have an answer.  For all my experience with seduction, this seemed different.  Bigger.  Not to be taken lightly.  I was prepared to hear her say, Well, I’ve scratched that itch, let’s cut this off.  And I would have agreed readily.  But over the years I have learned that it’s easier to be courageously stupid than a smart coward.  That wisdom probably dates to this moment.  But in the moment, wisdom wasn’t driving the truck.

When she asked me to kiss her, a lot of things happened.  One, I knew where she stood and what she wanted. Two, a passionate, life-altering, and ultimately chaotic path was chosen.  And three, I got my first real whiff of that perfume.  It smelled of rose (which I have since learned is the rarest and therefore most expensive and desirable essential oil) and something subtly like almond.  Drifting up from her neck as I leaned in, it also smelled of cigarettes.  Blended with her own scent, as perfume is designed to do, I got my first hint of what I would someday taste when I parted her long legs.

The kiss was long.  It was quiet, almost reverent, maybe fearful, as we both sensed what was being decided. It was nervous, in case somebody we knew was watching.  And when it ended, we said good-bye and I went home.

Then again, I never went home again.

The chronology is fuzzy.  I’m pretty sure we met online while I was in school.  After my degree I got a job requiring an hour-long commute.  The kiss probably happened at the tail-end of a daily commute.  Whatever the case, the kiss solved nothing, quenched no flames, and so we kept talking and wanting more.  And the commute provided the opportunity to consummate our desire.  I met her one early morning on the way to work.  I found her truck in a dark, empty, mutually convenient parking lot.  As I walked up, she lay back wordlessly on the bench seat.  Standing in the open doorway, her calves on my shoulders, I slid my rigid cock into her engorged pussy.  At that moment her eyes closed, as if she’d waited a lifetime to have that moment, that feeling.  Every emotion crossed her face.  I felt the same.

We kept meeting.  It didn’t matter that other aspects of our life suffered.  In time, there was nothing else, nobody else.  One day in mid-February, the office mail delivered a red envelope sent from a town an hour away.  Even before I opened it, I knew who had sent it.  Inside was a Valentine’s card.  And inside that was a lock of hair dyed blond, tied by a red ribbon to a sprig of baby’s breath, drenched in the scent of rose.  Every time that scent finds me, I am back in that long-ago office opening that card.

Finally, we made the big leap of dark faith.  It seems wrong to skip over the dismantling of two relatively stable households, the damage done to families, friendships, careers.  Those ripples went out and continue to be felt.  In other ways, the passage of time has demonstrated forgiveness, resilience, and the healing power of unconditional love – almost as if all the chaos we unleashed barely left a mark.  Somehow that seems wrong, too.  But that story is not this story.

Once we had the freedom, I finally got to explore Valerie in all her naked glory.  She was relatively tall and thin in that classic beauty-magazine way, with the cheekbones to match. The curve of her hips and ass set me on fire.  Her small breasts and belly bore the marks of motherhood, as they should; I have always liked and preferred that honesty.  In bed she was inventive and occasionally surprising.  One night she sat up and said, “I want to see something.”  She threw one leg over me and proceeded to lower her ass onto my cock.  No prep, no preamble.  The last guy she’d done this with, way back when anal sex was a young woman’s answer to an unwanted pregnancy, was apparently much bigger.  One of my sexual regrets is that we never explored it further.  But there was so much to explore.

Our new life together led to new friends.  We both found ourselves crushing on the hot bartender at our favorite hangout, who turned out to be a neighbor who reciprocated our interest.  Finally one night (let’s call her) Donna came over to join us in bed, my first real threesome.  It pains me to confess that it was a frustrating experience.  We hadn’t talked through the complexities, trusting desire and guesswork to see us through.  The ladies had their fun – Donna clearly wanted to see Valerie writhe in orgasm, which I could appreciate and enjoyed watching — and I joined in where and when I could, my head too much in the way.

A day or two afterward, I was still mulling those events when Valerie called out my dark mood.  I confessed that I hadn’t had the experience I wanted, and I wasn’t quite sure why.  Bolder and perhaps wiser than me, she picked up the phone and called Donna while I stood there, wondering what was up.  Valerie asked Donna for a favor.  Could she, Valerie, send me over to fuck Donna?  Donna said yes.  And out of that gesture of unconditional love came my first conscious insight into the tangle of desire and guilt that defined my approach to sex at that time.  Valerie’s gesture was a ray of light showing the beginnings of a path out of the thicket.

Donna, herself no stranger to men or their tangled desires, welcomed me into her home and between her legs.  We took our time.  For whatever reason, the simplified setup made all the difference.  I went down on her until she was quite ready, and then I gently fucked her missionary-style on a mattress on the floor.  And afterward I was rewarded to hear her say, as she still quivered from her own orgasm, her arm across her eyes, “Wow, I didn’t expect that to happen.”  It was the first time I remember hearing it, and certainly the first time an ex-pro said it to me.  I have heard it many times since then, most recently and frequently from Sophie herself.  I never get tired of hearing it.  There is nothing more gratifying in bed than pleasing your partner.  I will always be grateful to Valerie and Donna for giving me that moment, that insight.

But the party had to end.  The relentless weight of reality became too much to withstand, and no amount of passion or ingenuity or chutzpah could turn the tide.  The crux was money, or the lack of it – a common stress in any relationship.  We weren’t equipped to handle the stress or find answers, and the chaos rising out of our choices didn’t help.  The pressure affected our vision, our confidence, our chemistry, and ultimately our trust.  One night we had an argument, maybe our first real one.  In the aftermath it seemed Valerie had been waiting for the opening.  It was possible she had maneuvered the events to create it, although in the moment I didn’t want to believe that.  The result wasn’t clean or even obvious at first.  We lived in limbo for a while.  I tried to reconnect with some Valentine’s roses, only to learn as she received them indifferently that she was having a miscarriage – something supposedly impossible after a postpartum procedure meant to prevent pregnancy.  That moment became an enduring symbol – a supposed impossibility that somehow beat the odds, only to falter and die in a pool of clotted blood.  No amount of flowers could fix it.

And so I had two relationships to grieve: the one I had abandoned, and the one I had just lost.  Valerie and the husband to whom she returned made clear that further contact was not welcome, and I honored that request.  I lived in a fog for many months.  I kept a hermit’s hours.  I read an entire section of books at the nearby branch library.  Donna and I hung out once or twice but just as friends, knowing there were no answers to be found in sex.  I was again grateful for her kindness in a time of need.  I apologized tearfully to my ex-wife, and I listened to her pain, and with her huge, forgiving heart leading the way, we began to build what has become a quiet, kid-focused friendship.  A new job and a loyal dog gave me purpose and rhythm, and slowly I left the fog behind.  A year or two later, I moved to another part of the country and haven’t been back.

Before I left, I dug out that old Valentine’s card.  The perfume was fading but still potent enough.  I considered burning it all as a way to get closure, but that seemed too angry.  I took the lock of hair to the bridge over a nearby creek, and I unwound the ribbon, and I let it all go.  The hair and the ribbon and the baby’s breath hit the slowly moving water and even more slowly disappeared.  And then I could leave.

The email showed up about a decade later.  Valerie had tracked me down through a school-reunion site.  We had the chance to reminisce, to apologize, to own our mistakes.  It was cathartic, and I remain grateful that she reached out.  Valerie confessed that she had secretly been on drugs while we were together, and that had affected her judgment and ability to function.  She told me that every time she and her husband had an argument, he would say, “Why don’t you just go back to Jamie?”  And so one day she did.  She asked if we could get back together – even briefly, even just once.  Somewhere halfway between us, maybe.  And I said no, much as it pained me to do so.  I was in the middle of a new relationship, using the hard-won wisdom from the past to make better choices.  I couldn’t see any healthy way to backtrack.  After a few more emails, she stopped writing.

Everything that happened, every immortal or forgettable moment, every noble or shamefully selfish choice, has shaped who I am today.  I am an ethical slut not because I have ethics woven intrinsically into my fabric, but because I’ve lived the alternative.  I’m still learning how to do it well, as a second ex-wife and numerous ex-lovers can attest.  My relationships with Sophie and my primary girlfriend are a result and a reflection of my gritty progress. I’m proud of that progress.  And when I say how grateful I am to know Sophie, how glad I am to share a portion of life with her, that gratitude has its roots in this story.

Thanks to the magic of social media, I can see Valerie whenever I wish.  I did it most recently as I began this piece.  Like me, she is older now.  Her kids, like mine, are grown now and, also like mine, seem to be living happy productive lives largely unaffected by the events their parents foisted upon them. Valerie stopped dyeing her healthy mane some time ago, letting that silver streak have its way.  Her face has aged prematurely, perhaps due to the drug habit she told me she left behind.  Her eyes, when she bothers to look at the camera, seem sad and empty.

At some point she created a second online presence using her maiden name.  Perhaps she has forgotten it exists.  Besides references to an online game nobody plays anymore, all the page contains is a link to a song we discovered together.  That song, and all the songs on that album, were the perfect soundtrack for the time we spent together: how we met, how we tangled our lives, and how it all imploded.  The chorus includes these words:

Valerie, can you hear those engines drone?
I wanted to go to Mexico
But I’m stranded here alone
And once I knew a true love
It’s been three years since he’s gone
If I could get that feeling back
I’d give up everything I own

I don’t think it’s delusional or narcissistic to believe that this song was intended for only one person to find.  Only one person could understand the context, the full message.  That song on that page is like a lighthouse in a storm.  It’s literally a cry for help.  And as much as I might wish otherwise, at least sometimes, there’s not a goddamned thing I can do to help.

 

by Sophie

Jamie has an eye for hidden function. He sees an interesting tool or piece of furniture out in the wild, at garage sales or retail outlets, and his mind almost immediately goes to the different ways in which those items could be used in the bedroom. He takes great joy in finding kinky purposes for innocuous things, using the playful imagination with which he constantly surprises me. Even a year into our acquaintance I still am left anticipating exactly what we will do once we get naked. Our sex is never, ever boring.

A few weeks ago Jamie brought home a nylon sex “swing” – or restraint? – from a sweet little locally owned toy store. I have to admit a bit of nervousness when I first saw it set up against his bedroom door. It’s a few straps of strong nylon with anchors that keep the straps hanging securely from the door jamb. At the ends of the straps are padded loops for wrists and ankles, the idea being that a person can be suspended, reliably, spread-eagle for whatever purposes the other partner has in mind.

I am an average American woman – that is to say, carrying some extra weight. Not too much, I don’t even think I fit the definition of “BBW,” but enough to cause a bit of alarm at the idea of being hung in the air by what look a little bit like dog leashes. Jamie sheepishly asked me how much I weighed, a question that honestly amused me more than anything, and was happy to hear it was far below the limit suggested by the toy manufacturer. I was also quite relieved.

Jamie is naturally dominant, sexually speaking. That is to say, he doesn’t require props or stunts to exert his control over my body. He just does. It’s in the way he firmly holds my waist and opens my legs, the way he gently tells me how well I am pleasing him when he pushes plugs into my ass – he’s a benign and loving but serious “master,” not that we use the formal terminology.

This dynamic works for me. I am in control of everything else in my life. In bed I’d rather surrender. When I walked into his bedroom one evening to see the suspension device hooked over his door my heart skipped a beat. My panties immediately dampened as I imagined being rendered utterly helpless as he had his multiple ways with me. Our foreplay that evening was definitely a little abbreviated as we were both excited to get down to business.

Of course, both of us being novices in the realm of specific sex furniture, we experienced a bit of a learning curve. After a few minutes of what I like to think of as “warm-up fucking,” we moved from the bed to the door. Jamie could definitely sense my nervousness and I think that aroused him even more. His eyes lit up as he helped me slide my arms and legs into the loops, his erection so prominent it was bouncing slightly with his pulse.

We realized very quickly that there were several issues that needed to be addressed. First of all, I wasn’t far enough off the ground for him to fuck me, even with my legs spread wide – he simply had to crouch too much to move effectively. Secondly, I was supporting myself almost entirely with my forearms and wrists, which fatigued my shoulder and back muscles quite quickly. We played with strap length and angles for a few minutes and kind-of sort-of fucked awkwardly as we sussed out the issues.

Even as we faced what was turning out to be a failure we were having fun, laughing and joking about our predicament. It just so happens that a sense of humor is possibly the most important tool to have while setting up sex furniture. It’s the emotional equivalent of an Allen wrench. We retreated to the bed to continue our fun and afterward, lying in tangled, dampened sheets, Jamie mused:

“I think we need a chair.”

A short two weeks later, The Chair entered the bedroom.

The Chair is a black barstool, about four and a half feet tall, sturdy and wide-seated. The hilariously cheesy packaging for the sex straps featured a lingerie-clad model with her legs spread invitingly wide. Jamie had noticed after some study that she seemed to be sitting on a surface that was no longer in the picture, perfectly edited out. When he pointed it out to me I realized that her positioning was almost physically impossible without a bodybuilder’s upper body physique. Well, that explains the second-day soreness in my shoulders, I thought to myself. After realizing the deception in advertising, Jamie turned his eye for sexual improvisation to different types of chairs. One day, at a thrift store, he found The Chair.

I noticed it when I walked into his bedroom after he bought it. Jamie noticed me noticing it and smiled his mischievous smile. It was obvious he couldn’t wait to use it, but he had foreplay plans for us that evening. That night he took his time undressing me, running his fingers over every inch of my flesh, causing me to shiver under his hands. He pushed me down onto the bed, onto my hands and knees, and met no resistance as he slid into me from behind. I was so excited I didn’t feel him dripping lube onto my ass until he pressed his finger into my second hole ever so slowly. The parallel pleasure of his finger and his cock filled me so intensely I couldn’t even protest, not that I would have. “No” doesn’t mean “no” in these cases, but our safeword didn’t even come to mind. I was awash in the rawest bliss. The ecstasy escalated when he introduced the “small toy” – a short pink butt plug with little bumps in it that he delights in working into me while he fucks me. “You’re doing so well,” he whispered into my ear as I soaked his cock with my excitement. “It’s all the way in, you’ve taken all of it, you’re doing so well.”

I was doing so, so well. So well in fact that I came with a cry and a convulsion right after his hot breath carried his words across my ear and over my neck. That was the first of what would be many, many orgasms. His cock pulsed, hard in my velvet softness, and he slowed as to delay his own gratification. Besides, we had yet to utilize The Chair.

Jamie slowly pulled the plug out of my ass and I sighed with disappointment.  His lips passed over my neck and shoulders, an affectionate gesture, and he grabbed my hand to lead me the short distance to our new piece of furniture now sitting under the straps that were anchored behind the closet door. My arousal dampened my thighs and clung to my lips as he helped me settle into the seat, wetness underneath me as he again slid the loops over my ankles, pulling the straps up to my knees. The softness of the loops crushed under my fingers as I grabbed the arm straps for support and leaned back.

Jamie stood back for a moment, admiring his handiwork. My pussy was on full display for him, my legs splayed perfectly like the woman on the packaging. I have never felt as exposed as I did at that moment, my cunt hot against the cool wood of the chair, unable to move in any way besides leaning back or forward. Jamie’s cock bounced passionately yet again and he reached down to stroke it for a moment, showing off for me, torturing me. “Please please fuck me,” I remember begging him. He smiled and moved in, guiding himself into me, and I almost came from the pleasure that came with that moment of completeness.

Fireworks exploded beneath my closed eyelids as my body strained involuntarily, helplessly, to meet his. I was so perfectly restrained and spread for him and left unable to do anything but accept what he wanted to do to me. When I finally opened my eyes I discovered his body was also on display for me in a way I am not used to seeing. I was able to really see him work, in the ways he always does, only this time with a whole new perspective. I could watch the muscles under his skin flex with every thrust, his hips slamming into me. Looking down I could glimpse the shaft of his cock, wet with my come, rigid and perfect. I have always found Jamie attractive, but this amount of exposure was almost vulgar. Almost. God, I love looking at this man, I found myself thinking before thoughts washed away with yet another shaking orgasm that left my back arched, nipples hard, breath lost.

Jamie fucked me forcefully for what felt like an hour as spasms of euphoria ripped through me. My body went slack as orgasm after orgasm swelled and subsided. Jamie cradled the back of my head with one hand as our lips met with bruising pressure, over and over again. Finally he pulled back and slammed into me one last time and I heard the sweet husky moan that always precedes his climax. He pressed himself as close to me as he could possibly get, his arms tucked under my widespread legs, hands on my ass, cock thrumming as he came and came and came. After what seemed like an eternity he gently pulled out of me and immediately began untethering me. I noticed for the first time that my fingers were sore from grasping the straps so tightly. The world came back into focus and it was as if I were seeing his bedroom for the first time. Sweat covered his nakedness and glistened in the dim light.

I am not accustomed to restraint, physical or emotional or verbal. It’s difficult for me to give up control to someone else. Jamie makes it simple by creatively taking what he wants without apology or preamble. Giving myself up to him is exciting because he makes it exciting. The Chair and The Swing were such a success that now Jamie is working on modifying his bed. It will become The Bed. He has been cutting wood and gathering fasteners. He is making it taller, to make room for storage underneath. This will be where our sex toys and accessories live. He is also adding some functionally decorative pieces to the headboard. On The Bed he will continue to teach me how to more perfectly surrender to him. Ultimately, he is building a bed to more thoroughly bed me, and this excites me endlessly.

What can I say? I like a guy who works with his hands.