For Kay

My name is Bill. I live in Bayview. You may have read one or another of the other stories I've written. Or, maybe you haven't. It doesn't much matter. Anyway, I found an old digital photograph buried away on my hard drive the other day. It brought back memories.

It was 1992 - twenty years ago at the time of this writing. Pretty obviously, I was quite a bit younger then. I was living in the same little place I'm in now, but I was different. Times were different. The way people lived was a little different, too.

I had flown down the coast for a few days to attend a wedding. I had slept on a family member's couch for a couple of days, attended some dinners, gone to the wedding, danced and drank at the reception, visited some cousins, paid calls on a few friends and took a leisurely flight back home. Believe me, just the experience at the airport would impress you with what a different time that was from today.

After I arrived back in Bayview, I realized that I was kind of horny. I hadn't hooked up with any bridesmaids at the reception. Nor, for that matter, had I hooked up with anyone else during my week away. Couch-surfing at friends and relatives homes hadn't afforded me a lot of privacy. I hadn't had an orgasm in maybe ten days because I hadn't even had a comfortable place to jerk off for a week. Until I touched down at the airport, I hadn't really thought about it. With my feet on the ground, however, I realized that I couldn't wait to get home. I wanted two things right away - a cold beer and a screaming orgasm.

I got my car out of the long-term lot and drove right away to the Boulevard Bottle Shop near the University. I bought a six-pack of something cold and imported and a men's magazine. Then, I drove straight home. I let myself into the house, refrigerated all but one of the still chilly beers, and took one beer and the magazine into my bedroom. I lost no time in losing my clothes. Turning to a glossy pictorial feature, I rapidly developed a long, thick erection and started stroking it.

I was startled by a noise from the living room. Someone was unlocking the front door and presumably coming in. I quickly stuffed the magazine in a drawer and pulled on a handy pair of sweat pants. A familiar voice came from the living room.

"Anyone home?" it queried.

It was Kay. I had been introduced to Kay by a friend. She had fairly recently moved to Bayview. She was an attractive woman in her early thirties with honey hair, big brown doe eyes, an innocent-looking pretty face, a fabulous bosom and surprisingly narrow hips. I was taken with her from the day we met. I asked her out almost immediately, but she had just gone through an ugly break-up. Her last boyfriend, Drew, had been jealous, possessive and controlling. She had moved 400 miles to distance herself from him. She wasn't looking for a boyfriend, a lover, a romance or a relationship. She told me she wasn't dating.

Still, Bayview is not that big a town and the neighborhood in which we both lived was also close. I started running into Kay around town. We saw each other jogging around the lake and finished our run together. I bumped into her at the Farmer's Market and shopped for produce with her.

She sat down with me at the coffee bar one afternoon and chatted with me over a latte. She opened up to me a little bit about her personal life. She was clearly happy not to have Drew with her anymore, but she suggested that she missed the physical intimacy that comes with having a boyfriend.

I was of the mind that not having a lover was not necessarily a reason to give up sex. I indicated my perhaps naïve belief that two people did not have to be 'lovers' to be regular bed partners and to satisfy one another's needs. It could be as simple and uncomplicated as the way one borrowed a cup of sugar from the next door neighbor. All that was necessary, I opined, was honesty and openness about the nature of the relationship and willingness to accommodate the other's needs. Kay was skeptical and I let the matter drop.

One night, a few weeks later, Kay appeared at my door. She asked if she could borrow a cup of sugar, and I was on my way to the kitchen asking whether she wanted refined sugar or brown sugar before I actually realized why she had come. She still had her doubts whether a purely sexual non-romantic relationship was really possible, but she was willing to suspend her doubt because she really wanted sex - right then - and she figured I was probably available. That night we became 'friends with benefits.' Times were a different and nobody I knew used that phrase then, but that's what it seems to be called now.

After that we began meeting just for sex at random intervals maybe three times a month. Sure, we still jogged together sometimes, and went for coffee together sometimes, and shopped at the farmer's market sometimes. The only thing that really changed was that sometimes we met, got naked and gave each other nice, friendly, no-strings-attached orgasms.

I don't know why I should have been surprised to hear Kay in my living room. I knew perfectly well that she had a front door key. I had given it to her to facilitate one of our little 'dates' and never asked for it back. Besides, I had also asked her if she could bring in my mail and water my houseplants while I was away. So, I almost should have been expecting her, but I wasn't.

"With you in a second," I called out a little nervously. For the sake of decorum, I pulled a large t-shirt on atop my sweatpants, exited the bedroom, and walked to the front room. Kay smiled, greeted me, looked me over and began chuckling.

My cock was still about two-thirds erect and was making sort of a tent in my sweat pants. I hadn't had time to completely lose my stiffness and the clothing I had quickly thrown on did not do a good job of concealing that fact.

"You were in there stroking off, weren't you?" Kay asked playfully, nodding at the bedroom door..

I felt my face flush crimson. Denial seemed pointless, but I wasn't sure how to make a graceful admission about my self-pleasuring. I stammered something non-committal and tried to duck the question.

"Well, you don't have to stop for me," she said. "You should carry on and let me watch. I'd like that."

I don't know whether there is a color called double crimson, but there should be, because I felt my face flush a second time in less than thirty seconds.

"Oh, no, I couldn't do that. That would be so awkward," I replied.

Kay didn't seem to quite understand my reaction. We had seen one another naked. We had had sex a number of times. We had already tried most of the ordinary varieties of sexual position and technique. So what could be the issue with letting her watch me masturbate?

I didn't have a ready explanation. To that point in my life, practically nobody had seen me masturbate, except two guys with whom I'd discovered the joys of reading smut and masturbating in a tree fort during school vacation in our eleventh summer. Certainly, up until then, I'd never put on a stroke show for any of my girlfriends. I reckoned masturbation was a kind of shameful thing that you did alone only when you didn't have a girlfriend or sex partner. I wasn't quite sure how to explain that to Kay, though, but I kept resisting her suggestion.

It was pointless. Kay was strong-willed and knew how to win an argument.

"Besides," she asked, "what ever happened to being open and honest and willing to accommodate the needs of the other? That sounds pretty closed and one-way."

I hated hearing the words of my own theory used against me. I had to admit defeat.

"Alright, alright, I'll swallow my pride and let you watch me jack-off," I told her. "I've never done this before, and it feels weird, but you can watch."

I made a mental note to figure out what sexual activity might make Kay feel similarly awkward with the intention of engaging one day in a little tit for tat. A few weeks later, I even discovered that Kay had serious reservations about any kind of anal penetration - no matter how gentle, but I never did insist that she violate her own taboo.

"In the bedroom?" Kay asked.

I felt funny enough agreeing to put on a one-man show for Kay. I was pretty sure I didn't want to share the experience of my 'perving' over the twenty year old centerfold model in the magazine I had left in the bedroom.

"No, let's do it out here. I'll sit in the papa-san. You sit wherever you want."

Kay selected the swiveling office chair next to the desk that held my computer. It was not the most comfortable seat in the house, but it was the nearest chair to the papa-san. The papa-san was one of those big wicker chairs covered with a quilted pad that passed for furniture in the bachelor pads of yesteryear.

I ambled over to the papa-san shedding my t-shirt. I ogled the seated Kay, admiring the way her hips and thighs filled her blue jeans. I took in an eyeful of a red short-sleeve knit blouse which could not conceal her generous bosom. I examined her pretty face, her even, clear complexion and the bright, straight teeth of her generous smile. Our eyes locked, my cold blue eyes and her big, brown eyes and I could see the eager anticipation in her face. I undressed her in my mind's eye and remembered why I wanted to get involved with her in the first place. I felt my cock stir again.

I dropped my gray sweat pants and reclined in the papa-san. I wrapped my fist around my swelling tool and began kneading myself like a cheap stress ball from a trade show. I closed my eyes and imagined Kay the last time I had seen her naked. It had been two weeks prior and she had wanted my physical attention. We had been in my big queen sized bed kissing, petting and working each other's desires up when she crawled upon me cowgirl style.

Positioning herself optimally, her hands upon my shoulders, she had born down upon my erection and in one slow thrust she had buried my cock deep in her warm, slick quim. She had begun a deep, slow grind that had thrilled my cock like a kid on a Ferris wheel ride. I was only able to manage a pale imitation of Kay's expert fucking with my fist, but try to imitate it, I did.

I remembered the smell of Kay's firm body next to mine and the sound of her heavy breathing as she rode me. I continued to stroke myself slowly, touching every part of my genitals - the entire length of my stiff penis, as well as the soft fig-like curves of my scrotum, I thought about the sight of Kay's heavy breasts with their chocolate colored nipples the size of half-dollar coins. I envisioned the way they had swayed rhythmically as we performed our sexual dressage - rider and mount. I felt my orgasm approaching and I encouraged it more with the strength of my hand than its speed.

Suddenly, I was aware of bright light even through my closed eyes and I heard a short, high-pitched, square-waved beep. I opened my eyes to see Kay holding the digital camera that had been charging in a cradle on the desk next to my computer. At the same moment, my cock erupted in a series of gooey spurts that left my lower abdomen decorated with splashes of semen. I loosened my grip on myself as my cock continued to ooze a little pool of goo in and around my navel.

Kay looked pleased and victorious - the little minx. Not only had she cajoled me into giving her a masturbation show, but she had opportunistically managed to record some little part of it for posterity. In the afterglow of my self-pleasure, I didn't really care about either of her little triumphs. Once I had gotten started, I had forgotten that I was giving a masturbation show and ultimately the orgasm was a fantastic one after a week's abstinence on the road.

Later, Kay got me to copy the picture to a three and a half inch floppy drive. Remember those? And, she took the copy home to use in some way that I can only imagine. The picture is in black and white, VGA resolution, it was taken on a state-of-the-art digital, consumer snapshot, camera back then, but I have a free phone that takes a much richer picture today. Then again, I was younger and trimmer and, in retrospect, I think I looked pretty good handling my tool.

Let me share a copy with you...