The Door Into Summer

We were getting to know each other sexually. I had asked Simona to tell me when she had orgasms, explaining that I found it exciting to know. She said that she was generally too preoccupied with having them to talk about them. But in the middle of night, after a particularly obvious and noisy one, she remarked sarcastically that she had just had one. We began to talk to each other, sotto voce, as we fucked, describing the sensations and what excited us.

The following morning, we awoke and began to fuck again. I came inside Simona, after which she smiled so winsomely at me and asked, “May I have my reward?” I remembered the fantasy she had shared with me. I pulled out of her, and swiveled around to the 69 position. We ate each other greedily for a moment, then I turned again, with a mouthful of our mixed fluids, and kissed her mouth. She kissed me back greedily, sharing the fluids, and we rubbed our sloppy faces together in a state of agitated arousal.

Simona: “There was something intoxicating about a man overcoming his reticence, even disgust, to try something that I had found exciting. My husband, although possessed of a healthy libido, was rather conventional in his sexual tastes. My time spent on the Literotica site had awakened not only my libido (which my husband accusingly complained of being sluggish), but also my curiosity with more adventurous sex. Having a man lick and swallow his own cum from my pussy seemed the height of decadence and depravity, and I couldn’t wait to try it. Andre hid his doubts beforehand, and acted as if he was anticipating fulfilling my desire as much as I was anticipating experiencing it.”

Late in the morning, Simona excused herself and disappeared for a while into the bathroom. She emerged wearing her corset, which she had mentioned several times to me as a garment that particularly excited her. She modeled it for me, then had me photograph her wearing it in various provocative poses. We attempted to make love while she wore it, but my body was by this point worn out and uncooperative. I made a mental note to revisit the corset during a future visit.

It was time to check out of the motel. We proceeded to a Starbucks for espresso. Getting out of the car, I experienced a dizzy spell, which disturbed Simona. I was later to learn that I have low blood pressure, and a combination of vigorous activity with intoxicants, and probably not enough hydration, will cause dizziness. After doing a bit of exploring around the neighborhood, we decided it was time to head back to Portland.

Once we were on the freeway, the memories of our earlier trip south along the 5 came flooding back, and the next thing we knew, my cock was out of my pants and we were stroking each other excitedly. When we reached my apartment, I dared to invite her up, and soon I was seated on the couch with Simona sucking me until I came in her mouth. Then we switched positions and she came in mine. It was the perfect end to a spectacular encounter.

Intermezzo

Not long after our encounter in Tigard, Simona wrote to me:

Our relationship is a source of continued surprise, joy, and frustration. I think about it a lot, but tend not to talk about it. If I am honest about it, like you have been, it seems doomed by its constraints. As you've said, we've done well so far, ripping down barrier after barrier, curtain after curtain, somehow stimulating that kind of confessional exhibitionism in each other, and it's been a balm to my soul. The excitement of the sex we've shared (in all media), your generosity as a lover, all of it has been surprising and delightful. Our inciting one another to poems, our collaborations - those I'd love to continue in some form, however we possibly can.

I wrote in reply,

Simona, we have touched each other on that rarified plain of the intellect and spirit, in part through our work on poetry, but more just through a special chemistry that I can't really explain, but I feel it powerfully. We may never know "what if," but we know what we already have, and to me it is beautiful. We are compatible. Do I want more? Yes. It would be so sweet to share every little facet of our lives. Would we eventually quarrel over some small thing? Yes, I imagine we would. Maybe we will never have that particular opportunity. This morning we were both saddened because we would like to climb mountains together, and we probably never will. But I would not hesitate to trade those sorts of things for the intellectual relationship that we already have and will continue to have.

I had been grappling with Simona’s fascination with BDSM, the acronym for “Bondage & Discipline / Domination & Submission / Sadism & Masochism”. There is a subculture that has arisen around these practises, complete with its own lexicon, rituals, and discreet organizations for aficionados. Simona had read many BDSM-themed erotic novels and stories, had attended a demo of the toys and how people in the culture wielded them for maximum pleasure as well as safety, and had even visited a private BDSM club where Doms and Subs “scene” in public. She explained that she had read that clubs like these provided a safer environment for people interested or just beginning their journey into the culture, provided more elaborate equipment than most people would wish to invest in privately, and which also provided supportive gathering places for like-minded people to get together, in addition to being able to fulfill their exhibitionist and voyeuristic proclivities.

I came to the discussion with the impression that BDSM was a sort of psychopathology that afflicts people who are unable to make a healthy connection between sex and love. I believed that it was misogynistic, because it often involved women being dominated and humiliated by men (although in a minority of cases, the gender roles are reversed), and that it was emotionally perverse, because it seemed angry and hostile, rather than loving. I suspected that many participants were sexually abused as children, and were acting out an unhealthy dynamic that had been imprinted on them in the process. Most significantly, I worried that it was a need in Simona that could only be satisfied by a macho brute of a lover, a role that I was not suited to play.

I was also very confused about what attracted Simona to it, since she was a confident feminist who showed no signs of wanting to be humiliated, and she was tremendously loving and affectionate toward me. I could not reconcile my conception of BDSM with the Simona that I knew, and I became somewhat obsessed with trying to unravel this mystery.

Over time, I came to understand it differently. Although I believe that the subculture does include some people who are misogynists and emotionally crippled, there are many participants who are simply looking for a more intense sexual experience (as was the case with Simona). Any good sex involves an element of surrender to one’s partner; the dominance/submission approach simply exaggerates that surrender with a form of role-playing that can be exciting. Mild pain causes a sort of sensual excitement that complements pleasure, while also causing the body to tense up in a way that is complementary to sexual arousal.

As I came to these understandings over time, I was greatly relieved. It had frustrated me tremendously to think that there was some secret niche in Simona’s psyche that was inaccessible to me, some need that I could not fulfill. We began to incorporate some elements of BDSM into our online fantasy-play, and eventually into our real-life encounters. It was light-hearted and affectionate, and may not have been sufficiently intense to completely satisfy Simona’s curiosity. But my insecurity about the topic had dissipated.

Simona went with her family on her own camping trip for several weeks, during which our contacts were infrequent. We were only completely cut off from electronic contact for about 24 hours, but it was agony for me. In part, I was jealous that she was spending the time with Herb, though I recognized the injustice and the futility of that emotion. During this period I wrote two more sonnets:

A sonnet for love in the desert

Our love, it blooms in such a fiery hue,

Secluded on a vast and arid plain.

I know I'll never see its like again,

A color exquisite and warm and true.

I ask the waning sun: is it in vain

To hope for just a breath of healing rain,

When any respite still eludes my view?

My song shall touch the skies, implore them to

Afford to us new weather, to sustain

A fragile blossom in a dry domain.

Until my humble sonnet may imbue

The skies with kindness, let my tears renew

That bed from which our budding beauty springs,

Awaiting what our better weather brings.

A Sonnet for Tanabata

This sonnet was inspired by the Tanabata Legend.

When Orihime let her shuttle fall,

Her bobbins, too, and cast her loom aside,

And Hikoboshi let his cattle all

Disperse, to make his way across the wide

Expanse of stars to kiss his shining bride;

As Altair, hearkening to Vega's call,

Refused to let a galaxy divide

Him from the glow that did enthrall

His stellar heart; let us not be dismayed

By plodding time or yawning, vacant space.

For when the stars a daunting torrent made

That stayed those lovers from their hot embrace,

The bustling magpies hastened to their aid,

And spanned the flood in waves of feathered grace.

Simona wrote a poem which provided me a window into some of the inner turmoil she was experiencing:

Bliss, A Purgatory

I fell in love with acts of kindness,

acts of art, wandering intellect and heart,

spontaneous acts that reveal

you - the one whose soul

has spoken, open, laid itself bare

out there for me to collect and share.

I did not want to fall in love,

that heady feeling that addicts

and lures you in...

And yet I did.

Wisdom and age are funny things.

I want to gift them to my kid,

to keep under her pillow, baby teeth,

unsteady, delicate and brief.

And when she needs a hug most

I'd gift her my experience as I've lived

adventures in call and response

with friends and lovers, other hearts.

That stricture in my chest and throat,

the warning that I shouldn't, I've ignored

over and over, at high cost.

Ignorant bliss, I well know, is a myth -

there's no such thing... bliss is won

through the wrought iron fence of life.

I misspent mine, perhaps, with loves misfit.

Simona and I were thrilled by the intensity of our sexual bond, but we were also occasionally frightened by it. We continued to discuss our kinks, and fantasize about acting on them. As I had come to accept Simona’s interest in BDSM, I introduced elements of it into our cyber-trysts. I, in turn, had shared with Simona my fantasies about having a ménage à trois with her and another woman. One day she sent a playful message to me via FetLife, in which she wrote:

Tell me lover, would you like to watch me eat another woman's cunt and suck her clit? Is that becoming a fantasy for you? And would you like me to eat your cum out of her cunt after you cum in it? I might like that. And I think I'd like to feel a woman eat my cunt while you fuck her cunt from behind her - I'd like to watch both her face and your face, the bliss and concentration on both, seeking that climactic peek and watching you be so ready to burst as you watch my face in ecstasy at being feasted upon.

She told me that thinking about it had caused her to have an orgasm. For reasons I did not understand at the time, this filled me with anxiety. In retrospect, I had worried -- because this exchange was so wanton and raw -- that Simona’s interest in me was predominantly sexual, that I was, for her, a sex object of sorts. Simona was puzzled and disturbed by my anxiety, and with good reason, because she had been unselfishly trying to gratify my kinks.

Some weeks later, the shoe was on the other foot. I had written to Simona:

Darling, I have said it before and I will say it again -- sex with you has brought me a deeper, more intense satisfaction than any I had had before. Your kinks complement my kinks, your body fits mine so well, and the emotional connection is deep. I am so in love with you when we fuck. Although I have pretty much defined myself above as "vanilla," I am receptive to new things, from you in particular. I will give you anything you ask for, and there is nothing that you have asked for that I have not learned to love.

To my surprise, Simona became very upset. She said that she felt “gutted” by my words. Over time, it became clear that the offending sentence was “I am so in love with you when we fuck.” She had taken that to mean that I was only in love with her when we fucked -- she imagined that I regarded her only as a sex object.

Simona: “ ‘I am so in love with you when we fuck.’ That phrase echoed in my brain over and over, and I couldn’t get it out, couldn’t get past it. It made me cry, so much that I had to hide from my family to avoid being asked to explain what was wrong. ‘I am so in love with you when we fuck.’ I had protested, and long avoided, using the word ‘love’ to describe what was taking place between us, for I was worried that Andre and I had very different definitions of what love might entail. This phrase of Andre’s, so nonchalantly written, so plain and blunt, seemed to justify all my reservations. Moreover, I now felt foolish on top of everything else, for having let myself believe. I let myself be led astray, as if there might be some fairytale ending out there in the future. I wanted to believe...I don’t know what, exactly. What did I expect, really? He was, sex notwithstanding, a happily married man in his 60s. Nothing more would happen between us than the same kind of thing that had already happened. This phrase resounded so plainly in my head, like a slap of reality. ‘I am so in love with you when we fuck.’ What I heard, what I read, was an unspoken, unwritten follow-up: ‘...and when we do not fuck, you are my BFF, my demi-goddess with the slippery cunt, with whom I juggle electrons…’ This incident, which took me quite a while to get over, was a turning point for me. From now on, I worked hard to lower my expectations, to get--and keep it--real.”

These two incidents illustrate to me both the difficulties involved with trying to conduct a love affair over the internet, and also the remarkable similarities in Simona’s and my respective emotional make-ups. We shared both the powerful sexual attraction to each other, and the anxieties regarding it.

Third Meeting

I arose before dawn on a morning in mid-August and hit the road for Eugene, once again with the pretext of a gig. Simona had arranged to get away for the day, but we would have to part company in the late afternoon. I checked into the Paramount Inn, an independent, family-owned motel, at 7:00 AM and waited for Simona. About an hour later my phone rang, and Simona told me she was shopping for provisions and would be there shortly. Not long after I peeked out the window and saw her approaching. I opened the door to admit her, and we embraced and kissed. We held each other very tightly and squirmed our pelvises against each other, trembling with excitement. Simona murmured to me triumphantly, "You won't believe how wet I am!"

I was looking forward to finding out. But I had a plan to experiment with CFNM, the acronym for a kinky practise called Clothed Female Naked Male. I hoped that it would please Simona. Stepping away from her, I stripped and began to stroke my cock, letting her know that she was to look, not touch. She seemed to enjoy it, but I soon grew impatient and began to undress her. She was in her full regalia -- corset, heels, thigh-highs. I lay on my back and invited her to show me how wet her panties were, up close.

She showed me, and I could not contain my excitement. I began to suck the juice from her panties as she rubbed them against my mouth. Then I rose from the bed, took off her panties, and asked her to stand and lean forward with her hands on the bed. I entered her from behind and we began to fuck. This was unfinished business from our tryst in Tigard -- I wanted her to experience her favorite position while wearing her corset and her other dress-up apparel. It did not take long for us both to cum, simultaneously and explosively.

We spent the day in bed, alternately talking and fucking. Simona gave me a science class, attempting to explain to me the basics of her discipline. I gave her a class on musical counterpoint, looking for parallels with her science. Then we made passionate love some more. I put her legs up over my shoulders and plunged my cock into her miraculous depths; enraptured, I tilted my neck and took her toes into my mouth, worshipping them as we fucked. We were very happy.

I had arranged for late check-out from the hotel. We lingered in the room together until nearly 4 PM, then we checked out and sat together on a bench outside near the lobby, sharing some quiche. I remember how marvelously comfortable and content I felt with her, and when we said goodbye and I began my journey back up Interstate Five, I imagined that we could continue in this vein indefinitely.

Intermezzo

We were very happy, although our happiness was punctuated by distressing episodes of intense, unslaked yearning, the phenomenon we called “Electronic Torture” or the “ETs”. I wrote to Simona:

If the sexual heat between us begins to fade, will you be sad? Relieved? I believe that you had suggested at one point that the cooling of our ardor might be the only antidote to the ETs. Personally, i don't ever want it to fade. I know that's unrealistic, but when have I ever been a realist?

Shortly after our meeting at the Paramount, Simona had typed the following during a chat session:

My parents told me a story from when I was about three, that I was walking with my mother in the middle of Prague, don't know the occasion, but I think my mother was heading to work or something, and I happened to see a beautiful model of the Taj Mahal in a store window. Took immediate fancy to it, and begged her to buy it for me. She tried to explain that she couldn't, it was too expensive for a toy. At which point I dissolved into a temper tantrum there and then on the sidewalk, and she was exasperated, not knowing what to do with me. I think she may have resorted to spanking me. You may be turning into my Taj Mahal. That is, if you aren't already.

I replied:

Darling, that is both hilarious, scary, and very very touching. I feel very much the same way about you -- I would stay online with you every waking minute if you were available.I would be like a dog, that doesn't know that it should stop eating, and will eat as long as it sees food. And there is a kind of intoxication involved for both of us, an addictive emotional high. Not to mention the sexual dimension.

Simona typed:

I read a book in Atlanta by David Brooks, I forget the title now, about human relationships. He's sort of a neocon commentator, but I find him smart and not too objectionable. Anyway, in his book he made mention of a word that I liked and that describes our relationship a bit too closely - limerence. Look it up.

I did. I found that it was a term coined by an American psychologist, Dorothy Tennov, and defined as “a state of mind resulting from romantic attraction, characterized by feelings of euphoria, the desire to have one's feelings reciprocated, etc”. The following day I sent her this email:

Darling, you have made a very interesting and insightful discovery, and I adore you for it, which is of course highly ironic. The Wikipedia article highlighted all sorts of very familiar symptoms, such as how "actual events are replayed with memory with great vividness." Yep, I know that one.