Elise Ch. 01

Sandy

I suppose I'd be considered the "dirty old man" about whom you'd warn your pubescent daughters. And in some ways, I guess I'd fit the profile. Mid-60s, goatee and thinning salt-and-pepper hair, widowed, living alone in Blanksville, a smallish central California town, quite near not one, but two high schools.

Except, I have no bad intentions at all. The last thing I'd ever do is harm a young woman in any way. I simply love and cherish them too much -- all of them. I'm Trevor Sandifer, expectedly -- and very early-on -- nicknamed "Sandy."

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Let me back up. I was married to the love of my life, Elizabeth ("Beth") for 38 years, until she passed away four years ago. All those years, by day I was a professional manager, working in various offices in the larger cities on the coast, while by night and at any other time we could manage, Beth and I had a wonderful life, including and especially in the bedroom.

We had only one child, a daughter, Rachel, who throughout her entire life has been the apple of my eye. Both she and her mother taught me everything I know, quite a lot if I do say so, about appreciating women and all their wonders, and I've taken all their lessons to heart. Rachel is my only relative in the area, works as the Director of Counseling Services for the local school system, and is my confidant in every important way. Her relevance to my story will soon enough become apparent to you.

In some ways, my wife Beth and I were ahead of our time. Although I was always the main breadwinner, we were equals in every way that anyone could observe. We understood one another in everything, and completed one another in myriad ways, so many that I couldn't begin to do justice to them all with the written word. We always believed we were truly meant for one another.

In the bedroom, however, our roles were different. Early on, even before we were married as I recall, it was apparent that Beth wanted to play the submissive in our sex life -- indeed she craved doing so. Something in her upbringing made her extremely comfortable in that role. To her, sex was a total escape, for a brief time at least, from all the responsibilities of everyday life, and the bedroom was the place in which she willingly gave up all responsibility for what took place, and in which she was truly able to just go with the flow, react, and enjoy.

Far from me having to figure this out over the years, Beth made this unique kink of hers clear to me early on. Put simply, behind closed doors I was Beth's "Daddy," and she was my "babygirl," for our entire life together. I got off big-time on being a dominant, gaining proficiency at directing her bedroom activities, taking care of her every desire, and providing loving structure and discipline, and for her every need sexually, and she got off equally big on allowing me to do so with her. Our sex life was one big role-play and a total joy, and we each had the utmost respect and appreciation for the role the other played within that part of our relationship.

Given this background, one can imagine how devastating Beth's diagnosis, at age 59, of terminal cancer, and her death barely a year later, was for Rachel, and especially for me. For about a year, I went through the motions of work and life the best I could, as I tried to process the loss of my everything, as well as to figure out what to do next. One fact became blindingly obvious to me: my wonderful life with Beth had helped me insulate myself from the full effects of my less-than-desirable work situation, particularly in the last few years, as I came to increasingly regard my job as a succession of petty political battles, of no importance to me, and with which I no longer had the interest or inclination to engage.

Fortunately, I was financially able to consider retirement as a serious option, and I decided to pull the plug on my career at age 62. Once that was done, I knew I had to get out of the city rat race as soon as I could. A few years earlier, Rachel had moved inland, to Blanksville and her school system position in California's Central Valley, and she was constantly talking up life in the smaller town, the livable lifestyle, the slower pace, and the lower cost of living. Since there was nothing any longer tying me to life on the coast, it was not a hard decision to make to move near my daughter. I found an attractive, reasonably-sized cottage in a nice enough neighborhood, sufficient for my modest needs, and for the last couple of years I've enjoyed the relaxed retirement lifestyle I had hoped to find, away from big-city bustle and worries.

Upon relocating here, I re-connected with Rachel in a big way. As I said, we have always been close and comfortable in sharing aspects of our lives that, perhaps, many fathers and daughters might not. We resumed getting together for those deep discussions as if we had never been away from them. She had always trusted my counsel, and as she progressed in her career as a respected school counselor and then an administrator, I had come to respect and trust hers as well.

Beth and I had always been very straightforward about sexual matters with our daughter, wanting her, above all else, to develop healthy, open-minded attitudes about all things related to her sexuality. In the course of many discussions we had with Rachel, she became aware of the nature of her father and mother's sexual relationship, including our respective roles as Dom and sub. Without going into unnecessary detail about what went on in our bedroom, we were always willing to share our insights with her on any sexual matter, frankly and unapologetically, and particularly in response to any of her questions about our flavor of sexual kink, fairly described as light BDSM.

As a result of these discussions, her natural curiosity, and her habit of reading and researching voraciously, by the time Rachel left for college she was more versed in sexual topics than most experienced adults ever become. She said later that this depth of knowledge helped her avoid virtually all the mistakes she saw her friends, classmates, and dorm-mates consistently make while away at college. Although she didn't fully realize it at the time, it also was of immense help to her as she began her career by counseling high school and middle school students on, among many other things, anything sexual in their lives or minds that might merit her attention.

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Beth's illness and death had left a hole in my sex life, one that I felt deeply. I had not only rapturously enjoyed sex with my wife at every opportunity over the years, but I had come to love and relish my role as the dominant in our relationship. Rachel knew this, and after she processed the loss of her mother on a personal level, she set about doing what she could to help me process my own. She is really a very skilled counselor, having the great gift of being able to truly listen and take on another's feelings, and she would also have made a terrific therapist for adults had she so chosen.

Rachel has never married, or even for that matter considered it all that much. She always insisted that, after seeing my relationship with Beth up close all those years growing up, she considered it the gold standard against which to judge her own, and others', relationships. She dated both sexes without prejudice, getting what she needed out of her friendships, but had never found anyone with whom she felt the relationship should truly get serious. Her assertiveness and self-awareness allowed her to always set proper boundaries, keep her partners aware of where she stood at all times, and for the most part avoided hurt feelings when one party or the other felt it was time to move on.

So my daughter had more time for her dad than a woman her age usually did. As a family, we had always met our issues head-on, through discussion, so that type of intense interaction, even about our most personal issues, was comfortable to Rachel and me. Before my move, we spent countless hours on the phone and on FaceTime, and after I relocated to be near her, we met many times for dinner -- my place, her place, or out at a restaurant.

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One evening, in late summer of last year, a few months after I had moved to town, Rachel was over at my place. I had cooked us a nice dinner, a skill I had developed, during Beth's illness and after her passing, as a way to deal with my grief and the long hours alone at home after work. After dinner, we relaxed in my dining area, engaging in our normal banter about anything and everything. This always seemed so comfortable to me, having my daughter close, enjoying her unique outlook on everything under the sun, sharing mine as well. This time, though, the conversation was to turn in a different direction -- one that would change my life over the next year, right up to the present time, in incredible ways.