Erotica Artist Ch. 05: Fantasyland

"Possibly. But the choice not to do it is still there, isn't it? There are other options, even if they pay much less."

"I think there's a revenge factor in men watching porn. They see a beautiful, highly desirable woman, who they know they'd never stand a chance with in a million years, being screwed by one, two, sometimes a whole gang of men. There's an element of "Fuck that bitch! You're getting what you deserve for not fucking me!"

"You could be right. But isn't it better the frustration is relieved in masturbation than in some other way a revenge-prone weirdo might come up with? I don't know, Connie, you can analyze this forever. Is the sex act a political act because the male is the penetrator and invades a woman's private space? Is it an act of aggression or domination? An argument could be made for the female as the controlling force in much of sex. Is a woman on her knees giving a blowjob acting in a submissive manner, or does she have the male by the balls, quite literally? And as for the preliminaries, and sexual arousal, titillation, who has the power there? Don't underestimate the incredible allure of erotic presentation. The male is putty in the hands there."

"Sounds like you've spent a lot of time thinking about all this."

"Well, obsessions are like that. I just like the notion of mutual pleasure-play, of fun, in sex. Reciprocation. Whatever turns you on, I'll do it for you, and I hope you feel the same. We're both using each other for pleasure. Is some of the play disrespectful? Possibly. But it's play. It's therapy. It's fun. It's only sex. As long as we're all consenting adults, who cares? If some people want to do it in front of cameras and get paid, okay. If some people like to watch, all right too. Enough with the politics. Enough with the revenge.

Because you're right: most of us will never get to experience sex with someone as desirable as a porn model, and if we do, you can bet that in real life there'll be a price to pay. So until Ms. Perfect comes along, and I'm not holding my breath, let me wallow in porn. I don't smoke, or drink to excess, I don't do drugs or cheat on anybody. Allow me my small pleasures."

"But you're using your talent to pander, to titillate."

"I'm using it to retain my sanity. I'm using it to save my fucking life!"

"Well, if you were a doctor, you could be struck off for malpractice," she concluded.

Possibly. But besides being fun, and bringing in some US dollars, my new vocation brought bonuses I'd never even dreamed of. For it proved an infallible litmus test in my dealings with women in the real world. Not that I came in contact with many. I was too absorbed in my new line of work to be on the prowl. But when I did meet anyone new and they asked me what I did for a living, I was frank. I worked part-time in a food warehouse and I wrote music reviews and pornographic novels.

Most of the time this sent the ladies scurrying for the exit, which was fine with me. No point spending time with anyone leery of such a subject. No point in getting to know any more Dawns.

But then there was the odd woman who didn't run at the mention of the p-word, but pricked up her ears and was all attention. Such a one was the wondrous and delightful Nicole.

She was a slender brunette who lived in my building, and the only conversations I'd had with her, apart from brief pleasantries in the elevator, were in the laundry room. She was often accompanied by a muscle-bound, caramel-skinned boyfriend who sported a diamond stud in one ear, but over laundry one day when she was alone I learned that she was not in fact living with this guy, though that was in the cards for the end of the month.

She worked as an emergency room nurse at nearby St. Paul's and maybe this was what accounted for her un-shockability when I revealed how I earned part of my living. Not only was she not shocked, she was enthralled, and went on and on about how she used to steal her brother's girlie magazines and take them to bed with her. Too bad about the boyfriend, I thought. Nicole would have been the perfect woman to get to know better.

Then one Saturday noon, as I walked home from a solitary breakfast with Kafka's "In The Penal Colony" under my arm, I came across her sunbathing on the lawn in front of the apartment building, within a few feet of passing traffic. She was stunning in her tiny peach-colored bikini.

"Who's Frank Kafka?" she wants to know.

But for once I'm not interested in discussing literature.

"Would you like to come sunbathe on the roof?" I ask without hesitation or the slightest self-consciousness.

I wasn't for some reason the least surprised at my coolness here. I must have learned something, I mused, since the tortured days of Goddess Kirsten. Or maybe I knew I had absolutely nothing to lose here.

Within minutes I'm showing her my penthouse suite and soon we're stepping out onto the sunbaked deck. Then my heart leaps and I'm in fantasy heaven, for with a quick "Do you mind?" that required absolutely no response, she's slipped out of her brief bikini and is striding about totally nude.

Do I mind? This is the kind of situation I've been dreaming of all my life! Such a lovely woman, with a tiny waist, perky little breasts, an exquisite ass. My heart aches already with gratitude for such a gift: even if nothing else happens, she has made my day, my year, my decade, with such a selfless gesture.

And of course something else does happen, for my heart isn't the only organ reacting to this gorgeous creature. We lay down together on our mats, myself too stunned to strip off as yet, and we speak of work, and sex, and our families, and sex, and her boyfriend, and sex.

Turns out she's totally committed to Kane, for that is indeed his name, and plans to move in with him in a matter of weeks. The obvious question here of course is "Why then are you stripping to the nude, without prompting, in the apartment of a fellow you barely know?" But it's not a question I'm interested in asking. I'm no longer quite the callow youth of the Kirsten days, or the self-effacing, accommodating saint of the Dawn Webb agony. I'm a published pornographer with a naked girl on the deck of my penthouse apartment. Boyfriends no longer concern me.

Even though this particular boyfriend is apparently sexy and virile and gainfully employed and cares for her deeply and is, in fact, everything a young woman could want. Except that ... he sometimes lacks ... imagination.

"Imagination?" I groan, my erection aching beneath me on the warm mat.

"Yes. You know, during sex, when you need a little extra ... spice to excite you?"

"Spice?" I croak.

Turns out Nicole likes to be talked to during sex. Not tender, romantic talk either. The dirty kind. The dirtier the better. And Kane, the aforementioned paramour, is just not up to the challenge. He's a little lacking in the imagination department.

Say no more! I exult. For dirty talk, not to mention acrobatic leaps in the fields of sexual fantasy, are for me all in a day's work.

All that is needed, in this instance, is the custom-making of the dirty talk to the requirements of Nicole's particular peccadillo, which happens to be spanking. Not that she wants to be spanked herself, necessarily, but she wants to be threatened with it, she wants to have the act described, rather than enacted.

I've never written a line concerning this particular preference, but that is a minor detail. I'm in my element. Not that I start the fantasy dirty talk right away, of course, but I know it's only a matter of time. For now we discuss Kane a little further, and sex, and their plans, and sex, and their respective families, and sex. Until Nicole is telling me of her favorite mode of masturbation, which involves the bath-tub and a spouting faucet, and, well, it doesn't exactly require any cajoling for her to give me a demonstration.

And then, eager to offer support to so deserving an adventurer, I strip and am behind her in the tub, my mouth at her ear, my boner wedged between her trim little buns, and I'm hissing over the roar of the cascading water my unrehearsed tale of a young woman who perhaps dreams of cheating on her boyfriend and who merits a certain amount of discipline. All this while the faucet jets onto Nicole's tingling clitoris.

She loves every minute. She too is in her element, and she whimpers and groans her appreciation. I string it out as long as I can, my lurid little tale of the naughty girl who deserves to be spanked. I don't want it to end, for this is as close to heaven as I've ever come. But soon Nicole can hold back no longer, and she's gasping and buckling against the side of the tub. I support her, hold her gently and whisper at her still as her orgasm subsides, which isn't for quite some time.

Eventually she turns around and is faced with my throbbing erection. She grins, shrugs, and says simply "This isn't cheating. It's not like we're fucking. Oral sex doesn't count." And she proceeds to give me the blowjob of my life. I lean back and watch her glorious head rising and falling, again wanting this day never to end. But the lead-up has taken so long, and she is oh-so-expert, and she insists on pausing periodically, in a spirit of turnabout being fair play, and panting obscenities up at me.

Today's the day for the fulfilment of fantasies with this wondrous creature, and I can hardly believe my ears as she poses the dirtiest, most arousing question I've ever been asked by a woman: "In my mouth or all over my face?"

Without waiting for an answer, she's on her knees in front of me, waiting with a wicked grin for her reward and mine. Such eagerness, such total lack of any hesitation or second thought. Just immediate, spontaneous response and unguarded willingness. I know I'll never forget this lovely woman, this magical afternoon, if I live to be two hundred.

And as I spray her gorgeous face my heart damn near bursts with gratitude, along with my balls. They do exist: spontaneous, sexy, playful, giving adult women. Women for whom sex-play is neither ordeal nor political act nor psychic trauma, but rapture pure and simple, though Nicole is the first I've met in my thirty years on earth. There is sex after Dawn Webb. It is possible. It is!

"What a fun afternoon! What a blast!" laughs Nicole, stepping blindly to the sink, her face plastered with sperm. "If my mother could see me now!"

It's not a concept I care to dwell on. Nor do I wonder what Kane, her he-man boyfriend, would say if he could see her now. Instead I smile in gratitude at this beautiful, gracious young woman. For bespattered as she is, she's all this and more to me. She has given herself generously, in a spirit of fun, with no strings attached. I gaze at her with tenderness and real affection.

"You're wonderful." I tell her.

And I mean every word. What a fun afternoon indeed.

And why couldn't there be more such afternoons? Why couldn't we go on and on? Why couldn't my life be a series of such flashes of paradise with someone just like Nicole, or with a whole string of Nicoles? For there was no doubt this was heaven for me, or as close to it as I'd ever come outside my pornographic fantasies. This was as good as life got. Nothing compared.

And it was my erotic imagination that had got me here. Not my looks, not my sparkling conversation, not my fashion sense or my money. Had I not written several pornographic novels, this magical afternoon would never have occurred.

I knew, deep down, that it might not be repeated. Nicole's commitment to the unimaginative Kane was real. But that was okay too. I would have the experience with her in my memory bank forever.

As it turned out, we did manage to see each other four or five times more before she moved out and into her life with the hulking Kane. She would phone up when she had a free hour and burst through my door hissing "Talk dirty to me! Call me names! Say filthy, gross, obscene things to me!"

No problem, Nicole! Chances were that I was in the middle of composing some hardcore scene anyway. Easy to shift gears and verbalize for a while. Yes, I was actually verbalizing with Nicole. I wasn't shy and tongue-tied and fearful I'd bore her. If I still had an accent, I didn't care. I just let loose, making sure only to steer the tale at some point toward the spanking motif. I was speaking a barrage of filth, but I was speaking.

I would help her masturbate this way, then she would go down on me. And this always occurred in the bath-tub. We never went to bed, and we never actually fucked. She didn't even want me to go down on her, much as I pressed her.

"If you're slurping my pussy how can you talk dirty to me?" she asks, for she is somewhat linear of thought, darling Nicole.

"Do you have to have me talk dirty to you to get off? Is that absolutely necessary?" I persist.

"It sure helps. And it's more fun that way, don't you think?"

I have no answer for this, because I have to admit that talking dirty to Nicole is more fun than I've ever had as an adult. I'm not about to quibble over niceties. If she doesn't care to be sucked off because she prefers me to spout filth at her while she's blowing me, I'm not about to argue.

At this stage in my life, after months, years of deprivation, I'll take what I can get. Though I know the limitations of the sex with Nicole parallel the limits of our friendship as a whole. We never have a date outside of the bathroom. We rarely see each other except naked in the bath-tub, and when we do we're often reduced to small talk because of the looming shadow of Kane beside her.

In the few precious weeks I see her, about all that I learn of Nicole is that in her capacity as emergency nurse she comes to regard accident victims and even terminal patients in a very objective manner, that she lost her father when she was only two, which doubtless explained her need for a strong disciplinary figure in her sex life, and that she's firmly committed to the ubiquitous Kane. She learns virtually nothing of myself beyond my obsession with sex because she never asks and, I'm convinced, she wasn't really interested.

I accept all this with perfect equanimity because I can't recall a time I've been as content, or when I've lived such a balanced life. I have a job in the real world that paid a decent wage and left me more than my share of free time. I had an exercise program in place that kept me fit. I had a modest creative outlet in my music reviews and pornographic novels. I had a couple of good friends. And I had a sexual outlet, other than fantasy, with no complications or expectations on either side.

I enjoyed the physical demands of my warehouse job and my jogging routine. I still liked writing reviews and dirty books. And after a long day, or an hour of lewd, thrilling, dirty sex with Nicole, I loved retiring with my headphones or my Henry James.

I was most proud of my lack of emotional involvement with Nicole. For the first time I didn't feel vulnerable. Without heartache and without the relentless effort required to interest someone who wasn't interested in me, I was enjoying sex I had never known. Naked in the bath-tub with Nicole on her knees in front of me, I was free of guilt, free of shame, free of all the moral and political strictures that would label such acts obscene or sexist or any number of things. It was a huge step forward.

Would I have liked the arrangement with Nicole to continue indefinitely? Of course. Would I have liked Kane out of the picture so that Nicole and I could go it alone? Probably. But I knew the limitations of our friendship only too well. Beyond a deep appreciation of the erotic, we had nothing in common. Nicole never read books. She thought Kafka's first name was Frank. What would we talk about when we weren't playing our naughty bath-tub games?

I sometimes wondered what she talked about with Kane, who seemed to me, for all his surface glamor, to be a very dull fellow indeed. On the one or two occasions I had encountered him alone in the elevator on his way to see Nicole, my attempts at conversation had met with low grunts and blank stares.

Clearly young Kane had no time for me at all, and I wondered if his interest would have been piqued if he knew that his pretty girlfriend was spending time in my bath-tub begging me to talk dirty to her and spurt semen all over her face.

I felt no sense of triumph over the handsome, muscle-bound fellow. Yet I couldn't suppress an odd twinge of something when I saw them together, as on the occasion I caught sight of them from my window, leaving on a date all dressed up only an hour after she'd been naked and quivering on her knees in my bath-tub.

I'd never been the "other man" in a three-way set-up before, assuming of course it was only a three-way and not a four, five, or six-way. Given Nicole's sexual appetite, anything was possible.

Years back, when I'd learned the lovely Kirsten had a steady boyfriend, I'd scurried off like a frightened rabbit. I'd been so upset, in part at least, over taking part in what I considered a betrayal that I withdrew completely. I was in my Jamesian mode. At this later stage in my life I hadn't even hesitated. I was in more of a Henry Miller phase. For clearly a betrayal was taking place. Nicole could salve her conscience all she liked by saying oral sex doesn't count, but every time she sucked me off, every time she took off her clothes in my presence, she was betraying the hapless Kane.

"We just masturbate each other, basically," she would say. "We just play sex games."

"You blow me and let me come in your face, Nicole," I reply. "May you live a long and blessed life for doing so, but the fact remains that it's still sex. Dirty, thrilling, fantastic sex, and Kane would be devastated if he knew."

"Kane isn't going to find out," she concluded.

It was that simple. Sex with no commitment, no strings attached. So why worry? Whenever I'd tried to do the honorable thing with women it had gotten me nowhere. Now I was helping Nicole cheat on Kane and I was enjoying every minute of it. Sex that was free of turmoil, free of emotional anguish, free of guilt, sex that was casual, relaxed, and fun! There really was such a thing. It was heaven, as close to my fantasies as I thought I ever could come in the real world.

"You should write this stuff down," she tells me.

"I already have, my darling, many times," I reply.

Soon enough, of course, the time came for Nicole's big move, though I didn't let her go without voicing my opinion.

"Sex is pretty crucial for you, Nicole," I told her. "Are you sure that Kane is the right guy for you?"

She smiled wistfully but gave me no proper answer. I wished her nothing but the best. She was the first woman in my life who had offered herself to me up front, with little or no effort on my part, except maybe for Mia, and I would be eternally grateful.

Sexual fulfilment, such as it was, had come to me when I wasn't even looking for it, involved as I was in my new career. And for once I'd felt no need for an emotional, romantic engagement. I knew from the outset Nicole and I had no future together, even without Kane looming in the wings, and I knew once she moved on I would miss the sex greatly, but there wasn't much else to miss.

Nicole had shown me that deep eroticism did exist in the real world. It was rare and nearly impossible to find, but it was there. And it was fabulous.

When our few weeks were up she stopped by to say goodbye and we parted on the friendliest terms. All the dirty, abrasive words growled out at the height of passion were just so much play-acting. I would always think of her with tenderness and affection.

My parting gift to her was an erotic short story based on our bath-tub sessions and laced with spanking overtones. I meant it in a light-hearted way, but she seemed quite touched.