Nora - Embracing an Erotic Life Ch. 04

I had noticed as soon as we began to date how many men simply could not resist eyeing Nora's lovely face and luscious body and, as we became intimate and then after we married, I often imagined watching her grant her sexual favors to one or more of them. That was easy to envision. I soon realized when my comely Nora flirted in even a slightly provocative way no man seemed able to resist her breathtaking sexual allure. I knew they all wanted her, even those who regarded her as unattainable for one reason or another.

Perhaps I was picturing such situations more often now because I had noticed recently Nora had begun to dress more suggestively and I saw other men find her as sexually stirring to look at as I did. I was certain Nora knew exactly the reactions she was arousing.

While I long had enjoyed fantasizing about Nora being with other men, I was excited she was finally willing to describe even a few of earlier relationships she found sexually rewarding.

Once Nora began to share several of her early sexual experiences with me she told me she found talking about them let her feel again some of the passion they had involved. For some weeks I would encourage her to recall them again and again while we were having sex and I took advantage of how hot she became while revisiting those times. They seemed to fuel a lustfulness, even a raunchiness in her I had not heard or felt from her before.

One recent night shortly as we sat before a fire, Nora said to me, "James, there is one more part of my sexual past I am ready to share with you. It is the longest and most complex relationship. It is also the one I wrote most about while it was happening because it was so unusual and so hard for me to understand at the time--and still is. I have felt for a long time I owe it to you to tell you about this relationship, to describe the several aspects of it--and I need to talk about it for my own peace of mind.

"I am not proud to admit this experience was very important to me. It centers around an older man who, for over two years, led me through erotic experiences I had not even imagined. Sophisticated might be one word for this experience while it was happening. Or decadent. Or corrupting. Or addictive. All of those. Even now I feel guilt and embarrassment. I have been reluctant to tell you about this because of the questionable activities in which I took part. We might conjecture together on how this relates to my heightened sexual desires in recent months.


"James, because I am concerned about your reaction, I have thought hard about how to go about sharing this. I don't want to be careless in what I say or how I say it. So I reread the diary and notes I kept and I've made some new notes recalling things I did or felt or said or thought then, things I remember now but I did not write about then. I have decided to leave out a few things; maybe I will share them later depending on how you react to what I will reveal now.

"Rather than tell you about this while we are together I have recorded my memories so you can listen when I am not with you. I don't want to be interrupted to explain things further or to defend myself or to apologize. I want you to have time to consider how you feel about what you hear and what you want to say to me or ask me about. James, I want to be honest with you. I have found it exciting to recall many of these experiences, even the ones I am ashamed of. Much of it still stimulates me in remembering it and describing it for you. During that time I often felt myself very alive, very aroused-- and I felt very desirable. I was very desirable. Sometimes I would look at myself in the mirror and think: Nora you really are stunning, and seductive, ravishing, almost sexually irresistible. That's how I felt at times. I was enriched by that experience even as I let things go much too far.

"So here is the recording, James. If it becomes deeply upsetting to you, destroy it and forget as much of it as you can. I have tried to make the dialog as close as I can come to words that were spoken during this relationship. But it also frightens me for you to hear me saying these things. I am showing great confidence in your love for me. I also tell myself, and I remind you now James, you have asked over and over for me to describe my sexual experience before we met. "

I waited several days before I began to listen to what Nora had recorded. She was away spending a long week end with her parents. Later I used software to translate the recording into text. This is the transcription of Nora's recollections:

Nora meets Arthur Beri Davis

James, what I am going to describe for you here is the way a very attractive older man, drawing initially on my interest in art and photography, patiently and skillfully led me through a series of unexpected and unusual erotic experiences. These were new and exotic to me and for a time I came to crave more and more of them. Gradually I became addicted to the thrill of them.

When this began I was working on my Master's thesis at the Kellogg School at Northwestern. I was spending a lot of time talking with directors and staff of art galleries in Chicago. I attended many exhibit openings so that I could ask artists about their relationships with galleries and to meet board members and other supporters of the galleries, deciding then which of them I wanted to interview later. All of this was to help me better understand the operations of the galleries, especially their financial management, the subject of my thesis.

James, I was not in a romantic relationship and was having little sex during this time. I was very busy; my mind was on finishing my MBA degree and on what I might be able to do with it career-wise in Chicago where I hoped to stay. Perhaps subconsciously I was also waiting for something out of the ordinary to come along in my personal life. Maybe I was overdue for an intense sexual relationship. This was still three years before I met you.

At an opening in a gallery in the West Loop, a show featuring Edward Weston's nude photographs, I met an older man, Arthur Beri Davis. He was standing beside me as we stared at one of the photographs. He asked me whether I liked Weston generally and particularly his nudes. I told him I did but I then mentioned several other photographers from the same period whose work I preferred. We began to talk and found we had shared interests in photography and film and in our opinions on several of the then "hot" young Chicago artists. Beri, (pronounced "Barry") which he said is what his friends called him, made a remark about the gallery we were in that led me to tell him about my thesis, then in first draft. He immediately told me that he would be very interested in hearing my ideas and the conclusions I had reached. The financial management of galleries interested him, he said, especially as a board member of several of them and a supporter of quite a few others. He knew well, for example, the owner of the gallery we were in and he explained that over the years he had gotten to know the directors and staff of many of the interesting private galleries in Chicago.

I told Beri Davis that I would be pleased to discuss my thesis findings with him and would welcome his reactions. So we agreed to have coffee a few days later at the Art Institute coffee shop to continue our conversation. I had lived in the Loop for several years by then to be near the Art Institute School while I was an undergraduate there and I had continued to live there while I commuted a couple of day a week to Northwestern in Evanston. Beri said he lived not far from my apartment. When I looked later at the address on his business card I knew that in addition to having an interest in art and photography he must have considerable wealth as well. I had often walked past his elegant art nouveau building which I learned had been an apartment hotel that had been converted to condominiums some years ago. His apartment number, 2001, indicated to me that he lived at the very top of that striking historic register building.

It was clear to me, James, that Beri Davis was considerably older than me, I guessed in his early forties. It surprised me that at age twenty three I immediately found him attractive as well as engaging. I had never had a sexual relationship with an older man, even a platonic one. Beri was of medium height with a strikingly handsome face, deep brown eyes, a dark closely trimmed mustache and beard with just a few flecks of grey, and a perfect posture. I remember that when we met that first time he was tastefully dressed in black slacks and a stylish grey sweater over a white shirt, even then one of my favorites combinations. As you know, I like it when you wear those together. Beri Davis obviously was someone who took himself seriously and expected that others would too. Initially I thought that he might be something of a poseur. I had met many of those in art school, both faculty and students. Beri Davis was much more than that. I guessed that he came from a moneyed family, probably not a self made business person. Those were my impressions after our first conversation.

During our coffee I learned more. Arthur Beri Davis was fifty years old, twenty-seven years my senior. He had grown up in New York City, went to Bard for his undergraduate degree, then to Princeton for a Master's in Art with a focus on photography. He had moved to Chicago from New York about a decade ago. He was a collector, especially of photography, both vintage and contemporary, and he was serious about his own photography though he said little about it then. Beri had travelled extensively in Europe and Asia, mainly in recent years to see photographs of high interest and to purchase some of them. He did not mention then that taking photographs of other people was in fact his main motivation to travel. He had once lived in Venice for a year and in Amsterdam and Osaka for several months each and he continued to travel to those three cities in a kind of cycle. His comments on my thesis were not especially helpful though they demonstrated that he was very familiar with some of the galleries I had analyzed and with many of the people involved with them. I found him easy to be with. I was impressed with his knowledge about photography and I soon became intrigued by his obvious interest in me.

During the weeks that followed Beri invited me for dinner twice in neighborhoods unfamiliar to me. It was nice to be with someone who knew the city so well and had tastes more sophisticated than mine. He also had lots of stories about people in the art world in Chicago, including romantic and sexual relationships among gallery owners, staff, supporters, even critics. He described how some of these relationships had led to the demise of some galleries and the origin of others. My thesis wasn't concerned with such personal factors but they were fascinating nevertheless. Beri also began to share more about his tastes in art, photography and film, especially foreign photographers and film makers.

I believe it was at the second of those restaurant dinners when, after we were seated, Beri commented that he was very pleased I had agreed to join him again; he had feared someone as young an as attractive as he found me to be might be reluctant to be seen with someone considerably older than myself. He told me then for the first time he found me beautiful and when he thought of me, which he did often, the words that came to his mind were captivating and desirable.

I was taken aback by these comments. I did not know how to react, in part because I did not know how I felt. The "beautiful" I appreciated but the "captivating" and the "desirable" seemed too personal, at least so soon. So I just told him I had no reluctance to be seen anywhere with him, for an older gentleman he seemed "very well preserved" and that he must take very good care of himself. He explained in an understated way he did work hard to keep in shape: vigorous squash early almost every morning at the Athletic Club and, in his apartment, weights and a pad for pushups, sit ups and other floor work, something he had been doing since his graduate school days. Then he added, "And I kept that up for as long as I could." He did not say more and I did not think it was appropriate to ask what he meant by "for as long as I could." I just told him that I was impressed

After a month or so, Beri told me he would be happy to show me some of his collection of photographs if I was ever interested. Several of the photographers he mentioned were well known to me and others I had not heard of, especially the Japanese photographers. I asked him what kinds of photographs especially interested him and he said his tastes were diverse and that I would need to see some of his collection to understand what really moved him.

I encountered Beri again soon at another Friday evening opening, this one showing new work by several young "emerging" Chicago artists. We talked briefly. Neither of us was very impressed with the promise of the artists whose works were on the walls. As I was leaving I said to him, "Beri, if the offer is still open I would very much like to see your apartment and some of your photographs. Almost any time. It would be a privilege to confirm my respect for your taste."

"That would be my pleasure, Nora," he said. "How about a week from Sunday, late afternoon, around five. I can offer you a light supper if you have time for that after I show you around my apartment and we can look at some of my pictures." I told him I would.

Not surprisingly, Beri's apartment and its furnishings were striking, a mixture of old world elegance mixed with contemporary design. And there were several very sexy art nouveau sculptural pieces. I did not find this an entirely pleasing combination but he obviously knew what he liked. Photographs were featured on his walls throughout the apartment, a wide range by period and subject, most of them in black and white. Several photographs that he described as favorites were by Italian and Japanese photographers and I was unfamiliar with them. Mixed in here and there were several excellent early twentieth century American paintings and prints.

In a separate room Beri showed me some of his own photographs, especially from his travels. More of these were in color and I found them engaging but not especially imaginative. And then he took me into one small more private room filled with his photo portraits of friends and acquaintances, some very formal, some very casual. Most of the people were very attractive and I recognized some faces I had seen at gallery openings or art lectures. A few of his photos were of extremely beautiful women and several more were of very handsome men. A few were of couples, several of handsome older men with striking younger women. That made me curious though I did not raise questions then. I was a bit surprised these seemed to be what he most wanted me to see. I was left with questions I was not prepared to ask.

Following this tour, Beri invited me to join him in the kitchen for a glass of wine as he prepared a simple cheese and mushroom omelet to serve with a salad of fresh greens and warmed bread.

While we talked over our food Beri asked me whether I liked his building and his apartment. Of course I told him that I did. He then explained very casually that he owned the building. I expressed amazement at that. He said he thought I might have wondered how he managed to live as he did without any visible means of employment, how he could afford it, and he wanted to explain. He said he lived entirely on an inheritance from his wealthy grandmother. She was a native of Venice who when very young had married a very wealthy Greek who owned a major shipping company.The Greek husband died and the grandmother also outlived their only child, a son. The grandmother visited Beri's family in New York several times and she had invited him to visit her in Venice. They became very close very quickly and each year his grandmother would buy Beri a ticket to Venice for an extended stay with her in her mansion on the Grand Canal. She introduced Beri to many of her friends in Venice and eventually he became well acquainted with some of them who in turn over the years had introduced him to the private and sexual underlife of the wealthy old families in the city. He did not comment on what this involved.

Beri explained that when the grandmother died she left him half of her fortune which was more than sufficient to permit him to live as he wanted without need for any other support. He remained in Chicago though he said he travelled often to New York and to Venice, Amsterdam and Japan in particular. He also noted that for several years a decade or so ago, he taught courses in the history of photography and of film as an adjunct professor at Columbia College in Chicago. He said he very much enjoyed getting to know many of the students and that he still retained relationships with some of them.

Nora and Beri watch a very special erotic film

After this dinner conversation we shared a brandy in a room with splendid window views in two directions. Beri pointed out some of the other architecturally significant buildings in the neighborhood. I had walked by most of them and taken Chicago Architectural Foundation tours of several. Then, as I was preparing to leave, Beri casually invited me to return a week later to watch a foreign film with him in his library. Before I could respond he said that before I accepted his invitation he felt he should tell me about the film he wanted me to watch with him. This was a Japanese film from the 1970s that featured very explicit sex scenes. It was produced with the cooperation of a major studio in Japan but was never intended to be shown to the public or submitted to censors. The film was created only for an elite audience interested in seeing real and graphic sex within a serious script and with high production values. The film was accessible only to a small circle of very influential and very wealthy people in Japan who had supported production of the film or who paid very high fees later for the right to view it.

Beri did not say how he gained access to a digital version or whether he was among those who paid a very high fee to do so. He pointed out that the several major actors in the film had agreed to participate either because they were very highly compensated for the sexual scenes or/and because it was known they found it exciting to perform sexually for an elite audience.

Beri told me that he did not want to take it for granted I would be receptive to watching with him and he did not want to offend me. But he wanted me to know he hoped I would be intrigued and would not be offended by an offer to join him in what would be frankly a sexual experience as well as an artistic one. Without very much thought, I told him that of course I wanted to watch, I liked feeling I was regarded as open to new experiences. I said probably I would enjoy the erotic content, certainly I was curious about the film, I would like to return the next Saturday evening. And so I did.

As he prepared to start the film that next Saturday evening, Beri very briefly set the scene for me. The film is set during the American occupation of Japan shortly after the War. It explores the life of a badly wounded Japanese veteran returned from the war and faced with life in a defeated nation, a struggling economy, a culture in turmoil, and his own physical and psychological wounds. The story, Beri suggested, is akin to D.H. Lawrence's novel, Lady Chatterly's Lover, but in Japan, not England, and after the second world war, not the first.

Beri started the film, projected to fill almost an entire wall of the small room. The figures were nearly life size as we observed them. It felt like we were just across the room from them.