She called herself "Kaira"

She called herself "Kaira." I'm not exactly sure why. Her real, full name suited her. I still remember it, now, twenty-some years later. She'd wanted anonymity, of course, but why "Kaira?" "I like the sound of it," she said. Not that it really mattered to me. I was in my thirties, she was in her twenties and out of her clothes.

I waited for the image to load, the dial-up modem squawked, my chest tightened. "Fiber-optic" was the latest thing, but I wasn't impressed. If I could've dived through that cable and come out on her end, I would've.

She didn't send photos the first time we "met." I'd scanned comments, had seen her name on a rapidly scrolling, brightly-colored list, clicked on it, a private window opened, and I typed, "Hello." We typed, tapped "enter," read, typed and tapped some more, back and forth. Five minutes became fifteen; fifteen, an hour. I made a note of her nickname; she, mine. We agreed to look for each other the next day.

She was online when she said she'd be. She sent a photo, a picture of her face. I was surprised she was so forthcoming and said so. She was sitting in a patio chair, leaning back, looking up and over her shoulder at the camera, smiling broadly, spontaneously. I was glad to be sitting down, for a couple of reasons.

I couldn't breathe. I just looked. She asked me if I'd received her picture. I said I had, thanked her, apologized, regretted that I had no picture to send her, no camera. That was alright, she said, we could still chat. And we did, almost every day, for months, maybe a year.

She became my friend. We talked about all kinds of things, sexual things among them. I never told her much about myself--although she insisted on a physical description, which I gave. Mostly, I made her laugh, she said. "You think. You are polite." That seemed enough.

She made me love her. And I allowed myself to love her.

She bought a web-cam, a new thing then. I was able to see her face move, smile, as beautifully as I remembered. I say "remembered" because I saved no images she sent.

She wanted to show me her breasts. She'd had implants and wanted my opinion. What could I say? Again, I was glad of my chair. We sat together for hours, Kaira and I. She worked, I worked, we reached out, titillated each other, laughed, went back to work. We were at home in this new, lewd Wild West.

One day, using her new camera, she appeared on my screen, naked, legs folded on the seat of her chair with her favorite--as she told me--chromed vibrator in her hand. I had no way to hear anything she said or the sounds she made, but I read her (very few) words and watched as she masturbated. I was speechless, any microphone useless, because remembering, even all these years later, I still wouldn't know what to say.

She was, to me, utterly, all-consumingly beautiful. I said I would have dived through the cable. But the truth is I could not move. And I didn't want to. Ever.

What was she really like? How would it have felt to bury my nose, cheek, lips in the hair near her ear? How would she have responded had I cradled her dear face in my blue-collar hands? What would her skin have smelled like, her lips and tongue tasted like?

(You know how it is for yourselves.)

Early sunlight slanted between chintz that bracketed the two, open, double-hung windows that looked over the front porch roof to the garden, to the road, and between houses across the street to the lake, quiet, blue, and still.

Still, just as I was until a moment before. K had climbed onto my narrow bed and was trying to find a spot for herself. There wasn't one. In faux frustration, she threw back the covers, straddled my hips facing me, reached behind her bum, and clutched my package through my boxers. She laughed, leaned forward, and put her tongue in my ear.

I awoke. She sat up, grinned sleepily, yawned, then spun around over my hips, hiked up her nightgown, and pressed her fur to my face, her face to my fur. I thought: her girlfriend had to have left for work.

After months of flirting online, we'd agreed to meet. I never had sent her a picture of myself, so she'd taken an awful risk. What if I were unattractive to her? But when she picked me up at the airport, studied me briefly, smiled her smile, and kissed me on the lips--all with hardly a word--my worry evaporated.

The next kiss--once my bag was stowed and she was behind the steering wheel--was breathless and wet: mouths open, lips pressed and sucked, tongues darted, teeth nibbled.

She composed herself, started the car, and drove us to her friend's house with its two spare bedrooms, K in one, I in the other. Her friend, recently divorced, had been recruited as fellow conspirator. Together, we'd grilled steaks, made potato salad, drank beer, and laughed like old friends--which the two of them were--until I fell asleep in a deck chair.

K had shaken my shoulder gently and walked me to my room.

I'd slept, soundly, from what I could tell, and now her pubic hair was tickling my nose, the smell of her after a night's sleep alone hung, a strange, irresistible cloud over my face. I breathed her in, eyed her labia, and kissed her, deeply. She giggled, pulled down my shorts, and kissed my penis like they were lifelong friends.

She asked me if he had a name, I told her: Big Jake. She'd snorted, then licked him from base to tip. "Not so big," she said. "Give me--him--a minute," I said.

The most vivid memory from that weekend with K is a mental-snapshot of her straddling me, unselfconsciously naked, a rosy patch between her full breasts, my penis thick and deep inside her, my fingers wrapped around her hips and ass, pulling her to me tightly. K leaned forward, pressed her breasts and nipples to mine, and open-eyed, parted my lips with her tongue, then she dissolved in my mouth. I could no longer tell where I ended and she began.

In one our last meetings, Kaira reminded me that she'd said she wanted a married man to speak with, that a married man would be safer, because out of reach. But, she added, if we were ever to meet in person, she didn't think she could resist her own desire. I knew I could not.

We never met. She's still married to the same man, has children now, as do I. Our lives are good. And I have let her go. Or have I?

I am grateful, Lovely K. Always, T