Turning “Once Upon A Time” into “Every Time Until One Of Us Dies”

“and they lived happily ever after.”

Those words at the end of a story always sounded like a blessing to me as a child. I would repeat them out loud, like a spell or a chant.

But I wasn’t interested in how the “ever after” worked. I never gave it a thought. Winning the right to the ever after was much more important than how you lived it.

Happily ever after was a blessing, not a prophecy. It was meant to mark the fact that love, true love, heart-stopping, once-in-a-life-time, struck-by-lightning love, had triumphed despite all that fate and circumstance could throw at it. It is this transcendent moment of blissful fruition that is meant to last for ever after in our hearts.

In my view, a Romance novel that doesn’t deliver that transcendent moment short changes the reader in the same way that a country house murder mystery would if the no one found out who the killer was.

If I read a novel that declares itself to be a Romance with a capital R, I expect to be taken on a very specific journey. I want the novel to be a cathartic experience. It should have at least two people that I care about and who deserve something more and better than a life of shallow compromise, or corrosive loneliness, or bitter regret. It should subject them to the misunderstandings, injustices, social constraints, fears, small acts of malice and major misfortunes that regularly rob us of our happiness, and it should allow the two central characters to recognise and act upon the fact that their happiness depends upon their potentail to offer each other love, make each other complete, become together something greater and more wonderful than they could ever be apart.

I know that real life isn’t like this. Romance isn’t about real life, it’s about the everyday magic that love can work, it’s about the world as we would like it to be, it’s about our dreams coming true.

The purpose of Romance is to transcend real life – that is why it needs to have that “Happy Ever After” ending.

I enjoy reading romances but I am not temperamentally suited to writing them.

In my day to day life, I am deeply distrustful of glamour and charisma, both of which seem to me to be a form of deception.

I am sceptical of the honesty or self-knowledge of men who claim to love at first sight; I cannot imagine what such love is built on other than a hormonal surge or conditioned response that is bound to fade with time. How can they love a woman they do not know? What is such a love worth?

I doubt the sincerity of the big romantic gestures. They seem to me to be chat-up lines with extended choreography, self-aggrandizing clichés that spring not from love or from a deep knowledge of the woman’s needs but from the man’s desire to be attractive to a woman he wants to fuck.

As you can imagine, this makes it hard for me to write the male romantic lead.

While Romance may be beyond me, I do frequently find myself writing about love. Love is something we do not choose and cannot control. Love can be a source of happiness or despair, of selflessness or jealousy, love can change who we are.

Ironicly, it seems to me that a relationship built on the props of Romance is unlikely to survive the move from “once upon a time” to “every time until one of us dies” while real love at least has a chance of growing strong enough to create a happy ever after.

Perhaps because I write about love, it turns out that I have written a story that describes a Happy Ever After. I’ve attached it below. You can decide for yourselves whether any romance is involved.

“The Last Taboo”

(c) Mike Kimera 2008

Most men lie about sex. I don’t know why. We talk about it often and loudly in all those places where men gather without women. We talk about who we’d like to fuck and how and sometimes where. We brag about our performance on one-night-stands or with whores or with the wives of friends. But, to my ears, these conversations lack authenticity. They have about them a whistling-to-show-I’m-not-afraid-of-the-dark quality that is more than a little pathetic.

I am usually silent when these conversations take place. No one in my circle of male acquaintances, hereafter referred to as, ‘The Lads’, questions this. I was never a handsome man and I am no longer a young one. I think the assumption, in the language of male-(don’t worry, we’re all hetero here, honest)-bonding, is that “Fat Frank isn’t getting any.” What else could explain my silence?

In reality, I remain silent because I think The Lads would not react well if they knew the truth. Fat Frank, (a nickname chosen for its alliterative charm, its factual accuracy, and the ease with which it can be rhymed with wank) deviates from one of the accepted norms of married life. I break the last taboo: I like to fuck my wife.

I mean I really like to fuck my wife. I think about it before we do it. I give myself up to it completely when I’m in her. I hug the memory of each fuck to me, reluctant to let it go.

Liz and I have been married for eight years and been together for twelve, so we must have fucked thousands of times. I know the conventional wisdom is that repetition blunts the experience but Liz is like a whetstone for my knife-sharp desire, each time I rub against her the edge gets keener and cuts deeper.

Perhaps if Liz was the kind of woman that The Lads ogle and comment on (but never EVER actually speak to) I could share the reality of my passion with them. They would slap me on the back or punch me in the arm and shout “You lucky bastard.” Jimmy would say, “Who’d have thought Fat Frank would have it in him?” Robbo would grin and say, “Who’d have thought Fat Frank would have it in her you mean.” I would be expected to drop my head in false modesty and then explain of how Liz goes all night like a racehorse on speed. Jimmy would say, “If you ever need a hand with her, Frank, you only have to ask.” Everyone, including me, would laugh. I’d be offered a beer and my status in the group would rise.

But Liz is not the kind of woman The Lads notice. She’s not a fantasy figure. She’s a normal, healthy, slightly over-weight woman in her mid-thirties.

Liz, it seems, is extraordinary only in my eyes. Her eyes are green with little flecks of gold that shine in the sunlight. Her hair, which she keeps short, curls against the back of her neck as if caressing it. Her smile is crooked and filled with wickedness. Her skin is soft and pale and flushes when she is aroused. But the most extraordinary thing about Liz, the arse-clenching, cock-stiffening, heart-aching thing about her is that she loves me.

I’m not talking about something vague here, some Hallmark sentimental notion of love, a fantasy emotion propped up by romantic gestures and mutual self-delusion. I’m talking about a warts-and-all, robust, uncompromising and unconditional love that crashes over you like a big wave, taking your breathe away but leaving you excited to be alive.

Liz has known me for a long time. We went to the same school. We saw each other grow up. Liz knew the bookish, solitary boy I was and the hormone-charged, cripplingly shy youth I became, and yet she still fell in love with me. The power of being thoroughly known and thoroughly loved is almost impossible to get into words.

According to Liz, words are my weakness. She thinks I use way too many of them and get lost in the patterns that they make. It’s true that sometimes I can be too introspective for my own good. I get hooked on ideas and concepts and lose touch with the day-to-day world where reality happens. Left to my own devices I could float away from the world and become an eccentric old fart who laughs at obscure references no one-else understands. Liz saves me from that.

It’s not that Liz doesn’t like ideas. She loves to hear me talk about them. She just doesn’t let herself become seduced by them. One time I was going through a phase were I was obsessed with the early Greek philosophers. Liz bought me a copy of Plato’s “Apology” written in defence of Socrates. Inside the cover she wrote, “An over-explored life is not worth living.”

Liz and I don’t speak much when we fuck. We laugh and groan and grunt and sigh, but mostly we let our bodies do the talking. From the beginning, Liz has been the one who initiates these kinds of conversation. There’s a certain look she gets that I know means that she wants sex and she wants it soon. I never act on the look alone. Over the years, we’ve developed a little ritual: when the need is strong, Liz will stand close to me, sometimes in front, sometimes behind, put her mouth next to my ear and whisper, “Fuck me.” Those two words are like a trigger, they always make me hard.

Most of our fucking is outside of the bedroom. Liz thinks that beds are for sleeping on and that floors (and sofas, and tables and stairs) are for fucking on. She has whispered, “Fuck me,” in every room in the house. Although we’ve never talked about it, we both understand that I will fuck Liz whenever and wherever she whispers those two little words. We’ve fucked on Ferry Boats, in cars, in phone booths, on the steps of public buildings. I love the risk that this introduces and I love the sense of wickedness that comes from a secret shared.

Liz is the only woman I’ve ever had sex with. Now there’s a statement that would make The Lads shuffle their feet and pretend that I hadn’t spoken. As a conversation stopper, it’s on a par with “Have you opened your heart to Jesus?” The fidelity implied by this statement is not a badge of honour. I have made no sacrifices. Liz gives me everything that I need and I give thanks for my good fortune everyday.

I’m sure that Liz and I are not the only couple with this kind of relationship but I’m equally sure that we are a minority. Many marriages run out of passion or find they no longer need it.

The real reason it is taboo for me to talk to The Lads (none of whom are lads any longer and all of whom are or have been married) about the reality of my sex life, is that they don’t want to be confronted with the possibility that, if they had found the right person, they too would look forward to fucking their wives.

So, I will continue to be silent when they brag and boast and encourage one another. It is the polite thing to do. And it gives me time to think about Liz and what we will get up to the next time that she whispers in my ear.

American Holidays 5: Thanksgiving

My understanding is that Thanksgiving is fundamentally a family holiday in the US. People will travel great distances to be together with their families on that day.

Erotica and families make uncomfortable bed fellows. Apart from stories with a (usually extremely unrealistic) fetish for incest, most protagonists in erotic stories spring whole onto the page with neither parents nor children to distract their focus from sexual satisfaction. Yet our families are an inescapable and sometimes inscrutable part of our identity.

In this story, I wanted to understand how little Helen grew up to be a sexually dominant woman and I wanted to set her relationship with Peter in to the context of her relationship with her parents.

I hope you enjoy the result.

 

Thanksgiving

“You want me to sleep here?”

“Well this is where you slept when you lived here, Helen. Why should it change now? I thought you’d be pleased to have your old room back.”

I try to read my mother’s face. She must being doing this deliberately. And she must know that I can see what she is doing. But she still has that innocent, not-quite-connected-to-planet-earth look that she uses to avoid any minor questions about her decisions that my father might be rash enough to voice.

I stare in disbelief at the single bed that I slept in as a child. It’s a very narrow single bed.

“I know that you prefer to ignore the fact that Peter and I are married mother, but he is my husband and I expect to have him in my bed. We can’t sleep here.”

“Really, Helen, I have no idea where you get these impressions from. I have no opinion about Peter. As I said at the time, who you chose to marry was up to you.”

What she’d said at the time was “Are you sure you want to marry Paul, dear? He’s such a bland man. I can see the advantage of having someone manageable but marriage needs a little spice if it’s to last. I’ve always preferred to wake up to Huevos Rancheros, the problem with Paul is that he’s just so… oatmeal.”

I’d stood there, with my hands balled into fists and my jaw clenched, trying to quell the desire to hit her.

“His name is Peter, mother,” I’d spat out.

“You see, dear, not even his name is memorable. Ah well. It is your decision of course.”

Now, seven years later, I find myself having to bite back my anger one more time. My mother is talking. I’m trying not to strangle her.

“I didn’t think that you and Peter would mind being separated for one night. I’ve given him the fold-down bed in your father’s den. He’ll be perfectly comfortable. I had to give the guest bedroom to Troy and Dianna; after all they have the baby to think of.”

The baby. Of course we should be thinking about the baby. My younger brother (what kind of mother calls their kids Helen and Troy?) produced a grandchild right off the bat. I of course committed the sin of putting my career ahead of my duty to deliver grandchildren, although even that became Peter’s fault in my mother’s mind. “If Peter has a problem dear, I can recommend an excellent clinic.” My mother had left that helpful tip on our answerphone in the second year of my marriage. Peter played it back to me when I got home from work.

I don’t resent the fact that Troy and Dianna got the big bed. I resent the implication that Peter is so bland that I won’t even notice his absence.

“I want him here with me, mother.”

Even I can hear how petulant I sound.

“Well if it’s that important to you, dear. I’ll ask your father to move the fold-down bed in here. I’m sure he won’t mind. Although of course he has only just set everything up the den. But then your father always makes sure that his little Helen gets what she wants, doesn’t he?”

I don’t believe it. She is still jealous of the fact that Dad will do things for me.

“There won’t be a lot of room in here. You’ll have to fold up the bed before you can open the door. But, if that’s what you want…”

Oh God. It is always like this. A constant trickle of words that erode my will. I either have to get angry or to shut down and give in. Giving in is easier. If I push her now, the topic will come up at dinner. And again in the morning. And in the next time we come to the house. If there is a next time.

“Never mind, mother. Peter can stay where he is. Let’s just concentrate on getting dinner ready.”

“Well, if you’re sure, dear.”

How did this woman live so long?

“You look tense, Helen. Why don’t you take a moment to freshen up? Dianna is changing the baby in the bathroom but you can use the en suite in the master bedroom. I’ll be in the kitchen when you’re ready.”

And then she is gone. The relief is physical, like when your ears pop at altitude.

I don’t really need to freshen up but it gives me a reason to delay going downstairs. Nothing has changed in my parents’ bedroom. The huge wrought iron bed with the chintz canopy over it is still there. I used that bed the first time that I fucked Peter. I used it because I liked the headboard, because I wanted revenge on my mother for all the times I’d had to listen to her thrashing in this bed in the middle of the night, and because I wanted to see if good, nice, sensible Peter Brader would do what I wanted him to do.

I sit on the stool by the dressing table and summon up the memory of a nineteen year old Peter, lying on this bed with his wrists tied to the headboard; so calm and trusting that, except for the impressive erection he was saluting me with, he might almost have been ready to sleep.

Other boys I’d known had only pretended to submit. They’d made comments as I tied them to establish that it was all a game and as soon as they’d come; they’d started to fret at their bonds, demanding to be let free. Peter didn’t do any of that. He just waited for me to use him. But his serenity wasn’t passive. Somehow it managed to amplify everything I did. The harder I fucked him, the harder I wanted to fuck him. His cock was my lightening rod, calling me forth, daring me to spend myself on him, taking everything that I could give and leaving me discharged and sated.

Afterwards I’d left him tied to the bed while I sat and brushed my hair. A beam of sunlight was shining down on him, highlighting the sweat on his muscles and the small scratches and bites I’d visited on him. He looked happy, even grateful. I’d shown him my wildest side. I’d sworn and fucked and bitten and scratched and shouted my come with my head thrown back and he hadn’t pulled away, he hadn’t been threatened. He was waiting for more. He was waiting for me. For the first time in my adult life I felt as if I’d found a home.

Peter wasn’t my first fuck, but he was my first lover. Actually, he is my only lover. To me that is a statement of how rich my life is rather than how narrow my experience has been.

“Helen dear, if you’ve finished up there, you can help your father lay the table.”

The sound of my mother’s voice makes me feel guilty and furtive and childish. I get off the stool quickly and smooth the cover of the bed, as if I had just used it. Why does coming home always turn me back into a little girl? And why do I hate that so much?

There are six of us at dinner but there is food for at least a dozen. The conversation is stilted at first. Troy and Peter have the mandatory road-number-filled review of the drive to my parents’ house, even though I actually did the driving. I ask Dianna about the baby, revealing my ignorance of modern childrearing with each question that I ask. Mother fusses over dad, ensuring that he gets the best slices of meat, touching his hand when she passes him things, keeping his glass full. She always makes sure that he knows he is the centre of her attention. Dad catches me watching them and gives me an unapologetic grin. This is how the world is, that grin says, and it’s too late now to change it.

As the wine flows, words become easier for everybody but me. I feel as though an invisible barrier has settled between me and everyone else. I watch but I don’t speak.

Peter fits in so well. He is a good listener. People relax when they talk with him. When they talk with me it is as if they are always just a little on their guard. Dianna is talking to him now. Peter isn’t talking to her about the baby. Somehow he has learnt that she paints and within a few moments the woman I could barely exchange a word with is sharing her passion for abstract art.

As the courses go by I drink and eat more than I should. I want to speak to Troy. I want to sit and exchange deep truths with him, except that those truths remain just out of reach of my tongue so I remain silent. By the time we reach desert I am quite drunk. It seems to me that Peter has abandoned me. Everyone has abandoned me.

“I think you might want to have little lie down, dear.”

My mother is leading back to my little virgin bed. I’d protest except that I can’t find the words. And I’m tired. Very, very tired.

I wake with a fierce thirst and a vicious headache. It’s dark. I’ve slept through the afternoon. I groan in self-pity. I’ve made such a fool of myself. I know that mother will be secretly pleased.

I want Peter. Except Peter isn’t here, my mother saw to that.

Sitting up is not pleasant so I lie down again.

The room has not changed since I left it seven years ago. I’ve changed so much since then that it seems incongruous for me to be occupying the same space that I did then. Peter is responsible for most of those changes. Living up to how he sees me, using the quiet space he provides for me to seek refuge in, has changed who I am.

Who would I have been without Peter?

Back before Peter, I’d never really been that comfortable with boys. It wasn’t that I was shy; it was more that I saw them too clearly and I didn’t like what I saw. For them, girls were trophies to show off to other boys. I used to imagine them at swap meets, talking to each other about girls like they were baseball cards: “Had her. Had her. Had her. Want her. I’ll swap you two Heathers for an Alicia.”  But the worse thing was that, when it came to sex, they all seemed to want to be in charge although very few of them seemed to know what to do.

I knew enough about my own body to know what I wanted: where and how I wanted to be touched and for how long. I also knew the kind of body I wanted to do the touching: tall, lean, strong. Unfortunately, most of those bodies seemed to come with the supersized ego option as standard.

I tried a few anyway. It wasn’t hard to get their attention, I was attractive enough in a petite, androgynous sort of way, the challenge was to stay in control. The first couple of attempts were an education.

“Tall ‘n’ Lean #1” put his hands everywhere but he didn’t know what to do with them. And he got irritated when I moved around. I was supposed to be his bendyfucktoy, something he could pose for his convenience. His dick was nice: smooth and hard; but he wasn’t interested in me touching it for long, he wanted to “slide it home”. I moved to climb up on his lap but he wanted me on my back. He wasn’t in me for long before he came. Then he asked me if I wanted to go get a burger. I realized I’d just had the sexual equivalent of a drive thru meal: smells good, is over too quickly and lies like a lump on your stomach afterwards.

“Tall ‘n’ Lean #2” wasn’t interested in entering anything other than my mouth. He wanted me on his knees, looking up into his eyes. I had no objection to the idea in principal. It was corny but it had a sense of theatre to it. What turned me off was him placing his hand on the back of my head and using my mouth like an extension of his hand. I’ve seen drains unblocked with more finesse. I had to grab his balls to make him stop. I thought he’d be angry with me, maybe even try to hit me, but he actually whined like a little boy, “What did you do that for?” It was the question I was beginning to ask about sex as a whole.

I decided to do some research before seeking out “Tall ‘n’ Lean #3”. I went to Barnes and Noble to see what kind of books I could find on sex. I’d done the “Insert Part A into Part B” manuals and the “Joy of Sex” hippy-type manuals but they didn’t give me what I wanted. They were too much like cookery lessons and not enough like good food. I moved on to the erotica section and found “The Story of O” and “The Taking of Sleeping Beauty”. They definitely got my attention. Hours of it. The thing was, I didn’t want to be O or Beauty, I wanted to be the person doing things to them. Well not them in particular. I wanted to be doing things to “Tall ‘n’ Leans”. I’d lie in my narrow little bed, exhausted from my reading or listening to my parents having sex in the room next door, and I’d think about what it would be like to have that kind of control. Then I got to thinking about how I might make it happen. As it turned out it wasn’t that difficult but it wasn’t that much fun either.

I found “Tall ‘n’ Leans #3” in a Karate class. I’d signed up because I wanted to be able to protect myself and because I figured the boys there would be more disciplined. He was beautiful, his sweat smelled good, he was a black belt and he was older than me. I waited for him in the parking lot after class. I had decided to be direct.

“Would you like me to fuck you?”

He didn’t look stunned, offended or even pleased, just curious.

“Are you sure you mean it that way around? Most girls want me to fuck them.”

“I’m very sure.”

He eyes licked slowly over me body. Then he smiled.

“OK.” He said, like he was agreeing to grab a pizza, “but I have a question.”

“?”

“What’s your name?”

I blushed at that. It hadn’t occurred to me that while I’d been noticing the muscles in his forearm and the tight curve of his butt, all he’d been paying attention to was his Karate technique.

My parents were away on one of their pagan weekends. Sex was the bedrock of their marriage; you only had to look at the two of them together to see that. The pagan weekends gave them the opportunity to concentrate on fucking each other’s brains out without worrying about making a noise.

I’d decided to have a mini pagan weekend of my own. I brought Tall ‘n’ Leans #3″ back to my house. I was more than a little nervous. He didn’t touch me or hassle me but there was a confidence behind his eyes that was unsettling. I took him into my dad’s Den and gave him the speech I’d rehearsed.

“OK, here are the rules. I want to fuck you. I want you to do what I tell you while I fuck you. If you don’t do what I tell you, the fucking will stop. Do you understand?”

It was supposed to be my first step to establishing mastery over him. He sat on the edge of my dad’s desk, like he had a right to be there, and said, “That speech would work better if you said ‘I am going to fuck you. You will do what I want’. You have to sound like you mean it.”

He slipped off the desk and on to his knees in front of me without breaking eye contact.

“Tell me how to serve you, Mistress.”

In theory this was just what I wanted. But he was laughing at me. It was gentle laughter, but laughter all the same.

“Shit.” I said.

For a second he looked surprised. He thought I was giving an instruction.

“I so wanted to tie you to my dad’s chair and tease you and fuck you. But it’s not going to work is it?”

He stood up, lifting me like I weighed nothing at all and placed me on dad’s desk. I felt a little bit of panic and a lot of excitement.

“Your dad’s chair? How old are you, Helen? No. Don’t answer that. You’re a pretty girl, Helen, and a brave one. You know what you want but you don’t yet know how to recognize who can give it to you.”

I’d known he was a little older than me but I hadn’t expected him to talk to me like I was a child. Who did he think he was, my camp counselor?

“Well why did you come here then?” My eyes were hot with embarrassment.

“You sounded convincing in the parking lot. And I don’t mind switching from time to time.”

“Switching?”

“I’m a Dom, Helen. I normally do the tying up.”

“You think I’m stupid, don’t you?”

“No. But I think you need to learn to recognize a sub when you meet one.”

Then he kissed me. It was a slow kiss, passionate but friendly. It made me wonder what it would be like to be tied up by him. To let him do whatever he wanted. Then he wasn’t kissing me anymore.

“Gotta go, Helen. My name is Jon, by the way. I’ll see you at Karate next week.”

I picked up a book from the desk and threw it, but it only hit the door closing behind him. I was mad at Jon for the rest of the day. Then I started to think about how things might have gone wrong: about the risks that I’d taken; about how gentle he’d been. Gentle and strong. I could see why women would let him tie them.

Jon and I became friends but not lovers. He gave me things to read and told me about his life. I left the “Tall ‘n’ Leans” alone for a while and concentrated on getting to college. I’d gotten through two more “Tall ‘n’ Leans” in college before I met Peter, both of them one night stands, both of them left me feeling hungry and somehow cheated.

My head is feeling better so I check my watch. Somehow it has reached 10pm. I’ve missed Thanksgiving and they’ve all forgotten about me. I hug my sense of hurt to me tightly. It serves me right that I’ve been abandoned. You see I made a mistake. Such a big mistake. I gave Peter away to my best friend. I was so sure of him you see. So certain that I was what he wanted. I thought I could lend him out. Share him with a friend.

It started out Ok. Barbara was sad and needed comfort so I tied Peter and blindfolded him and then I shared him with her. It was fun. It felt human and loving. I was so proud of all of us. But the thing is, I get jealous. Just the way my mother does. I hate myself for it but I can’t help it.

I’d invited Barbara to stay with us, to join the Peter and Helen household. I knew they liked each other but I was too vain to think it through. And then I saw how Peter looked at her. How he wanted her. It was my doing, not his. Peter followed my lead, trusting me to do the right thing, and I gave him away.

Except Barbara gave him back. Barbara gave him back. I don’t know if he’d have come back on his own.

I must still be a little drunk. I’ve spent months carefully not thinking about this and now I’m crying into my pillow afraid that Peter hasn’t really come back to me.

You see, I know that I’m not worthy of Peter. I’m not really the person he deserves. For weeks now I’ve been watching him, wondering if I’m living in a charade; whether Peter would rather be with Barbara but is just too nice to leave me. Maybe my mother was right to put him on the other side of the house.

“Helen?”

Peter is standing over me. I didn’t even hear him come in. I sit up on the bed, conscious of how red my eyes must be and how strongly I must smell of drink. I want to get up and hug him but I can’t make myself move.

Peter has brought the toybag with him. I didn’t even know he’d packed it. Shit, he’s brought the toybag to my parents’ house.

He places the toybag on the bed beside me. Normally I choose the toys, but this time it is Peter who opens the bag. He takes out the strap-on. It’s a complicated affair. The strap that goes between my legs will push a dildo and a buttplug into me and leave a long thin curved black latex cock jutting out from my belly.

“I’d like you to use this. I want us to make some noise”.

Peter wants me to fuck him and he wants everyone to know its happening. Joy spreads through me like liquid sunlight. Peter wants me.

He’s been watching me figure it out. When he sees my smile start, he kisses me. I am sleeping beauty being brought back to life. Except I’m going to reward my Prince by reaming his ass as hard as I can.

I take the strap-on from him.

“Strip, Peter,” I say.

He sheds his clothes calmly but quickly. He is already hard. I make him wait while I shrug out of my clothes, then I stand with one leg on the bed and tell him to tool me up. I mean to sound stern but I can’t keep the joy out of my voice.

Then it starts for real. Peter lubes me slowly and thoroughly and straps me tight. With both holes full and a strong black cock thrusting in front of me I feel powerful and as randy as hell.

“Get on your back on the bed, Peter, and hold onto to your ankles.”

I love the sound of that. Love the calm excitement with which he obeys. He doesn’t ask why he’s on his back when he should be bent over. He does what I tell him.

I spread lube over my mockcock, place my finger and thumb around the base of Peter’s erection and push the strap-on hard into his anus.

“Keep your hands around your ankles, Peter.” Then I make the noise he’s been waiting for: in my best rodeo tones I shout, “YEEHAW” and we’re off.

I ride him hard enough to make him buck on the bed. I keep his cock in my hand like a joystick or perhaps a saddle horn, squeezing it as I pound his ass. The harder I push into him the deeper the dildo rises into me. When I’m close, I slap his hands away from his ankles, lift his feet up over my shoulders and fuck for depth. The bed is bouncing now.

“Jack-off, Peter. Jack-off hard.”

His hand moves eagerly on his cock. I am so close that I’m groaning as I grind into him. The heat of his sperm splashing onto my belly pushes me over and I growl my come at him.

I pull out of Peter’s poor abused asshole and collapse on top of him. I feel strong and whole and loved.

Peter holds me gently and whispers, “Welcome back, Helen”.

It turns out that the bed is not too narrow if we lie like spoons. As I fall asleep I remember that I’m still wearing the strap-on but I’m too tired to move.

We are both sore the next morning but that doesn’t stop us grinning at one another.

“Do you think they heard us?”

“Your parents’ bedroom is still next door isn’t it, Helen?”

We both laugh.

At breakfast I wait for my mother to say something. She discusses the weather and asks if we really have to leave straight after breakfast but makes no mention of our exploits. As we say our goodbyes, mother hugs Peter and says something to him. I miss the exchange because I have a crying baby in my arms at the time.

When I’ve driven as far as the freeway, I ask Peter what my mother said.

“She told me you were lucky to have me.”

“What did you say?”

“I said that you would always have me and that I would always give thanks for that.”

I try to imagine the expression on my mother’s face when she heard that. I decide that it would probably be one of approval. “Thank God for Peter”, I think to myself. Then I start to look for the next rest stop. I want a quiet place where we can do a bit more thanksgiving.

 

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© Mike Kimera 2003 All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without written permission from mikekimera@yahoo.co.uk

 

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A story without a reader is incomplete. Please let me know what you think of this story by leaving a comment below.

American Holidays 4 : Halloween

Halloween is for me the ultimate American Holiday: a European tradition that has mutated into something spectacularly American and then been resold to the rest of the world. It’s a feast that celebrates transformation and brings to the surface things we normally keep in the shadows. I decided that the best way to get the spirit of Halloween was to tell it from the point of view of Anthea, Mark’s boss. Once I got inside her head, everything looked different.

I hope you enjoy this. Please let me know what you think.

 

Halloween

“You can’t do this to me, Anthea.”

Mark is more pathetic than fierce. The smell of alcohol preceded him into my office. He looks slightly jaundiced. His cheeks and chin sport small islands of stubble that managed to evade his razor this morning. I’m surprised he can keep his hand steady enough to shave.

“I’m not doing it to you, Mark,” I say. “You’re doing it to yourself. You’ve lost it. Look at yourself. How long can you last between drinks now, Mark? An hour? Two if you really try? I’m giving you a simple choice: either dry out or ship out.”

For a moment I think he’s going to tell me to fuck off. I almost wish he would.

When we first met, before his long-suffering wife finally left him, he was a maverick. He always had a comeback ready. I liked him. He reminded me of Davey, my younger brother. Or at least how Davey would have been if he hadn’t wrapped himself around a tree riding that motorcycle of his.

I’ve never found it easy to talk to men. Somehow it always turned into a conflict: the strong ones saw me as a challenge, someone to put down either by bedding or ridiculing; the weak ones were afraid of me and their fear made me despise them and despise myself for feeling that way. I built a shell around myself. I out-manned them; being tougher than the strong and ruthlessly removing the weak.

I thought Mark was the exception, that for once I could drop the macho crap and make a friend. I liked the way he smiled and he was easy to talk to. Then, one evening, when we were working late, Mark pushed his fingers between my legs. I wanted to kill him. I felt betrayed. Stupid really, he wasn’t to know that he reminded me of my dead brother.

Mark works for me now. I should probably have fired him, but I always hoped that he’d pull himself together and be the guy I wanted him to be. Now he’s sitting on the other side of my desk with nothing to say. Oh shit. He’s crying. Not big sobs. More like his eyes are leaking.

Part of me wants to hug him and help him, but most of me just wants to slap him. How could he fuck up his life like this?

Of course I can’t do either of these things. I’m the boss, Anthea the Hun they call me: strong, logical, unemotional.

I look at my watch. Mark is my last chore before I head home. It’s Halloween tonight and I have things to prepare. I let my eyes rest on the picture of Drazen and his daughter that I keep on my desk. The picture is supposed to remind me of home, give me a smile in the middle of the day; increasingly it just reminds me that I spend too many hours at work and most of them are wasted on cleaning up the messes other people make. Time to clear up my last mess of the day.

“I’m going to leave these details with you, Mark. If you want to keep your job then I will get a phone call from the clinic on Monday saying that you’ve checked in. If you want to continue to drown yourself in booze, then just clear your desk and don’t come back. This is your last chance, Mark. Choose wisely.”

Why do I always sound so pompous when I’m doing something unpleasant?

Even though it’s my office, I get up to leave. I want to be home. I want to be somewhere where I don’t have to be in charge and where I can let people love me. Mark starts to cry properly as I leave. I pretend not to hear him and keep moving.

The express elevator, a perk of my executive status, is softly lit and lined with mirrors, presumably so that executives can maintain a positive image. I stand in the centre of the elevator and stare at the infinite number of Antheas that head off in each direction. I don’t recognize them. I don’t want these uptight, asexual women to be me.

Perhaps it is the shock of seeing the wreck Mark has become, or perhaps it is the news I want to give to Drazen tonight, but I feel a strong need to change the images in the mirror. I reach up and release my hair, letting it fall around my shoulders. My hair is thick and soft, I love the feel of it against my face, the taste of it in my mouth. My hair is my freedom, my sexuality. Which is why I bind it so tightly at work, but why I refuse to have it cut.

I bend forward at the waist, letting my hair fall forward over my head. It is almost long enough to touch the floor. Then I flick myself upright, casting my hair behind me like a mane. The images in the mirror, with their legs apart, shoulders back, hair shining in the massaged light, seem more recognizable now. I wave to myself just as the deferential tone sounds to let me know that I have reached the ground.

I opt for a limo rather than taking the train. I tell myself that it’s because I’m late and I need to hurry home, but I know that what I want is the privacy.

In the car I settle back against the leather seat and slip off my shoes. I will be home in less than an hour, but I need Drazen right now. The wireless earpiece of my cell phone (Anthea the Hun always has all the latest boys toys) is hidden beneath my hair. I say, “Drazen” and the speed dial starts.

“Anthea.” A statement, not a question. Drazen’s voice, soft and calm, slides into my ear and makes me shiver. In his mouth my name is “Ann-Tea-Ah” and immediately “the Hun” is left behind. I remain silent, waiting.

“So…” he says, “you can be overheard, but you want to play. Soon, I hope, you will be home, but then there will be other things before… I understand.”

I can hear him walking through the house. He will go to his studio. Sound proofed and secure. I recognize the noise the door lock makes as it snaps shut.

When he speaks again he is more relaxed. His voice is still soft but it has energy to it suggesting the confident strength and controlled arousal of a predator stalking his prey.

“You are in a car. No, it is quiet enough to be a limo. I can hear your breathing, Anthea. Press your shoulders back against the leather seat. Keep your thighs together. Tight together. Squeeze. Close your eyes and remember how it feels when your thighs close against my beard, when my tongue dips into you. Remember the smell of your arousal, the soft drizzle of your juices onto my chin. Remember how hard it is for you to stay still, how much you want to move, to grind, to rock, to press, to drive yourself down upon my tongue until it impales you. Remember all of that but keep a calm expression on your face.”

I look forward at the rearview mirror. The driver’s eyes are on the road, but if he looks up he will see me.

It feels as though Drazen is behind me, breathing into my ear, as if it is him I am pressing into. I want to open my legs, just a little, slide a finger along my thigh, draw small circles on my mound.

“No touching, Anthea. Keep your legs closed and your mind open.”

I smile. I know he will be imagining me smiling.

“Stretch your legs. Feel the muscles at the back of your thighs tense. Keep them tense. Can you smell yourself yet? Do you think your driver can smell you? Not yet perhaps, but soon.”

My face flushes at the thought. I check the rear view again. The driver looks up, then looks away.

“You will feign sleep, Anthea. Let your beautiful head rest against the leather. Hold some of your hair across your mouth. Keep it in place. Remember how my thumb feels, pressing against your lower lip, my fingers resting on your cheek, how good it feels to dip your head forward and feel the thumb press into the roof of your mouth.”

I bite down on my hair as the first little contraction hits. Memory flares. The first time that he fucked me in a public place it started like that, a small dip of my head on his thumb, my face scarlet with embarrassment, my sex damp with need. It ended with me bent over the back of a park bench, Drazen behind me, pushing slowly and calmly into my ass, as if anal sex was a normal pursuit on a Sunday morning stroll in the park.

“Good girl, Anthea. Good girl.”

His voice is stroking me. Soothing me. I hear him unzip his fly and a small moan escapes from me.

“Shh, Anthea is sleeping. She cannot see how hard I am at the thought of her, cannot smell the musk of that arousal.”

I love the smell of him. The taste of him. The fascination of playing with his foreskin. The strong scent that rises when I roll back that soft skin.

“In her sleep Anthea will reach beneath her respectable executive jacket, open one button of her pressed and spotless white blouse, push aside the cup of the plain white cotton bra and let her breast rest in the palm of her hand.”

Slowly, shifting to one side as if in sleep, I let my hand slide onto my breast.

My nipples are so sensitive that I can hardly bare to have them touched. Before Drazen, my lovers had always been too rough: pinching and biting when they should have been caressing. I had begun to think that I was a freak with hair-trigger nipples that would be constantly off limits. Drazen, with his pianist’s hands, showed me how wrong I was. He would stand behind me, his mouth on my neck, my breasts cupped gently in his hands, just the underside of them resting against his skin, lifted slightly but with no pressure. Then his thumbs, light as butterflies, would graze the tip of the nipples, coaxing them, letting them rise, working them until they throbbed, finally pushing them back firmly into my breasts and biting down on my neck until I was wriggling with pleasure.

“Anthea is dreaming. In her dream my cock slides, slick and stiff, out of her mouth. She guides it to her breasts. Uses it to draw a wet circle around her nipple. Laughs when I flinch with the extremity of the sensation. Rubs the underside of the gland over the stubby arousal of her nipple, then squeezes the head of my cock until the slit opens. She looks up at me, her eyes on mine as she pushes her nipple into the slit, fucking me and fucking me and fucking me.”

Drazen’s voice has a ragged edge now. He will be touching himself. His eyes will be closed as he remembers how I took him that night. The first time I really took the initiative.

“Stroke the nipple, Anthea. Slow strokes. Persistent strokes. Suck on the hair in your mouth. Squeeze your thighs. Sweat for me inside your executive suit in your oversized limo. Come for me. Come hard. Come silently. Come for me, Anthea.”

And I do. Not at once. Not on command. It takes maybe a minute of silent struggle. I can hear him breathing hard into my ear, listening to me, sniffing at me through the phone line. The come is a sunburst of warmth spreading up from my stomach, exorcising the tension of the day.

“Good girl, Anthea. Very good girl. Now come home to me.”

The line goes dead in my ear.

I open my eyes and sit up straight. The driver’s eyes flick away a little too quickly when I look into the rearview. I realize that I am smiling. “Ann-Tea-Ah” smiles a lot.

I open the window, even though the day is cold. I don’t want my smell to stay in the car.

I am nearly home now. We’ve left the freeway behind and are driving slowly through tree-lined streets. I can see Jack O’ Lanterns on porches. They are all grinning at me. I grin back.

Drazen was my New Year’s resolution. It was part of project APT GAL (Anthea’s Plan To Get A Life) that I dreamed up when I found myself alone in my house on New Year’s Eve. If I’d been sober when I put the plan together, I’m fairly sure that step one would not have read “Take piano lessons”. Nothing might have come of it except for the card I saw the next day on the notice board at the convenience store. It read “Drazen Bebic: Piano Teacher”.

For some reason, “Piano Teacher” had summoned up an image of a kindly old man wearing spectacles and an old brown cardigan and speaking with a Professor Von Duck accent. Drazen was nothing like that. First there was his hair: thick, jet black, and brushed straight back so that it seemed to cascade to his shoulders. Then there was his beard, short, precise, somehow emphasizing the sensual softness of his lips. But most of all there were his eyes, dark but filled with light, and hard to look away from.

He was at least fifteen years older than me and I’d only just laid eyes on him but, by the time he stepped forward and shook my hand, my palm was already damp. When he touched me, my nipples hardened. No one had ever had that effect on me before. Then he said my name, “Ann-Tea-Ah” and I understood what gives cats the urge to purr.

He sat me down in front of the huge piano that dominated his tiny apartment. I felt like Jane Ayre, asked to play for Mr. Rochester, and knowing that every note would diminish her in his eyes. Yet I’d been good at the piano once, back before work spread itself across my life like a gorse bush, leaving room for nothing else, so when, standing so close behind me that I could smell his cologne, he said, “I would like to hear you, Anthea.” I started to play.

He listened and watched. There was nothing flirtatious, but I had his complete attention. I played quite well once I got started. Enough to demonstrate some technique at least. He didn’t tell me to stop, so I played every piece I knew. When I finished I wondered why I’d ever given up playing. I was good and this was fun.

“I would like to know what it is that you want, Anthea.” Drazen said.

I had turned to face him, waiting for praise or at least coaching, wanting to look into his eyes again. His question surprised me.

“I want to play the piano.”

“Ah, I had hoped that perhaps you wanted me to teach you.”

“?”

“You already play the piano. But you play with these…”

He reached out and picked up my hand, holding it gently by the tips of the fingers. My skin prickled where it touched him.

“When you could be playing with this.”

He held me by the wrist and placed the palm of my hand against my chest, between my breasts. The contact wasn’t overtly sexual but I felt naked in front of him. The surprising thing was that my body was clearly happy about that. My mind was offended.

I shook his hand off my wrist and stood up.

“I’m leaving now,” I said.

Drazen bowed his head. I’d never seen anyone do that in real life before. His eyes stayed on me during the bow. I couldn’t read them but I didn’t want to look away from them. I had to remind myself that he had been rude to me and that I wasn’t going to stand for it.

“Are you always so…” I realized that rude was the wrong word. He’d been polite but, “…personal with your students?”

“What is life if it is not personal, Anthea?”

That was pretty much the question I’d been asking myself on New Years Eve.

“I’m going now.”

He stepped back and to one side so that I had a clear route to the door.

I didn’t leave. It was Anthea the Hun who wanted to leave. The rest of me wanted to stay. I sat down.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You caught me by surprise. I’d like to stay.”

He didn’t look surprised, but he did smile.

“Then I’m glad that I ‘caught’ you at all,” he said.

And he had caught me. We became lovers within the week. But even in bed he was my teacher. He taught me to listen to the now, to surrender to the needs of my body in order to feed my soul. Another man talking like that would sound ridiculous, Drazen just sounds truthful.

Months afterwards, lying in his arms after sex, I asked him about the day we met. I wanted to know what he thought of me then.

He lifted my chin off his chest to make me look at him and said, “I thought then, what I think now. That I want you. That, if you will let me, I will take you. That sometimes life is worth living.” I knew then that he loved me.

“We’re here ma’am”, the driver says.

There are no lascivious looks, no innuendo. I smile at him and tip him more generously than usual.

Anja is waiting for me when I get home. She has the same grave face as her father, one that is transformed when she smiles.

Anja is doing her best to find a place for herself in America, but she has a solemnity about her that is not normal for an eleven year old American girl, but she is strong, a survivor. She has survived the war in Bosnia, the death of her mother, her exile in America. Seeing her standing there on the porch, her face lit by the huge Jack O’ Lantern that I helped her carve last night, I want to rid her of her ghosts. I want to see her filled with joy.

“Hello, Morticia,” she says, holding out her hand in a formal invitation “come and meet Gomez.”

Tonight we are, at Anja’s insistence, the Addams Family. She will of course, be Wednesday.

Drazen is already in the double-breasted pinstriped suit that is his concession to costume. I wonder if he was wearing it when I called.

“Gomez, mon cher, mon amour,” I say in a voice I hope is like Angelica Houston’s.

“Ah Tish, you spoke French,” he says on cue, taking my outstretched arm and kissing his way from the back of my hand up my arm to my neck. I glance sideways at Anja/Wednesday wondering if she approves, fearing that moments like this summon the spirit of her mother. The edges of her mouth are slightly upturned. I take that as warm approbation.

When Drazen’s head is at my neck I twist sideways, plant a quick kiss on his cheek and say, “Thank you. That was delicious.” Then I send him away so that Anja and I can change.

Anja has prepared everything, the clothes are laid out on the bed, the wigs are on the dressing table. It is all I can do to slip away and shower before she sets about her work.

There is an intimacy in dressing each other that is like nothing else. It is a recognition of trust and an offer to reveal and to transform. The costumes emphasize this. I never wear black at home, yet now I am wrapped in it like a shroud.

“How do I look?” I ask as the wig goes on.

“Believable.” Anja says.

Not quite the comment I expected. I wonder how I normally look to her. There is a short silence during which I grow nervous in front of this child.

Then she hands me the make-up bag and says. “Make me look sad, but scary”.

It doesn’t take long.

“Gomez” declines to walk the streets with us. Waving a thick cigar, which I know he will not smoke, he says, “My dears, the two of you are frightful enough, three of us could prove fatal.”

By the standards of the day, our costumes are sedate, yet at every door Anja makes a killing. She never once steps out of character, extorting treats because, from her, the threat of tricks seems so real.

I let her walk ahead of me, keeping to the shadows, arms folded across my breasts, whenever we reach a house. Watching Anja, I see her father, his stillness, his confidence. I wonder which of her gestures belong to her mother, Sanja.

I realize that I am jealous of Sanja, for having Drazen before me. Crazy to be jealous of a dead woman, and yet tonight I feel as though, at any moment, I might meet her.

When Anja’s sack is full we return home. She is so serious that I am uncertain whether she has enjoyed herself or whether this has all been a bizarre experiment in which she has tested the sanity of those around her and found them wanting. Yet when she sees Drazen on the porch, she runs to him.

“DaDa,” she says, holding up her sack, “look how much they gave me.”

“You must have made them tremble, little one.”

“No, it was Anthea, standing in the shadows like a threat. She was perfect.”

Drazen looks over Anja’s head at me and smiles. I feel as though I have won a medal. I wait for Anja to turn and thank me, but she grabs her sack and runs into the house.

“Happiness still catches her by surprise,” Drazen says. “She wants to go and hug it to herself in private.”

He takes my hand in his, rubs his thumb against my palm and says, “You understand that I’m sure.”

I almost tell him then, but I don’t want to do it in my costume so I wait. Dinner comes and goes without me finding the right moment. Anja gets permission to sleep in her Wednesday outfit because, as she explained very seriously, “it is still Halloween until morning”, and then Drazen and I are alone.

I go into the bedroom to change out of my Morticia costume. Drazen follows me. Leaning against the door frame, he looks at me, waiting for something.

I want to tell him. But not yet. ‘I need to think some more’, I tell myself. ‘Coward’, I reply.

“Come to bed,” Drazen says.

“I have to do some work first. I’ll be back later.”

I can see he doesn’t believe me, but he makes no comment when I go back downstairs.

I sit at my laptop, pretending to work, trying to find my courage. I make some coffee and go out onto the back porch.

The moon is full tonight. It sits in the sky, large and round and proud. It occurs to me that the moon and I are both pregnant, except that I don’t show yet.

This is what I need to tell Drazen. So what’s stopping me? We aren’t married. We’ve never really talked about the future. A man with a past like Drazen’s can be forgiven for living in the present. I don’t want to drive him away and I don’t want to force him to commit. And I don’t know how I feel about being pregnant.

I know exactly when this baby was conceived. It was on the anniversary of Sanja’s death. Drazen had never talked to me about how his wife died, but then I’d never found him crying before. I held him and let him cry.

“They hurt her, Anthea, before they killed her; they spent a day hurting her. And I couldn’t stop them. I didn’t even know what was happening until they dumped her body at my door.”

I rocked him, holding his head to my breast.

“She was my life, Anthea. And they killed her.”

There was nothing to say, so I stayed silent.

After a while he looked up. His eyes had no strength in them, only sorrow. I kissed them one at a time. Then I kissed his mouth, again and again, small healing kisses.

I put his hand between my legs. I don’t know why I did it. Words seemed so inadequate. I gave him what I had. The sex started slowly. I sat astride him and pulled him into me. Then I carried on kissing him. He stopped crying. He held me so tightly that it left bruises. Then he started to fuck me, fiercely, passionately, as if fucking me was the only thing that kept him alive. He clung to me even after he had come. I still hadn’t spoken to him, but now it was me who was crying.

I think he was saying good-bye to his wife that night. I know he was choosing me, choosing life. It turns out that we were also creating one.

I shiver in the cold and realize I have been outside a long time. Drazen is asleep when I reach the bedroom. The moon is washing his face with silver. He looks older, more vulnerable. I want him so badly it frightens me.

Time to choose: trick or treat?

I stroke his face, following the moon, then I sit astride him. He doesn’t wake until I kiss him. I place his hands on my breasts and rock gently on his cock, which is lying flat against his belly. I lift my hips and he slides into me. So good to have him there. So good to have him.

“There is something I need to tell you,” I say.

Drazen puts his finger across my lips pulls my head down to him. He pushes upwards, slowly, without urgency, until he is all the way in.

“What shall we call the child?” he says.

 

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© Mike Kimera 2003 All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without written permission from mikekimera@yahoo.co.uk

 

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A story without a reader is incomplete. Please let me know what you think of this story by leaving a comment below.

The Last Taboo

Those who attempt to define that nature of erotica often describe it as fundamentally transgressive.

Yet  it sometimes seems that there are no taboos left so what exactly do you have to do to be be transgressive these days?

Fat Frank knows the answer. He has a secret. Read “The Last Taboo” and he’ll share it with you.

 

© Mike Kimera 2008

Most men lie about sex. I don’t know why. We talk about it often and loudly in all those places where men gather without women. We talk about who we’d like to fuck and how and sometimes where. We brag about our performance on one-night-stands or with whores or with the wives of friends. But, to my ears, these conversations lack authenticity. They have about them a whistling-to-show-I’m-not-afraid-of-the-dark quality that is more than a little pathetic.

I am usually silent when these conversations take place. No one in my circle of male acquaintances, hereafter referred to as, ‘The Lads’, questions this. I was never a handsome man and I am no longer a young one. I think the assumption, in the language of male-(don’t worry, we’re all hetero here, honest)-bonding, is that “Fat Frank isn’t getting any.” What else could explain my silence?

In reality, I remain silent because I think The Lads would not react well if they knew the truth. Fat Frank, (a nickname chosen for its alliterative charm, its factual accuracy, and the ease with which it can be rhymed with wank) deviates from one of the accepted norms of married life. I break the last taboo: I like to fuck my wife.

I mean I really like to fuck my wife. I think about it before we do it. I give myself up to it completely when I’m in her. I hug the memory of each fuck to me, reluctant to let it go.

Liz and I have been married for eight years and been together for twelve, so we must have fucked thousands of times. I know the conventional wisdom is that repetition blunts the experience but Liz is like a whetstone for my knife-sharp desire, each time I rub against her the edge gets keener and cuts deeper.

Perhaps if Liz was the kind of woman that The Lads ogle and comment on (but never EVER actually speak to) I could share the reality of my passion with them. They would slap me on the back or punch me in the arm and shout “You lucky bastard.” Jimmy would say, “Who’d have thought Fat Frank would have it in him?” Robbo would grin and say, “Who’d have thought Fat Frank would have it in her you mean.” I would be expected to drop my head in false modesty and then explain of how Liz goes all night like a racehorse on speed. Jimmy would say, “If you ever need a hand with her, Frank, you only have to ask.” Everyone, including me, would laugh. I’d be offered a beer and my status in the group would rise.

But Liz is not the kind of woman The Lads notice. She’s not a fantasy figure. She’s a normal, healthy, slightly over-weight woman in her mid-thirties.

Liz, it seems, is extraordinary only in my eyes. Her eyes are green with little flecks of gold that shine in the sunlight. Her hair, which she keeps short, curls against the back of her neck as if caressing it. Her smile is crooked and filled with wickedness. Her skin is soft and pale and flushes when she is aroused. But the most extraordinary thing about Liz, the arse-clenching, cock-stiffening, heart-aching thing about her is that she loves me.

I’m not talking about something vague here, some Hallmark sentimental notion of love, a fantasy emotion propped up by romantic gestures and mutual self-delusion. I’m talking about a warts-and-all, robust, uncompromising and unconditional love that crashes over you like a big wave, taking your breathe away but leaving you excited to be alive.

Liz has known me for a long time. We went to the same school. We saw each other grow up. Liz knew the bookish, solitary boy I was and the hormone-charged, cripplingly shy youth I became, and yet she still fell in love with me. The power of being thoroughly known and thoroughly loved is almost impossible to get into words.

According to Liz, words are my weakness. She thinks I use way too many of them and get lost in the patterns that they make. It’s true that sometimes I can be too introspective for my own good. I get hooked on ideas and concepts and lose touch with the day-to-day world where reality happens. Left to my own devices I could float away from the world and become an eccentric old fart who laughs at obscure references no one-else understands. Liz saves me from that.

It’s not that Liz doesn’t like ideas. She loves to hear me talk about them. She just doesn’t let herself become seduced by them. One time I was going through a phase were I was obsessed with the early Greek philosophers. Liz bought me a copy of Plato’s “Apology” written in defence of Socrates. Inside the cover she wrote, “An over-explored life is not worth living.”

Liz and I don’t speak much when we fuck. We laugh and groan and grunt and sigh, but mostly we let our bodies do the talking. From the beginning, Liz has been the one who initiates these kinds of conversation. There’s a certain look she gets that I know means that she wants sex and she wants it soon. I never act on the look alone. Over the years, we’ve developed a little ritual: when the need is strong, Liz will stand close to me, sometimes in front, sometimes behind, put her mouth next to my ear and whisper, “Fuck me.” Those two words are like a trigger, they always make me hard.

Most of our fucking is outside of the bedroom. Liz thinks that beds are for sleeping on and that floors (and sofas, and tables and stairs) are for fucking on. She has whispered, “Fuck me,” in every room in the house. Although we’ve never talked about it, we both understand that I will fuck Liz whenever and wherever she whispers those two little words. We’ve fucked on Ferry Boats, in cars, in phone booths, on the steps of public buildings. I love the risk that this introduces and I love the sense of wickedness that comes from a secret shared.

Liz is the only woman I’ve ever had sex with. Now there’s a statement that would make The Lads shuffle their feet and pretend that I hadn’t spoken. As a conversation stopper, it’s on a par with “Have you opened your heart to Jesus?” The fidelity implied by this statement is not a badge of honour. I have made no sacrifices. Liz gives me everything that I need and I give thanks for my good fortune everyday.

I’m sure that Liz and I are not the only couple with this kind of relationship but I’m equally sure that we are a minority. Many marriages run out of passion or find they no longer need it.

The real reason it is taboo for me to talk to The Lads (none of whom are lads any longer and all of whom are or have been married) about the reality of my sex life, is that they don’t want to be confronted with the possibility that, if they had found the right person, they too would look forward to fucking their wives.

So, I will continue to be silent when they brag and boast and encourage one another. It is the polite thing to do. And it gives me time to think about Liz and what we will get up to the next time that she whispers in my ear.

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© Mike Kimera 2008 All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without written permission from mikekimera@yahoo.co.uk

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A story without a reader is incomplete. Please let me know what you think of this story by leaving a comment below.