a date

"I feel bad about Gerard-- canceling the original plan, you know, and excluding him."

"Oh, don't feel bad about that."  I waved my hand dismissively.  

"Well, I don't actually feel bad.  I just wanted to acknowledge him, say something to let you know I acknowledge him."

I laughed.  "He has no problem with it at all.  He likes it.  I never really explored anything with girls alone before I met him-- it's really only with his encouragement that I've started to realize that I'm bisexual."

"I don't really want to do the photo shoot anymore," she said, "That was sort of an excuse... to get us talking.  I used to use photo shoots as an excuse to play with people, back when I was in a relationship and I wasn't really allowed to play with people but I was allowed to have photo shoots."

"Well," I said, emboldened by wine, "you really don't need an excuse with me."

***

She and I just have a sexual connection.  We met through a mutual friend... a friend of mine who is kinky and who frequents local BDSM events.  The two of them met in that scene, and then she and I met at a party he hosted.  My eye had been drawn to her as soon as she walked into the room.  I thought she looked perfect... beautiful, fit, confident, sexy.  Later, she asked our mutual friend for a picture of me.  The next time I saw her, she admitted that she'd wanted the picture as an aid to fantasizing during masturbation.  I was more than intrigued.

Gerard isn't attracted to her, which amazes me since her physical appearance is completely his type, and beautiful.  But I think it's just because she's so dominant... he's attracted to vulnerable, submissive girls like me, and she's probably the opposite of that.  So even though Gerard would love for us to get involved with a third person together, he's happy to let me go off alone with her.  He imagined that I might have some submissive fantasies fulfilled with her-- the ones that go farther than what he's interested in.  And I've imagined that too.  She's worked as a professional domine, after all, in addition to being dominant in her private life as well.  How could my fantasies not run wild?

In the week before I met her for a drink, I had three or four sexy dreams about her.  And when we were there in the bar, sitting next to each other, after we'd discussed the non-kinky subjects that we had in common for half an hour or so, I got what I thought of as confirmation of our complementarity.  I mean, I'd been thrilled to come meet her.  She'd made it clear that she was interested in me, and that alone was exciting.  But then she started to talk in more detail about her kinky interests.

I already knew that one of the big things that she is into is the feminization of men.  I don't have any real connection with that kink... in fact, I know very little about it.  But she mentioned that her "twink" had recommended the bar that we were sitting in.  "What's a twink?" I asked.  She explained: it's a man who is interested in allowing her to feminize him-- to make him wear high heels, stockings, panties, and eventually to let her fuck him with her strap-on.  She told me that she'd always been into more feminine men, and that she just loves to dress them up.  

"How is it different with women, then?" I asked.

"It's not really different," she told me.  "I like to do the same things to girls... I like them in the same stockings and panties, really.  I've got this thing for objectification... it's just really arousing for me.  And I like very feminine women, just like I go for feminine-- or gender-neutral-- men."

I laughed.  I couldn't help it.  It's so funny to me how our instincts draw us to people who match us.  Objectification of femininity has got to be one of the main themes of my fantasies.  I shouldn't have been surprised that it was her fantasy too.  Plus, I know that I'm extremely feminine, and it was exciting to know that I fit her desires.  I felt my panties getting a little bit damp as she talked about it.  The idea of being alone with her was so exciting-- and strangely not intimidating, even though I've had very few experiences with women and zero experiences alone with an experienced dominant.  

I let my interest in her be clear.  I don't think of myself as being any good at flirting, so I stumbled through it.  It was probably an odd combination, my usual nonverbal, mostly-inadvertent cues with my very direct blurtings about how compelling and sexy I found her.

Foreign forwardness aside, I think it's fair for me to make this judgment: Flirting with a woman is so different than flirting with a man.  Most notably because I had to try a lot harder.  I still felt like my girly and submissive self, even though I had to initiate a lot more, and put myself out there a lot more than I've ever needed to do with a man.  She kept calling me on my inadvertent flirtatious behaviors-- the subtle batting of my eyelashes, the way I touched my hair.  But I was direct, too.  I told her outright that I'd had sexy dreams about her, and I made it clear that I wanted to be alone with her, although these revelations didn't make her jump to her feet and try to rush me off to her bed, as I know a man would have done.  Also, I kept waiting for her to touch me.  With men, it's so easy.  They're always dying to touch you, and they always initiate touch quickly.  Not so with her.  In fact, she told me there was no assurance she would ever touch me at all.

"If we go back to my apartment, will you take off your top?" she asked at last.

I didn't hesitate (and by the way, this is so unlike me).  "Sure."

"Do you need another drink?"

"No."

"Well, then let's go."

getting hot again

He pinched my nipple-- not very hard-- and I yelped.  It had been aching since I'd gotten up that morning, and Gerard knew it.  I didn't bother opening my eyes to see him smile.  He doesn't necessarily want to be a sadist, and he hasn't acted like one in months.  But it always amuses him to see me just a little bit tortured.  Even if the initial torture wasn't at his hands.

With one swift motion, he removed my jeans and panties.  Then he flipped me over to my stomach.  I was lying horizontally across the bed, my eyes looking down onto the hardwood floor.  Gerard smacked my bottom and I cringed at the sting.  It hadn't hurt last night at all... I hadn't even thought that she had spanked me that hard... but when Gerard gave me a friendly smack earlier in the day, it hurt a lot more than it was supposed to, and I realized that I had taken more than I thought I had.  Or maybe my bottom was just out of practice.

Gerard pulled me up onto my knees, and I felt him pressing himself against me, then pulling away and smacking my bottom again.  "That hurts, doesn't it?" he asked condescendingly.  "This is what happens when you let other people do what they want with you... aren't you embarrassed?"

My face flushed.  He knows that this type of gentle humiliation is erotic to me, but he has rarely used his knowledge.  I buried my face in the bedspread.

"I'm waiting for your answer, Aurelia.  I said, aren't you embarrassed?"

"Yes!" I relented.  Through my arousal, I marveled at how much he was nailing it, saying everything right, being so dominant, and clearly having so much fun.  We hadn't had sex like this in months.  It reminded me of how hot we were when we first got together.

He spanked me some more and I whined, "Ow, it hurts!"

"And do you deserve it?"

"Yes!"

His clothes were off, and he was inside of me.  He moved me so I was flat on my tummy.  The palms of my hands laid against the floor, supporting me against the force of his body over me, and I rotated my hips so that my bottom lifted up to meet him.  He slammed into me.  "Does this hurt your bottom a little bit, having me fuck you so hard?" he asked.  It didn't, but I told him yes anyway, because it was hot to me to think that it could hurt, and I knew that was what he wanted to hear.

I had two amazing orgasms, and then Gerard flipped me over to my back and lifted my legs over my head.  This position hurts me if I'm not aroused enough.  I haven't tolerated it for a long time.  But tonight I complied-- maybe because I was feeling really submissive in a way that I haven't for a while, or maybe because Gerard was feeling dominant in a way that he hasn't for a while.  I was turned on enough that it felt completely natural.  I screamed with pleasure until he came inside of me.  

And I was on cloud nine.  Suddenly, we have found our sexual connection again.  After months of meaningful lovemaking, full of intimacy but lacking the sexual oomph that defined us for so much of our relationship, we are HOT again.  

histories

It's weird for me to think that Gerard and I have been together for almost two and a half years now.  We've definitely passed the point of "significant life investment."  In fact, I feel us moving to more and more official, grounded commitment.  It's scary for both of us, but it's feeling less scary lately.  And I've finally realized that, for Gerard and I, this is a pretty fucking big deal.

We both have big histories, relationship-wise.  In a way, it's kind of odd that neither of us has already been married, because we're both romantics, and we both place a high value on love relationships and falling in love.  We've both had passionate love affairs in our past... long relationships and big commitments... major life steps taken while holding the hand of another (at-the-time) treasured person.

We've both lived with other partners in the past.  I've lived with two other men, Gerard has shared an address with three other women, plus several who traveled around with him for various periods of time while he was living in a camper van in Australia.  We've both thought, in the past, that we had met the person we were going to make the lifetime go with.  I've been engaged twice, and Gerard bought a condo with his most recent ex before me.

That's our respective relationship histories, of course.  We also each have pretty extensive sexual histories.  My history includes several threesomes with married couples and male friends of boyfriends, plus a couple encounters with girls.  Most significantly, I spent a year and a half living as the submissive pet of a dominant couple, which led me to all kinds of crazy sexual adventures.  Gerard's history isn't so kinky, but he eclipses me with his sheer quantity of past escapades.  It seems that his sweet, unassuming charm has never failed him with getting a woman into bed, whether that meant a quickie in the restroom at a wedding reception or a week in the back of his camper van.  In a way, Gerard feels to me like a mythical kind of man, the kind that I never thought I'd actually know personally-- like a character in a Hugh Grant film or something.  But then again, maybe I too have some kind of crazy archetype that could be assigned to me based on my sexual history.

When we first got together, I think we were both taken aback by the other.  Gerard didn't imagine that a girl like me would be satisfied being with one man... I didn't imagine that life with me could ever measure up to the romantic globe-skipping he'd done with all those flings of the past.  But we still each respected what the other brought to the table, and saw the ways that our pasts molded us into a person that the other could fall in love with.  And gradually we realized that we were looking for the same thing: a stable, passionate love relationship with one permanent partner.  Our histories didn't change that-- it just showed how much we were both willing, throughout our pasts, to explore and forage for new experiences on our paths of self- and other-discovery.

And now, after two and a half years together and nine months living together, the histories aren't so important anymore.  Maybe some of that is feeling the weight of our history, and what we have created together.  I mean, it's not all that much in terms of time... but the amount of investment we've made in each other in these two and a half years makes it feel like more.  The histories are still important... we each keep those volumes on our shelf, and we revere them-- but now we're fully invested in the the life's work that we're going to write together.  We're writing it every day, and every day the words flow with more ease and sincerity and promise.

sunny days

It's gotten to that time of year right before Daylight Savings Time begins, when the mornings are really sunny.  In our cold climate, it's still really cold-- but the birds are starting to sing in the mornings, and the sunshine is bringing people outside.  Gerard and I live in a first-floor apartment with our bedroom windows looking out on the street, and we often hear little strollers or scooters going by in the early hours of sunshine, adorable under-5-year-olds emitting cute comments to their parents or nannies.  I'm getting out of bed earlier now, sometimes earlier than Gerard, and writing in my journal or prepping breakfast for both of us.  And it's so weird to realize what a change this is.

Without getting into details about why, I would like to share that I'm a VERY educated consumer when it comes to the topic of mental health.  And I've always avoided psychopharmacology because... well, even though I know I've always been sort of anxious, I always felt like I knew what the problem was stemming from, and I wanted to work it out psychically instead of using meds.

I already mentioned all this in a previous post-- but basically the stressors of unemployment were too much, I was feeling unbelievably miserable without pause, and I knew it was time.  And now that I'm feeling so much better, I'm shocked by the change.  Gerard has stopped commenting about how different I seem, but I've slowly been considering his perspective, as he's expressed it over the course of many months.  Especially since we moved in together last summer, he's often said that he thinks of me as a pessimistic person.  And that always felt so strange, because I've always considered myself to be pretty sunny.

Here's the thing, though.  My life has been very clearly the opposite of sunny for a while.  I've been pretty slammed for the past several years, and just trying to pull myself out of it.  And so it sort of makes sense that I became someone who seemed kind of dark, and that I presented myself that way when Gerard and I met and for most of our relationship so far.

Four years ago, I was engaged and had been living with a man for three years.  The wedding was six months away (invitations already printed) when suddenly one day he went into a rage and threw me out of the house, asking for the ring back, canceling everything.  One month later my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  I got a new job and moved to a city near my parents, and four months later I was fired after I tried to stop some unethical behavior in the department I was responsible for. Two weeks after that, my mom was pronounced terminal and brought home on hospice.  For a little over a month, I took care of her at her home, until she finally died.  She was only 56 years old.

Then I spent a year grieving heavily.  For that entire first year, I was constantly sick with all kinds of crazy ailments, and I was an emotional wreck.  I started working very part-time about a month and a half after my mother died, and then slowly added more working time to my week as I could.  I met Gerard while I was trying to stabilize myself... understand my grieving and also continue to put my life together in some way.  And I continued to do that during the first year of our relationship.  There were all the anniversaries, there was the trauma of my father starting a new relationship... but I was getting through those things.  I felt like I was starting to move towards being firmly planted as of this time last year.  And then I lost my job (a job I loved).  It just brought back all the waves of loss.  And then Gerard moved in, and we had all this adjusting to do... well.  It's been a difficult four years.

I know I haven't been sunny during this whole time.  How could I have been, honestly?  I shouldn't be surprised.  But starting to feel sunny now makes me realize the difference.  And I don't mind if it's drug-induced, because I need a reminder of the person that I'm able to be.  I need Gerard to see that the girl he fell in love with isn't always so dark.  It makes him feel more secure about us, and more loved, and that's better for me too!  With these boosts, I think I can make my dreams happen, and then I can go off of the meds and enter a world without crises waiting around every corner.  And that will be a welcome change.