Renee's Renaissance:
A Novel of Erotic Rediscovery
By
Imelda Stark
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010
All Rights Reserved
ISBN-13: 978-0-9829073-3-7
Imelda Stark is the nom de plume of a teacher and practitioner of psychotherapy at a major East Coast medical school (hence the need for a pseudonym). She has been exploring the psychologically complex realm of BD/SM for fifteen novels now. Imelda strives to combine the eroticism she feels around challenging things happening to willing bottoms with an exploration of how we aficionados of these painful pleasures got to be the way we are. She welcomes and will respond to email at otherself@sbcglobal.net. Imelda’s Complete Works, all available on Kindle and other electronic media, are detailed in the Afterword.
CHAPTER ONE
I am not the usual protagonist of erotic memoirs. Or at least not the kind of erotic memoirs I would have been willing to spend money on and hide beneath the New Yorkers in my bedside table so my husband wouldn’t know I had been masturbating while reading them. Not that he would have given a flying fuck, mind you, as I eventually discovered. But I thought he might feel hurt, so I kept my ‘clit lit’ secret. As it turned out, my own little dirty secrets were the merest patch on his own, but who’s keeping score, after all? Certainly not moi…
So, you might ask, why exactly am I not a prototypical female heroine of a chronicle of sexual self-discovery? Well, for one thing, I am way too smart. I mean, Pauline Reage’s O or Anne Rice’s Beauty are more of your standard types for such roles. Neither of them were exactly rocket scientists, as far as I could tell. This is not to put them down. I happily got myself off dozens of times while poring over each of their adventures in the world of kink, and I wouldn’t want to be ungrateful. And Anais Nin certainly was nobody’s dummy. Though writing on-demand erotica for a franc a page seems like a humiliating occupation for a brilliant woman. But I digress.
Being way too smart has been my blessing and curse my whole life. Having skipped two grades ahead did not exactly put me in synch with my social peers as a teen-ager. Nor did going to Caltech to study biochemistry at age sixteen. Of course, the Techers were all at least as smart and socially awkward as I was. This was a relief, in that I didn’t have to feel that odd combination of intellectual superiority and social inferiority I had always known in mainstream schools. I was always both academically adept and socially maladroit all in one. At least at Caltech I was if anything less than average in my weirdness compared to my fellow undergrads. Unfortunately, that meant that I did not find the boys very appealing. So by the time I jammed through my BS in a fast three years I was still a virgin. The one best thing I did there was to force myself the whole time to study karate from a famous teacher. My Sensei loyally still taught nerdy undergrads there because the school had given him his first job when he immigrated from Japan. This led me to a black belt and a level of physical skill that made me comfortable in my body for the first time in my life.
My parents weren’t exactly any help with any of these issues. They were classic New York Jewish intellectuals, noses always buried in books or crossword puzzles. Each was preoccupied with their work as a local college professor (though my Dad was an investment whiz on the side). I knew they loved their only daughter, and they proudly supported my education at every level. For Christ’s sake, they even endowed me at age twenty-one with a trust fund from Dad’s stock market winnings that makes earning an income optional for me. But in terms of registering the kinds of things that would have helped a gawky smart girl to be more successful socially, they were worse than useless. Such things simply never mattered to them. They were interested in my decisions about education and career. But they actually never offered advice, just endorsement of my choices. I never made this hard for them, always opting for the most prestigious institutions and life path.
So when I let them know Stanford had admitted me early to medical school, their pride and approval were evident. They wished me well as genuinely as they could. Then they sort of let me go, paying the bills promptly and asking cheerfully to be kept in touch, but seldom initiating contact with me on their own. I felt a vague sense of unmooring around that period in my life. But I moved up to Palo Alto with my usual single-mindedness and bought myself a condo in walking distance from the Medical Center and plunged into medical student life. My anatomy partner turned out to be a very handsome, sort of shy guy named Kevin who was the sweetest man I had ever met. I developed an enormous crush on him, but in spite of my best efforts at signaling romantic interest we became just best friends. We enjoyed studying together every night and hanging out at lunch and dinner together every day. Finally, we both got uncharacteristically drunk at a party after the end of the second semester. The night ended up in bed at my place, though neither one of us remembers very much at all about the whole incident. But I had by God lost my virginity, as I could tell by the sheets that looked like a battle zone the next morning. And what’s more, it was with perhaps the most desirable guy on many levels in the entire class. Not too fucking bad, or so I thought at the time.
One thing led to another and we became known as one of the class items. It was an intense cohort of bright young people trying to combine pairing off with learning a staggering amount of material even for such smart kids as we all were. Sex with Kevin was never spectacular, but always kind and considerate, and always initiated by me. I didn’t know enough to wonder about this. I never had a whisper of useful sex education from either my parents or the series of prestigious schools that I attended. So I just accepted that getting to have intercourse that felt good and always ended in an orgasm for me with a seriously handsome man who was really nice to me all the time was about as good as it could possibly get for a somewhat mousy Jewish med student. I did my schoolwork, practiced my karate, and hung out with Kevin and our small circle of similar high-powered coupled friends, and all seemed right in my world.
The time came for us to pick our specialties and decide where to train for our future careers. That happens through a process known as the Match, where students rate residency programs and the programs rate their applicants and some computer puts it all together to determine your life course. Kevin and I decided to match together, meaning that our choices would be constrained by needing to end up in the same city. We discussed this all very rationally, as was our wont, and both elected to pursue Internal Medicine in the Bay Area if we could. This turned out not to be a problem, given both of our statuses as top students, and we ended up matching at UC San Francisco. This seemed to decide things, and we matter-of-factly got married in a civil ceremony attended by a few of our couple friends at the local courthouse. I sold my condo in Palo Alto and bought an upgraded one in a fancy new building otherwise occupied by faculty members and biotech stars near the UCSF campus. Then we embarked on our future together when I had just turned twenty-two.
So, since this is supposed to be a sexual memoir, I suppose I had better bring you up to date on the erotic evolution of Renee to that point in my very inexperienced life. I had discovered masturbation with a girlfriend on a sleepover when I was ten years old. She happily demonstrated the wonderful feelings that came from touching that miraculous little button of skin at the top of our hairless pre-pubescent genitals. After that, I became a fervent practitioner of the art of sexual self-gratification. I routinely got myself off as a prelude to sleep every single night of my life. Initially I just focused on the sensations, which were quite enough for me to stay interested long enough for the delicious payoff. But after awhile my voracious reading began to expose me to adult sexuality in all its complexity. Then the world of erotic fantasy opened up to me.
My girlfriend Janine and I had experimented with touching each other’s pussies. This was certainly fun for both of us, and we tried kissing and feeling each other’s budding little tits as well, which had its own intrigue. But as puberty came on, boys became much more interesting. Neither of us was brave enough to do anything about this suddenly intriguing new species, but our lesbian experimentations ground to a halt. Something else happened with her, though, that I have to believe shaped my sexuality in a surprising way. One time early on when she and I were diddling each other’s clits, I noticed that her bottom was quite red and tender, and I asked her about it. She seemed reluctant to talk about it. But eventually I wormed out of her that she had gotten spanked on her bare buttocks by her Mother for sassing back. My own parents had never laid an angry hand on me, so I had no basis for comparison. But I did know I found Janine’s spankings to be intriguing.
I pressed her for information, and she described how she was taken into her bedroom and over her mother’s lap and her skirt was raised and panties lowered. Then her Mom would slap Janine's butt cheeks until they were quite red. After which a hairbrush would be used to spank them even harder if she’d been really bad. To this day I don’t understand why, but hearing about this got both me and Janine off much more convulsively than ever before while she was telling her tale of corporal punishment. She said that she always cried and squirmed like hell while it was happening. But then her Mom would stroke and comfort her burning bottom, spreading a cooling lotion on it afterward. This sounded so yummy to me, since my parents seldom touched me at all. I guess I think some switch inside me got thrown in the direction of eroticizing spanking, and has stayed thrown ever since.
Now, it would never have occurred to me to tell anyone about this secret fascination, I can assure you. But what did happen is that I began to form a little private collection, first in my head, and eventually in the back of a drawer. It consisted of remembered scenes from movies or photocopied passages from books that described women or girls getting spanked. These became my staple masturbatory fantasy fodder. With my almost eidetic memory I could summon up in detail passages from mainstream literature as well as my growing collection of frank erotica that did the trick for me. What they all had in common was some girl or woman willingly having her bottom bared to be punished. It was usually by some handsome man for some either punitive or purely sexual reason. I think the penitent-bad-girl-getting-what-she-knew-she-deserved-from-the-hunky-but-stern-and-loving-man fantasy was my favorite. As you will see if you read on, it remains hot for me to this day.
To this day I also wonder why no one picked up on how actively sexual I was until I lost my virginity with Kevin. I mean, Jesus Christ, I was beating off daily to explicit porn! This must have meant that I was putting out some kind of sexual vibes. But aside from a few groping advances in high school and at Caltech from nerdy guys who really turned me off, not a single pass was made. Granted, I was shy and had mousy brown hair and eyes, but my features were regular, and my teeth had been straightened. As well, my body was trim, and I had grown a seriously dismaying set of tits by the time I left high school. I’m talking fully D-cup-sized knockers that should have had the immature guys drooling. But no one except my doctors ever saw them naked until Kevin. And he only paid them perfunctory attention, for reasons that will become apparent if they aren’t already.
To be honest, our sex life together was kind of perfunctory, period. He seemed very shy about sex and was pretty much unwilling to talk about it. And I was too uneasy to persist in the face of his resistance. So about once a week, we would drink some wine to get loose, and I would essentially attack him. This wasn’t hard to do, since he is one of the most gorgeous men I have ever met. He would go along with the program, usually getting more-or-less hard. (By the way, he had a huge dick, though I had nothing to compare it to until much later). Then he would dutifully fuck me, staying harder if we did it doggie style with him taking me from behind. I always came pretty easily from intercourse alone, which my girlfriends tell me is rare among intelligent women. After I had my orgasm he would seem to have his and then we would stop and go to sleep. I was on the pill for birth control, so I never checked inside me. But as it later developed, much of the time he was faking his climaxes.
Now I wasn’t completely interpersonally blind. So some part of me was registering that the handsome hunk I was married to wasn’t entirely into me sexually. But he and I were both interns in an incredibly busy inner city general hospital. Then we were residents taking care of godawfully sick people day in and day out for over a hundred hours a week. So I hope I can be forgiven (especially by myself) for dropping the ball here, so to speak. My third year of residency my unconscious mind seems to have taken over the story, in its way. I managed to ‘forget’ my birth control pills (which I had been taking spottily as it was) for long enough to find myself pregnant. So apparently at least one of his orgasms wasn’t faked. Although even that is not certain. As they taught us in OB-GYN, the withdrawal method of contraception is unreliable. Like basketball players, guys always dribble before they shoot. Kevin was his usual sweet, supportive self, and we decided to have the baby, and my wonderful daughter Chloe was born.
I thought I had been in love with Kevin, but with this incredible infant I fell truly head-over-heels. As is commonly the case with busy residents with young children, whatever energy we had away from work went to our precious baby. Of course the marriage withered even further. But Chloe was such a shining star to both of us that it didn’t seem to matter. We just united in our very workable partnership as we shared our household and her care. Of course we relied liberally on my trust fund money to hire top-notch supplementary childcare so we could finish our training on schedule. He continued to be the same wonderful guy and superb doctor, and a great Dad to boot. How could I complain if he was just not much of a lover. But to tell the truth, I didn’t feel all that desirable anyway. I had kept an extra twenty pounds around my middle and boobs after childbirth that wouldn’t yield to resumed karate workouts no matter how intense. Let alone my many abortive efforts at dieting either. And as any woman can tell you, when we feel pudgy, we don’t feel sexy.
I talked to other female residents who had born children, and they all reported pretty much the same desultory results for their sex lives. So I chalked it up to the vagaries of real-life-parenthood and still tried to keep counting my blessings. Soon my sex life began to consist solely of furtive masturbation sessions with my slowly burgeoning collection of erotica. I was a little worried about how much my fantasy life was beginning to slant in the BDSM direction. So I even honest-to-God tried to conjure up more vanilla-ish imaginings to light my fires ‘down there’. But inevitably in order to climax I would end up with some female’s naked bottom getting spanked, fucked, and otherwise ravished until I reached my pathetic little solo version of the promised land. And I certainly wasn’t going to debrief any of these worries with my girlfriends. Especially since a couple of the ones with what I regarded to be cuter tushies than mine often substituted as the stars in my private inner peep shows.
So residency ended. Kevin (now predictably, I realize with hindsight that rather embarrassingly exceeds the insight I could not dare to muster at the time) chose to do the world-class HIV fellowship at UCSF following his residency. I, on the other hand, had enough of the fiercely intense days and nights we had spent the past eight years in our training. I took time off to be with Chloe, while studying for and passing my Internal Medicine Boards. As well, I spent several hours each morning working out before teaching a karate class at my local dojo. Most blessedly I tried to catch up on years of missed sleep. This went on for a couple of years, during which I actually started to feel my libido coming back rather steadily. In that interval my body got a good deal fitter and firmer, though that annoying twenty pounds resisted all efforts to eliminate. I decided I just had to get used to being a zaftig Mom and give up on visions of myself as a svelte martial artist babe.
Once Chloe entered elementary school, Kevin and I realized we had a bona-fide genius child on our hands. She was already reading at a high school level by second grade. As well, she had picked up fluent Mandarin and Spanish from our nannies, in addition to being a delightful free-spirited personality. I freely spent my trust fund to afford her every imaginable opportunity for growth and learning. So she was happily busy between the best private schools, piano, multiple language lessons, and tiny-tots karate that I taught. Kevin had finished his fellowship and joined the faculty on the clinical track, specializing in care of the most intractable AIDS patients. And we hadn’t had sex in over four years when I turned thirty. I finally got up my nerve to ask about it. He looked really uncomfortable and muttered: “I just don’t understand, honey, but since Chloe was born I simply don’t have any desire. Let’s try this Saturday night and I’ll work on getting my mind around it.”
And by God, he did. He got a babysitter, took me out to dinner, and brought me home and fucked me just the way he had used to. As usual, he was considerate, barely kept a passable erection of his gorgeous cock. He claimed it was the condom that reduced his sensitivity, but refused to have me go back on the Pill, and stopped fucking me immediately after I came. And for the next ten years, he kept up that very same pattern once a month or so. He always careful to set up a date night so it wouldn’t seem as perfunctory as it actually was, and barely managed to screw me before we went to sleep. I found his Viagra prescription some years into that phase, and felt a strange mixture of dismay and appreciation. Clearly, he needed the drug to get it up with me, but at least he cared enough to make sure he could.
During that what I now call my ‘fallow’ decade, I also changed my work life. I had close to ten million dollars in my portfolio and a lifestyle that didn’t come close to spending the income from the conservative investment strategy my father used in managing my money. It seemed like working for pay was silly for me. So I kept up my routine of mornings for exercise and started working as a volunteer doctor most afternoons in the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, caring for homeless people. My exercise changed too. I developed a routine after dropping Chloe off at school. It began by getting in an hour of aerobic workout on the exercycle or elliptical trainer, doing half an hour of strength training, and catching a yoga class before showering to get ready for the rest of my day. Karate had dwindled in appeal as I got older and Chloe’s interests branched out to other sports after she got her black belt. So I just did a few katas (ancient solo choreographed routines) every day to not entirely let it rust away.
Things started to change dramatically when I turned forty. Chloe went off to Harvard, and I realized that I felt a certain subtle emptiness pervading my whole being. I had some inklings that sexuality had to do with it. But what kicked my mind into high gear was developing a schoolgirl-intense crush on one of the regulars in my yoga class. He was an older guy who clearly enjoyed looking at the bodies of the limber young yoginis in our class, though he was discreet about his ‘yogling’. Jim was friendly with me, but my chunkiness probably made me unacceptable eye-candy for him. The reverse was certainly not the case, as I couldn’t help lusting after his remarkably athletic body even though he admitted he was in his late fifties. After awhile my masturbatory thoughts about him crossed over into what felt like an obsession. So I decided it was time to get some help figuring myself out.
I went to see a female psychotherapist who also volunteered at my clinic, and who had always struck me as markedly normal and well-adjusted. I mean, for a shrink…let’s face it, they do tend to be odd ducks for the most part. We talked for about ten hours with her getting a careful picture of my history and background. Though I decided to leave out my spanking fetish…I mean, after, all, even for shrinks there has to be such a thing as TMI, don’t you think? Then she asked me the most obvious question that had never consciously crossed my mind. We were talking about my crush on the older guy in yoga. She had observed that in her experience such things tended not to happen unless some important need was not getting met in one’s marriage. A silence fell, and she asked with the utmost gentleness: “Have you ever wondered if Kevin was gay?”
CHAPTER TWO
I believe somewhere in the Bible (the New Testament version, I dimly recall) some prophet or disciple of some sort describes ‘the scales falling from his eyes’ as an important revelation is made apparent to him. Well, that happened to me in spades in that moment. Literally hundreds of clues and observations over more than twenty years with Kevin fell neatly into place. I burst out in tears for several minutes as the resonance of her gentle inquiry struck home. Everything that had seemed so confusing about my life suddenly fell into place. A torrent of words and memories surged out of me. Since my shrink happened to have a cancellation the next hour, we stayed on while I processed this shattering revelation.
Now remember I’m someone who has prided herself on being smart from earliest memory. So you can only imagine how idiotic I felt to have been best friends with and married to a gay man for over twenty years and not have realized even an inkling of the truth. If you have any doubts about the blinding power of denial, my picture appears in the newest editions of some dictionaries as an illustration for the concept. I felt the oddest combination of rage, sorrow, and compassion for both of us. But mainly I experienced sheer relief at finally understanding so much that had been so confusing to me for so long. That night when Kevin came home, I sat in the living room of our condo and called him in and simply confronted him: “At my shrink’s today, she asked me a question. My whole being knew the answer, but I need to hear it from you. You’re gay, right?”
I could see the relief flood his beloved handsome features as he burst into the first tears I had seen him cry since Chloe was born. He collapsed into my arms and sobbed: “I’m so sorry, Renee, it’s been so hard for me all these years. But I just couldn’t bear to admit it…” Then came the hours-long debriefing, as I raged and cried and grilled him about when he first knew and when he started having lovers and whether I should get HIV tested and on and on. He was wonderfully patient with me and held me and continued to be the same loving guy he always had been. But now he could at last fully occupy his true role in my life: the gay best friend of the fag hag.
We decided that we should move apart, and we flew to Boston to tell Chloe what was happening. True to form, her response was totally blasé: “I’ve known Daddy was gay since I was in kindergarten. But I figured you guys didn’t want to talk about it. Will he finally be able to live with his boyfriend now?” Well, it turned out that he would. He had been lovers with the fellow faculty member that I had always thought was his best friend and rock-climbing and surfing buddy for her entire life. Now this kind of tore it for me on some level, as the combined deception made me feel like such a total dupe. So I let myself have a full-on tantrum, and kicked his ass out of my condo (which I’d never gotten around to putting in community property).
Kevin was of course totally understanding about this. He didn’t ask for a thing in our divorce settlement, and behaved far better than I did at virtually every step of the unraveling of our apparently-perfect marital world. At the end, I forgave him and his partner totally. They both continue to be dear friends to me, but such capacity for equanimity escaped me at the time. So I did some months of intensive psychotherapy with my shrink. I processed every perceived betrayal and worked my way gradually back to the interpersonal ineptitude that my parents bequeathed me along with their brains. During this time I continued working out like a madwoman in an effort to dispel my demons. As well, I started spending more time with a medical school classmate, Diane, who had become the go-to plastic surgeon for the San Francisco elite society.
One day she and I were having a glass of chardonnay and she mused aloud: “You know, Renee, you have a gorgeous face, that strong-featured Ashkenazi Jewish beauty that smart men just swoon over. If you let me have my way with you, I promise you I could give you a body to match. I know you have worked out like crazy for the past twenty years, so the underlying structures are all in place. Let me do a reduction mammoplasty and about ten kilos of laser liposuction and in six months given the way you work out I guarantee you’ll have the body of a teenager.” This was just the thing I needed: a self-improvement project that could propel me right in the direction of the singles market I was fearfully contemplating the necessity to test.
Well, I said yes on the spot, and wrote her a check the next week for fifty thousand dollars. The week after that I was in surgery for almost six hours and in her swank private post-op rehab facility for the next six days. She started out with my floppy post-breast-feeding D cup tits that even the most industrial-strength sports bra could barely manage. They were magically morphed into firm, perky, completely sag-free B cup beauties with only the faintest of symmetrical semicircular scars hiding in the tiny crease underneath each of them. Even better, once I healed from the surgery, I didn’t lose on iota of sensation on them anywhere. At the same time, she poked her scope through two tiny incisions in my belly button and two more near the dimples above my butt. Suddenly every bit of belly fat and love handles was magically gone. She had warned me that I would look and feel like I’d been hit by a truck for a couple of weeks after the procedure, and that was no lie. I had to wear a whole-body corset device until all the connective tissues re-set themselves. But when I took it off for good I already had an honest-to-god six-pack of sculpted abs from my years of working out. Within a month of intense return to the gym and the daily hot tubs and massages she prescribed, all but the most subtle signs of the surgery were gone. At age forty I had the body I’d have killed or died for twenty years earlier. Now the problem was, what to do with it?
Well, that older guy Jim in my yoga class clearly had his own answer to that question. Once I returned to being one of the regulars after my convalescence I felt his jaded gaze on my own ass more and more often. So I started frankly returning his admiring looks. This led him to remark during one of our little post-class chats: “I love what you’ve done with your body.” I threw caution to the wind and replied with a small smile and a straight face: “I’m glad you noticed!” He shot right back: “Can I buy you some lunch?” I stunned myself by retorting pertly: “How about if I make us some back at my condo?” Now you have to understand—this was literally the first time in my life I had ever openly flirted with someone. It felt both incredibly exciting and terrifying at the same time. He grinned salaciously and gave me an honest to God deadpan wink as he responded: “Sounds much more interesting to me…shall we meet out in front of the club after we shower?” I assented with my own best approximation of a lusty smile and said that sounded great to me and we parted company for the moment.
Whatever audacious inner self had taken me over during this exchange evaporated completely once I got inside the women’s locker room. I frantically wondered what the fuck I had gotten myself into. I borrowed a razor and shaved my legs carefully, even grooming the edges of my bush. I mean, it was starting to look like someone was going to be paying sincere attention to everything ‘down there’ for the first time in my life. As pathetic as that may sound coming from a forty-year-old mother of a grown daughter… I was literally trembling inside when I emerged from the rather swank club to find him waiting there. He was waiting, dressed in a blue warm-up suit that matched his killer eyes. Which, btw, I had been swooning over during every one of our post-yoga chats for several years by then. Jim asked: “Do we need to drive or take public transport to your place?” I felt myself flush with frank arousal as I managed to blurt out: “No, it’s a two and a half block walk, so that won’t be necessary.” He gestured in a courtly manner and replied: “Lead on, Madame, I am yours to command!”
The wildly uncharacteristic flirt in me took back over and I looked him straight in those amazing eyes and said: “I plan on holding you to that…” He actually cracked up and retorted: “Wow, Renee, you don’t mess around a bit, now do you? Well, then I guess I’ll have to do my best to not disappoint you. I certainly wouldn’t want to negatively reinforce such wonderful clarity of expression of purpose.” As we walked, we both started collecting a little data about each other, since our yoga-class chats had never headed that direction. It turned out he was a venture capitalist who had retired two years earlier out of one of the stellar biotech startups spawned by the genetic revolution for which UCSF had been such a key incubator. His previous identity had been as a medical scientist. I discovered he had both MD and PhD degrees from UCLA, so he was certainly in my league intellectually. It turned out he too was the father of grown children, though in his case they were several and the youngest a couple of years older than Chloe. When we reached my building he registered surprise and remarked: “This is too weird—I moved here two years ago when I cashed out of my stock…I had no idea we were neighbors!”
It turned out we even had the same Northwest corner view, just five floors apart. I teased him a bit about mine being the higher (probably since I had moved in so many years earlier when the building was just opening). We both absently reached to swipe our key-cards at the elevator, and soon were in the foyer of my condo. I silently thanked the Gods of good fortune I had left the place in reasonably good order before embarking on my morning routine. This tremor I felt on the inside reminded me of how I would be when the time came for kumite (or sparring practice, in English) back when I frequented the dojo. I was excited as hell, but with an edge of fear as I knew I was treading risky territory. He complimented me on the design and art of the condo, of which I was proud since I’d splurged to redo it after Kevin left. Since he was the first non-close-friend I had brought there, I felt inordinately pleased at his praise.
The day was one of those San Francisco autumn gems. The summer fog was long gone, but the sky was clear and crisp. The panorama from Angel Island to the Golden Gate and past it to the Farallon Islands took your breath away as usual. I had never actually closed the window coverings in the place except for Chloe’s room so she could sleep. So the glass outer walls were unobstructed. He sighed and said: “I never tire of this view, though yours is even less blocked by other buildings than mine…But the view I’m really interested in is a good deal more intimate.” Damn, he didn’t mess around either, did he! The ball was clearly launched quite powerfully right back into my court. He calmly looked into my eyes, his gaze slightly humorous and challenging, but not at all presumptuous. It was as if he was saying with total equanimity: ‘Do you want to take this to the next level right this minute?’ I got the sense he was ready to hear either answer, and quite curious how I would handle his gentle challenge.
I summoned the bravest smile I could find amidst my inner agitation and parried, playing for time. “I’m glad to hear that, and I suspect that’s an intention we share. But the view I need to have the most right this minute is of a chicken breast sandwich on my plate. If you would accompany me to the kitchen, kind sir, I will feed us. Then we can see what we will see after I at least am no longer dying of hunger.” He smiled and nodded respectfully, as if to say: ‘Entirely your call,’ and gestured me to lead on as we passed through the living room into the kitchen. He asked if he could help, and I declined. I poured us both tall glasses of iced tea to address our post-workout dehydration and bade him sit and chat at the counter where I set to work making lunch.
We chatted amiably while I set chicken breasts to broil in the oven after seasoning them with my favorite Cajun spice mix and lemon juice. Then I got some crusty whole wheat sourdough slices toasting as I washed lettuce and tomatoes. He expertly quizzed me about my own life history, showing informed interest in my science background. He equally elicited my maternal joy about the wonders of Chloe. As well, he segued seamlessly into reflecting on his own background and pre-school grandchildren, intuitively matching my level of disclosure. I sliced and plated the sandwiches and we both tore into them hungrily. But we still pursued our conversation just as voraciously, devouring each other’s stories with equal gusto. Our previous relationships came up directly, as I asked: “So, Jim, tell me: you are a very sexy man, and seem quite personable. So why aren’t you safely sewn up in a relationship? After all, single straight presentable guys are in quite short supply in this neck of the woods.”
Jim grinned at me with his infectious self-deprecating humor and sighed, saying: “Well, thereby hangs a tale, as I suspect is the case for you too. But since you asked first, I might as well take the lead in relationship self-revelation. I was, so I thought, quite happily married to a lovely woman I met as an undergrad at UCLA, where her brother was my co-captain on the wrestling team. She was a dance major, quite beautiful and high strung, as those artistic types can tend to be. I considered myself the luckiest nerd on campus that such a high status girl would date me. When time came for grad school, we both elected to stay there since the programs were excellent in our respective areas. Of course, it seemed only natural to get married. The sex was always spotty, as it can be with eating disordered women (which most of her dance compatriots were as well, as far as I can tell looking back). But I loved the flair she brought to my otherwise sort of humdrum life. Her career began to wane in her mid thirties, as tends to be the case with professional athletes of all sorts given what they put their bodies through. So we decided to have kids and she could open a studio and teach. The kids seemed to settle her down a good deal, or so I thought. But sex got even sketchier for us from then on. Well, it turned out that she was having a long-term affair with one of her mentors. He was a famous dancer who would be in town for a month here and there when he wasn’t doing residencies with troupes and universities around the world. In fact, he seems to have fathered the last of the kids I raised, which has been a bit complicated for us all. This all came to light about ten years back, prompting my move to San Francisco. I lucked into the job that enabled me to hit my ‘home run’ financially and retire. So I guess you could say that I’ve had some trust issues with women... I have been working them out, both in therapy and in a series of relationships, the last of which ended about four months ago. Since then I’ve been celibate. Though as you may have gathered I’m hoping to change that status in the very near future.”
I was fascinated by the parallels and differences between our stories, and recounted mine in as close to the same level of detail as he had told his. When I had finished, he smiled crookedly at me and said: “Well, it looks like we both have some of the same experiences of finding long-term partners to be less than trustworthy. You are not someone I approach looking for a casual fling. I’ve had plenty of opportunity for those in the past decade--you’re right that this is the happy hunting ground for single even-marginally-presentable males. At this point, I don’t imagine any brief escapade is going to show me anything worthwhile I haven’t already seen. So if that’s what you’re seeking, which I could perfectly understand given that your own divorce is so recent, I’m not going to be your guy. But if you’re willing to proceed with finding out what kind of match we are with the absolute promise of honesty on both our parts every step of the way, count me in.”
Now this was quite a shock to hear. By the smoothness of his come-on to me I had imagined Jim to be something of a player. My thought at that moment was that bedding someone casually would be just fine with me. I mean, the last thing I wanted right out of the box was another full-on committed relationship. But I sure as hell was interested in getting laid, and he seemed like just the ticket for getting myself back into the game. Well, let’s be honest, and say into the game for real for the very first time at the embarrassingly late age of forty. So I swallowed hard and decided if he wanted honesty, that’s just what he would get. I replied: “Jesus, Jim, that’s quite an offer! I came on right back at you because I have always found you attractive from across the yoga studio. But you’re absolutely right that I’m far from ready for anything really serious in the way of relationships. I mean, I have no intentions in auditioning for the slut of the month club. I can’t imagine sleeping with more than one guy at a time (I don’t mean that literally, I hope you understand, since three-ways are a bit outre for a girl who hasn’t even gotten laid by one straight man in her life). So the best I can sign on for is a definite yes as regards monogamy and full disclosure and honesty at every step of whatever evolved between us. I would promise to let you know before I act on it if I feel any urge to stray. It means if we proceed, you’re going to have to understand that I am looking for Mister-Right-Now more than for Mister-Right-for-the-Rest-of-My-Life. After all, my last stab at that didn’t work out so well.”
He grinned ruefully and sighed, saying: “Damn, that is right on the edge of where I don’t want to go, since at age fifty-eight I am definitely life-partner shopping. I’m past looking for a good roll in the hay, which my instincts tell me you are almost certain to be. I appreciate your candor very much, and still feel very turned on by you in every way, even more as I get to know you better. How about if we take it a step at a time on the basis of the terms you stated—monogamy and full disclosure. Perhaps we can see how things evolve between us with only those ground-rules and stated intentions about the future?”
This suited me fine, including his willingness both to bend from his original stance and to show and admit he was struggling to do so. I smiled back at him with some relief that I was finally going to get to take a shakedown cruise in this new bod in which I had invested so much time, energy, and money. Then I stood up, leaving the lunch dishes on the table (very uncharacteristically for me), and crooked a finger at him. I intoned: “Please accompany me to my boudoir, kind sir, and you can have a look at that view you alluded to earlier. I hope you enjoy it as much as I plan on enjoying my own chance to check out that rather amazing body of yours that I have been lusting at from across the yoga studio all these long months!”
So Jim followed me down the hall to the master bedroom that had not seen a male human since Kevin’s departure. I was acutely aware of his eyes on my newly-sculpted killer of an ass, and tried to throw him as much of a wiggle as I dared without looking ridiculous. My surgeon said she hadn’t had to do much with it, just remove about 500 ccs around the love-handle region to make it taper in nicely to my new twenty-five inch waistline. I was glad to show it off, and looking forward to the audience response to the rest of her and my work. We reached the bedroom, still brightly lit but with the North-east view toward the Bay Bridge rather than the Golden Gate panorama we had enjoyed over lunch. I turned towards him and held out my arms in front of the bed. I felt excited and terrified to offer myself up for whatever was to come in this first concrete step into this new erotic universe that my revamped middle-aged body was avid to experience.
Jim moved gracefully into our first hug, his muscular arms enfolding me as mine encircled his own sturdy chest. I was surprised at how taut and massive his pecs and lats felt compared to Kevin’s. My ex was the last man I had hugged, and he had always been on the wiry side of the male physique spectrum. I liked Jim’s scent, clean with vague hints of Old Spice deodorant. His chin with its short, neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard fit perfectly just above my head. My heart thrilled to feel through both of our warm-up suits a rock hard cock just as sizeable as Kevin’s pressing against my belly. That awareness sent a jolt of excitement and a gush of moisture right through my pussy. Apparently the basic plumbing and wiring seemed to be intact for both of us, at least so far, which I took to be an encouraging sign.
We stayed in that delicious hug for a few minutes, initially quite still. Then as if by mutual agreement our hands began to move over each other’s backs, sizing up the lay of the land, so to say. Clearly, we each liked what we felt, since the avidity of our gropings increased. He led the way as his hands slid down to sample the heft of my ass, which was quite pleased to be sized up by his large strong hands. I followed his lead to fondle his own sturdy buttocks, and once again was surprised how different they felt than the only other man’s butt I had ever felt up in this way. Kevin’s cute little rear end was not nearly as substantial as what I was feeling. In yoga class clothed in tight spandex it had reminded me of Michelangelo’s David’s perfect male ass. I couldn’t wait to see it unclothed.
Jim’s next move was to tip my head back and turn my chin upwards so our gazes met. He held my eyes with his own laughing blue ones as he gently lowered his mouth to invite me into the sweetest of kisses--slow, tentative, his moistened lips exploring mine with infinite patience until I thirsted for more. I thought to myself: “Jesus, this guy really knows what he is doing here…,” as my insides both leapt and melted at our joining. My own tongue led the way to the next level, and he followed adroitly. We each held each other’s asses more passionately while the fires our kiss was stoking burned steadily hotter. Kevin had always been a good kisser, but over the years had seemed to want to do it less and less. It had probably been a decade since I had been coaxed into passionate flame by such a skillful practitioner of this art.
After perhaps ten minutes of this delicious mirror dance of mutual exploration, Jim broke it off and pulled back to look at me with his gaze now smoldering with desire. He reached up to my neck and took the zipper of my warm-up suit in his hands with a quizzical look, asking for permission. I smiled back encouragingly and reached up to do the very same thing with his own top. We simultaneously tugged downward to reveal what lay beneath. In my case, I had felt quite naughty in deciding to eschew a top or bra underneath my jacket. He grinned appreciatively at my awesome new tits, clearly pleased not only with the view but also with my audaciousness for going naked under my warm-up jacket. His own muscular athlete’s chest was clad in his usual tank-top I had seen dozens of times in yoga. I copped a lascivious feel of his pecs as I slipped his jacket over his arms, forcing him to do the same with mine. We both let go and allowed the discarded clothing to hit the floor. Next I boldly tugged his tank loosed from his waistband and dragged it over his head so that we were both similarly naked from the waist up.
Kevin had been scantily endowed with body hair, and had routinely engaged in ‘man-scaping’, claiming he liked the hairless feel better. Though now I know he had other motives for adopting that look (which was de rigeur in many gay circles). Jim, in another sharp contrast, was unabashedly hairy, his muscular chest and abs furred with dark curls flecked with silver near his neck. I resumed my hug and leaned against his torso, inhaling his sexy manly scent and savoring the feel of his furriness against my face, chest and tits, all of which seemed to like it quite a lot. Our hands re-explored each other’s now-unclothed backs, and then we resumed our kiss as we leaned apart and at long last he began sampling my tits.
As usual, this guy was smooth in his approach. He started out by taking my head in his hands as he deeply engaged my mouth with his, taking my breath away with the delicious intensity of his kiss while his fingers explored my ears and neck. From there, they drifted down to sculpt my collarbones and shoulders. Then it was a short movement for them to begin exploring the contours of my shiny new breasts. We both moaned into each other’s mouths at this new contact, myself in appreciation of how wonderful his gentle touch felt, and him, I presume, reacting to how good my firm surgically sculpted orbs felt to him. He started with his fingertips delicately tracing their contours, as my nipples sprang into full erection at the deliciousness of his touch. Then he palmed each tit more firmly, testing their heft and resilience, and murmured: “God, they’re perfect! I’ve never felt such wonderful breasts, even on women half your age…”
Now this, of course, made my little post-surgical heart sing, and only stoked the fires of my arousal even further. I decided it was time to take the lead myself and allowed my hands to drift around his hips to the enticing bulge in the front of his warm-up pants. Through the fabric I encircled his cock with the fingers of my right hand as my left cradled his balls. It was his turn to groan as I retorted pertly: “I suppose I could say the same about this rather appealing swelling I’ve detected down here…perhaps I could do something to ease its inflammation…” I then proceeded to guide his pants down to the floor, and then to ease his bikini underwear the same direction. Then I brazenly knelt and took his spectacular cock in my mouth just like an experienced woman might have.
Jim groaned much louder at the sensation of my lips engulfing his frenulum as my hands cradled his balls, which were satisfyingly hefty in a good match to his seven-inch rock hard phallus. He sighed as I encircled his cock head with my tongue, and then just savored my fellatio for a minute or two as his hips moved with the rhythm of my sucking. I liked his fresh, clean taste, and how responsively his erection leapt to the stimulation I was lavishing on it. I wondered if I was going to suck him off right there, something I’d never done for a man in my life. I decided to ask, looking up and releasing him for a moment to inquire: “Do you mind if I keep going until you come?” He grinned down at me and replied: “Only if I am allowed to return the favor as soon as you have drunk your fill…” I retorted: “Sounds like a plan to me!” I continued sucking, enjoying it more than I had imagined possible. It was a sense of power, that my hands and mouth could produce such obvious pleasure in this sexy man. I experimented with taking him deeper into my mouth as my hands caressed his responsive balls. He brought his own hands to rest on my shoulders to steady himself as his climax neared. I could feel his balls contract upward as his groans quickened. Suddenly his cock leapt in my mouth as he cried out: “Oh, God that’s good, Renee!” He spent himself in my mouth, flooding me with a shockingly large quantity of semen that I struggled to swallow in spite of its rather yucky texture and strange taste. Somehow, I succeeded in spite of the less-than-delicious quality of this dessert. I was feeling rather proud of myself for my audacity in taking charge of this powerful older man.
After his final spasms of pleasure had subsided, I looked up into Jim’s smiling, grateful eyes and he thanked me warmly. Then he drew me up into a kiss, tacitly offering to sample what I had just imbibed. As we kissed, my own arousal flamed even greater than before (hell, than ever in my life, to be quite honest). His expert hands skinned my warm-up pants off of me, and he easily picked me up without disengaging our kiss and laid me down on my back on my bed. He then disengaged and pulled back to look down at my nakedness arrayed below him and murmured: “You are just as lovely as I could possibly have hoped, and now it’s my turn to devour this luscious body and get to see how you come, dear woman!”
I grinned back and replied: “Be my guest!,” and he lowered himself on top of me so we could feel each other’s naked bodies pressed against each other for the first time. I have to tell you that it felt damned good, maybe the best feeling I had ever had until that moment, though countless even better ones were soon to follow. Jim then proceeded to kiss and nibble his way around my ears and down my neck as his hands caressed the same areas. I was feeling absolutely delicious as his touch sent jolts of energy straight to my clit. He lingered around my collarbones, tantalizing me a bit until my breasts ached for him to for-Christ’s-sake get there, and then at last his hands and mouth found them. The sensation was even better than before my surgery, especially since (for obvious reasons now) Kevin showed never more than perfunctory interest in my old gigantic boobs. I found myself moaning and writhing when he suckled my nipples, shocked at the jolts of hormonal energy his attentions sent right to my crotch. He sensed this, and began alternately sucking one nipple while his hands toyed with the other. Suddenly I shocked us both by surging into orgasm without his touching my vulva at all except to be lying on top of it with his hard stomach.
When my stunning breast-orgasm passed, he rose up with a humorous grin and said: “My goodness, Renee, I had no idea you were such a firecracker or I wouldn’t have been able to restrain my lustful advances nearly so long!” I decided to stick to my policy of radical honesty and replied: “Frankly, Jim, neither did I…God knows what other surprises I’m going to have in store for both of us, since this is all new territory for me as much as it is for you.” He grinned once more and retorted: “Then let’s both go exploring and see what natural wonders we can discover!” He proceeded to kiss his way down my new sculpted stomach, which felt delicious and sent little quivers down to my very hungry groin. But he decided to tease me a bit. Jim detoured his hands and lips down the wonderfully sensitive hollows at the front of my newly trim hips. Then he rose up and pulled my ankles far apart and gave me a wink, murmuring: “I must play with these wonderful legs of yours, so that sweet pussy will have to wait a bit before it gets its turn.”