It's Been So Long!

I didn't get an answer, and stupidly asked, "Are you asleep?"

I got a small snore back as a reply, so I grabbed the afghan that was laid over the back of the sofa and threw it over her so she wouldn't get cold. Then I wrapped my arms around her and allowed myself to doze off too.

What do we do now?

I guess we must have napped for an hour. I woke when I felt Sherry stir. She blinked and looked around and seemed momentarily disoriented. I figured that being in an unfamiliar position, on top of a man she'd just met, was probably going to make it worse, so I carefully moved out from under her and rolled her back into a reclining position with her head on the pillow at the end of the sofa. By this time I was kneeling on the floor, and I kissed her gently on the cheek and laid an arm loosely over her to let her know I was still there with her.

Her first words were, "Did I dream that? Was it real? Did all that really happen? I never felt anything like that in my life! Do you remember what you did to make that happen? Could it happen again some time? Please, tell me."

"Of course it was real. You had a very intense orgasm, a real mind blower. You had it because I teased some very sensitive nerve endings by oral stimulation. When you hear about oral sex, that's what it's all about. Regular sex, with my cock penetrating into your cunt, can stimulate your G spot quite well, but your clit doesn't always get its fair share, simply because my cock is inside and your clit is outside. The easiest way to do a real job on your clit is with my mouth, and by doing it carefully, I can bring you to wonderful orgasms that you probably haven't felt before." She looked dubious. "Honest. I'm glad it felt like a miracle, but it's just careful, considerate lovemaking. You must have read by now that lesbian sex can bring a woman to better orgasms than heterosexual sex can, and the lesbians claim that only a woman can know the best way to please another woman. That's such bullshit! But it's true that only someone who cares about making you feel wonderful can make it happen. No man who just wants to get in, get out, and get away can ever bring you the sexual pleasure that you deserve."

"I've sure had that! But you didn't reach climax, did you?"

"I got more pleasure from doing that for you than I ever could from an orgasm. Some time we'll talk about male orgasms, and ejaculation, and sexual pleasure, and you'll understand all this better. You've been -- what's a good word? I almost said exploited. But no, you were married for a long time to a man who loved you. You raised two wonderful kids. But you started out with some misconceptions about sex, and they never got exorcised, so there's a lot out there for you to learn about. For now, let's leave it that I was able to give you a mind-blowing experience, and that gave me more satisfaction than you can imagine."

"I guess I thought the woman's role in sex was to make sure her partner comes in her. I can see now that there's more to this sex stuff than I ever dreamed of. But I still think that I owe you one. I owe you big!"

"Well, unless I'm hopelessly misled, we'll have a lot more sexual escapades, and I'm sure that I'll get my share. Agreed?"

"Oh, yes. Definitely. I want this to be the start of something big, something wonderful."

"Good. Now do you want me to leave so you can get some rest, or should I stay for a while?"

"Stay! Please stay! Oh, Hank, are you hungry? We never did get dinner."

"I guess I could eat something. How about you?"

"I didn't realize it before but I'm ravenous. Can I fix you something?"

"Suppose we just throw on some clothes and go find a fast food place where we can get a hamburger.?"

"No." There was a long pause while she was sorting out her thoughts and feelings. "I don't want to break this spell. I don't want either one of us to put our clothes on. I want to get used to looking at you naked, and you to get used to me naked, too. Nothing between us. I don't mean forever, but for a while. For right now. This is all very new to me, and I need to get it impressed on my brain that this is a good way for us to be, with no barriers to keep us apart. I want us to understand and appreciate each other. I've been too alone for too long, and I may be overreacting, but humor me."

"All right, if that's what you want, that's what you'll get. I'm sorry that I can't give you a better appearance to look at. My body has gone the way of too much food and too little exercise, I'm afraid. But you! You look wonderful naked. You look just right. I'm out of shape and probably disgusting to look at once the thrill of sex has evaporated. Sorry."

"Don't be. I see you with my eyes, and they may very well see things differently from yours. I see a man who would rather kiss me than drive to a restaurant for a steak dinner, and would rather give me the greatest orgasm in the world than have one of his own. I see a man who sent me wonderful emails, and suffered through mine as I spilled out my quirky idiosyncrasies. I see a man who focused on the real me that was hiding underneath all that other stuff. In fact a man who was so understanding that I got bold enough to reveal things about myself, things that I've never admitted to anybody else in my whole life. You already told me that you think you need to get rid of twenty pounds so I'm not disappointed with your body. I see you as you really are, inside all that. I see through to your soul. And the way I see you, I think you're simply beautiful."

"Well, nobody ever told me that before. You're a very remarkable person, Sherry. I really liked you from our emails; that's why I wanted to meet you. But now I can see that you're so much more than I thought. You're sort of spiritual and sexy, all rolled into one. I bet I could go on for a long time, seeing a new side of you every time we get together. This business of wanting me to stay here with my clothes off, for example. That's right out of the blue, but I see the honesty of it all, and I like it. Maybe all couples ought to do this. Too bad there's not more room on that sofa, so I could lie beside you and feel your skin against my skin. But as long as there isn't, I guess I'll prowl through your kitchen and see what there is that I could whomp up for us."

"I know there's cheese and butter and margarine and bread, so we could have grilled cheese sandwiches."

"Any tomatoes?"

"I think there's one in the crisper."

"What the hell is a crisper?"

"Stay right there. I'm on my way."

"Sherry, help me out here; I'm confused. There's a big plaque on the wall here that was given to you for excellence in gourmet cooking, and a little one over there that says you'd rather die of starvation than cook. Is there something that I just don't understand?"

"Here's your tomato. You can slice it right after you slice the cheese. I'll get the frying pan heated up. Now about those plaques: the thing that you don't get to see is the time element. If they had dates on them they'd make more sense. A long time ago, when we were living in a college town and my husband was chancellor of a university, gourmet cooking got to be the rage with a bunch of faculty wives. I had to do it to maintain my social contacts, and because I was basically insecure, I had to be an over-the-top competitor. If they'd been into distance running, I would've run my little feet off to win a marathon. But this was gourmet cooking, so I studied and practiced and invented new flavor combinations and all that. And I won the prize. But when we moved out here there was no more competition, and in fact I felt like sitting back and letting the world pay me back for all the excelling I'd done in those college town years. And the joke was on me, because I didn't do it for the world, I did it for me, to boost my ego and overcome my feelings of inadequacy. It took me a long time to figure that out. Many years. How do you like that? Still think I'm so hot?"

"Probably more than ever. Everybody does what you did, but you have the insight to figure it out. You're a person, Sherry. Not a machine, a human being. We all have our triumphs and disasters, and just because you figured out some behavior that might seem illogical, doesn't mean you ought to beat yourself up over it. Just accept it."

"You know, Hank, I could probably take you on as a project, the way I did with Jay. I could devote my whole self to making you happy and successful. Maybe that way I could make up for past mistakes."

"Sherry, every night the sun goes down and we go to sleep. It's our way to declare that the day is over. Whatever we did or didn't do, is behind us. If we're good people, and you very definitely are, then in some way we've done some good thing to make up for some not-so-good thing, and the book can be closed. Then when the sun comes up again, we start fresh. There's nothing to feel bad about and nothing to make up for. If you'll get used to that idea, then you'll sleep better and feel happier."

"Do you really believe that crap?"

"Yes, and that's the way I try to live. It works, at least for me."

"But you're an educated man. You're big on technology and you've studied at some of our best universities."

"And from all that education I've learned more about human beings than I ever knew before. Look, back when I used to develop new products, I had to know who's going to use them and how they tick. Not just how tall they are or how much hand strength they have, but how their minds work. Our brains have evolved over millions of years, and the most striking things they learned about their environment are hot and cold and light and dark. When it got dark out, all sorts of nocturnal animals roamed around looking for somebody to eat, so they had to stay in their caves. It was a natural time to turn off and go to sleep, because they couldn't see anything. They started to worship the sun, and later the moon and stars and trees and water and fire and all sorts of things in their environment, but the sun was always the big one because it gave them light to see by and it kept them warm. So our brains have developed around the knowledge of day and night, and that cycle has come to pace our actions and thoughts and emotions. This is not just some childish belief that we outgrow as we become adults. It's hard wired into us, and it's one of those things that we can fight against, but we shouldn't because to challenge the things that are part of us is to take on a lifelong war against ourselves, one that can only make us unhappy."

"So you're saying I ought to close the books every night and start fresh every morning. Is that it?"

"Do you see anything wrong with that?"

"Only that it denies our ability as thinking beings to rise above our baser nature."

"Look, you're taking on an impossible fight. Think of it in purely physical terms. We're part of the Great Apes. We have evolved alongside of monkeys. We spend all our lives walking and sitting on the ground or other horizontal surfaces. Monkeys live in trees, and swing from tree to tree, using all four limbs for grasping, and also their tails that they can wrap around branches and hang on with. If you decided that you'd like to live like a monkey instead of a person, you'd have a hell of a time because you don't have a tail, and your feet can't grasp very well. So you could try and practice and search for better and better ways to do it, but you'd never be able to climb and swing and sleep in trees because you're just not built that way. At some point you'd have to accept the idea that you're not a monkey. Trying to do what our brains aren't equipped for is just as bad, but because we can't see the differences right out in front of us, we don't realize how futile it is. It just fills you with guilt and makes you feel worthless. Why do that to yourself when you have the inborn ability to make yourself happy?"

"Well, okay, I'll think about it. Tell you what: I'll try it your way for a week or two and see if I feel better about myself. I'm not trying to be stubborn, just having a little trouble changing the way I live. But I do see your point and I'll really try."

We were standing in the kitchen, partway along with the grilled cheese project, but just standing there wrangling over Sherry's guilt mechanism and not paying attention to the frying pan. It was getting pretty hot and it didn't have anything in it except a little bit of butter, which was starting to smoke. I yelled, "Hey, kill the heat under the pan."

"Oh, my. Not a very good show for a gourmet cook, is it?" She grabbed a potholder and moved the pan to another burner. I hurried up with the sandwiches and in a couple of minutes we had them heating up. Sherry took care of turning them, putting the pan back onto the hot burner when it got cool, and before long we had beautiful, golden brown sandwiches. I put them onto plates, let them cool for a minute, and sliced them diagonally.

Sherry asked, "What would you like to drink?"

"Got any beer?"

"There's some Bud Light that's cold."

"Perfect. My favorite."

Sherry got out a beer for me and poured herself a glass of wine, and we took our places on stools at the counter for a feast. "Oh, that's good. That good cheddar you've got makes the difference. Great flavor."

"As good as a steak dinner at Angus?"

"Better, because we're here in your comfort zone, and we don't have to go out and drive somewhere at the end of the meal, and we've got the privacy we were looking for. By the way, I love the way you're dressed."

"We sure couldn't eat in the nude at a restaurant, could we?"

"Not for long. Know what I'd like for dessert?"

"Probably the same as what I'd like. This time I want to suck your cock till you come. I'd like to find out what it tastes like, and see if I can swallow it all. At least I'll try."

"Oh, I'm just a pushover for a beautiful, smooth talkin' girl like you. You have the sweetest way of saying just the right thing."

"Do you have to hurry home? How far is it, by the way?"

"Around fifty miles."

"Oh, don't go out there in the middle of the night. Can you stay overnight here with me?"

"Sure, love to. But I'll have to get going early in the morning to fix the dogs their breakfast."

"Oh, good. Tonight I'll be able to practice. I want to be a good cocksucker, for my own satisfaction and so I can please you."

"Maybe it would be easier for you if we went in on the bed. One of the best positions is with me sitting on the edge of the bed and you kneeling on the floor. Want to try that?"

"Let's go. If I get it right, will you eat my cunt after?"

"Sounds like the perfect way to relax after a good meal. Let's get started."

We sucked and fucked for hours, sometimes going at it hard, but mostly gentle and loving. We'd drift off to sleep, then wake up and have an encore. When we slept we clung to each other as if we were afraid to let go. In the morning I had to get up and hit the road, but we woke at the crack of dawn and had another hour of fucking and sucking before I had to leave.

I was dressed and she was still naked, lying in the bed watching me. I sat down on the side of the bed and reached out to her. "Before I go come over here. I want to say goodbye in a special way."

"What do you have in mind?"

"I just want to suck your tits for a minute. That way when I'm gone your nipples will still be tingling, as a reminder that there's new life in your life." I sucked them and licked them and left her thoroughly titillated. "Want to come to my house for a few days? It's not elegant like this, but it's comfortable. I have a great bed. King size, very soft, a comforter to pull up when we feel chilly, and a very private backyard with a six foot brick wall around it. You can walk out in the nude to pick oranges for breakfast. I've even got an assortment of porn movies we can watch together and maybe get some new ideas."

"Call me when you get home, and we'll make a plan."

Sherry pays me a visit

I gave Sherry the fifty cent tour of my home. The dogs were yapping and nudging her, competing for her attention the whole time, as I knew they would. When we went back into the living room and sat on the sofa they eased off a little, lying down and watching her to make sure she didn't escape. "Would you like to check out my supply of porn flicks?"

"Of course. Do you watch much porn?"

"Very seldom because I'm all alone there. It just gets me frustrated. But with you, I could enjoy it as it's supposed to be enjoyed. They use some positions that we haven't tried. A lot of them are just to make it easier to get the camera zoomed in on the actors' genitals, but some of them are pretty good. Like that one I told you about with your one leg sticking up in the air; that's one that John Holmes liked to use, during what I think of as the golden age of porn, back when the movies had plots and the actors really acted. I've got a few of those oldies."

"Seems it'd be a good position for the G spot. I'd never even heard of the G spot until a year or so ago, when one of my friends mentioned it at a book club meeting. I thought she was making it up. You found it easily enough when you changed from the missionary position by putting my legs over your shoulders. How'd you know about it?"

"Only from reading about it. Back when my wife was alive, nobody'd ever heard of it. We thought that the clit was the only super sensitive spot down there."

"Did you and she fuck a lot?"

"Oh, at first we did, about like every other married couple, I guess. Later it got to be two or three times a week, but then there were weeks that we didn't do it at all. Depended a lot on what she felt like. She was a terrific fuck and I was always ready to get it on, but she was full of unresolved issues from her childhood and religious guilt over our premarital sex. I could never get her to talk about her feelings the way you can. When she did, it was the same things over and over. She couldn't get herself to resolve anything, to forgive herself, so she never got any relief from any of it. For me it was sad, watching and listening to the same stuff, over and over and over. The older she got, the worse it tormented her. Really a damned shame because she was a very nice lady, a good mother, and a lot of fun when she'd give herself some time off from that same old tortured harangue."

"Did you love her?"

"Yes, very much so. I still have dreams about her. Not so often now, maybe once every two or three months. It took me a lot of years after she died before I'd even think about getting together with another woman. And even then, I was just sort of fooling around with the dating sites. I had that one unsatisfactory date that I told you about, and didn't seriously think I'd ever have another one. Even when you and I started emailing back and forth, I thought I'd never get to meet you. It wasn't until we started opening up about our feelings that it got to seem real to me. Up until then you were more of an idealized symbol than a real woman. Like a movie star, somebody you can admire but never meet in person."

"Did your wife suck your cock?"

"Yes, but not very often. She was good at it, and she could get me off doing it, but she didn't like to swallow, so she'd usually finish me off with her hand and let me come all over her tits. She loved to watch it spurt out of my cock. You know how you got me real hot your mouth in the shower at your house, and then finished with a hand job with the soapy water, and I sprayed clear over onto the wall of the shower stall? She did that to me one time when we were dating. She laughed and laughed, said I had a fire hose. And back then, in my twenties, I guess I did. Some things improve with age, but I don't think the male sex organ is one of them."

Sherry looked wistful. "It feels funny, both of us being widowed and not having had anybody close to us for a long while. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel. Am I being disloyal to Jay's memory by getting close and lovey-dovey with another man? It seems to me that the right thing is to get involved again and to enjoy sex while our parts still work right. If I live to be ninety I don't think I'll be able to fuck then. Why not do it now? What's to hold us back? We've had appropriate mourning periods, and we don't seem to be disrespecting our late spouses or our families or anybody. I guess it just seems a little strange. Last week at my house, we did more things together and used more positions than I ever did in my whole married life. And I'm glad that it's that way, totally different. If I were just doing the same old missionary routine that I did with Jay, then I might feel guilty about it. As it is, this is a whole different world, not the same one that Jay and I lived in at all."