Pele Reinvented

When Adam asked to use the hot tub, I was taken by surprise. This wasn't like him. He had been extremely boundaried with me for quite some time. We had managed to stay away from one another for over a year, this while we lived on the same property. And here he was, asking to use the hot tub, with my husband away on a trip. How did we get here?

Adam has worked for Jack and I for about 2½ years, doing carpentry work and various odd jobs. Until Adam came along, I hadn't been sexual with anyone other than Jack for nine years. Not so with Jack, who has had fidelity issues in every relationship he has been in. I knew this about him. But--well, that's the thing with love, isn't it? It does not succumb to logic, or rather it follows a logic of its own. That logic is usually hidden from us even about others, but especially about ourselves.

A few times during our relationship, Jack had thrown out the idea of an open relationship. He questioned the idea of long-term monogamy, and insisted that it wouldn't bother him if I had another lover. But I wasn't into it. I didn't want it. I didn't want anyone else but Jack. I felt like I was hard-wired for monogamy, that it just wasn't in my nature to want more than one man at a time. That is until Adam came along. Mysterious, handsome, soulful, ascetic Adam. I was very attracted to him. Just being attracted to him made me feel less hurt by Jack's infidelity, some of which he admitted to, and some of which he didn't admit to, but I knew about it. I had come to a place of not directly confronting it. It was always met with denial, and it seemed pointless to even go there. I chose to stay with him despite it. It didn't mean that it didn't hurt. My attraction to Adam helped it to hurt less.

So I secretly masturbated to orgasm, thinking about Adam, and felt power in that. I have an earthy sexuality that can go underground for long periods. It was erupting in a powerful way in the winter and spring leading up to our experiment with an open relationship. When Jack and I went to the big island in Hawaii for a winter vacation, we spent time walking around the active volcano, Kilauea. It was the first time I had been around an active volcano, and I was fascinated by it as we walked around all the smoldering pits. I read a book on Pele, the Hawaiian fire goddess associated with Kilauea. The eruptions of Kilauea were seen as eruptions of her anger. It was easy to understand how the natives having their home ravaged by lava would see it as the act of an angry goddess, but in the state I was in, the eruptions seemed orgasmic. I joked about this with Jack. Perhaps Pele was just misunderstood. She didn't mean to hurt anyone. She was just having an orgasm that had been building for a long, long time!

During the spring, I had thoughts about approaching Adam for an affair, though I wasn't sure that he would go along with it. I thought it would go against his principles. Yet I still thought about it. I think about a lot of things. Who knows if I ever would have ever actually approached him? Instead, Adam approached us about living on our property. I saw my potential affair flapping away on little wings. And I felt morally obligated to let Jack know I was attracted to Adam before he ever moved on to our land. Jack, once he had gotten over the initial shock of this revelation, proposed an experiment in open sexuality.

Jack, Adam, and I went through many conversations about it, trying to head off any problems by having open communication. Adam was reluctant because Jack didn't seem entirely okay with it, despite protests to the contrary. We kept talking it through, striving for a "win, win, win." These were Adam's words. He was so earnest and idealistic about it, looking at it as a spiritual journey mirroring the coming of "the number three into the culture," whatever that meant. Like we were riding a wave coming from the greater culture. It seemed important to him to see it that way, as part of a greater metaphysical spiritual plan of some sort. The talking about it was getting old for me. I wanted to jump all over him. I brought myself to waves of orgasms thinking about him, my orgasms so strong at times that I thought he must somehow feel them.

Adam was definitely coming around. We talked on the phone and he started sharing his fantasies about me. I was shy about sharing mine, but with some nudging shared a fantasy about my sexual juices in his beard. It was very erotic. My first phone sex. The excitement continued to build until, finally, we went forward.

The three of us entered into an open relationship experiment and rode a wave of giddy ecstasy for about three months. Jack had my blessing to play with other women, and I was genuinely not jealous for a change. He loved it. Adam had been celibate for three years and got to play and be sexual with an attractive woman who didn't want commitment or marriage from him, his idea of heaven. And I—well, like a lot of women, I had conflicts about being openly sexual and seductive. My ideas about who I was sexually got blown apart.

I had two men, who were complete opposites physically and in just about every other way, wanting to be at my service. Jack is of medium height and built like a bull, very strong, clean-shaven, with big features and short-cropped salt and pepper hair. Adam, on the other hand, stands 6'5" and is very slender, with sensitive features, a trim beard, and long brown curly hair. Jack is an alpha male who exerts power in his world. He has a big, infectious laugh, tends to dominate a room, and enjoys indulging his appetites. Adam is an introverted, sensitive man, with the temperament of a poet. An ascetic, suited to living alone in the woods, who likes to challenge himself by denying his appetites. He left a successful career in public health to study divinity and become an ordained new age minister, to turn away from the world and life as most of us live it.

One of the things that being with Adam opened up was the world of sexual fantasy. We both have—well, let's say a rich inner world—and we were craving a chance to talk about it. So we talked to each other about our fantasies, sometimes acting them out, sometime not. It felt delicious, and a little like children whispering to each other in the night.

Adam liked for me to dress in sexy lingerie, with something more conservative over it, with my long blond hair up in a twist, and glasses. The classic librarian unveiling herself fantasy. So fun! And we played at other fantasies. Like him being my private yoga instructor. Like me being a lingerie model, and he was a special customer that got to see more than everyone else. For a brief period in my twenties, I was a lingerie model. It wasn't as though I would have wanted anything like we were playing out to have actually happened. But this was make-believe. It was safe. We had the freedom to give full expression to our sexual fantasies, even ones that had never completely bubbled to the surface before. It was so playful. I had never been so playful in my sexuality. Life felt like one big orgasm.

Talking about fantasies was not a realm Jack and I had dipped into, but this started to open up between us, too. We had been together a long time, and he was now hearing my rather elaborate sexual fantasies for the first time. He sometimes looked at me like a foreign, exotic creature that he had recently discovered. And in a way, I was.

So here I was, making the climb towards fifty, feeling like a sexual goddess in a way I had never felt before. I felt confident in my ability to bring Jack and Adam to orgasm with my mouth and my tongue. I bought new lingerie and modeled it for each of my men. My body was fit and slender from regular hiking and vinyasa yoga and it was appreciated. I loved seeing the desire in their eyes. My body—from my long, blond hair to my full breasts to my strong, slender stomach to my muscular legs to my slender feet—all received their compliments and attention. And I took it in. It seemed strange that I could feel so much better about my body than I had in my twenties, but I did. I had never felt so beautiful.

Every day was a surprise. Life had a rare intensity to it. Adam and I took this time as an opportunity to experiment, and experiment we did. The living room. The kitchen. The shower. The stairs. Everywhere in the house except the bedroom I shared with Jack. That was off limits. One time Adam surprised me with a question after we made love face-to-face.

"I can't tell, Cathy. Do you want my love or my lust?"

"I want your love," I responded quickly, "And your lust." I, who had always experienced my own wants and desires constrained in the background, let loose my hunger. I was in an altered state, high on the kind of ecstasy that doesn't come in the form of a pill. I was floating on the clouds, experiencing my sexuality and ability to seduce in a way that I never had before. Some part of me knew it couldn't last this way. I wanted to take advantage of it while I had it.

Utopia. That is where I place the idea of a successful open relationship now, in the realm of utopian ideas, in which we think we can transcend the way we really are. Free of jealousy, feeling joy at our partner's pleasure while we feel secure in their love, having novelty and security at the same time! It looks so good on paper.

Well, nobody died, at least. Though I think murderous feelings arose, more than once. Jack was struggling with jealousy that he could not admit to having. That's the worst kind of jealousy, because it can't be addressed. He had a few volcanic eruptions that he blamed on Adam and I not being considerate of his feelings. Adam and I wanted very much to be considerate of his feelings, but his feelings changed from day to day. One day he wanted this, the next day he wanted that. How about if we only had sex on Tuesdays? No, Tuesdays weren't good. Maybe if we only had oral sex. Maybe if we only had sex at our home downstairs in the sunken living room. No, that feels invasive, better that it be somewhere else. But there wasn't anywhere else that was okay. Adam and I kept saying, "Hey it's okay if this doesn't work for you." We were met with--"But it is okay, you both just need to be more considerate of my feelings." It was an impossible situation, a minefield.

Despite all this, somehow, someway, Jack and I did come through the experiment with our relationship intact. In fact, we got married. While I was busy experimenting sexually with Adam and bringing that excitement into my sex life with Jack, and Jack was running off on dates, and Adam was letting himself expand into being sexual with me without fear of—Eeeeeeeek! My wanting something else from him—during this time we were getting a place cleared and ready on the land for Jack and I to get married. The three of us were working on it together, if you can imagine that.

We were planning a big wedding. Our land is sloped, so we were having bulldozers brought in to create three terraces. Jack liked to say that he and Adam were moving heaven and earth so that I would have the perfect wedding. Planning and getting things done for the wedding were part of the fevered pitch of the time. And that part worked. The wedding ended up being beautiful, elegant, all that I could have wanted. However, our little experiment leading up to wedding did not end well. The three of us agreed to end the experiment a few weeks before the wedding. And it did end between Adam and I. I decided to communicate directly with Jack's sexual partner to let her know the experiment was over, because I was pretty sure that news had not been conveyed to her. And I was right about that.

I didn't find it easy to let go of being sexual with Adam. It was very exciting and crazy and warm and wonderful. Adam ended up really distancing himself from me, even from friendship. Part of me understood. He needed to be able to live on our land. He didn't have a lot of other options. He wanted to live in his trailer peacefully, reading his books on spirituality, and writing his own book on spirituality. He didn't want trouble. He never had wanted trouble.

So, yes, I understood his need to distance himself from me, but it also hurt. Through the winter, he and Jack hardly spoke to one another. Jack, after being very open to Adam, wanted nothing to do with him, and became angry at the very mention of his name. Jack had actually proposed that he be allowed to kiss and mess around with the woman who had been his lover, but didn't want me to have the same freedom. Naturally, I said "no" to this. Somehow, Jack seemed to be blaming Adam for the experiment not working, not that he would talk directly to him about it. And Adam is a very earnest sort of man. Perhaps a bit naïve. He went into the experiment with Jack and I thinking, if we just keep talking about things, if we just communicate, things can work out. He was hurt by Jack's rejection of him. And I was hurt by Adam's rejection of me. The desire in my lover's eyes had been replaced by fear and distance.

We entered the winter of our discontent, each of us putting our walls up, as we went about the business of living. Adam made several attempts to hold out an olive branch to Jack, which Jack ignored. With time, I felt more matter-of-fact about what had transpired and where it had ended up. Adam and I were on a little friendlier terms. Jack had lunch with his former lover weekly, and I had good reason to believe they were messing around, not that Jack would admit it.

We continued in a holding pattern through spring and summer, until our first anniversary passed. With that passing, Jack suddenly had an interest in talking about what had transpired. He said it seemed like a time for looking back. He asked Adam to smoke a bowl with him, and then again, and again. I don't smoke, so I wasn't part of this. They would be off in the garage, and I would wonder what they talked about. I was relieved they were talking again, yet I was also suspicious of Jack's motives. He still talked about the experiment as something that had failed because of logistics, not because he had been threatened by it. I know my husband well. He can forget periods of intense emotion as though they didn't happen. So I remind him. I could tell he was thinking that maybe we can try again. He doesn't know himself as well as I know him. And I know how threatening it was for him, that it went to his primal core.

Perhaps it wouldn't have been so threatening if it had been the three of us in bed, something neither Adam nor I were comfortable with. Or if it had been just some guy out there that I didn't care about, a purely sexual encounter. I'm not wired for that. The truth is, Adam was never a threat to my primary relationship with Jack. I didn't have fantasies of leaving Jack for Adam. But I did, and do, care about Adam, even have a certain kind of love for him. And that's the part that I think was too much for Jack. I wouldn't have known how to enter an experiment like this in any other way. I make love more than I fuck.

With Jack bringing up the experiment and hanging out with Adam, I was wondering what he was up to. Did he really just all of sudden decide he wanted to be friends with Adam? Hmmmmmmmmmm. I had effectively walled off my feelings of attraction towards Adam, and I thought it best to keep it that way. There was nothing in how Jack talked about our experiment that made me think it would go any differently this time. For Jack's sake, Adam's sake, my sake, and for the sake of my marriage, it seemed best left in the past.

So this is the background for Adam asking to use the hot tub. Jack was going to be out of town for nine days. Adam had showed up in late afternoon, and asked to come in and chat. Not so strange. We hung out and chatted now and then, keeping it pretty light. He had a couple of beers. I sipped on a glass of white wine. Then he stood up, said he was achy from all the work he had done that day, and would it be all right if he used the hot tub?

"Sure." That came out of my mouth quickly. I'll stay inside, and he'll use the hot tub. No problem.

As he got to the double glass doors leading outside he said, "Do you want to keep talking?"

"Um, okay." The proverbial angel and devil appeared on opposite shoulders. I could have said no. But I didn't. I waited until he was in the hot tub and came out bundled up. It was cold outside. The sun had set, and a full moon bathed the valley we live in, in that kind of light that feels textured and soft. I sat bundled up on the bench near by. He was buried in the water. No problem. Isn't it funny how we kid ourselves?

"It's been nice, spending time with Jack." Adam ventured this while sunk down in the hot tub.

"Uh huh." Maybe I would find out what they had been talking about.

"He said it is a time of re-visiting."

"Yes, he has said that to me, too."

"He asked me to take care of you while he is gone."

"Mm-hmmmm." I cocked my head to show my skepticism. Not about his report, but about the meaning of Jack's words being as simple as presented.

"And he said I could 'play' with you."

"Did he?" My feathers were a bit ruffled. "He forgot to mention it to me."

"Yeah." A long silence. I was the one to break it.

"What do you suppose he really meant by that?"

"Well, that we could play together. He's come a long way."

"Oh, come on! You've got to be kidding! He can't even admit that he was jealous!" I could not kid myself about this.

"Yeah, I suppose you're right." He sighed and laid his head back against the soft tub. Another long pause. "But it's nice being naked in front of you. The last time I was naked in front of a woman was with you."

At first I said nothing. I knew we were treading into dangerous territory. "That's a shame," I finally said in a small voice, "For your beautiful body to not be seen for that long." Danger! Danger, Will Robinson! The ancient robot warning from "Lost In Space" entered my consciousness at that odd moment. The red flags were really whipping in the breeze now, urging me to think. But I didn't want to think. He stood up. The moonlight was full upon him. And his large erection.

"Oh my" I said lamely. I closed my eyes. I listened to an inner chant. Could go in now. Should go in now. Could go in now. Should go in now. I opened my eyes. "I see you have an erection."

"Yes." He continued to stand there. "Tell me what you like about my body."

"Well. Um. Well." I felt flushed. I stood up and walked towards him. "Well, you have such long legs, like a gazelle. No, that's not quite it." I paused and considered. I had it. I smiled and put my hands on his hips. "It's like when Jack had that dream about you. About you being Pan. And you played your flute." I removed my hands to pantomime playing the flute. "And you made the trees dance with your flute." He smiled at the memory.

"Yes, I remember."

"Well, that fits." I put my hands on his hips again. "Because down here, you are like Pan, well, Pan's lower body, animal-like, solid and muscular, but long and slender. It's not hard to imagine hooves." I let my hands drift slowly up to his waist, never losing contact with his skin. "And then here, you are almost boyish. You are so slender." My hands continued tracing up his chest, and out to his arms. My gaze drifted up to his eyes, and I kissed him, soft and slow. It was as though walls had never come between us. Merging, submerging, and drowning together. When our lips parted, we were still left with what to do now.

"Wow, it's cold. I need to get back under the water." He abruptly dunked back under. It was cold. I had a choice. Either I stayed bundled up. Or I disrobe and get into the hot tub.

"It is cold." I paused. "Taking off my clothes and getting into the hot tub with you, that would be crossing the Rubicon."

"Yes, we can't do that."