Sexual healing

I had recently lost my cat Vasily to cancer, I had been recovering too slowly from a monster cold, my work week had been truly disastrous, and I was under the gun to get a large fund-raising event organized. Not a day had gone by for two weeks when I hadn't dissolved into tears at one time or another. I felt haggard. I looked haggard. My skin is normally clear, but stress had created two delightful zits on my face. I had dark circles under my eyes, I was mired in a perpetual bad-hair day, I needed a pedicure -- your basic wreck, is what I was.

So when I got the email from Mr. LQ asking whether I would like to get together for maybe dinner and definitely sex, I had to think about it. I felt unlovely and undesirable -- was this a good idea? Before this summer I would have made my excuses and told myself I needed to wait until I was in the right frame of mind. But things have changed, my dear imaginary readers, and so I did something once unthinkable. I accepted. So I wasn't at the top of my game. Was I going to feel any better if I hid at home? I needed to feel good; I needed to make someone else feel good; I needed to get out of my head. I emailed back and said his plan sounded lovely. The rest fell into place quickly: next day, 6:00 P.M., same hotel.

Mr. LQ and I had met once before a few weeks earlier. It had been brief, intense, enjoyable -- a whirlwind few hours with very little talk and a lot of sex. As I drove toward the hotel and our second assignation, I imagined pulling a Blanche DuBois once I got there. I could drape the lamps with scarves to create flattering light. Maybe use my hands a lot, sort of flutter them around to distract from my various physical imperfections. The idea made me grin. Poor Mr. LQ would have to wonder what kind of freak show he had invited over.

But here's the thing: as soon as I got there, everything was all right. Just like Curtis Mayfield sings it -- "have a good time, 'cause it's all right." I walked into the hotel room, dropped my purse in the chair, and turned around to tell him it was good to see him again. He smiled, kissed me in greeting, then pushed me up against the wall and pinned my arms above my head with one hand while he freed my breasts from the plunging neckline of my dress with the other. Then he bent his head and sucked my nipple into his mouth and ohhhh yes, this was exactly what I needed. Instant and total immersion.

He stopped long enough to pull my dress off and pushed me right back up against the wall, now sucking the other nipple while I sighed and writhed and tried in vain to grind against him. He took my forearms and pulled me toward him. "Here," he said, "here," and pushed me down until I was kneeling in front of him. I took his cock in one hand and licked up the length of it, then around it, then pulled it into my mouth, sucking in earnest. We stayed this way a while until he suddenly withdrew, reaching for the condoms, and pushed me forward upon my hands and knees, where I waited, panting, the synthetic carpet somehow both rough and oily feeling, until he was thrusting into me.

And so it went . . . and went . . . from the floor to the bed, hands, mouths, cunnilingis, fellatio, finger-fucking, ass-fucking, tit-fucking, and in between bouts of sex there was conversation. He had brought his computer equipped with satellite radio, and classic jazz and swing floated through the room. This time around we had time to get to know each other. We twitted each other about politics. I heard about the evolution of his career. He heard about my grandfather's life as a bandleader. And all the while we talked he was either running his fingernails over my skin (bliss) or fondling me (more bliss), occasionally giving me a lazy spank. Sometimes I caught myself humming or singing to the song on the radio. Sorry, I told him. It's a compulsion. "I don't know what advantage in life I get from knowing the entire Harold Arlen songbook, but I know it."

"It's an advantage," he assured me.

While we had been talking his hand had wandered down to my cunt again, his fingers parting and stroking me. I reached down and pulled his hand to my lips. I took his wet index and middle fingers into my mouth and sucked them slowly; lavishly. His cock twitched hard against my thigh, and suddenly I was seized with the desire to feel it in my mouth. I moved quickly to kneel between his legs and used my breath and my tongue to tease him, taking him all into my mouth at times, other times nibbling about the tip just to hear him moan. Slowly I settled into a pattern, and then all that mattered was the connection between us.

I don't mind giving head at all, but there are times when I'm giving it simply because I know that's what my partner wants at the moment. This wasn't one of those times. I needed to be doing this. I was utterly absorbed. It was my own little work of art. I didn't want to make him come too fast; I didn't want to get it over with -- I wanted to be doing exactly what I was doing. You don't hurry art.

I could tell when I hit a perfect rhythm because he would start to tremble. He held my hair back from my face in his hand like a thick single rein. I breathed through my nose so I could keep my mouth on him without stopping. Now and then his cock would hit the back of my throat and I would gag slightly, feeling my mouth constrict around him. Sometimes I would force the issue and take him so deep I gagged, because I liked the flow of saliva it triggered. With my hands I toyed with his scrotum, his testes, his perineum, soft fingers, the hint of a fingernail, increasing the pressure as he approached climax, laying off, then increasing again.

I don't know how long I did this. At one point my jaw became sore, but I ignored it, and soon I didn't feel it. Finally the intensity of his shaking and thrusting pierced my reverie and I realized he was about to climax. He came with a loud series of groans, and I kept him in my mouth, waiting for each spurt of semen. It was a long, drawn-out climax, and I loved being able to read the intensity of it in his cries. When he was finished, I released him gently and slowly from my mouth, and stayed where I was, my head resting on his thigh.

"Oh baby." He laid there breathing hard, eyes closed. "Oh baby. That was incredible. That was . . . that was . . ." His voice trailed off. I flipped my hair up onto his chest, then dragged it softly down over his stomach and groin, listening to his breath catch when strands caught on his sticky thighs and cock. Then I did it again.

"That feels so good," he muttered.

"I know," I whispered.

Finally we were both completely still. I reluctantly rose to clean myself up and caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror. I was smiling, flushed, disheveled -- a million miles away. When I came back out we lolled about still naked, watched Saturday Night Live, happy, spent, and giggling. Then it was time to go home. We dressed, and when I paused at the mirror to smooth my hair, he said, "You look great." I rolled my eyes and laughed. He walked me out to my car, kissed me good night, and we went our separate ways.

In the car, I looked up at the clock and read the time: midnight exactly. Six hours of nothing but pleasure, and I was feeling . . . really good. Really fucking good. When I got close to home I realized that I was famished, so I decided to stop at Kerbey Lane for some gingerbread pancakes. But when the plate was put down in front of me, I took a few bites and then I didn't want any more. So I paid, assured the waiter that nothing had been wrong with the food, and went home, pleasantly jangled and buzzing.

The next morning, while I was getting dressed to go to dim sum brunch, I saw that I had a bruise on my neck, courtesy of a long, hard kiss from Mr. LQ. There were some scratches at the base of my throat -- not from Mr. LQ but from my cat Nora, who forgets herself and loves her human a bit too fiercely at times. And of course, the zits were still there. But I didn't look haggard. I sure didn't feel haggard. I felt just fine.

I haven't cried since.