It happens when you least expect it.
It must be a law of nature that things happen when you least expect it. Or a law of human nature, anyhow, that when you're looking for someone and needing someone, you never find them. You're too positive that you know what you want, and what you want is your own ridiculous dream.
But when you stop looking, when you put out of mind your ideas of just who you're looking for and what they'll be like, you open yourself to possibilities, and that's the only way it happens. After all, you really don't want what you already know. You have to make room for someone else, a different person, with a different mind, who feels things differently than you. When you stop looking, you open yourself for love and attraction to find new ways into your heart and change you. And sometimes they change you to make you more of who you really are.
Sometimes, in the darkest night, the dimmest, most unsuspected glow becomes a blaze, and before you even know what's happening, you're consumed in an overwhelming light.
That's how it was for me on that gloomy November day when I stopped by my bank to see about removing my ex from our joint account. It was five months since she'd left, and it had taken me that long to accept that it was over and that there'd be no reconciliation, no mending of fences, no compromise. We were incompatible, she'd told me, and I remember how our counselor had simply sat there and looked at me after Dana had made that remark, waiting to see if I had anything left to say. But what can you say to that? I suppose that was the end, right there, and we all knew it. Dana just didn't want to be with me anymore. Whatever I'd had to offer her wasn't enough, or wasn't right, or God knows what.
I don't want to recount the anguish that followed, the months of devastation, loneliness, despair, depression. Let's just say that by the time I walked into the bank on that dismal wintry day, I'd graduated to the ranks of the walking wounded, the emotionally crippled and the spiritually destitute. Grief had become second nature to me, something I took for granted, but it looked like I would live.
The clerk who sent me to speak to a bank officer was solicitous, the officer who directed me to Ms. Zamora was glad to get rid of me. I sat in Ms. Zamora' cubicle and waited for her as the subdued sounds of the bank murmured around me, a million miles away.
Ms. Zamora was young, young enough to be a daughter, and that didn't help my mood. She was neatly dressed in a brown skirt suit and very femmy blue blouse with a ribbon at the throat; wavy black hair that fell past her shoulders, and a pair of glasses I knew were supposed to make her look more businesslike, but only seemed to accent her coy femininity to me. She had the face of an angel on the body of a woman, and while most of me still mourned, some part of me noticed.
But despite all that, she projected an air of expertise and efficiency, from her sensible business heels to the ends of her perfectly manicured but colorless nails. She was a young woman who had had learned how to play this man's game: cool, professional, organized.
"Hello, Mr. Townes." She smiled as she walked in and gave me a firm handshake. "I'm Anamaria Zamora. How may I help you?"
As yet I wasn't really aware of anything special about her. I registered that she was beautiful just as I registered that she was young and female, but all that was of no real interest to me in the condition I was in. Beauty was something like sunshine or laughter, something for other people to appreciate. To me, she was just another bureaucratic functionary I had to deal with in this prolonged and difficult sweeping up of my ruined life.
"I have a joint account with someone I'm no longer with," I said lamely. "I'd like to get her name removed from my account."
The briefest cloud passed over her face. "Do you have your account number?"
I gave her my checkbook and she flipped it open and typed in the numbers.
"You shared this account for some time," she remarked.
"Yes," I said. "We did."
She typed in a few more numbers and said, "I'm sorry."
I thought it an odd comment for a bank officer to make, and I watched her as she scrolled around the screen for a bit, a look of concern on her face; a look of more concern than my simple request would seem to warrant. She seemed genuinely upset.
"The easiest thing," she said. "Would be for her to come in and remove her name herself."
She slid her eyes over me. "Would that be possible?"
"I don't know," I said. "We're not exactly speaking."
She nodded grimly and bit her lip. "Then the next best thing would probably be for you to open a new account in your name only, and transfer your funds. Does she have any money in the present account?"
"No. Well, it's hard to say. You know how it is with couples. Everything gets tossed into the common pool. There's some complications though. Some auto-pay things I need to change, and the matter of savings."
I spelled out for her what needed to be done, and as I spoke I realized how involved it all was. I didn't want to screw Dana over, but I didn't want to be paying her bills anymore either. Our finances were surprisingly complicated for a couple who had as little money as we did, and at a certain point Ms. Zamora took out a pad and paper and started taking notes.
And at another certain point, I realized she was going far and beyond the call of duty. For some reason, she seemed to be getting personally involved in my story and reacting with a lot more sympathy than I'd expected. She was honestly trying to help me.
That made me glace at her desk, looking for clues to her personality. It was very neat and organized, with just one framed picture of an older couple on a cruise ship, smiling, their arms around each other. Her parents, no doubt. No picture of a husband, no kids. It seemed unusually forlorn.
I tried to catch a glimpse of her left hand as she typed. No ring. But was that a pale band where a ring had been? She was naturally dark, so it was hard to say.
In the end I couldn't help myself. "You're not married?" I asked boldly
I was still wounded enough that I didn't think the question especially inappropriate.
A tight smile, just this side of grim.
"Separated," she said. "Two months today."
Now I did feel stupid. "Oh," I said. "I'm sorry."
And I was, because after working with me for fifteen minutes to arrange my own financial split, I really had no business asking. And because it suddenly reminded me that mine wasn't the only broken heart in the world.
She stopped typing and took off her glasses and put the heel of her hand to her eye.
"I'm sorry." She reached for a tissue. "It's silly. Forgive me. We just have to-"
"No," I said. And without thinking I reached over and took her wrist. "No, that's okay. I understand, believe me. And after all you've done for me. This must be so painful for you."
"No, it's stupid. It's silly. But it just happens to be my birthday today too, and—"
She laughed at herself, or tried to, then waved me off and stood up.
"I'm sorry, you'll have to excuse me for a second. I'll be right back. I just need a moment. Please, help yourself to some coffee, I— Oh God, this is so embarrassing!"
She hurried out of the cube and I watched her go, for the first time seeing her as a person and trying to imagine the kind of man who could let something like that go. She was indeed beautiful, very well put together and youthful, and obviously sensitive and intelligent.
God knows what kind of weird things go on between two people in an intimate relationship,but it was hard for me to imagine what kind of flaw she might have that would lead to a break-up. Was she a clinger? A babbler? Too pushy? A nag? Bad in bed or non-sexual?
The spirits of banking propriety might strike me dead, but I knew that last one was false. There was an aura of sensuality about her, even in her grief.
I knew it with a small sense of shock, that Anamaria Zamora was a hellion in bed, or would be if treated properly. That innocent beauty, that tight leash of control she kept herself under, her emotionalism, that overripe body...
And just as shocking was my own reaction, the first response I'd had towards a woman since Dana. I could hardly believe it.
There are women you see who are gorgeous, or sexy, but you know there's nothing inside and they're not for you. Their beauty or demeanor speaks a different language than you do, and you know any attraction is all superficial and shallow. They're basically all packaging with no prize inside.
And then there are women who seem to speak in some secret tongue, who crackle with some electric tension or energy on your special frequency: sexual tigresses in lamb's clothing. They're not for all men to see; nature's worked it that way. There's a special matching that goes on, a fitting together. It takes a certain man to see inside and see that spark and sizzle, where another man just sees a young bank officer or female employee.
Not that I had any plans on Ms. Zamora at that time. I was totally out of meeting-someone mode, let alone even considering a date. Besides, we were about as unlike as it's possible to be: me an older, cynical and disillusioned chemist barely holding onto his dead-end job, and she a young, up-and-comer in the buttoned-down world of banking and finance. She was sweet, she was helpful and sympathetic, she was gorgeous, and she was in pain, and that's all I knew.
But that was enough for me to get my coffee and wait there in the little room where the coffee pot was, right outside the woman's bathroom.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Townes. I'm so embarrassed," she said when she came out. "If you like, I can have someone else help you."
I poured another cup. "How do you take it?"
She smiled. "I really shouldn't. They don't like us drinking at our desks. And please, you won't say anything?"
"About what? That some bankers have feelings? And you can stay here and drink it with me. In the interest of customer relations."
She smiled. "Then two creams, please. I don't know why I got so upset. For two months I've managed to function without letting it get to me."
"Maybe I just look as miserable as you feel?"
Another smile. "No, no. But there's something about you. like I feel like I know you. And I don't do I? I mean, I haven't seen you in here before?"
"No. I would have remembered," I said. "And by the way, happy birthday."
"Thank you. Maybe that has something to do with it. I hope you know I'm not normally like this, honestly."
My turn to smile. "No? And what are you usually like?"
I won't go into the rest of that coffee-room conversation, nor into what we said sotto voce in between finishing my official banking business back at her cubicle. Anamaria pulled strings and threw levers and got my business done. We drained the joint account of all but twenty dollars, effectively solving the problem, and in between doing that, we talked.
It was a strange talk, a dual confession of the pain and suffering we'd endured at the hands of our ex's, and it seemed to flow out of both of us as if at last we'd found someone who could truly understand our trauma and grief. We talked like long-lost siblings who fit one another perfectly, even in our rhythms and speech patterns and body language, and we seemed to know each other's each and every thought and feeling before they were even expressed.
I can't explain what made me ask her out as if it were the most natural thing in the world. It was like I knew she could read my mind and so I'd might as well put my thoughts into words. She demurred at first as I knew she would, but strangely for me in my wounded condition I wouldn't be put off. I begged and cajoled and teased and pleaded till my persistence had its way and she agreed.
No, she wouldn't give me a weekend night, but a weekday would do. She'd let me take her to a film on a Thursday, but only if I met her in the lobby of the theater. She didn't have to say that she didn't want to have to explain this old man with his salt-and-pepper beard to her parents, which was where she was living since her break-up. And it was understood that we were going out together only for therapeutic reasons, to soothe each other's grief and commiserate over our losses.
Or at least, that's what I pretended it was. And she did too. But on a first date like this, who can be sure of what motivates us?
I was nervous waiting for her, but once she showed up, striding a little near-sightedly into the lobby, we seemed to take up just where we'd left off at the bank: the same easy familiarity and lack of self consciousness. It was obvious that we weren't suitable for each other, with me being so much older than her and my life seemingly running down as hers was just beginning, and maybe that's what made being together so easy. There was no pretension, no need to impress and no façade to maintain; no sense of sexual threat. Or promise, for that matter.
Away from the bank she was surprisingly girly in jeans and boots and a bulky sweater. It was a sweater to cuddle in and be soft and protected, whose cowl neck served as a not so subtle barrier between us. And yet her jeans were maybe a bit more snug than was seemly in a casual date, and her sweater did little to conceal the ripe thrust of her breasts, and even exaggerated them somewhat.
I noticed too that her nails were painted, something she'd have to undo before she went to work tomorrow. Was that just for me? Or something any girl would do when going out?
The movie was The Boarders, a bizarre Eastern European art thing about a mother and daughter living in a surrealistic apartment building where they were alternately terrified and seduced by the bizarre inhabitants. I suppose it was some allegory about the communist past or something, but I didn't know that when I chose it.
At first Ana and I couldn't stop whispering and even giggling like two adolescents. She needed popcorn, unbuttered, and a diet Coke, and I teased her about that until a patron turned and asked us to please be quiet. Then we settled down and sat rapt: Ana's eyes glued to the screen, and mine scarcely able to leave her. She watched the film with wide eyes, her painted nails dipping into the popcorn every so often and lifting automatically to her mouth. She gave herself over totally to this confusing movie that concerned events she was too young to understand, pulling my sleeve and whispering a question when something needed to be explained.
We entered into that dual trancelike state that movie theaters so often engender, both of us absorbed into someone else's story. It's strange to admit, but I was attracted to her and strongly, but not sexually. There was something about her I wanted more than just sexually. Something about her femininity and softness and beauty, her curiosity and openness and the way she whispered those questions to me, the feeling of her trust and reliance. I wanted to protect and shelter her and heal her pain.
At one point in the film, a male tenant of the apartment house sadistically rejects the daughter and Ana instinctively pressed against me as if cowering, her breast pushed against my arm. I glanced at her and saw tears in her eyes, but all I could do was offer her a clean napkin free of popcorn salt
But when I turned back to the screen, I felt tears gathering in my own eyes too, and my throat get constricted and tight. That's not like me. I didn't understand this turmoil inside, this angry sadness.
The scene turned into a near rape, the tenant pushing the daughter down, manhandling her and ripping off her clothes in a way that made me cringe for shame at my gender. But at this Ana's tears seemed to stop and she sat silent and wide-eyed in horrified fascination at what was almost certainly going to be some very non-consensual sex. It was only when the scene faded to black that we both realized how tightly she'd been gripping me.
She dragged herself back to reality and made an awkward joke to excuse herself, but I'd seen that fascination in her eyes, both excited and repelled, paralyzed in a state somewhere in between.
It was just a movie moment. I wouldn't realize its significance till later. But I noticed it.
After the movie I suggested a drink, but she deferred. "Orrin, I can't. I have work tomorrow."
She seemed honestly sorry, and that was some consolation, so I gave her my arm and we started walking back to where she was parked.
The theater was in a little urban mini-mall, strings of stores standing cheek to cheek and all the windows made up for Christmas. We didn't walk so much as stroll or amble, in no particular hurry to reach her car. Ana wore a long red scarf and matching stocking cap that only further broke my heart. It made her look so young.
We stood by her car in a metered lot, and the harsh vapor lights made her look even more fragile and delicate, like some frail and injured bird. It was starting to snow, stingy little pellets of frozen sleet, nothing like the soft snowflakes of Christmas cards.
"Thank you for the movie," she said. "It was fun. And you were right: it's good to get out of the house."
"Then we'll do it again," I said. "I enjoyed it too. I like being with you."
She laughed a little and played coy. "You're just saying that. Trying to get some free samples from the bank."
"No, I mean it. There's something about you. Being with you is so easy, so effortless. You're different from anyone I know."
She smiled. "I like being with you, too. You make me feel safe and looked after. Like you could be my big brother or uncle—
"Oh!" she caught herself. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way."
"No, that's okay," I said. "I'll be for you whatever you need: brother, uncle, daddy. Second cousin twice removed..."
Ana smiled, and we fell silent. The gusty wind shook the plastic evergreen garlands that had been strung between the street lamps, tossing the styrofoam snowmen and candy canes that hung from it and making them dance. Between us was thick web of unspoken emotion that had sprung up with almost alarming speed and ease, tangling us up together before we even had any idea of what to make of it.
And though my affection for her hadn't yet turned into full-blown physical desire, I had no trepidation about saying what I said next:
"You know, the worst part is the physical loneliness. The empty rooms, the empty bed, the empty nights."
She turned to me with her key in her hand and I felt her own confused need coming off her as if in waves. I felt it almost as a physical force, as if our bodies were seized by some magnetic energy that was trying to pull us together, and we had to fight to resist it.
Ana put her mittened hand on the back of my neck and leaned her forehead against mine in a gesture both innocent yet intimate, and filled with aching sadness.
"Orrin, you don't want me for that. I'm not a good lover, and especially not now so soon after..."
She let her voice trail away but kept her head pressed against mine.
"But you feel it too, then?" I asked. "You feel the attraction?"
"Yes." She nodded against me. "I like you, Orrin. I like you very much. But I'm not the one you want. Trust me."
She turned reluctantly away and unlocked her car door, then turned back and faced me again.
"But if you could— If you could just hold me for a second?"
I stepped up to her and took her in my arms and she embraced me; clung to me is maybe a better word. And despite our layers of clothes and thick winter coats and our gloves and her scarf, I felt our bodies meld together as if they'd been designed for it. Her breasts met my chest and yielded, and her thighs pressed close against mine.
And I knew that if at that moment I were to tilt her face up and kiss her with what I was feeling, there would be no way she could resist.
It was just a hug, a friendly hug, yet never was there a hug that contained more sexual tension and aching potential than that simple embrace. She didn't move against me, didn't suggest or invite or do anything, but suddenly the true depth of my desire for her rushed over me like a wave and left me dizzy.
But I would not do that to her. Not yet. It was too fast, too confusing, and these feelings were too special, beyond the crudeness of simple sex.
She released me and got into her car, keeping her eyes down to avoid mine. She started it up and put on her belt, and with one last little wave of her mittened hand, pulled out of her spot and drove away, and the snow and the night took her.
Chapter Two
I was a chemist and biochemist up until a few years ago. I was a troubled child they tell me, moody, quiet, and always vaguely dissatisfied; driven by a strange and quiet hunger to know and to master. I could have easily come to self-destruction as a teen and adolescent, as so many of my friends did, but instead I was pushed by a stubborn curiosity and a need to know into science and literature. I wanted to know who I was and what I was doing here and what these feelings meant, and while I was no stranger to drugs and alcohol and the dissolute life, I knew there were no real answers there, only more questions.
I was quiet, driven, and intense, and I wanted answers. I needed to figure things out, one way or another. It seemed like the only worthy goal in life
These days I see all these new parents frantic to give their kids a leg up and make them intelligent by buying them books, and apps, and videos, and it makes me smile. You want to make your kids smart? Make sure they're unhappy. When you're unhappy, you spend all your time trying to figure out why.
I read a lot. And when books and literature proved a dead end, I put my mind to science, to the biochemistry of the brain. I wanted to put myself at the juncture where blind, unfeeling matter somehow arranged itself to create life and awareness, the miracle of consciousness, a new dimension to the other four. More than any other problem in science, this was the place where the miraculous happened, and I wanted to be there in the thick of it.
But things are simple when you're young. On the way to my goal, life tripped me up and battered me around. I had experiences. I fell in love, several times, and got burned. I knew joy and heartbreak and frustration and depression. I never finished my Ph.D. People I loved died, and new people came into my life. I got caught up in all the complications of life, and life had its way with me: bitch-slapped me and put me through the wash. In the end nothing was clear.
I ended up working in one tiny specialized corner of biochemistry, teasing apart the secret life of plants, far from area I'd dreamed of. I became disenchanted with this way of knowing, this trivial, niggling, molecular bean-counting. I began to despair that science could ever tell us anything.
And so I returned to the humanities; to the far edges of the humanities, the pseudo-sciences of astrology, mythology, religion and spirituality; esoterica, legend, lore. These things were true with a different kind of truth than I'd found in science. These were emotionally true. They felt right. I began bringing my mythology books to work, my books on primitive religion and the history of God. My work suffered as I lost interest.
And then science and I parted ways and all went downhill. Laid off in a department reorganization and feeling the lack of my Ph.D., I couldn't summon the will to pursue another position in biochem. I immersed myself in studies of magic and spirituality and began writing and contributing to internet sites and magazines.
There are many fools and much nonsense in the field. But there among the shards of garbled quantum physics and misunderstood neuroanatomy are a few pearls of wisdom, and more importantly, a new (or rather, old; very old) kind of truth to give light and depth and savor to life.
All this is by way of saying that as Ana drove away, I stood in that snow-blown street and felt the dark levers of heaven creaking in the night; celestial gears engaging as our two mechanisms found a way to enmesh; chains tightening, belts snapping into place.
Such things exist if you believe they do, and they were as good a way as any to explain what I felt happening between Ana and me. There was something big and important working between us and drawing us together with an inevitability that I could feel but not yet explain.
I gave Ana her Friday evening and her Saturday too. When I called her on Sunday, her younger sister Alex answered and told me she was in church.
Well why not? I'd already seen the crucifix around Ana's neck and accepted it as part of who she was, and just because I was a cynical atheist with classical neoplatonist leanings didn't mean I expected her to be. Also, the thought of her kneeling in a black lace mantilla with candle light sprinkling that earnest and innocent face, in a gown cut low enough to reveal what I knew would be an insanely overripe and sumptuous cleavage, was by no means unpleasant to contemplate.
In fact I found a deep satisfaction in the idea of Ana's Christianity, because just as I knew she'd have a fresh and devastating cleavage, I knew that her brand of Christianity would be of the tender and loving kind, intensely motherly and female, the kind that honestly forgives and comforts and opens itself to embrace the sinner. Because there was no doubt in my mind that despite her sweetness and purity, she would make an even bigger sinner out of me.
And wasn't that more than half the attraction right there?
Surprisingly, Ana returned my call later, probably after her family's dinner. I hadn't expected her to call back, mainly because I'd just called to chat and had told her sister it was noting important. But apparently Ana wanted to chat too, because we were on the phone for more than an hour.
At first, after the initial small talk ended, she wanted to talk about her pain, her hurt and uncertainty, and from the way she talked it seemed obvious that she had no other shoulder to cry on. I don't know if she was fishing for reassurance, but that's what she got from me. I couldn't help it. I honestly couldn't imagine where a man could find fault with her.
She cried for a bit but I made her laugh. I got her to forget her sadness enough that she excused herself to get a glass of wine, and then another, and the wine and her gentle tipsiness built a kind of shelter around us. A special, intimate space for just us two.
Ana made me high. Talking to her, I wasn't myself. I was funny, I was encouraging, I was positive. I thought I was being that way just to cheer her up, but no. Something in her drew it out of me. Not just her hurt and pain, but something in the way she was made me want to comfort and protect her. It wasn't that she was especially needy or solicitous; it was just something about her.
It was the same quality that allowed me—encouraged me, even—to be so honest and straightforward with her.
"You need to sleep with me," I told her at one point. "You really need to let me make love to you."
That's the kind of thing I meant. I would never have said something like that to any other woman. With her it just felt like I was advising her to get more exercise. It was a statement of fact.
"Oh no, Orrin. I could never do that. That's a bad idea."
She answered me in the same open and objective way I'd done with her. But now she went further.
"That only messes things up for me, like it messed things up with Ethan."
Ethan was her ex.
"How did it mess things up with Ethan?" I asked.
It was an intensely personal question, and I knew it. But I really wanted to know what made him leave her. And I also wanted to know just how personal I could get.
"It's just hard for me," she said. She hesitated, but it was only to find words. "I guess I'm too demanding or something. Or unresponsive. He said I didn't respond like other girls. He said he could never please me because I'd never let him. He said I didn't co-operate, so after awhile he stopped trying. And I think that was the end. He found someone else."
"You never told me that," I said.
"Why would I? It's too embarrassing, and too painful. I've never told anyone."
Suddenly she snapped at herself. "And I don't know why I'm telling you this now. Why do I keep on embarrassing myself in front of you? I hardly know you!"
"You know me, Ana," I said. "You know me so well it scares you. And you tell me things because you know you can trust me. I'm your complete opposite. I'm so opposite to you it's like telling things to a tree."
"No," her voice was soft with contrition. "It's nothing like telling it to a tree."
We went out again Wednesday night. To the movies again, to a movie neither of us really wanted to see. I ate popcorn out of the box she held on her lap, and if she understood the symbolism, she didn't show it. Popcorn gone, I put my hand over hers on the arm rest and she didn't move. At a not-particularly-shocking shocking moment in the movie, she jumped and grabbed my hand. I laced my fingers through hers and left them there.
Whether she was so wrapped up in the movie that she really didn't notice or whether she was just faking such intense concentration, I don't know, but I've never felt someone need her hand held as much as Ana did. At a not particularly sad sad part of the movie, I saw her crying.
The levers creaked, the stars enmeshed there in that dark theater as they had out in the street and under the sky.
I took her hand again as we left the movie, and she didn't object. She didn't say anything, and neither did I. We walked to her car in silence, and there I let go of her so she could get her keys. She unlocked her door and turned to me and said, "Thank you", and that's all she said. Again I stood in the street and watched her drive away.
I lived in a small apartment in a coach house behind an old building. It was small and pretty dilapidated, but it was in a great neighborhood that was rapidly being rehabbed, close to the lakefront and the zoo, and surrounded by hip and trendy bars and restaurants that sprung up and changed hands with alarming speed. I stayed out of those for the most part, but the feeling of life and bustle on the streets was palpable, and something I always enjoyed.
To get to my place you went down some obscure stairs to a big iron gate painted Chinese red. That led to a dark passage under the building that brought you to a small cement courtyard, then it was up a long flight of stairs and into my place: 2 bedrooms, living room, kitchen and bathroom, all old and unimproved, but perfect for my use.
I had shackles fixed to the doorway that led to the bedroom, and on the lower sides of the jamb too, at ankle height. There were more shackles affixed to the walls in the living room: one behind and above the sofa, and a set lower down on the wall near the space heater too. There were chains and clips on the headboard and frame of my bed, and though they were dusty now from lack of use, I still kept them. A box beneath the bed held most of my gear, my cuffs, stretcher bar, sex toys and the like. They were probably dusty too. Needless to say, I didn't have much company.
I'd tacked up esoteric charts and posters in my living room so I could sit there and study them, or just look at them and dream. There was an astrological wheel showing the properties and relationships of all the signs, a Kabalistic Tree of Life, a simplified chart of the Tarot with all the trumps and court cards explained, and a drawing of the celestial spheres as envisioned by the Neoplatonists.
I studied these the way I used to study the big Periodic Table of the Elements that dominated another wall, but instead of looking for trends in ionic size or density or melting points, I now looked for relationships between types of human and the astrological sign, or between changes of all sorts and the Kabalistic sephiroth, the manifestations of divine energy. I'd look at the celestial spheres and plot the soul's journey from Saturn (natural law or limitations) down to the sphere of earthly existence, a journey it would have to retrace on the body's death.
Did I believe in this stuff? No. Not in the way I believed in my Periodic Table, as being factual and testable and predictive. But I believed it in another way, as putting a human lens over the madness of existence and presenting another way of understanding.
Ana was a Scorpio. And I'd pulled the exact time and place of her birth out of her and plugged that into an app that determined her natal horoscope.
Her moon was in Cancer, and Capricorn was her rising sign. That meant she would be intensely passionate and emotional inside, but in a quiet and unobtrusive way. She would present herself as reserved, efficient, and ambitious, but inside she'd be a roiling stew of emotion.
So you can see now what I mean about believing this stuff and disbelieving at the same time. I wouldn't wager anything on her natal sign's being an accurate predictor of her true nature. But once I'd read all this, can I say it didn't influence the way I acted with her?
Once you read your daily horoscope, even if you think it's complete bullshit, can you say it doesn't change your expectations for the day, maybe just a little bit?
It was on a Tuesday night that she finally came over.
She called me about 7, very upset. Ethan had called her and said some hurtful things, and she wasn't handling it well. She needed to talk to me, face to face. I suggested a bar downstairs, but no, she didn't want to talk in a bar. She wanted to come over. She wouldn't stay long. She just had to see me.
I had to buzz her in when she got to the gate, and when she got upstairs, she barely commented on the place; she was too desperate to talk. She was wearing what must be her standard after-work outfit: jeans and a blue sweater, high boots with sensible heels.
"Don't mind the place," I said as she entered. "Bachelor's quarters and all that. Sit, sit, and tell me what happened."
Ana took off her leather car coat and perched tentatively on the edge of my sofa. She began worrying the shredded tissue she held in her hands.
"It's Ethan. He called me. He said some really terrible things! It's bad enough that he doesn't love me anymore, but does that mean he has to hate me instead? Why would he say those things? What did I ever do?"
I offered her a drink but she declined. She didn't want tea either, but I went and put the kettle on anyhow. She just wanted to sit on the edge of that sofa with her knees pressed together and shred that helpless tissue when she wasn't blotting her eyes with it. I brought out the box of Kleenex from the bathroom and set it down for her.
"What did he say?"
"He called me a frigid bitch. He said no man could ever love me because I was a frigid, self-absorbed bitch. He told me he thinks I might be gay, a lesbian. He'd told me that before, too. Why would he say those things?"
"To hurt you," I replied. "He thinks you didn't respond to him. To some men, that's a huge insult to their masculinity, a metaphorical kick in the balls. They take it as a grave and personal offense."
She shook her head in disbelief and finally put the shredded tissue down and took a fresh one. "I just don't know," she muttered. "I just don't know."
"Well?" I asked. "Were you?"
"Was I what?"
"Unresponsive."
She opened her mouth then closed it. "I don't know. I don't think so. I mean... I don't know how other women are, or how they're supposed to be. I wanted to be good for him. I did whatever he wanted. But when he touched me... I don't know. It was like he was following a script: touch me here, touch me there... "
"So you never felt connected?"
"Connected?" she echoed. "No, I guess not. It was different at first, but once we got married... I felt like I was just a bunch of buttons and switches, and when he pressed this button, I was supposed to do this. When he threw this switch, I was supposed to feel that. But I didn't feel much of anything, and the less I'd feel, the more I'd worry, and that would make me feel even less.
"He'd get mad. He'd deny it, but he'd get angry at me, and he'd make the same kind of sound in his throat he did when our old car wouldn't start."
She looked up at me in sudden realization. "That was it," she said. "I felt like a car with him, an old car that wouldn't start. But I couldn't help it."
The kettle whistled and I went into the kitchen and made two cups of tea and brought them into the living room.
"You know that's not the way it's supposed to be?"
"No. I didn't know. Ethan was all I really knew. I mean, I had boyfriends before. But they were just ...boyfriends."
How disconcerting that my mind chose this moment to fixate on Ana's breasts. This sweater was thinner than what she wore when we went to the movies, and tighter too. She was always chesty, but in this sweater her breasts were a feature, a bosom whose weight and succulence I could just feel with my eyes. They pressed against the sweater with an eager insistence, as if they had a mind of their own.
I was suddenly inspired. "Here. Give me your hand. I'll show you."
She put her hand out before she asked, "What are you doing?"
"We're going to see how frigid and unresponsive you are. A simple test."
I took her hand and held it face up, then rubbed my thumb over the palm. Her hand lay in mine like a little bird, warm and relaxed, the skin wonderfully soft and tender. She flinched at first, but didn't pull away. I could feel her nervousness.
"Just relax it, Ana. I'm not going to hurt you. How does that feel?"
"Feels nice," she said. "Kind of tickles."
"Uh huh." I lightened my touch and kept on stroking. "The palms of our hands can be very erotic zones, or they can be dead as door nails. Did you know that?"
She gave a nervous giggle. "No. I didn't."
I smiled, thinking there were probably lots or erotic zones Ana didn't know about.
"Yes," I said. "It depends on the people involved, and their sensitivity to one another."
She nodded dumbly.
"What's that picture on the wall behind you?" she asked. "The print."
I knew which one she meant but I turned and looked anyways.
"That's Persephone, Demeter's daughter in Greek mythology. She's being abducted by Hades, the god of the underworld, and taken down to the land of the dead."
In the picture, Hades had picked her up and held her with his arms around her ass, and was carrying her off as Persephone struggled so vehemently that one breast was exposed.
I was still caressing Ana's hand, and her eyes had a glazed and distant look.
"Oh! I've heard of her. Demeter was the goddess of wheat, and it's because Hades locked her up in hell that all the plants die in winter. But Persephone comes back every spring."
"Yeah. That's one interpretation."
Ana looked at me.
"Another interpretation is that Hades took Persephone down into the underworld to fulfill her destiny and make a complete woman out of her, that before he kidnapped her she was just a frivolous youth. But when she came back, she had a woman's knowledge and depth and was suited to be a goddess."
She turned wondering eyes to me. "I'd never heard that," she said. "How did he do that?"
I smiled and squeezed her hand. "Attention down here, Ana. We can talk later."
She brought her eyes back to her hand in mine, concentrating. She was leaning forward slightly, knees together, gazing intently as my thumb moved over her palm. She probably wasn't aware of how her breath was coming faster and more shallow, but I was.
For a time we just sat like that, almost mesmerized, both of us lost in this moment. And then she gave a little shiver and tried to pull her hand back.
"Oh wow, Orrin. Really..."
I didn't let go. I lifted her hand to my lips and gently kissed her palm and she gasped but didn't pull back. Her eyes were wide, watching me, and I opened my mouth and bit her softly, a soft bite, right on the palm of her hand.
She wasn't prepared for that and in an instant I felt her just start to dissolve, her muscles going loose and slack. She looked at me in astonishment and slowly fell back against the sofa, her eyes glued to me and what I was doing to her hand. I didn't have to look to know she was covered with goose bumps.
"Oh, Orrin! I think you should stop. I think that's enough—"
But I wasn't listening. I scooted over to the sofa next to her and put my arm around her shoulders. I still held her hand, but not like a little bird anymore. I held it captive and I used my body to press her back into the sofa. Ana complied. She seemed powerless to stop me from doing with her what I wanted, and what I wanted was to kiss her.
Her head fell back. Her lips parted, her eyes closed, and in that gesture I felt the power of her surrender, that devastating feeling of a woman's surrender. My lips came down on hers as if she were a drinking fountain and I was there to slake my thirst. She was passive and unmoving, but warm, generous, and inviting. There was nothing hard in my kiss; nothing greedy or demanding or forceful; nothing even especially sexual. Her lips were there and ready to be kissed, and as I'd suspected, Ana was a woman who was born to give, to be taken, to be enjoyed and used.
For such a woman, her husband's rejection must have been devastating, but now I knew she took some redemption from my kiss. The real Ana bubbled slowly to the surface as if awakening from a long slumber, like a sleeping beauty. I could feel the thaw come over her, the cruel shards of ice dissolving in the heat of that kiss, and running down her body like warm water.
I got to my feet and turned, never breaking the kiss, stood and bent over her. I gripped her upper arms in my hands and pressed her back into the sofa to hold her as the kiss deepened. Ana mewled softly and helplessly, but when I released her arms, her hand came up around me to the back of my neck, where her fingers slid into my hair to pull me to her. Her body, soft now and no longer knotted with anguish, arched up to me, offering itself, and I couldn't keep from capturing one of those heavy, meaty breast as it almost pushed itself into my hand, demanding to be taken.
It was like being in a rocket, going from a standing start on the launch pad and blasting into a starry space of pure want and lust. The emotional acceleration made me dizzy, the release of all these repressed hungers poured out of her like a tidal wave, to be met by a flood of my own raging hormones filling me with desire. Ana withstood the raging flood with only a moan deep in her throat, but her body was under no such inhibitions and reacted on its own, her leg coming up and closing over my ass, pulling me down so that I fell on top of her. I heard her gasp in disbelief at her body's own wanton behavior.
This surge of incredible heat caught us both by surprise, and when I pulled back to take a breath, Ana worked her arms in front of her and crossed them protectively over her breasts.
"No, Orrin, no! We can't! Please! I'm not ready. I can't do this. I'm really just not ready."
I backed off and in that moment she scrambled to her feet mumbling some apology, confused and disoriented. She quickly grabbed her coat from a chair and picked up her bag and headed for the door, struggling to get her coat on as she went.
"I'm sorry, Orrin. Really. I shouldn't have come over and bothered you. It was my fault. I thought maybe I was ready but I'm not. I can't. I'm sorry."
I sat there stunned, as confused by this sudden rush of passion as I was about her leaving. It was like a dream.
But then I got up. I knew what I'd felt. I knew what she'd told me in that kiss, in the way she'd urged her body against me. I knew I wasn't the only one on fire, the only one who felt close to meltdown.
I strode to the door and caught her while she was still trying to get her other arm into her coat. I reached around and slammed the door shut and Ana turned to me, her hand still tangled in her coat. A red heat clouded my sight and I could smell her scent, hot and rich and female, the scent of sachet and lingerie drawers and perfume, soft and sweet and giving. I loomed over her and she looked at me with confused pleading in her eyes, yes and the no all muddled up together; fear and hunger, defense and surrender. I grabbed her ass and pulled her against me. I kissed her again.
Let her moan and protest, it didn't matter. My kiss was on her and her mouth fell open to it and her nostrils flared, and despite her twisting and writhing and trying to escape, her hand was caught in her coat sleeve and she was helpless to defend herself. She was like a treasure chest broken open, all her gold and jewels tumbling out. I pressed her shoulders back against the door and leaned on her and only broke that kiss so I could taste her throat.
"Oh no, Orrin! No!" she whined, but her voice was becoming weaker and breathier, her protests less sure. With her shoulders back her breasts protruded even more, as if begging for my touch.
I let go of her shoulders and took both her tits in my hands with no reservation now. I pressed my knee up between her legs almost lifting her off the floor. And there she hung, pinned between my kiss and the hard, unyielding door.
I'm not a rapist. I'm not a molester. But what I was doing had to be done. There was an inevitability about it I couldn't resist—the stars, the planets, some kind of arrangement I couldn't fathom. I held her there and ravaged her till all her resistance faded and she gave in to what I wanted. She pulled her hand from her coat and the coat dangled limply from one arm as she put her hands around my neck and pulled herself up to my mouth in a fever of desire.
When Ana gave in, she gave in totally, and all her passion spilled out as I knew it would. She became frantic for me.
I felt her teeth in her kiss, her darting tongue, her moans and gasps sucking me into her. Ana drew me to herself in just that way. Her need to be taken was something palpable and real, like a feminine sexual vacuum that my body rushed in to fill. And I reacted. I pushed her sweater up, lifting it up till her tits were exposed, insanely seductive in a brief and shadowy, black lace bra of the sort I'd never have imagined she owned. Her nipples were brown and lush behind the lace, and in her eyes I saw panic.
And then she grabbed me. As if I was the only one who could save her from what she was feeling, she threw her arms around me, her coat still hanging from one sleeve.
Mouth to mouth, writhing together against the door, pulling at clothes, hands and lips seeking bare flesh, an avalanche of raw emotion.
"Orrin, Orrin, Orrin!" she chanted, as if we were being torn apart when we hadn't even been together yet. She inflamed me to the point where I did something I thought I'd never do in my life. I picked her up bodily in the old bridegroom's carry, and I took her into the bedroom.
I dropped her on the bed and got on top of her. Buttons popped, zippers came down as we pulled off our clothes. I didn't want to give her even a second to think or reconsider, but even so it occurred to me as we fought to get undressed that she'd come to seduce or be seduced. The lacy black bra was part of a set and hardly the kind of thing she'd have bought to wear to work.
But I didn't even bother with her bra. I no sooner stripped her bare below the waist than I rolled on top of her and her thighs opened in a lewd and impulsive welcome. The feverish kissing never stopped, the grabbing and clutching, and then I was in her, being sucked into that wet and hungry pussy as much as I pushed my way in. Ana planted her feet on the mattress and pushed back. As body met body and she had the all of me, she tore her mouth from mine enough to emit a fierce, sharp cry of pain and triumph and surrender. For a second her legs stretched out and trembled, then closed around me convulsively, locking us together, and Ana wrapped herself around me.
It had all been pre-ordained, from that first day in the bank to this moment right here, right now, we'd been tangled together, victims of the stars or Cupid's arrows; the fates, the strange synchronicities that guide our lives. There was no doubt in the way we fit, the way she molded to me and the way we worked together seeking the same thing, obliteration in each other's bodies. She'd been drowning in sadness and needed rescue, and I was hardly any different. We were there to save each other.
I got an arm under her leg and levered it up so her knee was over her chest, splitting her open so I could reach deeper, and Ana took my face in her hands and looked into my eyes. I could see her pleasure and compliance, and something new: a wicked gleam that enjoyed this rough usage. She was split wide and stretched for me and totally violated, but she wanted it.
"Yes! Go ahead, do it!" she whispered. "Harder!"
I began fucking her so hard the bed shook, and with that the chains clanked against the headboard and briefly drew her eyes. She looked at the chains and then back at me in surprise, and then the surprise faded into a deep, submissive, bottomless look. She raised her arms above her head and gripped the headboard and her mouth went slack and her eyes closed. She was coming, in an amazingly short time and with amazing force, her body tense and then limp as a rag doll, spasms in her vagina, legs twitching.
I stopped, I slowed. Instinctively I grabbed for her wrists and held them down as if she might get away, as if she had the strength.
She turned her head and looked at my hand holding her wrist, then closed her eyes and sank into languorous acceptance, as if there was nothing more she could do.
Now it was my turn to enjoy her with slow, shuddering strokes, torturing us both with that delicious agony. I felt all her most intimate places, all her secrets and desires, all the places her unsuspecting husband had known and failed to appreciate.
I was so excited and so into it that it took a moment for the import of what had happened with the chains and her wrists to sink in, and when it did I almost lost it right there.
As obsessed with her as I'd been, I'd never had detailed sexual fantasies of her. I'd never stopped and imagined what she'd be like as a lover, other than knowing she'd be anything but unresponsive. But now it all clicked into place: just who she was and why there was this powerful attraction; why she didn't respond fully to her husband, why she was filled with such conflict and doubt.
I took her wrists again and held them tight against the bed. I levered my upper body up and looked down at her. Her lips were parted and strands of her disheveled hair were in her face, giving that angelic face a look of wanton sensuality. She was red with the flush of sexual excitement, but her eyes were open and looking at me with a mixture of fear and desire; a dark, glowing amalgam of Yes and No.
I knew that look. The secret submissive. I'd known it. She wanted what she would never dare ask for, from a part of her she would never even acknowledge: hot, needy, passionate, even slutty: the secret sub, the hidden sexual slave, on fire to be taken with all the violence of naked male desire; plundered, fucked, used.
And in her eyes now I saw that she knew I knew. She'd been found out, and she turned her face in denial, trying to hide it in the pillow, trying to hide the shame of her pleasure, but the magical power of her submission burst over me in a hurricane of lust and I couldn't hold myself back.
I know submissives. I know what it's like to find a woman who lives to give herself and open her body and heart and absorb all your wild violence and savage passion, whose pleasure is always mixed with a bit of pain and the ache of surrender. But to find one like Ana, who didn't yet even know what she was, who was ripe for discovery and exploration and development and teaching, was a treasure beyond price.
I looked down at her as she cowered there beneath me.
"I don't think we have to worry about your responsiveness," I said.
"Oh, Orrin! Orrin, please!"
She took my thrusts with a series of little grunts and excited mewls, and I fucked her like I know she'd never been fucked in her life, my pubic bone grinding against her labia, my weight on her, her wrists twisting helplessly in my fists as she tested the degree of her own captivity.
She brought it out in me. She pulled it from me. She milked me with her own greedy little banker's pussy, her neat vice-president's cunt, and I watched her fall into her own writhing, slutty ecstasy, cumming again and yet again, this last time clinging to be and sobbing as that hungry little quim enveloped my ejaculating cock and squeezed me like a mother cuddling her dearest child.
The cum just poured out of me, fierce jets splashing hard and deep, followed by a ball-draining stream of hot semen that poured into her and left me weak and spent. Ana just hung from me like a baby marsupial, legs and arms around me holding herself off the bed, her mouth open and pressed against my shoulder to stifle her screams.
We finally ground to a halt, both drenched in sweat, and she slipped from my body and fell back into the bed, gasping for air. I rolled off her and quickly took her in my arms and pulled her to me. I didn't intend for her to get away in any way, shape, or form, and she was too weak to resist.
Now that it was over, she seemed so frail; her arms so thin compared to mine, and compared to the fullness of her breasts; her features so fine, even in that look of sensual fulfillment and abandon.
"Oh my God, Orrin! Oh my God!"
"Shhh, baby. I've got you now. I've got you."
"What did you do to me? How did you do that? I've never... "
"Don't talk, angel. You don't have to talk. I think we just said it all." I held her closer. I could feel her heart thumping against my chest. "It was nothing. It was everything, wasn't it? We connected. That's what happens when you connect. When you both know."
She pulled back and looked at me, her eyes searching my face. "When you know? What does that mean? When you know what?..."
There was no way I could tell her what I knew. There was no way I could tell her she was a submissive, in bed at least.
And It's just not that simple. One's not a dom or sub like they're a boy or girl, or banker or sports fan. "Submissive" is just a crude way of describing what they want to feel in bed, and even then each sub's desires are different, and may not be the same from time to time. It's a label, and like all labels, doesn't come close to telling the whole story.
Plus, it can be threatening to someone in denial. The word conjures up images of weakness, low self- esteem, servitude, humiliation, degradation. So there was a reason why Ana repressed those feelings. And at this point, how could I be so sure?
"I meant that we know each other, that we're connected that way. We communicate, empathize."
But her face had closed up.
She brushed her hair out of her face and slid out of bed, keeping her back to me..
"It's late," she said. "I really have to go."
"Ana—"
"No, really. I have work in the morning."
"Ana, don't go. I didn't mean anything..."
She stepped into her panties and pulled on her jeans, got her bra on and then sat on the bed while she pulled on her boots.
She stood up. "I like your chains," she said drily. "Do they get a lot of use?"
"Baby—"
But she picked up her coat from the floor and took her bag, and marched to the door. My place is small enough that I could see her pause there from bed, her hand on the door knob.
"I'm sorry, Orrin. I really have to go. It's like I said: I just don't think I'm ready for this. I—"
And she opened the door and walked out.
-To Be Continued-
This story was written by user dr_mabeuse
Header picture by BDSM fetish, Angel Art
