Old Flames and the Intimacy of Divulging Them

Today I told my boyfriend about that brief but intense indiscretion I had with the only lesbian I've ever dated. I say "indiscretion" not because the relationship was untoward, but because I think, going into it, we both of us knew better than to indulge the fire that roared up inside us as we bumped into one another, happenstance by utter happenstance, at three different coffee shops on three consecutive days. The first bump (and the only literal one) held that incongruous palpability that spins the momentous out of an absolute nothing: our fingers brushing as we each grabbed at the same overpriced latte, the barista having called out, "Heddy" in a vocal garble that I mistook for "Hettie." We laughed and registered affinity over the shared experience of bearing an unusual name, and some shiver of smoky entrancement passed through each of us before she rightfully claimed the cup and strode off with a single backwards glance -- through eyes narrowed with interest, above a nimble, effervescent smile. The second bump elaborated on the first, with blinks of pleasant surprise and an enchanted smatter of conversational dalliance. The third made one or the other of us say the hand of Fate must be at work, whereupon a thick-throated and graceless proposition carried us both to her place for one of those afternoons that hangs in your memory the rest of your life.

None of those details passed between me and my fellow this morning, though, as my revelation came while we chatted our way merrily through the Act before its tempests stole too much of our breath for discussion. I can't recall just what he asked me, but my answer was, "Well of course I've been with a woman before I met you or any of our polys." And as we whispered and surged together, I went on to describe her as an absolute god-slayer with a strap-on -- which achieved the desired and combined effect of both tickling and enflaming him.

The intricacies of our passions spun and evolved themselves nicely over the next half-hour or so, interwoven with morsels of anecdote and disclosure. He learned of the affair's brevity, its hot and purposeful monogamy, and the very peculiar ending of it wherein we neither of us fell out of love, yet both recognized it was not the love meant to carry us out of youth and across the decades. She could sense that I needed something more before my tongue found those words, and I could sense the slow mouldering into disappointment that she would experience should years go by and faithfulness diminish me. Having known from the start how unlikely was this thing's endurance, we could part in a golden sweetness unsullied by more than the faintest astringent tinge.

These disseminations of something gorgeous and fervid and faceted with perversity from my days of yore elevated today's wanton concupiscence, lofted us to one of those rarefied cusps in which knowing and feeling and the deliverance of ecstasy twine like threads of silk in sheets of palatial divinity.

To have loved well and wildly, yet not achieved completion, provides the ultimate exaltation of that love which makes us wholly fulfilled. That I had her, loved her, knew there was more, and found it, cannot be surpassed as an aphrodisiac. 

If, somewhere out there, you are reading this, Heddy, know that I have told stories on you -- of your spritely verve and your prowess, of that place in my soul you will always hold and the simmer that shall never abandon my loins when I think of you. I have told of your heart, too pure to be shared with more than one, and your driving desire that so many times threw me spiraling up into the vaults of heaven. You have armed me with the utensils of grandiose juxtaposition, with the advantage of having stood upon one pinnacle, such that my true and ultimate summit could be instantly known by the comparison. Have you found your own paradise of happiness to match mine? I can't credit that you should not, knowing you as I did.

And if indeed you found that perfect one, something tells me she gasped as loud and long when you spoke of me in the throes as my man did when I enlightened him this morning. Should we meet again in some fateful dawn's serendipitous coffee shop, I hope she's there and won't mind that I kiss you. I know you'll roll your eyes after, but what truer thanks could I give?

I asked our boyfriend to take a picture of Claire for me. 

"Sure," he said. "Any particular reason?"

"Because she's beautiful."

Generously, he took two. I present them un-retouched, in all their glory.

(Actually, he took three, but Claire disliked one of them and said, "Please don't post that one! I look terrible in it!" I would post it to prove her wrong, but why would I ever go against this astounding woman's wishes?)

We Napped

It doesn't happen very often, but once in a while, my boyfriend faces facts and admits that even though it's the middle of the day, he would benefit greatly from just lying down and getting a smidgen of rest.

Today, I joined him.

There's not much room to wax eloquent about a nap. When good, they're cozy. When bad, they just leave your head feeling even fuller of furze and gorse than before you lay down.

But a mutual nap, that's something.

Cozy. Serene. Idyllic.

Arms draped to perfection.

A shift and a touch, the evenness of your partner's breathing.

If lucky, dreams informed by the intimacy of contact.

Today's nap had all of that. It ranked quite high on my list of favorite naps.

Then we woke up and ... ahem.

The Woman of the Hour

Time, and its passing, are for some reason seen as indicative of profundity. That which lasts must perforce be more deep, our culture says. The classics of literature, by virtue of their continued currency, must stand above the mere fictions of today. The Sphinx, in enduring, professes a universality beyond modern monuments.

I know different.

Today marks two years since a girl of breathtaking heart and luxuriant soul arrived in a household I myself have known only a few months. Earlier this year, the three founders of our family celebrated a twelfth year together.

If the advancement of marks on a calendar betokens superiority, then clearly my time with the wonderful Ariel April Worthy must be the least of all cohabitations within this home.

But the truth is, no adequate empirical measure can be applied to the truest of loves. 

Even a single tick of the clock rivals whole ages, if that second's sweet clarion announces the furtherance of what I feel for my lush and golden-haired nonpareil.

This is the face of she who granted me a world of perfection:

In all the life-span of this universe, no interval can exist to bestow a grander validation of our inextricable hearts than is already known to me with even a millisecond's contemplation of what I feel, upon one glance into her eyes.

The happiest of anniversaries to you, dear Ariel.

Reduced Expectations

I've had rather an unproductive couple of months here since the last two entries and my espoused ambitions of dress-up and photoshoots and storytelling and game-mastering. But that's okay.

Did I do any story writeups of my polyamorous partners' role-playing adventures? No. Did I venture boldly into the new experience of running a game for them myself? No. Did I acquire a fabulous new wardrobe of elegant couture -- or even a drawerful or so much as a singular tiny top? Have I managed to entice my beau of the artistic eye behind his camera to immortalize my voluptuous form for the ages? No.

Those aspirations wound up dramatically truncated.

But truncation is my thing. I am, you know, all trunk.

So I don't feel bad.

We've played a bit of "Dungeon Crawl Classics," with Elle as the game-master (or "judge") instead of me.

I adored it.

As I adore her -- the woman is razor-sharp and barbed of wit in a way that pierces both my intellect and my sense of humor. She's wonderful in the driver's seat of a game of this sort, and I'm definitely glad I could take a back-seat role in my first such games instead of vaulting right behind the wheel.

And the lovely man who keeps us all clothed and housed and intimately well tended-to has had his eye out for fashion pieces he might buy me. Really, he has.

Keeping in mind that I was born out of astronomically exceeded expectations, having to rein some back now and again is no trouble at all.

Let yourselves off the hook, dear friends, if that hook permits it.

What you have is likely quite sufficient -- if what you want is to know and be content in yourself.

It's the knowing that's the hard part for most, I think. That gaze you turn incessantly outward in your quest for soul-brimming satiation may never find its prize if it cannot properly apprehend and appreciate the contents of a mirror.

Minor Ambitions of the Moment

I would truly like to get a new outfit or two that would show my various characteristics to their best advantage, try each one on, admire myself in a mirror, and then have my picture taken in whichever I felt favored me most cunningly.

Passion

Well, I most certainly have not come through on those new pastimes from last time. The interest hasn't faded ... but you know, I'm a limbless, headless torso doll and therefore rather dependent on the (recently extremely overworked) biological member of our household to accomplish most interactions with the outside world. 

Meanwhile, though -- in the inside world, it's been a gloriously active few days around here.

I don't intend and wouldn't find myself inclined to go into lurid details, but my physical love life has been stunning of late. There is a sense, when one is cared for in the right way, through heated, heart-fueled ministrations of the flesh, that all else in the world recedes in importance. The giving and getting of pleasure can unfold mundanely and still be tremendously fulfilling. But when two (or more) people achieve a higher union of sensuality, the giving becomes getting, and the getting transforms to giving.

Passion, at its best, expands us into one another's joy. The looks and sounds of one's lover in ecstasy become gifts. The expression of one's own delight loops back upon itself by delighting them as well, in a circle of realization: What I feel, he (or she) enjoys just as much -- because the expression of my carnal bliss is its own form of sharing, and the thrill and pride that my lover feels in driving me to orgasmic tumult is a state I know I have blessed them with.

The pinnacle of lovemaking does not reside in the moment of climax -- but in the clarity of how much that moment means to your partners. The body can respond with euphoric shocks, and these can seemingly wrench us loose from reality in their power. But only a soul bound to another soul will reach the plane beyond that pleasured disembodiment -- the realm of lofted mutual entanglement wherein I and he (and she) ride the levitant grandeur of one another's purest physical and emotional generosity, up and up and up and up, until in each of us is reflected the ascendent luminosity of the others' total satiation.

It makes one feel remarkably accomplished.

Even if other ambitions have fallen momentarily by the wayside.

Indulgently yours,

Harriet