Gregorette’s blog

On the old Spark.com Slut test (now it's on OKCupid), there is a question that asks:  What is the shortest period of time you've ever gone between sex with two different partners?  You are supposed to give the answer in minutes, hours, days, years.  If you have had more than one person in bed at the same time, of course, you have to enter all zeroes.

I am chastened to admit, friends, that I have to enter all zeroes.  While I did thoroughly enjoy it, the precise circumstances were...let's say "suboptimal."

It happened like this.  A few short weeks after I moved to Japan, one of the other teachers was going home.  We decided to go to Ebisu (Tokyo) to party the night before accompanying him to the airport.  There were four of us--two men, two women.  We got double rooms in a business hotel near the bar.  Bloody shared rooms.

We went to drink at some bar frequented mainly by gaijin.  I was pounding Guinness and wearing an unthinkably short skirt.  Somehow I started talking to this French guy.  I could speak some French, though I found that the drunker I got, the less French I could remember.  He could speak a bit of English.  We both knew a smattering of Japanese.  Conversation was difficult.  Nevertheless he was quite charming and handsome and showed great interest in putting his hands up my skirt.  My friends moved on to a different bar where I promised to meet them soon.

The French guy--his name, if I ever knew it, is totally irrelevant--had different plans.  He called over this friend of his, a strapping and eager Moroccan fellow with curly black hair, shining dark eyes, and a lascivious smile.  They sat on either side of me in one of the back booths, the Moroccan kissing me while the French guy felt around and discovered that the tiny mockery of underpants I was wearing wasn't going to offer much resistance. 

I don't know, really, how it happened.  One minute I'm talking to a random French guy; the next minute I'm taking two guys back to my hotel.  Once you've made out with both of them in the bar and reached this tacit understanding, there really isn't much more to talk about.  They talked, but then, they had a much easier time communicating as they were both natively fluent in French.  I smiled a lot and took off my clothes.  I don't think they really wanted me for my conversation.

The French guy, it turned out, was too drunk to be very sexually active.  He got my mouth and seemed quite content to keep it that way. The Moroccan, on the other hand, was a force of nature, a sexual hurricane.  He had me on my back, on all fours, on top of him, and he never stopped.  I don't remember how many condoms he used, but it was greater than three.  He needed no rest.  He needed no foreplay.  He needed nothing from me except flexibility, willingness, and the ability to remain awake.  Sometimes the Frenchman would just watch us, and I think he, too, was amazed at his friend's energy.  Once they did switch ends, as I think the Moroccan wanted to at least try the mouth, but that didn't seem to suit them, and they soon went back to their respective positions.

The inevitable happened, of course, which is why it's inevitable.  My friends returned.  The girl I was sharing a room with was, erm, somewhat startled to knock on our door and hear the sounds of not one but TWO men getting hastily dressed and groomed and me going, "Oh, hell."  She actually took it rather well; her main complaint was that she was just really tired and not up for continuing the party.  But the two male friends felt a need (thus proving they were really good friends, although GOD I hated them for doing this at the time) to wait outside until my, mmm, friends left, and thus the humiliation sort of drug on and on.  Oh, heavens.  After all the men had definitively gone, I apologized profusely to my roommate, who mostly just found it hilarious. 

A couple of weeks later, I was talking to her and she said, "Listen, I don't mean to intrude, but...did you actually have sex with both of them?"  I said, "Well, er, yes."

Her eyes gleamed and got bigger and she sort of whispered, "How was it?" 

"Good.  Energetic.  Pretty hot, actually."

"I'm so sorry we came back at such an awkward time.  And I'm sorry I was so tired.  That Moroccan was gorgeous."

What could I do but laugh?

I've never really been attracted to girls, but there are always exceptions.  In this case there was a girl we'll call H.  H was a known bisexual; she had a boyfriend and a girlfriend who knew each other, worked with each other, and had passive-aggressive "I'm jealous--no I'm turned on!  No, I'm jealous!  Nope, turned on!" issues going on all the time.  Those of us who worked with the three of them thought it was hilarious and titillating and fun. 

Now, H was one of the sexiest women I've ever known.  She was lithe and svelte.  She was smart and funny and outgoing.  She was a dancer and a thoughtful person.  She seduced people entirely without intending to, without even trying.

My husband (first husband--I got married very young the first time) worked with me and H and her love triangle.  He was a very jealous, insecure person by nature, and he very much hated seeing me flirt with anyone else, even if that someone was H.

But we did flirt.  I'm a natural flirt, too, and the two of us together were like libido on toast.  We danced together, suggestively, in full view of everyone.  She would lead me back to the kitchen or the walk-in cooler and start caressing my breasts and nibbling at my neck.  I offered no resistance, but I wasn't bisexual myself, and I had no real experience of this kind with women, so I fear I was not as responsive as I could have been.  It wasn't from lack of interest, though.

And so one night, we kissed.  And kissed and kissed.  My husband walked in on us, with my hands around her waist, and her hands on my breasts, mouth to mouth, and he was shocked and appalled and jealous.  You'd think he'd have been more excited about the possibilities than anything, but...no...he put an immediate stop to the fun.  *sigh*

A few months later, at my birthday party, we were all mildly drunk, and H and I were alone in one room talking about some totally random, stupid thing, when all of a sudden, I was gripped by an urgent need to put my tongue in her mouth, and so I did.  After about 3 minutes of mashing, I stopped and breathlessly asked her if it was OK, and she said, "You know about me." 

So, we kept on, and her hands were all over my body, and for once I was reciprocating.  Suddenly, like a scene in a lame porno, H's girlfriend walked in.  Her girlfriend was tall and svelte, another dancer, and a really pretty, feminine type.  I wasn't attracted to her at all, as she lacked the intelligence and wit I found so attractive in H.  However, when you're already extremely turned on and a pretty girl walks up to you and decides to join in the party (and you're also a little drunk) you figure, sure, why not?  So then we had this three-way mash session, hands and tongues all over the place, and things were very sweet and wet and delicious when...

Oh, yeah, my husband...again.  Again he walks in, and again he freaks out.  He walked in on a scene in which three pretty young girls were about to have sex, and he chose the jealousy route.  *sigh*  Jealousy is a wetness killer, a highly absorbent paper towel that takes all that delightful feminine moisture, soaks it up, and throws it in the trash.  Jealousy sucks.

I haven't seen H in years now, but I recently Google-stalked her and emailed her, and we're scheduled to meet soon.  She says her boyfriend is also eager to meet me.  God help me, I hope that means something more than just conversation.

A. and I met in a chat room.  He was Filipino, young (I think 23 when we met, and I was 26 or so), incredibly flirtatious but also very random and prone to saying slightly bizarre things and logging in/logging out willy-nilly.  One second, we'd be talking and flirting; the next minute, he'd say, "Oh, I have to go right now."  I found myself increasingly intrigued by the unpredictable quality of our chats.

Finally, we agreed to meet.  I set a time when I could drive over to Seattle to meet him.  He emailed me to tell me that he already had a hotel reservation (paid) in my name and so forth.  All the plans were laid.  I had never seen his picture, and he had never seen mine.  I asked him what he was thinking getting me a hotel room without us having met--it set off some very scary alarms.  He assured me he had only the best of intentions and that he wouldn't pressure me into anything.  I decided to go and play it by ear.

About a week before I was scheduled to go see him, I was hanging out in the chat room when I got a message (a "whisper"--do they still call it that?) from an unknown guy.  It was the usual thing, and I told him I wasn't interested in talking unless he could come up with something more interesting to say.  And this is what he said: "Hey, so I hear you're my cousin's woman."

"Huh?"  I was no one's woman.  I wasn't dating anyone and hadn't met A. yet, so I was really and truly (offensive gender roles aside) no one's woman.

He told me that there were some things I should maybe know about A. before we met.  For one thing, he said, A. used to be gigolo.  His customers were all women, but they were apparently legion.  A. also used to be in a gang and do crazy shit like blow up his girlfriend's car when he caught her with another man.  A. had changed, though, he assured me.  Now he was serious and hardworking and had been since the birth of his daughter a couple years before.  He said now all A. wanted was to get married and have a bunch of kids and lead a stable kind of life.  But, he said, when you meet him, you'll see all the gang tattoos and the gunshot wound scars and all of it, so maybe you should be prepared.

So...I think for a normal person that spiel would have set off HUGE SCARY PANIC alarms.  Aside from the marriage bit, though, it only intrigued me more.  Tattoos?  Gunshot wounds?  Sign me up!  Plus, you know, if women paid him to have sex with them, oh, that can only be good.

I went off to Seattle to meet A. as scheduled.  It was the first time I saw him, and the first time he saw me.  I thought the date was going rather badly; he was extremely polite (possibly from all the experience as a gigolo--he opened my car door and everything) but there didn't seem to be any chemistry over dinner.  He sort of gawked at me a lot, and I thought, "Oh, I appall him."

Then we went out to a karaoke bar, and he relaxed, and the chemistry got much better.  We had a great time--neither of us sang, but we laughed at the singers and joked and just generally hit it off.  It turns out he was about as unpredictable in person as he was online, and yet much more sincere.  The strongest impression I have of him is that he was a person who really cared about other people.  That didn't match up with the tattoos and the scars, I guess, but I think that deep down that's really who he was.

I let him accompany me to the hotel.  I let him take off all my clothes, and I took off his and admired the extensive tattooing and licked them, every single one of them.  Then I licked the gunshot scars--I believe there were 3.  He licked me and bit me and left garish red marks all over my torso.  He fucked me for hours, and I realized why he had been such a successful gigolo.  It was easy to believe when you were there with him that you were the most gorgeous, most delicious woman on earth and the best sex he had ever had.  He made you feel like you were the only woman that mattered at all, and he never missed a cue, never failed to push the right buttons at the right time.  He was completely devoted to me for those few hours.  I would have paid for it, but I didn't have to.

After several hours of sex, he got a call on his cell and answered.  Suddenly, he had to rush off.  One of his "homies" was apparently in a fight somewhere, got knifed, and needed help.  Without a question or a protest, he rushed off to help him.  Now, that's a good man, I thought.  He promised he'd return after he helped his friend.

I was sitting there watching some stupid TV show thinking he wasn't coming back, as he'd been gone a very long time, when suddenly he walked through the door.  In one fluid motion, he shut the door, took off his shirt and came to bed with me.  He cuddled and nuzzled and caressed.  We had more sex until I was raw and scraped and chafed all over.  Finally we slept, very briefly.

I saw A. only one more time.  It was pretty clear he was after a serious relationship, marriage and a kid, and I wasn't prepared to give that to him, or anyone else, at that time.  We corresponded irregularly, and he finally met a girl who was willing to give that to him.  And all I could think was that she was a lucky, lucky girl.  Men like that--caring, polite, funny, and extremely good in bed--well, it's all a girl could want, really.  Damn. 

I have never told anyone this before.  To my knowledge, this story has remained a secret, a private compact between me and the dirty old man who lived next door.  Aren't y'all privileged? 

Muromachi wasn't quite his real name, but it's pretty close.  His name is utterly irrelevant anyhow, as he is a mere spectator.  I never spoke to him or met him.  I only knew his name from his mailbox.

When I first moved to Japan, I was living in a smallish city in a big, traditional sort of house.  The shower/bath was Japanese in style, which meant that you showered in an open space next to the bathtub, a large open space.  The shower got really steamy as it had no ventilation (and the house was, typically, very cold), so I usually opened the window a little ways.  There was one of those bamboo screens hanging outside the window (and the window itself was frosted glass).  The window happened to open into Muromachi's driveway. 

Oh, so you already know what happened, do you?  You clever fox.

The first time was an accident.  I failed to consider that the space between the bamboo screen and the window allowed an opening, a crack through which, if the window were open, anyone standing to the left of Muromachi's door could see into the shower.  I was in there, happily showering and--oh, this is embarrassing--sort of dancing about as I often do while in the shower.  At some point, I noticed that Mr. Muromachi was standing out there, but he was not looking at me, and I didn't know if he knew I was there.  I am quite sure now that he did.  I was startled and embarrassed and I closed the window.

The next time I was less startled to see him out there.  I am guessing now that he could tell when he saw steam coming out of the window that I was in there, and he found some excuse to come outside and putter with the flower boxes and the car.  This second time, I pretended I didn't see him, and I just showered as if nothing were amiss.

After that, though I continued to pretend that I had no idea he was out there, I...well, I was emboldened.  I had to assume that he liked seeing me naked, that he enjoyed watching me shower...so what the hell, right?  No one was forcing him to stand at precisely the spot in his driveway that gave him a clear view of me.  I put on ridiculous little shows for him.  I would wash in a sort of soapy slow motion that would have been appropriate in one of those soft-core, soft-focus Showtime movies.  Occasionally his wife would scurry out of the house and start griping at him for something or another--probably wondering why he suddenly spent so much time tinkering with the car--and I'd casually move out of sight.

The last time, when I knew I was moving away, I gave him a particularly special show.  I have to guess that it was quite special to him, as he didn't even pretend to look at the car.  He just stood there with the hood of the car up, staring at me.  From the look on his face, you'd have thought he had never seen a girl orgasm before.  I didn't make a big show of not seeing him there watching me this time, for a change, and at the end, I openly acknowledged him with a little blown kiss.  For a second, he hesitated there in the driveway staring at me and looking as if he might come knock on my door.  Instead, he shut the hood of his car as I shut the window, and we went our separate ways.

Once I was 18 and gorgeous.  I was curvy and blonde, and I smiled and flirted and drew people in.  I had this boyfriend, the geek, but he more or less encouraged me to see other people.  I didn't, but when we finally broke up, there was R just waiting.

R was old money, big money, said he was descended from Spanish royalty.  He had the right surname for it and conspicuous cash and a need to be always rushing to the hospital on a suicide attempt.  He also had a nice car and purple Doc Martens, and for whatever reason he not only came to all my poetry readings, he would sit in the middle of the audience, staring at me, with his lips quivering.

I had known R and been attracted to him and been flirting with him for a couple of months.  R and I had the same math class.  I don't remember what math class--whatever involved those stupid matrices.  I invited him to my room to "study" for the upcoming test.  He was sitting at the desk, asking me questions about some math problem I cared nothing about, and I slithered over to him.  I slid myself into his lap, casual-like, and started explaining the problem.  He put his hand on my hip, and I could tell it was shaking.

I turned myself around, straddling him with my breasts all up in his face, and I asked him what was the matter.  I said, "R, old boy, I feel your hand shaking.  Are you alright?"

He didn't say anything.  He just looked at me, his eyes wide and his red, red lips quivering.  I've never seen lips quiver that way.  I kissed him, deep and long.  Then I unzipped his pants and went down.

Afterwards, after I drank him so that his whole face convulsed, I invited him to bed.  I stripped for him, gave him a little striptease and a little lapdance.  He was speechless, and he came to bed...and he couldn't.  He was apologetic.  He was beside himself with apology, and I made him explain himself.

Turns out R was the only guy I ever knew with an actual vagina dentata fear.  You hear about this in your lit classes, of course, but who actually has this?  Don't they teach you in sex ed that vaginas don't have teeth?  He didn't actually think that a vagina could castrate him, I don't think.  But some part of him was afraid that he wouldn't return whole from that journey.

Pretty anticlimactic.  You flirt, you suck, you undress, and then the guy thinks your vagina is going to bite him.  Well, honey, if anything was going to bite you, it would have been my actual teeth. 

He's embarrassed now, so he prepares to leave.  After that kind of scene, you don't really move to stop him. 

On the other hand, those red lips quiver every time he sees you, every time he touches you.  So, maybe...maybe try it again?

But, no, every time is fail, the same problem.  Every time the quivering, the sucking, the disrobing, and every time he stares at the vagina as if it were alien.  This cannot go on, no matter how green his eyes or how red his lips.  This is nothing more than a farce--you can see it played out in French. 

It's nice, though, to make a boy's lips quiver, even if he is deranged.

Hahahahahaha.

Yes, this is mostly true.  I do like to fall in love.  I also like random, uncommitted sex.  Luscious.  I actually suspect that I'm more of the Random Brutal Sex Master but the fact that I am now happily married and that I do so enjoy the feeling of falling in love probably skewed the results.  Still, you might think they would have recognized that no one *seriously* falls in love that many times in a life (15--I wasn't lying about the number, I just fall in and out of love rather quickly and capriciously--yes, I do know that's not Love, and I don't care)...and the number of people I've slept with is still, erm, significantly higher than that.  *ahem*  I don't actually know off the top of my head how many people I've slept with.  Maybe by keeping this blog, I can arrive at an accurate count.  If we're talking oral sex, though...oh, man.  No way I can even remember.

Anyway, test is here.

Your results are in! gregorette, you are...

The Sudden Departure

Random Brutal Love Master (RBLM)

Sweet. Dear. Loving. At Gate 18. Final call. You are The Sudden Departure.

You've been in a lot of serious relationships. More than a few have ended ugly. Uglily. Whatever. Our guess is that you're a really fantastic girl who doesn't really know what she wants, and you've broken a few hearts as a result. You fall for people easily, and you enjoy the feeling of falling in love, but once you're there, either boredom or the old "grass is greener" syndrome sets in. The mind wanders, and with it goes the flesh. And then the toiletries.

We know you're not the classic "love 'em and leave 'em" type, at least not in a purely sexual sense. You have too many serious bonding tendencies for that. But even though you're theoretically looking to settle down, you don't settle long on one person. "Serial monogamist" is probably something you hear a lot. "Emotionally loose" is another way to put it. To the poor guys eating your dust and sniffing your panties, it doesn't really make much difference. Of course, it's not really your fault that people get hurt. You have every right to move on when you choose.

Your exact female opposite:

The Intern

Deliberate Gentle Sex Dreamer

Always avoid: The Backrubber (DGSD), The Gentleman (DGLM)

Consider: The Vapor Trail (RBLM), someone just like you

Once upon a time, when I was very new to Japan and its ways, I was trying to get from the small town where I lived to Tokyo.  I didn't get very far before I found myself out of trains and stuck in an unfamiliar city.  It was cold.  I did not have enough money to get a hotel and still have enough money left to go play with my friends in Tokyo.  So, I made up my mind to just wander the streets that night, explore the town, maybe write in my journal in a coffee shop for a while.  I was seriously all dressed up with seriously no place to go.

First, I met a random Australian guy (what is with Australian guys, anyway?) who told me I was "one sexy bitch" and gave me his CD Walkman that had some CD in it, some song he said would always remind him of me.  I don't remember now what it was, and I never saw the guy again, and I kept walking, only now with music to listen to.  Sadly, it was music I didn't especially like.

Then I was sitting on some stone chairs in a pedestrian area, and this guy walked by.  He was cute, Japanese, very petite.  And he looked at me, and he saw me looking, and he just flashed me the biggest, sunshiniest, most glorious smile ever.  He kept staring at me and smiling, and I gave him my most feminine smile, my flirty smile in return.  He came on over to talk.  I didn't speak much Japanese at all at that time, and he had to piece my story together from words I had to look up in a dictionary.  Once he figured out I was stranded, he became quite concerned for my well-being.  He offered me a place to stay.  Or, rather, he located his friend, another tiny Japanese guy, to offer me a place to stay. 

See, the first guy, Mr. Beautiful, had a girlfriend who was very jealous.  The second guy also had a girlfriend, but I guess she wasn't as jealous.  He told me he had a girlfriend to assure me that he wasn't going to try anything evil if I was sleeping in his apartment. 

Anyway, I let myself get swept up by their solicitousness.  I let this big group of handsome Japanese men, for by then the cell phones had been busy and all of their friends knew about me, this poor, stranded gaijin, and they all rushed to my aid.  I let this guy take me to his apartment and fetch me tea and blankets, and I slept there and met his girlfriend, and I grew to be very close friends with all of them.

I used to hang out with them in their most comfortable settings.  I would go fishing with them, for instance.  Or I would be there drinking with them in a bar.  In almost every case, I was the only woman around, despite the fact that they all had girlfriends.  In almost every case, when they went off to the whorehouse--er, excuse me, "soapland"--I'd be left to just sort of nurse my beer in awkward silence.  They always went in shifts so that someone was still there with me, as they felt it unseemly to leave me completely alone.  Still, awkward. 

Finally, one night, Mr. Beautiful, on whom I had developed a giant crush, asked me what I thought of this, their whoring.  I said, well, it didn't seem like maybe it was such a good thing to do.  And then he really let it spill.  "My girlfriend won't have sex with me." 

"Ever?"

"Well, one time per month."

"Uh, why not?"

"She doesn't like it, I guess.  She says it's painful."

"Painful?  Are you, um, really big or something?"

Giggles.  "Of course not."

"So...what's the problem?"

"I don't know, but she won't.  I love her, but she just won't."

"Does she know about the soaplands?"

"Oh, no, she would kill me."

"Ah, I see.  Oral sex, maybe?"

"Oh, no, not even once a month.  She says it tastes bad."

"What the...?  Well, I think it tastes good."

Giggles all around.

"Seriously, girls aren't all like this.  I like sex.  In fact, I love sex.  I love oral sex.  I love all of it.  And if she loved you, she'd give it to you more often than once a month, even if she didn't like it.  Hell, I only kind of like you, and I'd give it to you more often than that."

More giggles.

"But she'd find out about you.  Already she's jealous of you."

"Why don't you break up with her?  Why do you put up with this?"

"I don't know.  I love her, I guess."

Feh, I thought.  Feh--you may love her, although I doubt it, but she certainly doesn't love you. 

Several of the other guys confessed that the situation with their girlfriends was the same or, in some cases, even worse.  Tetsuo declared that this was exactly why he would never have a girlfriend, because they're all the same, and then you have to feel guilty about the soaplands, whereas when you're single, you can just go and enjoy yourself.

I never did manage to get Mr. Beautiful into bed, and he never did breakup with his girlfriend, but about the same time, I also found myself hanging out regularly with a Turkish guy whom we'll call Ali.  Ali was married to a Japanese woman, too, and I eventually became convinced that he'd only married her so that he could stay in Japan and follow through on his evil plan to seduce every woman in the country.

He told me one night, over beer and the World Cup, that the sex had been good in the beginning but now it was a different story--or, more accurately, there was no longer any story at all.  I made sympathetic noises and turned the talk back to soccer.

A couple of weeks later, I was bumming around the house, cleaning and writing and thinking when Ali called.  He wanted to come over.  He wanted me. 

Huh?  I thought.  This was unexpected.  He had never made overtures in the past, and honestly I would have thought him way out of my league on the physical attractiveness scale.  He was Adonis, and I was, well, just not in that league at all.  Damn--and I was a wreck.  My hair all up in a ragged ponytail, my legs unshaven, my hoodie splattered with paint.

I told him to give me 30 minutes.  I ran to the shower and made quick work of the depilatory process.  I combed my hair and changed clothes.  I straightened up my bedroom.  And then he came, and I thought, "Oh, well, then.  Am I going to fuck a married man?"

The answer turned out to be yes.  We kissed, and it was good.  He produced a batch of colorful condoms from one of his many pockets and took off my clothes.  It was cold in my room, and I had goosebumps all over.  He attempted to cover me as best he could.  I didn't stay cold for too long.

I was a sexual being long before I knew I was.  The sexualization was mysterious to me, unknown, and involuntary.  The summer I turned 12, I spent most of my time daydreaming about my plans to become an astronaut--scheming to get into the US Naval Academy, worrying that my eyes were getting too bad to pilot fighter jets, studying the basic science of rocket engines.  My mind was in space; my body was on earth.  And here on earth, my body gave signals that betrayed me.

I swore men could smell it, could sense the onset of puberty.  I did everything I could to try to hide it.  I wore tomboy clothes.  I walked awkwardly.  I wore incredibly dorky glasses and kept my eyes down.  I tried not to smile.  I didn't want the attention; I hated it.  The worst part is that I really had no idea what it was all about.

Older boys and youngish men would drive past me while I was out walking and make obscene gestures.  I did not know what they meant.  I knew, somehow, that they were obscene, that somehow this was very creepy and weird.  I figured out later that they were expressing their desire to perform oral sex upon my young body.  I tried hard not to smile, not to blush, not to do anything that might encourage them, might make them stop their cars and come back to talk to me.  I tried to forget them, but their faces and their gestures stayed in my mind.  I tried to keep my head in the clouds and my eyes on the ground.

When they did stop and come back to talk to me, it was always unsettling, even when I didn't know exactly why.  "You're so goddamn cute," they'd say, young men (though they looked old to me then), drunk or sober, offering me a ride, offering me a drink, offering me a "good time."  I always doubted very much that their idea of a good time would include contemplation of the life cycle of stars, but I really didn't know what they wanted, except to know that I was pretty sure I didn't want it.

"You're so goddamn cute.  I love the way you walk," they'd say, and I'd do everything in my power to make sure my hips did not move, that there was nothing suggestive about me.  Still they were there, watching my ponytail swing, offering, pressing, gesturing.

The worst one was a man in a beat-up, small yellow car, maybe a Pinto.  He had greasy yellow hair and reddish skin, and he would begin to feature prominently in my nightmares soon after our encounter.  I was walking home from school, wondering yet again why the sky was blue because of moisture, but the clouds, which were dense moisture, were white.  When I was 12, this seemed a very difficult and interesting problem. 

This man pulled over and offered me a ride.  It certainly wasn't the first time such a thing had happened, and I remembered McGruff and kept my eyes averted from him (observing him via my peripheral vision only), my face neutral, and my manner self-assured and curt.  I refused the ride, asserting that I lived nearby but certainly not telling him where.  He kept asking me questions, and I kept standing there with my eyes averted and my face neutral.  Too polite to just walk away--too scared, too.  When it finally seemed that he was about to leave and take my no for an answer, I looked at him.  He had his penis, a vile, purplish thing, in his hand.  At that moment, it appeared to me that he started urinating on himself.  Only the urine was white, a situation with which I was totally unfamiliar.  It only occurred to me many years later what he was doing, what he had been doing the entire time I had stood there talking to him with my head in the clouds and my eyes focused in middle space.

I ran home after encounters such as these and bolted the doors and drew the curtains, panicked.  I stacked books up in front of my windows.  A deep paranoia set in, and it would last for many years.  I think at this point I'm not quite paranoid, but the trust issues are all lined neatly up in place.  If all I was doing to provoke this kind of harassment was walking down the street in tomboy clothes, pondering the clouds, then how could I trust my body? how could I trust the men who seemed always to be watching? 

The fact is that it all became significantly less scary once I understood what was going on.  Sometime after I started to understand, I started to learn how to manipulate it, and to laugh at it.  I never did take to wearing revealing clothing, though.  I only wear clothes that I consider even moderately sexually suggestive in circumstances I can control, where I can control who will see me and what they will see. 

Looking back on it all, with the knowledge of hindsight and the additional wisdom gained from several readings of Lolita, I wonder if Humbert Humbert would have recognized me, even though I didn't know myself.  The men who stopped me in the streets--were they Humberts, recognizing the sexuality within me that I had yet to discover?  Or is it that all young girls have to suffer this?  If they do, they mostly don't talk about it--but then, neither did I.  When I'm in the mall or some other place where young girls gather, and I see how they're dressed and the way they're trying to attract attention, I think that they are not the Lolitas they are trying to be, that the sexual lies much deeper than they know.  Or perhaps I was a freak, the way I reacted to the attention. 

One thing makes me think that men saw something in me that I didn't see and that they didn't see in other girls.  I was 14 then, and sitting in a car, talking to a girl friend, when a mutual acquaintance walked up to us and started talking to us through the window.  He was two or three years older than we were, and he was talking about...well, I don't remember.  What I do remember is that he rather suddenly stopped and looked at me.  I didn't know him very well, and mostly he had not been talking to me, but to my friend.  And then he just looked at me for a minute and said, "One day, you are going to fuck and fuck and fuck and fuck and fuck, and you're going to love it.  You are going to love fucking.  You are meant to fuck."  And then he walked away. 

My friend just laughed.  She knew I was a virgin and not especially interested in changing that.  She never discovered that he was absolutely right.

One day in late March, several years ago, I found myself in a city not my home with several hours to kill before I could meet my friends to go drinking.  I decided to go to the main shopping street to do some people-watching. 

I was just stepping out of the Chinese restaurant on that street when I came face to face with one handsome fella.  I fell into step beside him, put on my best smile and greeted him in his native tongue.  He was quite startled.  It wasn't every day that a blonde foreigner put on her very best smile for him.  We struck up a very awkward conversation--I was less than competent in his native language, and he was yet less competent in mine.  Soon, we reached a conversational impasse.  He could not think how to rephrase what he had just said, and I could not understand it nor find it in my dictionary.  We went our separate ways.

About a half hour later, I found myself sitting in the pedestrian shopping arcade on a stone bench watching some street performers.  With reddened face, the handsome fella from before approached me and sat across from me.  He was much nicer to look at than the jugglers anyhow, and it was clear that he had screwed up his courage to talk to me via a nice, cold beer.  My kind of man, I thought.

We made more mincing, awkward conversation, and finally he asked me if I wanted to go get some coffee with him.  I did--oh, yes, I did.  We had coffee, and I broke out my Japanese-English phrasebook which sped conversation along nicely.  Eventually, we managed to establish that it was time for me to go meet my friends, that, yes, he would give me his phone number, and that he would be happy to meet me for lunch next week. 

The next week we met for Thai food.  I promptly spilled curry all down my nice, white shirt.  I don't know how I always manage to do that, but I do.  I should always just wear a shirt that's the same color as whatever I'm planning to eat.  Anyway, we then walked around town, checking out people and talking.  Several things struck me about him, despite our language barrier.  One is that he was incredibly honest.  He put on no airs, and he frequently said the "wrong" thing--not that it was actually wrong, but it was often the least impressive answer he could have given.  Yes, of course, every question a girl asks you on your first date is a kind of test, and answers are scaled by how impressive and/or honest they likely are.  He did very poorly in the impressive side, but he did quite well in the honesty column, and I'm more impressed by honesty in the end.

I finally confessed to him that I had a giant crush on him.  I did this, I later discovered, in truly inappropriate Japanese.  The way I said is how a young and somewhat ill-educated man would have confessed his love for a young woman.  I didn't know that, and he didn't care.  He responded, unfortunately, that it was bad timing for me to get a crush on him, as he was scheduled to move in a couple of weeks (he was in the military, and they were transferring him).  "To where?  Where is that?"  Finally, we had to go to a bookstore for him to show me on a Japanese map.  Still, I knew I wanted to at least get him in bed once before he left, even if that's all it ever was.  We walked around, holding hands and flirting, until we were both getting tired. 

We were sitting on a bench in a park, watching some kids chase pigeons, when somehow the conversation came around to my messy, curry-stained shirt.  I told him that I was sort of always like this, messy and clumsy.  He said, "Well, it's OK.  I'm dirty today, too, because I didn't shower last night.  I'd like to take a bath with you."

Inside, I thought, "Yay!"  I said, "Now?"

He said, "Sure.  Why not?"

Off we went to a love hotel, the Hotel 555 to be exact.  I don't know the significance of the 555, but it may be some sort of code for "the best sex of your entire life."  It wasn't that he did anything very special.  It was that he did everything with the utmost attention to detail and with self-confidence and assurance.  He didn't ask--he didn't have to ask because apparently he knew exactly what I wanted--he didn't fumble, he didn't waver.  He did me. 

When I entered the Hotel 555, I had intended that this would be the only time I ever slept with him.  That was my modus operandi, and I doubted there would be a need to deviate from it.  But you just can't walk away from the best sex of your entire life.  No.  That's worth keeping.  I asked him if he'd mind terribly if, should I find myself in his new neighborhood, I gave him a call.  He said he'd look forward to it.  Then I asked him, somewhat uncomfortably, some questions about his sexual past.  Where had he learned to be such an unbelievable lover?  I had to know.  He confessed he had only just lost his virginity a year prior, had only done it the one time, in fact.  He learned, he said, from videos.  I tried hard not to laugh.  "Oh, instructional videos?" 

"Yes, the educational kind."

Of course. 

Well, to make this long story somewhat shorter, I followed this poor guy all over Japan.  Then I married him.  I can attest to the rapt interest with which he watches instructional videos, and he continues to learn new and fascinating things from them.  He continues to be impossibly honest.  He continues to give me fabulous sex. 

Luke was my best friend's boyfriend.  This is the same best friend who pimped me.  Luke and I lived in the same city, while she lived in a city a few hours away.  She was living the party life and made no secret that she had sex with people other than Luke.  Luke didn't care--he wasn't apparently interested in commitment.

I am supposing that my friend, L, never really thought Luke would be attracted to me.  I was very different from her, in almost every way.  But I started spending a lot of time at Luke's house, and we found ourselves enjoying each other's company more and more.  Luke and I enjoyed drinking cheap wine and debating each other late into the night.  Inevitably, perhaps, there was flirting.  Flirting and drunkenness can lead places that are probably better left unexplored.

One night, they led to Luke laying me down on his sofa, fully clothed.  He climbed on top of me, also fully clothed, and between my legs.  He looked at me very seriously and started--well, let's say he started dry-fucking me.  Dry, as we were both fully clothed, but it was fucking in every other sense of the word.  He hit me hard and fast, and when he rolled off of me, he said, "This is what you do to me.  Every night we talk all around it, but every night this is what I want.  Every night you make me hard."

Shortly after that, he went to bed in his bed, and I slept on his sofa...wondering.

Nothing else happened, and we didn't really speak of it.  A week or so later I went down to see L, and I think while I was there and she was telling me about yet another of her sexual conquests, I made some remark about how she would not like it if Luke were also having rampant, random affairs.  She averred that she would not like it at all, and I dropped the matter. 

The day after I returned from my visit, I got a message from her to the effect that I was a terrible person for having an affair with her boyfriend and she never wanted to see me or speak to me again.  Quite upset, understandably, about the loss of my best friend, I called Luke and asked him what had happened.  He said she called him, claiming to have had a dream that he was sleeping with me.  He admitted there had been "physical contact," and she assumed she knew what that meant and broke off with both of us.  I don't know how she would have felt if she'd known the "physical contact" was a strange, hurried, fraught dry-fucking, but it scarcely mattered at that point.

There was nothing then to prevent us from a real affair.  I started spending every night at his house, and in a few days we even got to the point where we took our clothes off.  Unfortunately, I fell in love with him, one of the few times I've let such a thing happen.  I believe he fell in love with me, too, but some people aren't ready for it when it comes, and he wouldn't even commit so far as to letting me keep a toothbrush at his house, which meant every night I was forced to either carry around my travel kit or go to bed without brushing my teeth.  You shouldn't make a girl live like that.  Eventually, she will grow to prefer having well-brushed teeth to continuing the charade of a relationship, and she will break up with you.  And so I did. 

After I broke up with Luke and was seeing someone else, Luke called me a few times.  He never did admit it, but he did love me.  It was painfully obvious from the awkward phone conversations.

Stupid men.  If you find yourself standing there looking at a girl thinking to yourself that the thought of never touching her again fills you with agonizing loneliness and the concomitant thought of anyone else touching her is painful and terrifying, and then she smiles at you and tells you she loves you, you better find a way to hold onto her.  You have to be ready for it when it comes, because it doesn't always come around again.