By Lisabet Sarai
You all must be bored by now. Week after week, month after month, it always comes back to him.
I want him. I can't have him. And there's no one to blame but my younger self, blind and unthinking, not understanding that some decisions cannot be rescinded.
No outside force tore us apart. I scarcely realized what I was choosing, what I was giving up. And honestly, can I regret the choice that has led to so much joy and comfort? My married life is the envy of everyone who knows me. My husband is a true jewel.
And yet...there's still the absence, like a missing tooth, an amputated limb. My kinkier self forever unsatisfied, and the knowledge that for him, the loss is more bitter still. He blames me, I know, and I can scarcely argue with his logic. (I never could.) After all, I was the one who blithely severed our deepest connections.
More than three decades ago I married, and renounced my Master, at least a physical lover. Over the years, the pain of loss has intensified rather than lessened. Out of that pain, though, has come inspiration.
How many poems have I written to him? How many stories has he, or his memory, kindled in my imagination?
When you read something by me that touches you, that sears you with its naked passion, know: I was thinking of him when I wrote it.
Beltane
(October 1997)
Point of balance:
A body suspended,
wrists roped
with loving precision;
thighs spread,
almost on tiptoe;
flesh marked,
a rosy map
of the ways of desire.
Point of balance:
The fire rises,
dances, dapples
the flesh
with patterns
of brightness and shadow,
spices the breeze
with smoky incense.
Balance point:
Is it your flesh
or mine?
Does it really matter
whose sighs, whose moans,
whose hand wields the whip
with such tender skill?
The same nakedness
we offer each other,
the same power.
Point of balance:
This holy night
between summer and winter,
darkness and light
(the darkness of the mysteries,
secret dreams,
the velvet shadows
that render the light
all the more brilliant.)
Balance
of will,
of devotion,
of hunger,
a moment suspended
between two breaths,
between one loving
stroke and the next.
My first novel was a blatant paean to my neglected Master. I borrowed from our shared past and plunged deep into my well of fantasy. He recognized all the quotes - flattered even when he was trying to be angry. I lost myself in the writing of that book. Nothing, however, can bring back the magic we conjured when we were together.
I've consciously tried to wean myself away from him in my fiction. I don't want my readers to be bored. The further I stray from that fountain of emotion, the less intense and real my erotica feels - at least to me. Even now, in fantasy, I explore the consequences of having made a different decision.
He's smaller than my husband, but thicker and much harder. I dismiss the pang of guilt that flickers through me. This, now―this is definitely cheating. The blow job, the spanking...one could make a case that they didn't count, but now another man is ramming his cock into my cunt and I have no excuse.
Except that I have no choice. I can't say no. It would kill me. I've never known anything like this fevered bliss. The stranger―Mark―hovers above me, driving his cock deeper with each stroke. I'm wholly open. It's what I've craved all my life and never known. I swear I never dreamed of this―did I? He makes me wonder, as he fucks me like the slut that I am. Perhaps I've always craved this kind of surrender, my dark desires hidden even from myself.
His cock breaks me apart and remakes me as someone else. I strain against the welcome bonds, grinding my pelvis against his. I'm crying from the pain and joy of it. My cunt shudders around him as I come, and come again. He won't let me look away.
I'm transparent to him. He knows who I am, what I want. There's no need for shame. As I gaze into his eyes, for a moment he's equally open. We connect. I sense his need and his triumph. "Mine!" he growls as he swells and explodes in my pussy, still fluttering from my last orgasm. The heat bathing my tissues drags me over the edge one last time.
~ From "Never Too Late", in Body Electric, by Lisabet Sarai (Books We Love Spice, 2010)
We can't go back in time. I'm not sure I'd want to. Still, my mature understanding of what we had and what we lost - what I willingly let slip away - can bring tears to my eyes. The rare times he and I have been able to meet (even rarer now that I'm half a world, instead of just a continent, away) blaze in my memory.
Half Moon
(June 1998)
The moon was full
two years ago
tonight. I wandered
ghostly through
Victorian halls,
waded barefoot
in pools of moonlight,
haunted by
the echoes of
your voice, your touch,
marked
as ever.
Felt you breathe
across the City;
Thought my heart
would break from longing;
Dreamed a Mistress,
harsh and tender:
"You must be empty
so I can fill you."
The moon tonight,
half-bright, half-dark:
like you. Two years
of desperate dreams
have left their mark.
The City breathes
in this fragrant forest;
Still, still:
you are always
with me.
Tears in my eyes,
wind in my hair;
when
will we kiss
hello?
Is inspiration enough to compensate for losing a part of myself?
I guess it will have to be.
I thought I would respond with an excerpt from Ghost Love, a story-in-progress of mine that deals with a similar issue:
ReplyDelete...Though nothing can bring back the hour
of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower
we will grieve not, but rather find strength in what
remains behind...From the movie Splendor in the Grass
'If I asked you about happiness, Helena, what would you tell me?' he said.
'I would make you promise to meet me in another
lifetime,' I said reminding him we were married and not to each other.'
'Happiness, Helena, stick to the question.'
'A treehouse by the sea," I said, 'just you...just me
on our platform in the sky. My happiness is that.'
He was teaching me about the waves, telling me they
begin their life with the slap of the wind passing over
still water. We were together on a back shore beach
in Australia embraced by the sweet smell of trellised tea roses, so out of place in the pink heat of that
December day.
'The way waves will eventually develop,' Charles says, 'depends on the fetch, the distance the waves
can run without meeting an obstacle.' Don't fall I silently tell myself, please don't fall for this man.
He was telling me how waves lose their shape and become swells but I could only think about the push-pull of our sexual tension, how much I wanted
him inside of me.
'When I look at the waves,' Charles says, 'I see old friendships and new relationships. Repetitions,
hidden paths, surprises.'
'Do they ever betray you, Charles," I ask him. 'Or disappoint?'
'Out there in the ocean,' Charles says, 'when temptation and beauty collide, it's a crapshoot, Helena. It could ruin any of us.'
There is something special, though, at leaving a connection that is still strong. A way to preserve its strength, perhaps?
ReplyDeleteI felt a resonant ache in my heart as I read this. (I especially love the first poem, by the way.) I don't seem to have a more articulate or interesting response than that, but I feel the pain and longing of this offering. Thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteMary,
ReplyDeleteA beautiful, and highly appropriate, response. Thank you.
Shar,
ReplyDeleteIt's quite clear to me that if we'd stayed together, we would have had many problems in the relationship. One thing about a break at the height of the intensity - it leaves you free to fantasize.
Thank you, Emerald.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that I can only write poetry when I'm in the throes of unrequited longing.
I've been so happy in my marriage, I haven't written any in a long time.
I vaguely remember some of your other posts about this particular relationship, Lisabet, but this post is especially moving. I'm glad it's fed your Muse.
ReplyDeleteIn a way you;re lucky you had to part, in one sense. You at least have known great passion, compared to someone like me who never has and never will. I will always be an observer only. If you had stayed together its possible the dream would have become old. You would have worn each other out and the memories would all sit differently and maybe bitterly instead of bittersweetly.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking of that movie "Titanic". The young woman loved the young man for only a few days and then he was drowned. Then she was married to some man we never saw and had kids and grandkids, but then as she's dying she's reunited with her young man again. Not her husband. It makes for a romantic image, but I instantly felt bad for her husband who had invested his life in her. It seemed unjust. We love our dreams. I have no old loves to pine for, though I often wish I did. Maybe your master will be your tulpa some day when your time comes. You'll always have the memory to nourish until the hour you enjoy it.
Garce (getting noodley)
Only one, Jean? I feel like every other post I write is about this guy.
ReplyDeleteSigh.
Hey, Garce,
ReplyDeleteDoes it really make sense to feel sorry for the husband? After all, he had a lifetime with the woman he loved.
On the other hand, this brings back one of my favorite poems, "Barter" by Sara Teasdale:
"Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost.
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well-lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be."