Attending Bedpost Confessions is a sort of pact. Those who present their stories are baring their sexual souls. The lives they live, the choices they make, the pain and joy they share, may bear little resemblance to yours or mine. But by being present, by listening and responding, we offer our respect, our support, our acceptance and love. The feeling may last no longer than the applause or the ride home, or – as it has been with Sophie and me – it may feel as if something bigger has happened. You’ve joined a community, a group of people trying to keep each other safe and get the lifeboat to shore.
The BP format encourages audience participation. From there it’s not hard to make the big leap, to ask yourself, “If I were up on stage, what would I talk about?” From that impulse was born this belated Valentine’s story. In retrospect I can’t say I’m proud of it, but I can say I did my best then, I’m doing it better now, and I’ve told the unvarnished truth to the best of my ability. –Jamie
There’s a perfume out there in the wild. I gather the name has changed over the years, as it gets recycled and remarketed to different social strata, but the scent is fused to my spine and my soul. When it hits me, I can’t finish a sentence. Social decorum goes out the window. The world stops and I’m gone — suddenly transported 25 years and a thousand miles away.
Back then and there, I was a newly married, newly minted graduate student. I was also a new homeowner and a new parent. If you read that and say, Jesus God that’s a load, you’d be right. But back then I didn’t know any better. It was simply life, a series of events and choices, links in a seemingly logical chain.
I was also a cheater. At the time I wouldn’t have copped to this. I didn’t want to believe the facts added up, but the evidence was there. The background, the reasons, have been discussed in prior posts and no doubt will be explored in the future. I have no wish to gloss over those less-than-flattering details, but for the sake of brevity let’s accept that given the right conditions, a seed will sprout. The combination of my relationship history, my new life adventure, and the ensuing stresses proved fertile in that way. My cheating seed bore fruit. A patchwork schedule of school, work, and parenting provided ample opportunity, assisted by easy communication through the university’s fledgling computer network. I met entertaining and sometimes intriguing people, and we chatted on the university’s glorified dial-up BBS system.
I had numerous affairs. I was upfront about my situation – if not to my spouse, at least to the potential partners I courted. Yes, I readily admitted, I was a heel, a cad, a jerk, a sneak, call it what you like. I wanted to have good sex on the regular, but I wasn’t going to change my situation or, to the best of my abilities, put my family at risk. I’m sure that at times I abused the freedom and relative anonymity technology provided, in a way all too familiar to uninterested women in our #metoo era. I didn’t always make the best choices in terms of my or my family’s privacy and safety. But in general I tried to respect boundaries, mine and others, and it wasn’t too hard to find partners interested in me and comfortable with my limitations. At times I marveled at how easy it was. At times it frightened me. At times my hypocrisy was an unbearable weight. But I kept chasing…something.
Valerie was a staffer, a local who found a good job helping run a university department. She did her job well, and in her spare time she played on the network. She was bright and witty and occasionally naughty – not much, she was at work after all, but now and again something flashed from behind that veil. I am drawn to bright and witty and occasionally naughty, so over time we began to talk regularly. Then daily. Eventually our purpose for being online was to reconnect. I learned that she was much like me – married, a parent, her life a linked chain of choices and events that no longer seemed to add up. She was also nothing like me – trailer-trash (her words) upbringing, family chaos of the grittiest sort, never traveled or lived far from home, no schooling past high school except what she cobbled together through shrewd insights and voracious reading. We commiserated, we spilled our guts, we flirted, we played a game of sexual chicken.
When reading a screen was no longer enough, we agreed to meet. I remember a pleasant afternoon on a quiet back street on the way home. I found the small red pickup parked where she said it would be. I climbed into the passenger side and looked at her for the first time. She was pretty, clearly blessed by the family genetic lottery, undoubtedly showered with more male attention than she could want. (Which begged the question, why me?) She wore typical office attire – white blouse, modest skirt. Her hair was long and wavy, sort of a Farrah Fawcett look, and dyed blond to hide the silver streak she’d had since middle school. She sprawled comfortably around the steering wheel, her knees up on the dash. The almond eyes she turned toward me radiated amusement – amusement at me, my desire so clumsily obvious in person; at herself for playing along even this far; at the whole comically stereotypical scene. She lit a cigarette. At the time I didn’t smoke, and I wondered idly if the smell would betray me when I got home. At some point we held hands, just to see how it felt. Later I laid a hand on her knee. She was as strong as she was svelte.
I don’t remember what we talked about. Something along the lines of, What the hell are we doing? And I was lost. I didn’t have an answer. For all my experience with seduction, this seemed different. Bigger. Not to be taken lightly. I was prepared to hear her say, Well, I’ve scratched that itch, let’s cut this off. And I would have agreed readily. But over the years I have learned that it’s easier to be courageously stupid than a smart coward. That wisdom probably dates to this moment. But in the moment, wisdom wasn’t driving the truck.
When she asked me to kiss her, a lot of things happened. One, I knew where she stood and what she wanted. Two, a passionate, life-altering, and ultimately chaotic path was chosen. And three, I got my first real whiff of that perfume. It smelled of rose (which I have since learned is the rarest and therefore most expensive and desirable essential oil) and something subtly like almond. Drifting up from her neck as I leaned in, it also smelled of cigarettes. Blended with her own scent, as perfume is designed to do, I got my first hint of what I would someday taste when I parted her long legs.
The kiss was long. It was quiet, almost reverent, maybe fearful, as we both sensed what was being decided. It was nervous, in case somebody we knew was watching. And when it ended, we said good-bye and I went home.
Then again, I never went home again.
The chronology is fuzzy. I’m pretty sure we met online while I was in school. After my degree I got a job requiring an hour-long commute. The kiss probably happened at the tail-end of a daily commute. Whatever the case, the kiss solved nothing, quenched no flames, and so we kept talking and wanting more. And the commute provided the opportunity to consummate our desire. I met her one early morning on the way to work. I found her truck in a dark, empty, mutually convenient parking lot. As I walked up, she lay back wordlessly on the bench seat. Standing in the open doorway, her calves on my shoulders, I slid my rigid cock into her engorged pussy. At that moment her eyes closed, as if she’d waited a lifetime to have that moment, that feeling. Every emotion crossed her face. I felt the same.
We kept meeting. It didn’t matter that other aspects of our life suffered. In time, there was nothing else, nobody else. One day in mid-February, the office mail delivered a red envelope sent from a town an hour away. Even before I opened it, I knew who had sent it. Inside was a Valentine’s card. And inside that was a lock of hair dyed blond, tied by a red ribbon to a sprig of baby’s breath, drenched in the scent of rose. Every time that scent finds me, I am back in that long-ago office opening that card.
Finally, we made the big leap of dark faith. It seems wrong to skip over the dismantling of two relatively stable households, the damage done to families, friendships, careers. Those ripples went out and continue to be felt. In other ways, the passage of time has demonstrated forgiveness, resilience, and the healing power of unconditional love – almost as if all the chaos we unleashed barely left a mark. Somehow that seems wrong, too. But that story is not this story.
Once we had the freedom, I finally got to explore Valerie in all her naked glory. She was relatively tall and thin in that classic beauty-magazine way, with the cheekbones to match. The curve of her hips and ass set me on fire. Her small breasts and belly bore the marks of motherhood, as they should; I have always liked and preferred that honesty. In bed she was inventive and occasionally surprising. One night she sat up and said, “I want to see something.” She threw one leg over me and proceeded to lower her ass onto my cock. No prep, no preamble. The last guy she’d done this with, way back when anal sex was a young woman’s answer to an unwanted pregnancy, was apparently much bigger. One of my sexual regrets is that we never explored it further. But there was so much to explore.
Our new life together led to new friends. We both found ourselves crushing on the hot bartender at our favorite hangout, who turned out to be a neighbor who reciprocated our interest. Finally one night (let’s call her) Donna came over to join us in bed, my first real threesome. It pains me to confess that it was a frustrating experience. We hadn’t talked through the complexities, trusting desire and guesswork to see us through. The ladies had their fun – Donna clearly wanted to see Valerie writhe in orgasm, which I could appreciate and enjoyed watching — and I joined in where and when I could, my head too much in the way.
A day or two afterward, I was still mulling those events when Valerie called out my dark mood. I confessed that I hadn’t had the experience I wanted, and I wasn’t quite sure why. Bolder and perhaps wiser than me, she picked up the phone and called Donna while I stood there, wondering what was up. Valerie asked Donna for a favor. Could she, Valerie, send me over to fuck Donna? Donna said yes. And out of that gesture of unconditional love came my first conscious insight into the tangle of desire and guilt that defined my approach to sex at that time. Valerie’s gesture was a ray of light showing the beginnings of a path out of the thicket.
Donna, herself no stranger to men or their tangled desires, welcomed me into her home and between her legs. We took our time. For whatever reason, the simplified setup made all the difference. I went down on her until she was quite ready, and then I gently fucked her missionary-style on a mattress on the floor. And afterward I was rewarded to hear her say, as she still quivered from her own orgasm, her arm across her eyes, “Wow, I didn’t expect that to happen.” It was the first time I remember hearing it, and certainly the first time an ex-pro said it to me. I have heard it many times since then, most recently and frequently from Sophie herself. I never get tired of hearing it. There is nothing more gratifying in bed than pleasing your partner. I will always be grateful to Valerie and Donna for giving me that moment, that insight.
But the party had to end. The relentless weight of reality became too much to withstand, and no amount of passion or ingenuity or chutzpah could turn the tide. The crux was money, or the lack of it – a common stress in any relationship. We weren’t equipped to handle the stress or find answers, and the chaos rising out of our choices didn’t help. The pressure affected our vision, our confidence, our chemistry, and ultimately our trust. One night we had an argument, maybe our first real one. In the aftermath it seemed Valerie had been waiting for the opening. It was possible she had maneuvered the events to create it, although in the moment I didn’t want to believe that. The result wasn’t clean or even obvious at first. We lived in limbo for a while. I tried to reconnect with some Valentine’s roses, only to learn as she received them indifferently that she was having a miscarriage – something supposedly impossible after a postpartum procedure meant to prevent pregnancy. That moment became an enduring symbol – a supposed impossibility that somehow beat the odds, only to falter and die in a pool of clotted blood. No amount of flowers could fix it.
And so I had two relationships to grieve: the one I had abandoned, and the one I had just lost. Valerie and the husband to whom she returned made clear that further contact was not welcome, and I honored that request. I lived in a fog for many months. I kept a hermit’s hours. I read an entire section of books at the nearby branch library. Donna and I hung out once or twice but just as friends, knowing there were no answers to be found in sex. I was again grateful for her kindness in a time of need. I apologized tearfully to my ex-wife, and I listened to her pain, and with her huge, forgiving heart leading the way, we began to build what has become a quiet, kid-focused friendship. A new job and a loyal dog gave me purpose and rhythm, and slowly I left the fog behind. A year or two later, I moved to another part of the country and haven’t been back.
Before I left, I dug out that old Valentine’s card. The perfume was fading but still potent enough. I considered burning it all as a way to get closure, but that seemed too angry. I took the lock of hair to the bridge over a nearby creek, and I unwound the ribbon, and I let it all go. The hair and the ribbon and the baby’s breath hit the slowly moving water and even more slowly disappeared. And then I could leave.
The email showed up about a decade later. Valerie had tracked me down through a school-reunion site. We had the chance to reminisce, to apologize, to own our mistakes. It was cathartic, and I remain grateful that she reached out. Valerie confessed that she had secretly been on drugs while we were together, and that had affected her judgment and ability to function. She told me that every time she and her husband had an argument, he would say, “Why don’t you just go back to Jamie?” And so one day she did. She asked if we could get back together – even briefly, even just once. Somewhere halfway between us, maybe. And I said no, much as it pained me to do so. I was in the middle of a new relationship, using the hard-won wisdom from the past to make better choices. I couldn’t see any healthy way to backtrack. After a few more emails, she stopped writing.
Everything that happened, every immortal or forgettable moment, every noble or shamefully selfish choice, has shaped who I am today. I am an ethical slut not because I have ethics woven intrinsically into my fabric, but because I’ve lived the alternative. I’m still learning how to do it well, as a second ex-wife and numerous ex-lovers can attest. My relationships with Sophie and my primary girlfriend are a result and a reflection of my gritty progress. I’m proud of that progress. And when I say how grateful I am to know Sophie, how glad I am to share a portion of life with her, that gratitude has its roots in this story.
Thanks to the magic of social media, I can see Valerie whenever I wish. I did it most recently as I began this piece. Like me, she is older now. Her kids, like mine, are grown now and, also like mine, seem to be living happy productive lives largely unaffected by the events their parents foisted upon them. Valerie stopped dyeing her healthy mane some time ago, letting that silver streak have its way. Her face has aged prematurely, perhaps due to the drug habit she told me she left behind. Her eyes, when she bothers to look at the camera, seem sad and empty.
At some point she created a second online presence using her maiden name. Perhaps she has forgotten it exists. Besides references to an online game nobody plays anymore, all the page contains is a link to a song we discovered together. That song, and all the songs on that album, were the perfect soundtrack for the time we spent together: how we met, how we tangled our lives, and how it all imploded. The chorus includes these words:
Valerie, can you hear those engines drone?
I wanted to go to Mexico
But I’m stranded here alone
And once I knew a true love
It’s been three years since he’s gone
If I could get that feeling back
I’d give up everything I own
I don’t think it’s delusional or narcissistic to believe that this song was intended for only one person to find. Only one person could understand the context, the full message. That song on that page is like a lighthouse in a storm. It’s literally a cry for help. And as much as I might wish otherwise, at least sometimes, there’s not a goddamned thing I can do to help.
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