Some Quality Trouble

I feel like I used to when I ran competitively and pretty much would sprint flat out the 3.5 mile silly corporate challenge races in Central Park. The aerobic became the anaerobic and with no real breathing capacity my muscles would just carry me by some out of body masochistic determination to finish. Such is life when moving back in with a woman who just two years ago I decided I did not want to live with anymore.

But things change and while I'm not really going back to my marriage, I am looking forward to spending time with someone I love dearly and who truly needs me. I hate giving up my mancave and unwittingly may have already spent my last night there earlier this week. But like practically everyone, financial realities don't allow me to carry four homes. Jeez, realistically, there are income cycles where I'm lucky to hold one down. So a big part of the move is confronting the money thing and shuffling slowly to some sort of semblance of a practical, prudent, and pragmatic care about the pecuniary.

Ho hum.

But life could be so much worse. We'll live in a really great place. There's a little terrace where I can smoke my cigars. I get my morning river run and there's a killer view. But I won't be dating and alone time will no longer be just a quick cab ride away. It is a loss and a sacrifice, but worth it to be able to care for my terminally ill wife.

To look at her last night at the concert we went to you'd never know she was so sick. She was happily enthralled with Mavis Staples and Bonnie Raitt. And I thought that if Bonnie can look so hot and sexy at 62 then I can too. I don't need to feel that life is over - just a new chapter to begin.

Bonnie gave good patter between songs last night. She introduced one number by telling us that there was a time in her life when she was looking for some quality trouble and that she found him. So just because I'm giving up my single life for that of a caretaker, doesn't mean that I can't keep my eye out for some quality trouble.

You just can't make your heart feel something it won't.

New Perspectives

Last weekend I hosted She-Who-Visits and her friend who I'll call Swinger Girl in my Magic City condo. They were up from their idyllic island paradise for an intensive, off-island shop-a-thon. They arrived last Friday but alas, work kept me from preparing a proper welcome and I did not arrive until early Saturday morning. When I entered, I knew my place was not my own. Greeting me in the foyer was a pair of summer, strappy wedges. Hmmm...it's a sign. No shoes inside for the weekend. The visiting She is totally OCD about cleanliness. They had left early for one of the massive malls and a marathon of buying things that can't be found in Caribbean paradise.

Throughout the afternoon I re-organized so that I had servant's quarters in my little study nook as they had commandeered the bedroom. I laid out a nice little cheese and crackers spread for their return so we could nosh a bit before our dinner reservation in South Beach. Time passed. Shopping prevailed and they arrived back, glassy eyed and exhausted from their enforced version of super-mall sweep.

This was the very first time in the over five years I've known She that we'd had a guest. Swinger Girl was so incredibly nice and sweet. It was almost painful. I set out the hors d'oeuvres and was invited to sit at their feet by the sofa.

"Why don't you give her a foot massage", She ordered. "And tell him if he's doing it wrong because he's just not very good."

Swinger Girl was immediately appreciative and grateful for my sincere and hearfelt efforts.

"No, no, no!!", She laughed. "I've invested far too much time training him for you to be so nice and ruin it all!"

And so the weekend went. I waited on the them hand and foot. On Sunday I drove them to what seemed like nineteen different malls and a Walmart. I carried their packages to the car. I ferried them from J.C. Penny to Kohl's. I had a great time in the first real social interaction She and I have had together.

I used to be She's client. Now I am her dear friend and submissive on the side. I left them to go to work on Monday morning. Saying goodbye to her is much less painful as I know our relationship is a deep, long-lasting, lifetime current. When I got down to the car there was a $20 bill in the cup holder. Gas money? From She? Certainly one of the sweetest things she's ever done. Financial times are hard and I have upcoming medical expenses for the care of my dying wife. She really shouldn't have.

As luck would have it, Swinger Girl had one more internet shopping package that arrived that morning at my office. I jumped in the car and drove it home to the condo as they were not leaving until later that evening. When I got upstairs the two women were deep into packing their booty just so to look to island customs as though it was just their clothing from a seventeen week stay stateside.

"Was that gas money you left me?" I asked. "I should report you to the authorities that oversee your team. So sweet, but you are slipping, aren't you?"

She got a dark look and immediately grabbed my wallet out of my back suit pocket and took all my cash. I was horrified. I truly am a nitwit sometimes. My silly attempt at humor had deeply offended her. I should have thanked her profusely for her sweetness and yet my pride and shame at not being the earner that I once was, even though I know it's the economy, had gotten the best of me.

She made me beg and plead for my money back which I did with serious conviction. Eventually she relented. She took two five dollar bills and ripped the corners from them. She said we'd each keep one to remember this moment. I pecked her on the cheek. She grabbed me and hugged me and I was gone.

Later that night when I got home there was a note. She left me two more ten dollar bills and the torn five with the corner taped onto the note.

"Here's some more for something nice and a little more for an emergency."

And she signed it with a heart.

New perspectives and a future with a complex and dear friend to share it with in fleeting, borrowed, weekend bursts. Mean girls...they are so deliciously good.

Priceless

She-Who-Visits and a friend are planning an excursion off their idyllic island paradise. Plan was they'd come up on a Friday and stay until Monday as it was some obscure holiday, the remnant of an ancient colonial incursion or some global banking conglomerate. Plan was I'd play chauffeur-gofer and they'd let me sleep under the bed at the condo. Trouble is I can't get down until the Saturday. She and I spoke last night.

"So you're coming down alone, but you can't get here until Saturday, do I have that right?", she inquired sharply.

"Yes, that's correct", I answered on her crisp examination query.

"Well, we aren't sure we're going to use you, but would you like to be in the running?"

Priceless! You just can't teach that, it's hardwired. She probably didn't even realize how many of my erotic triggers she pulled with that one phrase. If she decides she has no use for me there will be no tears from me as what I need exists in all that infused that one little off handed phrase.

Hope Springs Eternal

I don't know what it was about yesterday but some of my terror and anxiety melted away. I mistakenly thought, "Good feeling for the first day of spring." Only a month behind the vernal equinox am I. Last week I'd had a nice conversation with She-Who-Visits as we both commuted to our jobs - she on her idyllic blue water isle and me, drop topped in the Magic City. I talked to her about actually looking forward to moving back in with my wife because each morning and meal with her has become precious. "I'm so glad you are getting to do this," she said with sympathy and real enthusiasm. Me too I said, me too.

And then yesterday morning I had this giddy optimism that I'll figure this all out. Things will be okay. I have great friends who I'll stay in touch with and have been talking to, hanging out with, or connecting with on-line. I'm a dramatically changed person in the past two years. Though I'll miss my black and white poster of Julie Newmar when I leave the man-cave in June I realize I don't need to announce my kink with home decor anymore. I just am. And I'm much more open about most everything with my wife. Though I won't date for the time being, it doesn't mean I have to stop having dinner, lunch, coffee, or drinks with my domme friends and subbie guy buddies. And who knows what outlet I'll figure for my kink. It's a work in progress and I'm creating it as I go.

I'd been talking to kinky friends about kink relationships and the problems we all face in forging them. Yesterday I just had this overwhelming feeling of hope and optimism that we're all in this together. Is it one big campfire sing along? I think not. But we're all out there working it and we have each other to help us along the way. And for that I am just eternally grateful.

Anyway, for musical diversion I've hung on to this Pat Benatar clip as it's kind of like a ruined orgasm - the most deliciously wicked of tease and denial "punishment".