True Heart Service

If you'd seen us you'd think we were on vacation; a happy family reunion in a hot springs mountain retreat. But death cloaked the blue skies and sunshine like an indecorous winding sheet. Her parents in their 90's; her brother a cancer survivor; a manical bike touring, hard pedeling uncle wheeling headlong through a defiant bucket list; and my wife with her terminal diagnosis. And me...

I help her onto the toilet in the unisex handicapped bathrooms that dot an airport like havens for the afflicted. I adjust her underwear and pull up her jeans. I grovel on the floor to make sure she slides into her shoes comfortably. I latch her seat belt. I always allow an hour more to get ready as we have to move slowly.

I think about sexualizing all this but I can't. The whole process makes me horny though. I crave humiliation, orgasm control, cuckolding, and being lovingly laughed at as her rejected loser while She-Who-Visits fucks another younger more virile man before my lust filled eyes.

It's all in my mind as I cut up her steak at dinner and dice her salad so as she raises the fork with her shaking hand less romaine falls to the plate as a frustrating reminder that this is only going to get worse. Some say she is lucky to have me.

But it is I who am lucky to have her. Ironically blessed to render true heart service in pure and unerring love.

Except for the fantasy dream sequence part where she denies me orgasm until I learn to comb her hair properly.

Twenty Plus

When my computer boots up it automatically opens to MSN. Invariabaly there is some vapid top ten study that I get sucked into before I go about my web surf. Something like, "The Top Ten American Cities For Beautiful People". Oh yeah, major league intellectual stuff.

So this morning I sign on and there's a top ten study about lasting relationships so I'm scrolling through the amazing insights. One entry claimed that the intensity of couples "in love" actually increased once you hit 20 years. Yeah right.

And ten minutes later as I am getting ready to leave for Miami I can't help but cry. I don't cry much in public or to anyone who doesn't really, really know me. But I thought that the idiot MSN study got it right. Okay, my wife is terminally ill. But somehow even if she weren't, I think I'd still feel an increasing depth of feeling. Everything is colored by the tragic unfairness of her illness. But there's just something that's right about the power of time. Even if it's not perfect. Even if there are significant holes there's something irreplacably valuable about somebody who has been right by you for twenty four years.

Then again, a little kink is a fine thing...

If Heaven And Hell Decide

I think one of the hopes many of us have is that this year will be "better" than last. We'll make more money, we'll get healthier, we'll go to the gym, we'll be all around better people. My wife is on the phone as I write this and just said to a friend, "what I know is 2012 will not be better than 2011".

For her and the inevitable physical toll her disease will continue to take there is no clean slate. Just a certainty that the downward spiral will continue. But as I listen to her voice, she's so connected to this person on the phone. She's really living the life she has. And that's inspiration enough to me that maybe my life will be richer if I muster the courage to be there to help her.

Last week I had lunch with a domme friend who suggested I read a series from the New York Times Magazine about regular people who died this year. I recommend it too. My wife and I read the series together this morning. She cried so much at the first couple that she couldn't make it through the series. Each highlighted how death can strangely provide hope. We all face it. Our own and the death of those we love. As the article suggested, death is the most democratic of experiences.

So my hope is that I can be there and go the distance. Since I hope it will be a long haul, I have to figure out how to take care of myself as well as take care of her. Shrink has a care giver group for me. So far I'm not moving back in with my wife entirely; so I have my bachelor digs in the West Village. And I've got friends.

So in the midst of the reality that for my wife 2012 will not be a "better" year - for me - it may be awful enrichment.