[ Go to http://www.churchonfire.net/2020/05/11/proposition-of-a-desperate-woman/ ]
I notice Rosie’s hollow, sad eyes—the eyes of a miserable woman who has just finished crying. I remember vividly her first words to me, “Mind if I ask a favor?” Rosie came to me while I was doing research in the library of the Graduate Theological Union (Berkeley, CA). It is half past nine, and the library is nearly empty since it is scheduled to close in a half-hour.
I swivel in my chair to look at an attractive brunette with sad eyes and say, “Sure! A favor? What do you have in mind?”
“I am a desperate woman. I need a man willing to make long, slow love to me tonight.” She says this with a muted urgency, half-whispered. I feel quite sure that she memorized this opening line, because, when she gets to the last word, “tonight,” she breaks eye contact and her delicate hands start to tremble.
“Here. Take this seat next to me. Tell me your story.”
She slowly sits down saying, “I am so ashamed. I don’t know how to begin.”
“You say you are a desperate woman. I also see that you are a brave woman willing to take risks. I want to listen to you without making any judgments–as though you are a dear friend who comes to me to share some terrible suffering. Do you think that you can trust me enough to tell me your whole story?”
“I would like to try, but I feel so ashamed to tell anyone the mess I’m in.”
“In that case, let me hold your hand. This might help to dissolve your fear.”
Rosie hesitantly extends her delicate right hand. I take it very gently and slowly begin to massage it using my two hands. “Close your eyes if you wish and take a few deep breaths, and, when you’re ready, begin telling me your story.”
Rosie closes her eyes. As she does so, I notice that the tension creases in her forehead slowly disappear. I see that she has an attractive face and that her chestnut-colored hair is nicely feathered so as to frame her eyes and cheeks. She is somewhat slender, yet she appears physically fit. Her white blouse has attractive frills, and her blue jeans hug her lower body quite nicely.
After having her eyes closed for a full minute, she suddenly opens them and looks straight at me as she launched into her bizarre story:
“My husband and I are both students preparing for ministry in the United Methodist Church. After a year of engagement, we were married two weeks and four days ago in the chapel here at the seminary. This gave us two weeks of passionate sex to begin our lifelong adventure as a married couple. We had speculated that, after two weeks of unfettered love making, we would finally be physically and sexually exhausted and ready to get back to work. My partner then took a plane to Houston, Texas, where he will function as a ‘junior pastor’ in a UMC church there as part of his final preparation for ordination. I stayed behind here in Berkeley in order to complete my final year of studies prior to my own assignment as a junior pastor.
“When I came back from leaving my husband at the airport, my body was racked by waves of sexual desire. I tried watching a love story on Netflix, but this only increased the urgency of my passion. I tried masturbating in order to relieve my sexual addiction, but this was only partially effective. In the classroom, I find myself reliving the hot sex I had before my husband left. By the end of class, my panties are absolutely wet. I tried taking a cold shower, but even that was of no help. I can’t study more than ten minutes without lapsing into sexual fantasies.
“Every evening, around this time, my sexual appetites begin driving me insane. I changed my panties only twenty minutes ago; yet, they are already soaked. When I was drying myself, I noticed that my clitoris is enlarged and just the ordinary friction of walking a few blocks brings me to the edge of an orgasm.
“I have been racked with sexual fantasies at bedtime that keep me from going to sleep prior to midnight. Last night, I took two sleeping tablets before going to bed. I slept for a few hours, but then I was wide awake. I put on my running clothes and jogged for three miles. I thought that this would exhaust me. But it didn’t. I found myself talking to a homeless guy in People’s Park. In ten minutes, we were touching each other. When we began kissing, however, his breath was so gross that I couldn’t go ahead. It was like licking the stale stench out of an old ashtray. I ran all the way home.
“I need relief. [long pause] I need a guy willing to have wild sex for a few hours every night. He needn’t stay the whole night, but he has to be willing to stay with me until the edge of my sexual frenzy is worn down. This worked for me during the two weeks that I was sleeping with my husband following our marriage. Hence, I have good reason to believe that it would work for me again, even with a complete stranger. Then, I could get back to studying and working without being toppled over by waves of sexual frenzy throughout the day.
“My husband tells me that, at bed time, he takes out the seductive pictures that I took of myself and, he talks to me and slowly masturbates and then falls asleep like a babe. For me, however, this is clearly not enough.”
At this point, I notice that, while Rosie was talking, she has taken one of my hands and that she is even now seductively rubbing my fingers. I close my eyes for a few seconds, not in order to enjoy her touching, but to get focused on the terms of her daring proposition. Berkeley was a wild place in 1968 but, for the life of me, I would have never expected the raw honesty and utter vulnerability of this woman.
“O.K.,” I whisper, “I fully appreciate that you are a brave and desperate woman and that you need me to be your ardent lover for a few hours every night. But why me?” My last three words express my shock.
“Well, to begin with, I watched you for ten minutes before I approached you. I liked the fact that you are tall, slim, and muscular—just like my husband. Now that I’ve experienced the smooth techniques that you used to calm my fears, I’m even more assured that you’re the right one for me. You’re thoughtful, playful, and inventive. These are all the traits that I love in my dear husband.”
“What’s more,” I blurt out, “I enjoy role playing! You could coach me as to how your husband touches you, how he licks your body, how he arouses your desire. . . .” My spontaneous enthusiasm for her proposal clearly shows itself. I am already fantasizing what the fulfillment of her proposal might entail.
“See,” she broke in, “you’re already pushing the envelope and my juices [Yes, she said “my juices”] are confirming that you’re the right one. I’m sure you’ll be able to take me to places that I’ve never been before.”
“And how about that dear husband of yours? How much are you going to tell him?” Now my protective and cautionary side takes over.
“Ah, careful, my dear friend,” she warns me, “These are things that I have to attend to in my way and in my time. He is my responsibility–not yours.”
“Hey, don’t get me wrong. I’m going to be absolutely discreet. No one will ever know or even suspect that there is anything going on between us. In fact, I’d prefer never having to meet your husband. Who knows? I may be so free and easy with you in a few weeks as to draw suspicions from onlookers. With this in mind, I’d prefer never to meet any of your friends or even to be seen with you in public.” [I have deliberately sidestepped her direct challenge.]
“Good idea! I was going to get around to discussing that once you agree to be my lover.”
“So I withdraw my question. Better not to tell me anything about when and how you intend to tell your husband.”
“Just for your peace of mind,” she said with a wink, “my dear husband doesn’t want me ever to tell him the details of what I did with any of my past lovers. He says that he wants to always imagine me as his ‘virgin slut.’ Thus I am sure that he will be satisfied to know that I deliberately chose a lover that agreed to undress me as he likes to do, to use his love language, to imitate his ways of pleasuring me.”
“Well spoken! Your husband is your responsibility. I have no intention to ever meet him or even to learn how he responds to the idea that I acted as a sort of body double that steps in to do those steamy sex scenes that he was unable or unwilling to do himself.” [I can hardly believe how, once again, I am enthusiastically fantasizing what my “yes” to her would entail.]
“Huh! I like your metaphor. He is indisposed. I am going crazy by his absence. So, you, as his body double step onto the set and do the steamy sex scenes in his place.” [Wow. She’s using my words as her words.]
“Ah,” I affirm, “that gives me the peace of mind that I need. This is going to be easier and far more enjoyable than I could have anticipated.”
“Not so fast, buster,” she says with a grin. “I want you to think about my proposition for 24 hours and come forward with a firm ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Then, if you’re ready to commit, I want you to audition for the lover’s role by joining me for a trial run in a hotel room that I will rent. If all goes well—and I do believe at this point that you’re a perfect fit for what I need–you will get the part and we’ll totally exhaust each other physically, psychologically, and sexually in my bedroom for one to two hours every night for three solid months. How does that sound?”
“Perfect! So do I meet you here in this reading room at 9:30 tomorrow?”
“Only if you’ve thought it over and come up with an enthusiastic ‘yes.’ If not, go about your life as if the last half-hour never happened. Don’t even show up. I don’t want to hear your explanations. It will just make me angry and disappointed.”
“O.K. All or nothing then.”
And with that she reaches out, catches me in her arms, and gives me a loving kiss directly on the lips. “That’s my down payment, and here is a surprise gift for you.” She hands me a 6 x 9 envelope. “Open it after I leave.” And, with that, she disappears out the front door of the library.
I eagerly open the envelope after she left. Here is the picture it contained. On the back, she wrote, “In anticipation of our mutually enjoyable love making. Your virgin slut, Rosie.”
Delighted by her picture and her words and the taste of her kiss, the grandfather clock in the library strikes the hour of ten. The library is now closed. I gather my books and head for home. I take the long way passing along the street where the students from the Methodist seminary have their rooms. I thought I might catch a fleeting glimpse of my Rosie. But I am disappointed in this.
I fall asleep relishing the prospect of making love to Rosie for the first time. I am mildly disquieted by the fact that I have had very little experience with making love. But, hey, whatever happens, it’ll be an adventure that will allow me to stretch my own boundaries and to save a damsel in distress as well.
The following day, I thought of Rosie nearly a hundred times. I imagined taking Rosie’s delicious body in my arms and arousing her in a hundred different ways. Sometimes I ravenously strip her of her clothes. . . . At other times, I imagine how I will slowly remove her clothes and playfully kiss and nibble her body as I do so. . . .
In one of my reveries, her husband, aware of her insatiable sexual hunger, arranges to come home suddenly and unexpectedly. This momentarily upsets me, but I quickly dismiss this sort of scenario as an unlikely possibility. After all, her husband would be preoccupied with the requirements of his new assignment. Thus this imagining seems too improbable to be significant. So I dismiss it quickly, maybe too quickly.
As I enter the library the following evening, the grandfather clock chimes 9:00. I arrive half an hour early. I am delighted to see that Rosie has also come early. “So what have you decided?” Rosie asks with a pleading hope in her anxious eyes.
“I decided yes, Yes, YES! I’m entirely at the disposal of my sweet damsel in distress.”
And with this Rosie jumps off the sofa and throws her arms around my neck. I, in turn, wrap my arms around her slim waist and lift her up and swing her around softly singing, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are grey.”
“Oh no, mister, it’s YOU that make ME happy,” she says in a rough, guttural voice.
At that moment, a patron in the library lets loose with a warning hiss, “Shhhhhhhhhhhh!.”
“Oh, oh, we’re in trouble,” I say with mock alarm. “Let’s get out of here and go to my place. There we can talk without being disturbed.”
Ten minutes later, we are sipping green tea sitting side-by-side on the little sofa in my bedroom. I’m telling her that I want to learn from her how to make love using the patterns of her beloved husband. She confesses that she was thinking along these same lines herself. “You are tall and handsome just like my husband. You can be his avatar. I would like that and, more importantly, he would like that.”
So we begin with “special words.” Rosie tells me, that whenever her husband is ready to make love, he begins by using the language of love.
“Give me some specific words that he uses.”
“Well, he usually begins by saying, ‘Hey, you sweet little slut, get over here.’”
“O.K. I hear you. Now say it using the volume and the intonations that he uses.” [At this point I’m borrowing some of the techniques that I learned in my psychodrama workshop.]
She says it using the intonations that sound like Clint Eastwood in his film, Hang ’Em High. I repeat it a few times and Rosie coaches me until I get it exactly right. [This is fun!]
“What happens then?” I ask.
“Then he usually says, ‘I want to see your sassy. . . .’ Oh, I’m embarrassed, I can’t say it.”
“Hey, Rosie, you’re just prepping me for a part that I have in your drama club. Just give me my lines, please.”
She laughs. “All right. Here goes!” She closes her eyes and imitates her husband’s commanding voice: “Get your sorry ass over here. I want to see my sweet little slut in action. Start with your special strip tease—the one that makes my cock hard and hungry.” [I am mildly shocked by this scenario, but I don’t let on. It’s their love life, not mine. Who am I to judge?]
Again, I try these lines for myself and Rosie coaches me on how to get it exactly right.
“What happens then?”
“I do my strip-tease dance and then, when I am finally buck naked, I bow before my Master and tenderly kiss his feet and his hands, but I avoid looking into his eyes.”
“Why so?”
“This is a little game we play. I am avoiding his eyes because I am ashamed. He notices it, and says teasingly, ‘So, my sweet little slut has been a bad girl?’ I answer in a trembling voice, ‘Yes, Master.’”
At this point, she turns her body and faces me. I follow her lead. In a moment, we are sitting on the couch facing each other. She has curled her legs under her and my long legs are softly bent and touching her sides. Now she begins touching me as she is talking. She touches my hands, my chest, and my face. All the time, her flashing eyes are alert and fixed on me.
Then she explains how her Master tells her to go fetch the bamboo cane. She already knows that she must return with the cane held in her teeth, very much as when a dog returns a thrown stick to her Master.
She then illustrates how they playfully go through an interrogation. “Truth and Consequences,” they call it. She is on her knees before him making a confession of her failings. He, in turn, will take each point in her confession and ask her for as few or as many details as pleases him.
Then he assigns how he will use the bamboo to cleanse his sweet little slut of her “indiscretions.” [This seems to me so undignified and masochistic. All my instincts rebel against this. I have to continually remind myself that they are adults and they have the right to work out their rites of intimacy as they see fit. Who am I to judge?]
All of this goes very smoothly until I ask her for an example of the most common failing that she confesses. “I can’t tell you, Master. It just so awful.” [I notice that she has slipped into addressing me as “Master.” This pleases me.]
Then I take on a mock seriousness: “You ungrateful slut. You strip yourself naked so that I may see and relish every part of you. But now you refuse to let me see you naked when it comes to recounting your failings? How can I relish your sins and purge them if I don’t know what they are? Strip yourself of this false modesty! Let me see every damn part of you.”
This does the trick. She responds with a grave countenance, “Oh, forgive me, Master. I am your ungrateful slave. Of course I want to be entirely naked before you. Of course I want to allow you to see me and to relish me as I truly am. So I humbly confess before you that I have been sexually arousing myself without your permission.” Once she says this, she giggles like a naughty school girl, and I break out laughing. [I now notice how playful these interrogations can become. I instantly feel more relaxed with their rites of intimacy. I’m so glad that I didn’t show my alarm earlier.]
Having passed over this risky boundary, she is relieved. In response, she spontaneously wraps her arms around my neck and kisses me repeatedly on every part of my face. “Oh, my,” I say to her, “I very much look forward to prying out of you all the juicy details of your transgressions. Does your beloved husband use the cane if you hesitate too much in giving him the juicy details that he requires?”
“You can bet he does, and he has other means as well,” she says in a soft voice. [She is avoiding my eyes, so I don’t ask what these “other means” are because I want to retain the freedom to invent both pleasant and frightful way of getting her to make a full confession. The “carrot and the stick” need to be artfully used at my discretion.]
Then, I look her straight in the eyes and whisper, “Then I too shall relish using the bamboo cane to insure that you come clean and disclose ever agonizing detail of your sexual failings.”
My imagination is on fire with anticipation. I so look forward to commanding her to strip naked. I have already anticipated removing my shoes and socks so I can feel her lips when she submissively kisses my hands and feet. I will especially enjoy the anticipation of extracting a full confession of her failings. And then I shall devise suitable punishments to fit her crimes. When I use the bamboo rod to punish her flesh, I secretly look forward to increasing the pain to the point where I can witness the silent tears running down her lovely cheeks. Once she shows complete remorse, I will use scented oils to massage the cruel marks of the cane that I have placed on her body. I will kiss away her pain and shame. Then, I will boldly make love to her for as long as she requires. In this latter part, I will be conscious of being her servant and arousing her as she likes and as often as she likes until she is completely satiated. I want to hear her purr like a smitten kitten. What a glorious assignment! I can’t wait to get started.
Then I blurt out, “May I make a request of my sweet little slut?”
“Of course,” she replies, “you’re the Master, and I am your submissive slave.” [Yipes! This is the first time that she confirmed that she is MY sex slave.]
Then I command you to go into my bathroom and to quickly remove all your clothing and all of your jewelry. Then turn the light off in the bathroom. This will be my signal to enter. I intend to give my sweet little slut a long shower. This will allow me to touch and to enjoy all the delicious parts of you that I will be claiming and using as your Master. When I finish cleaning and savoring your body, you can then do the same for me. Once we have dried each other off, we can jump into bed and use our body heat to warm each other until we are both ready for love-making.
When the light goes off, I enter, and I turn on the electric heater. The cherry-red heating coils provide just enough illumination for me to see Rosie in all her glory. Then it suddenly occurs to me that I want to touch and kiss her body before stepping into the shower. So I begin to use my hands to slowly explore all the parts of her body, beginning with her hair. This happens in complete silence. I kiss her eyes and used my tongue as well. It is then that I first notice the strong odor of sweat. I lift her arms and take in the musty scent coming from her arm pits. She begins to lower her arms, but I gently and firmly resist her intentions. Then I kiss her a dozen times there and taste her with my tongue. I want her to know that no part of her body is off limits for me and that no odor of her body displeases me.
When I get around to her breasts, I lightly kiss each of her breasts and used my tongue and teeth to playfully tease each her nipples. The sex manual I had read said that doing this would increase the temperature of her breasts. I couldn’t detect this. Nor did I sense that her nipples increased in size due to my delicious licking and sucking. She did, however, let out a few soft moans, and this was ample evidence that I had been teasing her nipples in just the way that satisfied her dark desires.
When I move down to her belly, I sit down on the toilet seat and nudged her forward so that I can easily and naturally bury my nose in her pussy. I hold this position and explore it for a long time. Finally I insert the middle finger of my right hand ever so gently into the sweet valley that runs from her clit to her vaginal opening. Here I encounter the sweet, slippery juices that the sex manuals describe as the sure sign that my “sweet, little slut” is already thoroughly aroused. “Well and good,” I say quietly to her. Her body shivers spontaneously and she made soft sounds deep in her throat.
It was then that I hear a gentle knocking at my bedroom door. I could not imagine who this might be. After all, it is after ten, and my housemates know that I would already be in bed. But then the knocking was repeated—a little more insistent this time. I freeze. “Expecting someone?” she whispers.
“Hell no,” I respond. “Stay here. I’ve only just begun to give you the treatment that your sweet body so desires. I’ll see who it is and quickly send them away.” So I grab my terry-cloth bathrobe that is on its usual hook behind the door and put it on effortlessly as I exit the shower room.
Then the third set of knocks comes, louder this time, as I am poised to open my bedroom door. Rosie then roughly grabs my hand and noiselessly pulls me back into the shower room. I yield to her. When we are safely inside, Rosie whispers in my ear, “No one is going to get between you and me this holy night. I’ve waited for this so long. Let’s go ahead with our shower and, whoever it is, will soon get discouraged and go away.”
Rosie then begins to plant her slippery kisses all over my face and neck. She then unties my bathrobe and slips it off my shoulders. Even before it crumples to the floor, Rosie is already using her nails to scratch my chest. Then she artfully uses her lips and tongue to relieve the tingling sensation left behind by her nails. In the next moment, she is tracing her engorged nipples against my belly. Charlie (the affectionate name that I use for my penis) immediately snaps to attention. . . .
I overwhelmingly agree with my sweet little slut. No one is going to interrupt this holy night.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~end of text~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mark Twain wrote, “Truth is stranger than fiction.” My experience with “Rosie” illustrates this so well. I am sure some of my readers have had experiences that push at the boundaries of sexual propriety. The test of the worth of this website is whether WE AS AUTHORS AND CRITICS can maintain a safe place for stories such as my own.
#1 The feedback that I appreciate most is when you, my reader, offer me two or three readback lines. To do this, simply copy and paste a few phrases or sentences that had a powerful impact on you (whether positive or negative) while you were reading Proposition of a Desperate Woman. You may include a few words specifying the key emotion/insight triggered by each of your readback lines. But even if you say nothing more, your very choice of readback lines says to me, “I am honored to allow you to notice that this line has a special importance for me.”
#2 Since this is a raw writing never seen by anyone before, I would also appreciate being alerted to (a) grammatical errors and (b) unclear meanings. In both cases, just write the phrase as it is in my text and follow it by your suggested rewrite. Some illustrations:
1. sexual frenzie > sexual frenzy
2. When I came back from leaving my husband at the airport > After driving my husband to the SF airport
3. he talks to me and slowly masturbates > he talks to me, gradually masterbates
To create a safe place for sharing personal stories, I believe that it imperative to entirely omit any moral judgments, either positive or negative. For all practical purposes, a true life story should be treated as though it were a fictional narrative. The focus must be on the power of the written word to move us, to inspire us, to awaken self-examination, to exalt us, and, at times, to diminish us. That’s why, in telling my story, I left in those moments where I felt moral outrage but then I catch myself and say, “Who am I to judge?”
Can real-life situations raise moral questions? Absolutely. Can God’s blessings be found in the strange events found in my narrative? To this I say unreservedly, “YES. THANK YOU, LORD!” If you’re unsure of this, go and read the story of Tamar (Gen 38). But my purpose in writing was not to prove to anybody that God is on my side. Far from it. My purpose was to recall as best I could an encounter that irrevocably changed my life 52 years ago. Will it change your life as well? I cannot say. You will have to tell me.
For those who want to discuss the morality of the words and of Rosie and myself, please go to http://www.churchonfire.net/forum/ When you login, please add the number 5 before your chosen name. For example, I would write my name = 5Aaron. This is done only to allow the Moderator to know that you’re coming to this forum after reading my story in fanstory.com
