Chapter 1

1974. Nixon had resigned on a hot August day. Rockefeller would become Vice President that winter (and just a few years later he was destined to expire in a highly compromising position with a young female staffer). Vietnam was still simmering on the back burner, and policy makers expected that the American-supported regime could hold on for the foreseeable future (President Thieu would ultimately prove more adept at running a liquor store than a country). The Arab oil embargo was just beginning to fade into the recent past, yet gasoline remained at a painfully high seventy cents a gallon. New York City went bankrupt, and its feisty little grey-haired mayor defiantly proclaimed that it was still the Big Apple. And that's where I lived at the time, Noo Yawk, Noo Yawk, and I was lonely and horny, though not necessarily in that order.

At 26, I was still a virgin, a "technical virgin," that is. What this means is that I had never been with a woman in that particular way. I liked women all right, could very easily have loved them, but they terrified me. I was afraid of not doing the right thing with them, of being rejected, laughed at, falling flat on my face, failing.

I wasn't really a virgin in every sense of the word. I had been with men a number of times. I didn't really consider myself homosexual (or, in the contemporary usage, "gay"). Admittedly I very much enjoyed being the passive partner in anal intercourse, and even found it moderately satisfying switching roles. There was something profoundly sensual about a dick sliding into my ass, penetrating deeply, moving in and out. That powerful moment when the guy bending over me would gently part my ass cheeks with his hands, then his vaselined dick would first touch, then push against my asshole (sounds more true-to-life than anal sphincter, doesn't it?), and it would dimple inward, then open. Now the magic, the clash of cymbals, as the head of the dick popped past the outer, then the inner ring of muscle, then, meeting no further resistance, slid smoothly upwards, penetrating deeply... up into my very guts. It even got so I found the faintly pungent residual shit-smell afterwards a turn-on. Yes, I liked taking it in the ass, up the ass, but... I didn't much care for men otherwise. I liked women, I loved them, I loved their touch and their smell and their curves and their softness and their femininity.

How I longed to cuddle against a round, soft body after we had both had our fill of each other. How I wanted to rest my head on her breasts at that moment, then fall asleep. How I craved having her nice round ass to caress as I woke up next to her. What a jarring contrast with the reality I had settled for -- a man, a hairy, sweaty stranger uncorking his slimy, dripping, limp cock from my ass and walking out the door. I was sick of this coarse, stripped-down version of lust. I wanted a woman, a special woman to love and be loved by.

I had just about given up. I was just plain too shy, too scared, too awkward and fumbling, too socially inept to get a girlfriend. Then there was the guilt, the thought that having been penetrated by men had somehow contaminated me, made me less of a man myself, made me unworthy of loving and being loved. Even the thought of approaching a woman made me break out into a cold sweat. Then I saw her ad.

Gentleman, gentle man, special man sought for a deep and intimate relationship, for a very special kind of love. If you have ever read Norman Mailer's story, "The Time of Her Time," and been moved by it, you might well be the one. You are likewise special in all other ways. You are a seeker, driven to explore the hidden paths.

What impelled me to read the personals in the "Town Crier" on that one particular day? I wasn't in the habit of doing so, generally finding female-seeking-male personal ads tedious, or at best grimly amusing -- mostly women looking for a perfect mate, not to mention the fulfillment of all their other assorted fantasies as well (the fairy tale theory of life). Yet this ad caught my eye.

Yep, I had read Mailer's notorious tale, part of his "Advertisements For Myself" collection of early writings. It was quite a departure for him, and possibly the first mention of anal sex in mainstream literature. That was in the late '50s, and the lit'ry establishment had been quite scandalized. I found the story provocative and a huge turn-on when I read it as a teenager. Imagine, an experienced stud and cocksman goes through his entire bag of tricks to bring a "frigid" woman to orgasm, but nothing works... nothing, until he tries, fighting her initial reluctance, tries to fuck her in the ass. He gets it in, against her furious resistance, and despite the pain this brings her to an explosive climax, the first of her entire life, if we are to believe the narrative.

(Nothing there about the special relaxation techniques needed for painless and pleasurable anal penetration. That might have been too much for an Eisenhower-era readership to stomach, or just maybe the great author himself was clueless.)

The story might have been a liberating breakthrough, the dawn of a new era of freedom when written, but now in the enlightened mid-70s, sodomy was no longer such a big deal. The story was not even all that well done, but then I didn't much care for anything Mailer wrote after "The Naked and the Dead," and I hadn't much cared for that either.

I wasn't at all sure I wanted to respond. It's not as if the woman in the ad were offering a simple, "starter" relationship that an inexperienced boob like me could handle. This was about kinky sex, with all the additional layers of complexity that implies. And how many years had it been since I had tried for any kind of relationship at all with a woman? What could I offer this one? Yeah, I knew a thing or two about ass fucking, learned firsthand, both as a top and a bottom. So what if it was with men? Were women all that different? For that matter, could that particular portion of a woman's anatomy where she shits be all that different than a man's? What the hell. I sat down in front of a borrowed typewriter and began to pound the keys.

Gentle gentlewoman,

Relationships between two seekers of beauty and hidden meaning are rare and precious jewels. Mailer might well have hit upon something -- that just possibly the path to the Fundamental passes through the Fundament. His character, though, didn't have a clue. He forced his way in, causing pain and violation. The woman was quite within her rights to dismiss the accidental bringer of her pleasure, to kick his butt, actually. Done properly, the act brings exaltation and intense pleasure to the woman (no pain! no pain!).

I'm offering more, much more than mere fulfillment of your cherished fantasy. Mutual appreciation and enjoyment of a particular variation or act is not in itself, unfortunately, sufficient basis for a sustained relationship. Note, therefore, that there is substance to me far above and beyond any fetishes and/or preferences I might be partial to. Yes, there is life after sex.