Chapter 2

About this time, Elaine spoke up. I had been extremely curious about her willingness to remain silent throughout all the excitement of the previous weeks. Based on her very domineering and confrontational persona when we first met. I expected her to be much more outspoken.

I called her on it. “Honey,” I said, which in itself was a sea change. “I’m not complaining, but you seem like a completely different person now than when we first met. Am I smothering your opinions by always being the one who speaks up first?”

“No. When you abandoned me on the beach that day and forced me to reconsider who I was and where I was going, it made me realize that my actions were not creating the kind of world I had hoped to live in.”

“In what way?”

“I had an epiphany. I realized that others were not complying with my wishes and demands because they respected me, but because they were either too insecure to challenge me or simply chose to not bother with me, as I think you had chosen to do.”

“That’s true. I simply closed you out of my mind and ignored you, since I was reluctant to challenge you and further damage the enjoyment of the cruise for the others at our table.”

“But now you have opened your mind to me, haven’t you?” She snuggled closer and brought my arms around her as we spooned on the couch. Loving her got easier every day.

“I had convinced myself that when others did not fight back when I ordered them around, it was because they respected my authority. You helped me realize that failure to fight back and respect are too very different animals.” She snuggled even closer. “I took a good hard look at my life and what I want from it and realized that respect was more important to me than control.”

“If you snuggle any closer, I won’t be responsible for my actions,” I warned.

“Good!”, she exclaimed as irresponsibility became the mantra of the moment.

“Not that I’m complaining, but where did you learn to make love like that?”

“Like what?”

“You know what I mean. You just go on and on and on, like the battery bunny, while I go crazy on you.”

“I like crazy on me.”

“Yeah, but I’ve never been with anyone like you that seems to be able to go on forever.”

“It’s like you were saying about your epiphany regarding the relative value to you of respect and fear. When I was younger, I could get it up over and over. In fact, I once tested myself and actually masturbated to completion five times without stopping or going soft.” <True>

“Five times? That’s impossible, isn’t it?”

“It is for me now, but it wasn’t when I was nineteen. I never blasted out gallons the way some porn stars do, but each of the first four times in my test produced enough to repopulate a small country.”

“What about #5?”

“It was pretty much a dry run, but the sensations were just as strong.”

“How old were you when you could no longer repeat so often?”

“I don’t really know. All I remember is having to jerk off at least once and sometimes twice before a date so I wouldn’t finish too quickly on the date. After I got married, there was usually too little time available to spend as much time making love as I would have liked. At first, we both worked, then the kids came along way before I was ready or able to handle them financially, so I worked a lot of overtime just to keep our heads above water.”

“Didn’t your parents help out?”

“Very little. My parents had very little they could share and as far as I know, her father never helped us at all. Now that I look back on it, there is a very good chance that he gave her money, but she never told me about it.”

“Well, getting back to where we were when we started this conversation, how is it that you can maintain an erection for hours, even while we are discussing mundane or even stressful memories?”

“Years ago, I read something about Tantric Yoga. I don’t even know whether it teaches the things I have learned on my own based on my assumptions of its teachings, but somehow I got that idea, so I practiced holding back my conclusions and found that the cliché that the journey is more important than the destination to be absolutely true with regard to sex. I learned how to focus on my partner’s pleasure in order to prevent mine from exceeding the point of no return.”

“Point of no return?”

“Yep. I don’t know about other guys, but for me there is this buildup of anticipation that can be easily stopped up to a point. Once that point is reached, things sort of lock in and there is no stopping the avalanche. It reminds me of what Howling Wolf said his father told his mother when he was beginning his singing career.”

“Oh?”

“Leave that boy alone. Hit in him and hit got to come out.”

“I love that.”

“So do I. Are you about ready? You’ve been to the Moon and back about a dozen times so far tonight. Hit in me and hit about to come out.”

“Howl, Wolf, Howl. Hit me with your best shot.”

I did. It seemed as if the whole world breathed a huge sigh of completion in synch with ours. It made me wonder.

“Art? When we make love, is the whole world tied into our emotions or is it only the thirty billion of your clan that I am sensing?”

“Please forgive us if we have violated your privacy, but your feelings for each other were so pure and unselfish that we wanted to show the rest of the world the value of putting the other person’s pleasure ahead of your own.”

“When you put it that way, how could I object?”

“May we make another point?”

“Of course.”

“With your permission, we wish to share your techniques with the world, showing them the detailed methods that can be used to learn the exceptional degree of control that you have acquired.”

“Glad to be of assistance.”

“Our purpose is not to simply increase the entertainment value of sexual relations among everyone. Our hope is that many will grasp the concept that our own pleasure is enhanced when we put the pleasure of others ahead of our own, in any context. It is another manifestation of your Golden Rule.”

“Many of our religious leaders would be horrified that you connect the Golden Rule with sexual pleasure.”

“Many of your religious leaders need to get a life.”

“I can’t argue with that.”

“Art? How are things going with the rest of the world? Elaine and I have an idyllic life. We are surrounded by beauty and comfort, with all of our physical needs and emotional desires satisfied. Are others as comfortable and well provided for as we are?”

“There has been a certain degree of turmoil and unrest, but this has mainly been among those who were accustomed to benefiting from the suffering of others. They no longer have the ability to run roughshod over the rights of others and not all of them have accepted the wisdom of our message.”

“Did you simply take the wealth from those who had accumulated it and spread it around?”

“No. That is a childish concept that doesn’t work, although it sounds good to so many that they support the oligarchs who promote it as a means of sharing wealth ‘more equitably’.”

“I’m familiar with the term, but not certain that I correctly understand the definition of oligarchy. Can you remind me?”

“Wikipedia has an excellent discussion on the subject. You might wish to review that. However, in short it is the rule of many by a powerful few who gain power by promising to correct income equality. One of your recent political figures ran for President on the platform of free college tuition, among other things.”

“Was that bad? It sounds good to lots of students who are saddled by horrific student loans by the time they receive a degree.”