In Which the Similarities Between a Hairbrush and a Handcuff Are Estabished

Now it's time I told you about Lucas, the man who engineered my most positive and beautiful early sexual experiences.

I met Lucas through the group of friends I ran with for a few years in junior high and early high school. I have no memory of my first impression except for this: I thought that his face was both grotesque and irresistible. I could not stop looking at him. In fact, Lucas' physicality has made such a lasting impression on me that I think the half-conscious memory of him may have contributed to why I allowed myself to fall so quickly into bed with Damon. But that is a different tale.

Lucas had an enormous mouth with a tongue as long as Gene Simmons'; he seemed almost to navigate the whole world by the use of his mouth, shaping each word he spoke with relish, tasting every person and situation he encountered, listening for his own amusement to the echoes off the walls of the great cave in his head. His laugh was impossibly loud, huge booming reverberations that seemed to come from everywhere at the same time. I loved his laugh, though, and his monstrously wide grin. I loved his long hair that was always dyed too black and the way it would fall over the prominent ridge of his eyebrows, which he kept immaculately waxed. This always made me giggle--that such a terrifyingly formidable hunk of man flesh would be so vain.

He had other charming incongruities, as well. For instance, he loved horses, and he kept several in a field behind his house. The rapturous attention he paid to them was as tender and startlingly private as a lover's. He would all but disappear into the depth of his affection for one of his horses, his hands finding every contour of her neck and face, his lips moving along her skin whispering his worship, and seem to forget I was there. I have never forgotten the image of him, a tattooed, pierced, black-maned goth boy leading his horse towards me down the crape myrtle-lined path on a late summer afternoon.

He had acquired a reputation as a talented lover, and we all pitied the foolish girls who attempted to possess him because every woman knew--or should have known--that he had been created as a gift to all of us, even men. (I am fairly certain that he even served as a male escort for a period of time.)  His body was our temple.

After a while, his piercing habit got fairly intense. That muscular expanse of flesh in his mouth started to collect decorations (or perhaps they are best thought of as tools) until he had five--count, FIVE--bars through his tongue. At the time when we were close, he only had one or two through the tongue, but he already had many other parts pierced: his septum, his cheeks, his le bret, his nipples, his scrotum, and his perineum. He also had surface piercings through the skin on the back of his neck and a ladder of four bars through the top of his shaft. Occasionally he would pierce himself on the surface somewhere random and then take it out a few weeks later, just for kicks. I know. Woah, right?

As much room in his psyche as I knew there was for the love of pain, rough dominance play, and humiliation in sex, he was always incredibly gentle and tender with me. He seemed to be motivated almost entirely by the desire to help me develop into a healthier young woman, and if he wasn't, then that was certainly a happy unintended outcome. He never once tried to penetrate me, and even gently refused to do so when I thought I wanted it. His project seemed to be making sure that I knew my body, knew what I wanted, and knew how men should be expected to behave in bed with me. Maybe I am completely wrong about this, but I am incredibly thankful for the memories and the personal growth he so kindly and selflessly brought into my life. He set the bar high--I still sometimes find myself comparing men to him--and equipped me with new self-respect.

You ask if I want to listen to music and I tell you of course because I know that it is your way of gauging what sort of mood I am in and I would like to tell you that I am never not in that mood when you are near but I don't want to make you worry that I am falling in love with you or anything even though I do love you so very much and thank you for making me shut up with that kiss.

And I loved him, and I still love him, but everything was always very clear. It was the weirdest thing. It's not like he was the wrong kind of guy for me to fall for, and it's not like all the ingredients weren't there. I had it all with him: love, mutual respect, sweet sweet lust, and lots to talk about. But I just couldn't bring myself to desire to possess him. I knew that none of the women who thought they owned him actually did, and I wished that they would see it the way I did: Lucas was serving his best and highest purpose when he was allowed to remain a communal resource. He lived to give of himself, and he had cured so many women (and men?) of their hangups, and there was plenty of him to go around. He was the true Love Doctor in the flesh.

Of all the naked fun we had together over those few years, the instance that I remember in the most vivid, panty-creaming detail occurred when we were both fully clothed. It is still one of the most terrifically, head-swimmingly intimate events of my life.

A bit of background and setting: One of our friends was the son of a very wealthy doctor. We usually ended up picking his house as our hangout spot because his parents left us alone to do as we wished in their enormous game room. Lucas, three or four other friends, and I were there on a weekend. I must have been about fourteen, and I still had impossibly thick hair that fell well past my breasts. I could wrap almost my entire torso with it.

I still felt very shy anytime I hung around these kids because I feared upsetting whatever magic made them accept me. I was two to five years younger than everyone in the group, and we had only recently begun to spend time together, so I kept my mouth shut most of the time. I had never had a serious conversation with Lucas before, only stared out at him from that deeply confused, impenetrable interior space that adolescence introduces to the psyche.

Ken had just turned on some music. The girls were distracted, chatting at the corner table with Tobias. I was reading something on the couch when I felt eyes on me, so I turned to meet them. Lucas had a musing expression on his face, and one corner of his broad mouth curled up in a devious little smile as he pulled himself up from his chair and began to walk toward me.

Towering over me, he extended his hand in a frank and commanding gesture that might have been translated: "You. Woman. Come." It was the sort of thing that I daydream about men being able to pull off. So simple, so complete. These days, when virtually no natural selection takes place any more among men competing for women, it takes a very rare and special mix of hormones and attitudes for a man to be able to communicate the most basic, ancient message to a woman without the assistance of words. The authenticity of Lucas' masculinity was like nothing my adolescent body had ever understood before, and like very little I have known after him. That feeling of surrender to the male animal mostly only ever comes up these days in fantasies involving tangles with men who use inappropriate amounts of force and whose faces I can't make out in the half-dark...

So, this was all that happened, all that I have been getting at: I took his outstretched hand and allowed him to pull me up from the couch. He led me through the hallway and into the bathroom, where he brushed my hair for a few minutes and only sortof kissed me. That's all. Really.

You close the door click behind you and you turn around to face me. You spend a moment searching me, all of me, still trying to figure out what you intend to do. You seem to decide then and your hands go to my hips and slowly close around them. Slowly, firmly you pick me up by my hipbones, your thumbs pressing into my flesh, and I feel so small and deliciously helpless and you set me down gently on the sink, all the while staring, sometimes into my eyes but other times like a scientist dissecting me inch by quivering inch. You start opening drawers, rifling through tubes of ointments and boxes of dental floss until you find a hairbrush. The next five minutes seem to last for hours as you slowly, gently, painstakingly brush my hair while examining my face, my neck, my arms, and the world has receded and there is only your face, your hot, smoky breath on my ears, your fingers electrifying the skin at the base of my skull, the mad flutter of my heartbeat, and the burning and throbbing between my legs that gets harder and harder to bear. You are enraptured, worshipful almost, and your brow is furrowed in perfect concentration. Finally you stop, put down the hairbrush, and look at me. The furrow relaxes as you seem to remember time and space. Your thumb grazes my lower lip, and your two forefingers dig slightly into the soft flesh under my jaw, pulling my face into yours. Your big, soft lips find mine only for a moment, and I could scream with need for more of you but I know you won't, but anyway you're not completely cruel so you smile and help me down again, straighten my hair once more even though nothing is out of place, and then lead me out of the bathroom. The others turn to look from the other side of the room and I can feel them wondering, probing, and I can feel my face flushing even redder, but no one asks. It seems as if your sweeping look of brazen self-validation must have silenced their curiosity before it ever reached their throats. I go back to the couch, and you walk over to Amber and kiss her on the collarbone.

And that is one of the hottest things that has ever happened to me.