Chapter One

 

I am not the usual protagonist of erotic memoirs. Or at least not the kind of erotic memoirs I would have been willing to spend money on and hide beneath the New Yorkers in my bedside table so my husband wouldn't know I had been masturbating while reading them. Not that he would have given a flying fuck, mind you, as I eventually discovered. But I thought he might feel hurt, so I kept my 'clit lit' secret. As it turned out, my own little dirty secrets were the merest patch on his own, but who's keeping score, after all? Certainly not moi...

So, you might ask, why exactly am I not a prototypical female heroine of a chronicle of sexual self-discovery? Well, for one thing, I am way too smart. I mean, Pauline Reage's O or Anne Rice's Beauty are more of your standard types for such roles. Neither of them was exactly a rocket scientist, as far as I could tell. This is not to put them down. I happily got myself off dozens of times while poring over each of their adventures in the world of kink, and I wouldn't want to be ungrateful. And Anais Nin certainly was nobody's dummy. Though writing on-demand erotica for a franc a page seems like a humiliating occupation for a brilliant woman. But I digress.

Being way too smart has been my blessing and curse my whole life. Having skipped two grades ahead did not exactly put me in synch with my social peers as a teen-ager. Nor did going to Caltech to study biochemistry at age sixteen. Of course, the Techers were all at least as smart and socially awkward as I was. This was a relief, in that I didn't have to feel that odd combination of intellectual superiority and social inferiority I had always known in mainstream schools. I was always both academically adept and socially maladroit all in one.

At least at Caltech I was if anything less than average in my weirdness compared to my fellow undergrads. Unfortunately, that meant that I did not find the boys very appealing. So by the time I jammed through my BS in a fast three years I was still a virgin. The one best thing I did there was to force myself the whole time to study karate from a famous teacher. My Sensei loyally still taught nerdy undergrads there because the school had given him his first job when he immigrated from Japan. This led me to a black belt and a level of physical skill that made me comfortable in my body for the first time in my life.

My parents weren't exactly any help with any of these issues. They were classic New York Jewish intellectuals, noses always buried in books or crossword puzzles. Each was preoccupied with their work as a local college professor (though my Dad was an investment whiz on the side). I knew they loved their only daughter, and they proudly supported my education at every level. For Christ's sake, they even endowed me at age twenty-one with a trust fund from Dad's stock market winnings that makes earning an income optional for me.

But in terms of registering the kinds of things that would have helped a gawky smart girl to be more successful socially, they were worse than useless. Such things simply never mattered to them. They were interested in my decisions about education and career. But they actually never offered advice, just endorsement of my choices. I never made this hard for them, always opting for the most prestigious institutions and life path.

So when I let them know Stanford had admitted me early to medical school, their pride and approval were evident. They wished me well as genuinely as they could. Then they sort of let me go, paying the bills promptly and asking cheerfully to be kept in touch, but seldom initiating contact with me on their own. I felt a vague sense of unmooring around that period in my life. But I moved up to Palo Alto with my usual single-mindedness and bought myself a condo in walking distance from the Medical Center and plunged into medical student life.

My anatomy partner turned out to be a very handsome, sort of shy guy named Kevin who was the sweetest man I had ever met. I developed an enormous crush on him, but in spite of my best efforts at signaling romantic interest we became just best friends. We enjoyed studying together every night and hanging out at lunch and dinner together every day. Finally, we both got uncharacteristically drunk at a party after the end of the second semester. The night ended up in bed at my place, though neither one of us remembers very much at all about the whole incident. But I had by God lost my virginity, as I could tell by the sheets that looked like a battle zone the next morning. And what's more, it was with perhaps the most desirable guy on many levels in the entire class. Not too fucking bad, or so I thought at the time.

One thing led to another, and we became known as one of the class items. It was an intense cohort of bright young people trying to combine pairing off with learning a staggering amount of material even for such smart kids as we all were. Sex with Kevin was never spectacular, but always kind and considerate, and always initiated by me. I didn't know enough to wonder about this. I never had a whisper of useful sex education from either my parents or the series of prestigious schools that I attended. So I just accepted that getting to have intercourse that felt good and always ended in an orgasm for me with a seriously handsome man who was really nice to me all the time was about as good as it could possibly get for a somewhat mousy Jewish med student. I did my work, practiced my karate, and hung out with Kevin and our small circle of similar high-powered coupled friends, and all seemed right in my world.

The time came for us to pick our specialties and decide where to train for our future careers. That happens through a process known as the Match. Wherein students rate residency programs and the programs rate their applicants and some computer puts it all together to determine your life course. Kevin and I decided to match together, meaning that our choices would be constrained by needing to end up in the same city. We discussed this all very rationally, as was our wont, and both elected to pursue internal medicine in the Bay Area if we could.

This turned out not to be a problem, given both of our statuses as top students, and we ended up matching at UC San Francisco. This seemed to decide things, and we matter-of-factly got married in a civil ceremony attended by a few of our couple friends at the local courthouse. I sold my condo in Palo Alto and bought an upgraded one in a fancy new building otherwise occupied by faculty members and biotech stars near the UCSF campus. Then we embarked on our future together when I had just turned twenty-two.

So, since this is supposed to be a sexual memoir, I suppose I had better bring you up to date on the erotic evolution of Renee to that point in my very inexperienced life. I had discovered masturbation with a girlfriend on a sleepover when I was pretty young. She happily demonstrated the wonderful feelings that came from touching that miraculous little button of skin at the top of our hairless pre-pubescent genitals. After that, I became a fervent practitioner of the art of sexual self-gratification. I routinely got myself off as a prelude to sleep every single night of my life. Initially I just focused on the sensations, which were quite enough for me to stay interested long enough for the delicious payoff. But after awhile my voracious reading began to expose me to adult sexuality in all its complexity. Then the world of erotic fantasy opened up to me.

My girlfriend Janine and I had experimented with touching each other's pussies. This was certainly fun for both of us, and we tried kissing and feeling each other's budding little tits as well, which had its own intrigue. But as puberty came on, boys became much more interesting. Neither of us was brave enough to do anything about it, but our lesbian experimentations ground to a halt. Something else happened with her, though, that I have to believe shaped my sexuality in a surprising way.

One time early on when she and I were diddling each other's clits, I noticed that her bottom was quite red and tender, and I asked her about it. She seemed reluctant to talk about it. But eventually I wormed out of her that she had gotten spanked on her bare buttocks by her Mother for sassing back. My own parents had never laid an angry hand on me, so I had no basis for comparison. But I did know I found Janine's spankings to be intriguing.

I pressed her for information, and she described how she was taken into her bedroom and over her mother's lap and her skirt was raised and panties lowered. Then her Mom would slap Janine's butt cheeks until they were quite red. After which a hairbrush would be used to spank them even harder if she'd been really bad. To this day I don't understand why, but hearing about this got both me and Janine off much more convulsively than ever before while she was telling her tale of corporal punishment. She said that she always cried and squirmed like hell while it was happening. But then her Mom would stroke and comfort her burning bottom, spreading a cooling lotion on it afterward. This sounded so yummy to me, since my parents never touched me at all. I guess I think some switch inside me got thrown in the direction of eroticizing spanking and has stayed thrown ever since.

Now, it would never have occurred to me to tell anyone about this secret fascination, I can assure you. But what did happen is that I began to form a little private collection, first in my head, and eventually in the back of a drawer. It consisted of scenes from movies or passages from books that described women or girls getting spanked. These became my staple masturbatory fantasy fodder. With my almost eidetic memory I could summon up in detail passages from mainstream literature as well as my growing collection of frank erotica that did the trick for me. What they all had in common was some girl or woman willingly having her bottom bared to be punished. It was usually by some handsome man for some either punitive or purely sexual reason. I think the penitent-bad-girl-getting-what-she-knew-she-deserved-from-the-hunky-but-stern-and-loving-man fantasy was my favorite. As you will see if you read on, it remains hot for me to this day.

To this day I also wonder why no one picked up on how actively sexual I was until I lost my virginity with Kevin. I mean, Jesus Christ, I was beating off daily to explicit porn! This must have meant that I was putting out some kind of sexual vibes. But aside from a few groping advances in high school and at Caltech from nerdy guys who really turned me off, not a single pass was made. Granted, I was shy and had mousy brown hair and eyes, but my features were regular, and my teeth had been straightened. As well, my body was trim, and I had grown a seriously dismaying set of tits by the time I left high school. We're talking fully D-cup-sized knockers that should have had the immature guys drooling. But no one except my doctors ever saw them naked until Kevin. And he only paid them perfunctory attention, for reasons that will become apparent if they aren't already.

To be honest, our sex life together was kind of perfunctory, period. He seemed very shy about sex and was pretty much unwilling to talk about it. And I was too uneasy to persist in the face of his resistance. So about once a week, we would drink some wine to get loose, and I would essentially attack him. This wasn't hard to do, since he is one of the most gorgeous men I have ever met. He would go along with the program, usually getting more-or-less hard. (By the way, he had a huge dick, though I had nothing to compare it to until much later). Then he would dutifully fuck me, staying harder if we did it doggie style with him taking me from behind. I always came pretty easily from intercourse alone, which my girlfriends tell me is rare among intelligent women. After I had my orgasm he would seem to have his and then we would stop and go to sleep. I was on the pill for birth control, so I never checked inside me. But as it later developed, much of the time he was faking his climaxes.

Now I wasn't completely interpersonally blind. So some part of me was registering that the handsome hunk I was married to wasn't entirely into me sexually. But he and I were both interns in an incredibly busy inner city general hospital. Then we were residents taking care of godawfully sick people day in and day out for over a hundred hours a week. So I hope I can be forgiven (especially by myself) for dropping the ball here, so to speak.

My third year of residency my unconscious mind seems to have taken over the story, in its way. I managed to 'forget' my birth control pills (which I had been taking spottily as it was) for long enough to find myself pregnant. So apparently at least one of his orgasms wasn't faked. Although even that is not certain. As they taught us in OB-GYN, the withdrawal method of contraception is unreliable since. Like basketball players, guys always dribble before they shoot. Kevin was his usual sweet, supportive self, and we decided to have the baby, and my wonderful daughter Chloe was born.

I thought I had been in love with Kevin, but with this incredible infant I fell truly head-over-heels. As is commonly the case with busy residents with young children, whatever energy we had away from work went to our precious baby. Of course the marriage withered even further. But Chloe was such a shining star to both of us that it didn't seem to matter. We just united in our very workable partnership as we shared our household and her care.

Of course we relied liberally on my trust fund money to hire top-notch supplementary childcare so we could finish our training on schedule. He continued to be the same wonderful guy and superb doctor, and a great Dad to boot. How could I complain if he was just not much of a lover. But to tell the truth, I didn't feel all that desirable anyway. I had kept an extra twenty pounds around my middle and boobs after childbirth that wouldn't yield to resumed karate workouts no matter how intense. Let alone my many abortive efforts at dieting either. And as any woman can tell you, when we feel pudgy, we don't feel sexy.

I talked to other female residents who had born children, and they all reported pretty much the same desultory results for their sex lives. So I chalked it up to the vagaries of real-life-parenthood and still tried to keep counting my blessings. Soon my sex life began to consist solely of furtive masturbation sessions with my slowly burgeoning collection of erotica. I was a little worried about how much my fantasy life was beginning to slant in the BDSM direction. So I even honest-to-God tried to conjure up more vanilla-ish imaginings to light my fires 'down there'.

But inevitably in order to climax I would end up with some female's naked bottom getting spanked, fucked, and otherwise ravished until I reached my pathetic little solo version of the promised land. And I certainly wasn't going to debrief any of these worries with my girlfriends. Especially since a couple of the ones with what I regarded to be cuter tushies than mine often substituted as the stars in my private inner peep shows.

So residency ended. Kevin (now predictably, I realize with hindsight that rather embarrassingly exceeds the insight I could not dare to muster at the time) chose to do the world-class HIV fellowship at UCSF following his residency. I, on the other hand, had enough of the fiercely intense days and nights we had spent the past eight years in our training. I took time off to be with Chloe, while studying for and passing my internal medicine Boards. I spent several hours each morning working out before teaching a karate class at my local dojo. Most blessedly I tried to catch up on years of missed sleep. This went on for a couple of years, during which I actually started to feel my libido coming back rather steadily. In that interval my body got a good deal fitter and firmer, though that annoying twenty pounds resisted all efforts to eliminate. I decided I just had to get used to being a zaftig Mom and give up on visions of myself as a svelte martial artist babe.

Once Chloe entered elementary school, Kevin and I realized we had a bona-fide genius child on our hands. She was already reading at a high school level by second grade. As well, she had picked up fluent Mandarin and Spanish from our nannies, in addition to being a delightful personality. I freely spent my trust fund to afford her every imaginable opportunity for growth and learning. So she was happily busy between the best private schools, piano, multiple language lessons, and tiny-tots karate that I taught. Kevin had finished his fellowship and joined the faculty on the clinical track, specializing in care of the most intractable AIDS patients. And we hadn't had sex in over four years when I turned thirty. I finally got up my nerve to ask about it. He looked really uncomfortable and muttered: 'I just don't understand, honey, but since Chloe was born I simply don't have any desire. Let's try this Saturday night and I'll work on getting my mind around it.'

And by God, he did. He got a babysitter, took me out to dinner, and brought me home and fucked me just the way he had used to. As usual, he was considerate, barely kept a passable erection of his gorgeous cock. He claimed it was the condom that reduced his sensitivity but refused to have me go back on the Pill, and stopped fucking me immediately after I came. And for the next ten years, he kept up that very same pattern once a month or so. He was always careful to set up a date night so it wouldn't seem as perfunctory as it actually was, and barely managed to screw me before we went to sleep. I found his Viagra prescription some years into that phase and felt a strange mixture of dismay and appreciation. Clearly, he needed the drug to get it up with me, but at least he cared enough to make sure he could.

During that what I now call my 'fallow' decade, I also changed my work life. I had close to ten million dollars in my portfolio and a lifestyle that didn't come close to spending the income from the conservative investment strategy my father used in managing my money. It seemed like working for pay was silly for me. So I kept up my routine of mornings for exercise and started working as a volunteer on afternoons in the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, caring for homeless people. My exercise changed too. I developed a routine after dropping Chloe off at school. It began by getting in an hour of aerobic workout on the exercycle or elliptical trainer. Then doing half an hour of strength training, and catching a yoga class before showering to get ready for the rest of my day. Karate had dwindled in appeal as I got older, and Chloe's interests branched out to other sports after she got her black belt. So I just did a few katas (ancient solo choreographed routines) every day to not entirely let it rust away.

Things started to change dramatically when I turned forty. Chloe went off to Harvard, and I realized that I felt a certain subtle emptiness pervading my whole being. I had some inklings that sexuality had to do with it. But what kicked my mind into high gear was developing a schoolgirl-intense crush on one of the regulars in my yoga class. He was an older guy who clearly enjoyed looking at the bodies of the limber young yoginis in our class, though he was discreet about his 'yogling'. He was friendly with me, but my chunkiness probably made me unacceptable eye-candy for him. The reverse was certainly not the case, as I couldn't help lusting after his remarkably athletic body even though he admitted he was in his late fifties. After a while my masturbatory thoughts about him crossed over into what felt like an obsession. So I decided it was time to get some help figuring myself out.

I went to see a female psychotherapist who also volunteered at my clinic, and who had always struck me as markedly normal and well-adjusted. I mean, for a shrink...let's face it, they do tend to be odd ducks for the most part. We talked for about ten hours with her getting a careful picture of my history and background. Though I decided to leave out my spanking fetish...I mean, after, all, even for shrinks there has to be such a thing as TMI, don't you think? Then she asked me the most obvious question that had never consciously crossed my mind. We were talking about my crush on the older guy in yoga. She had observed that in her experience such things tended not to happen unless some important need was not getting met in one's marriage. A silence fell, and she asked with the utmost gentleness: 'Have you ever wondered if Kevin was gay?'