It Only Seems Kinky The First Time (Part Two)

"All I ever wanted, all I ever needed is here in my arms. Words are very unnecessary, they can only do harm. Enjoy the silence."

When Denise told me she loved me, I was sitting in the passenger seat of her car. We'd pulled over on the way home because neither of us particularly wanted to go there and we had nowhere else to be. So we'd decided to prolong the journey, to remain inbetween for as long as possible.

Hard to express how I felt in the moments after she'd said those three little words. I'm sure, if I think about it, that somebody must have said them to me at some point in my life. I just don't remember it. The first time I can clearly recall being told I was loved was that night in her car. It was a big deal to me. It was more than a big deal. It was everything.

I didn't say it back right away. I didn't want to react. I wanted to say it because I meant it, not because it was expected of me. I needed to think about it, to be sure of how I felt and what I thought I was involved in. I'm a great believer in following your instincts, but there are times when it's all too easy to confuse instinct and stupidity

Our relationship stepped up a few gears. We were still playing the same games, but there was a more serious edge to them, a sense that something really was at stake. Every orgasm was another step towards a place I don't think either of us understood. It stopped being about exploring for me almost immediately. It started being about doing these things with her because I loved her, and because there was no-one else in the world I wanted to do them with.

I told her I loved her, and as soon as I did, that love was tested.

"Would you ever...would you be interested in a threesome?" Denise asked me. We were sitting in the pub, late winter, talking over the top of empty pop music.

"In what sense?"

"In the sense that I'd like to try having sex with more than one partner."

"With another man, you mean."

"Ideally, but I'm not against the idea of a girl." She looked around for a few moments, took a drink, took a drag on her cigarette, shrugged. "Why not both?"

"Why am I suddenly sure you have this halfway planned already?"

She smiled and kissed me lightly on the mouth. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean," she said.

About three weeks later, I was sitting on the couch at her house with a friend of hers I didn't know. His name was David, and he was much, MUCH better looking than me. Denise had left us alone for random reasons of her own, and we were actually getting along quite well. I wasn't at all sure that this situation was what I wanted, but I intended to let things happen and then see how I felt rather than leaping to condemn her for wanting to try it.

"So...uh...you two do this a lot?" David asked me.

I laughed a little, more out of nerves than anything else. "First time. How'd you get here?"

"Into the weirdest conversation I've ever had, or the whole scenario?"

"Both."

"I went to college with Dee."

I had to ask. "Ever fuck her?"

"No."

"So...what...she just asked you to?"

"More or less."

"This is insane."

David nodded. "You're right. This is insane."

It was a couple of minutes later that Denise wandered back in again. She immediately sat herself down in my lap and we started kissing. And...I felt comfortable with that. He was the outsider, the one who didn't really know why we were doing this or what his role was. For all I knew of David, a girl he fancied had asked him if he wanted to get into a threesome with her and her boyfriend, and he'd accepted purely on the basis of a girl offering him no-strings sex.

We did it. I'm not writing this for the fine details. We did it and I enjoyed doing it, and in the process, I managed to ditch a fair amount of the discomfort I had regarding my own gender. I already believed that sexuality was a matter of socialisation, and that encounter represented my first steps on the road to practicing what I preached. All in all, I was happy. Not to mention that, shortly afterwards, we reversed the situation, and I got to have sex with two women at the same time. That wasn't such a groundbreaker in terms of my sexuality, but it was fucking awesome.

On we went. That was the last new barrier we really broke. After that, Denise seemed sated in a lot of ways. We went back to having sex of the non-kinky variety much more regularly. The part of our relationship that was all about love (and yes, I do separate love and sex in the context of Denise and me, though I didn't then) blossomed. For a while, I was very happy.

The reasons our relationship went downhill have no particular bearing on this story. Suffice to say, by the time it got to both of us heading away to university, we'd essentially broken up. I say essentially because I found it extremely hard to let go. She was studying in Nottingham, while I was in Cambridge. After a silent first couple of months away, we began communicating again. She wrote me a letter, I called her, we got away from the harsh words we'd exchanged and started building something new. I went to Nottingham to see her a couple of times.

Everything had changed, but I was blind. I was still seeing her with the same eyes. We got back to intimacy, but it wasn't long before I began to suspect that I wasn't the only one she was sleeping with. Denise would neither confirm nor deny this. She would only ever say that she was still 'finding herself'.

Words cannot describe how sick I got of that little phrase.

Denise never came to Cambridge during the five month postscript to our relationship. I was always the one that travelled. I think that applies emotionally as well as physically. She was who she was, comfortable with her evolution and with the things she wanted. She wasn't a whore. She never relinquished control and - to my knowledge - she never did anything she didn't want to do. I was the one beginning to feel pushed and bullied. I was the one whose eyes were beginning to open.

One night in Nottingham we went out with a gang of her friends and proceeded to get very drunk. From the Student Union bar, we returned to her halls of residence, where everyone piled into some girl's room and continued to drink, smoke, and talk. I was pretty well in the bag, but not so far gone that I didn't notice how many people were pairing off right there in the room and how far those couples were going without seeming overly worried about who was watching. I remember glancing across at Denise and catching her watching me, reading me, gauging my reaction. I mouthed the word 'no' at her and stood up.

"Wait, wait, wait." She caught me at the door, drunk and obviously excited. "Let's do this. I want you to do this with me."

"I don't think so."

"Why?"

"We were...we were stable before. Stuff like this was okay because I loved you and I knew you loved me, too. I'm not sure of that now."

"I love you," she said.

"Then let's go."

"We're into emotional blackmail now?"

"Works both ways."

"I'm staying," she said. She looked genuinely upset.

"I'm going."

"If that's the way you want it."

"I don't want it any way. If I could have it the way I wanted, we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. Just so you know, I've got a pretty good idea of how you view this relationship or whatever it is now. I've never seen it as open, though, so if you're sleeping around, you're cheating. That includes tonight."

"I'm staying."

"Then goodnight," I said, and stomped off up the corridor.

I had nowhere to go. I was lonely and unhappy and I had only a return ticket that wasn't valid until the next day to my name. I went to the only place I could conceivably go. I went to Helen's room.

Helen was Denise's closest friend at university, or at least she was then. Denise had a crowd she partied with, and then she had Helen, the one she confided in. Helen was sensible by comparison, but then so was pretty much everyone else I knew. She seemed surprised to find a tearful Michael at her door at 2am on a Sunday morning, but she took it in her stride and showed me a kindness that's stayed with me ever since. She was a friend of a friend and she owed me nothing, yet she invited me in and listened to all I had to say without judging either me or her friend. As for what happened next...I'm at a loss.

Somehow she ended up hugging me. I was upset, she was torn between sympathy and friendship, I suppose, though I've never had the opportunity to ask. Hugging became kissing, kissing became undressing, and so on and so forth. I didn't intend it, and I don't believe she did either. It was a mutual catharsis, and it lasted as long as it lasted. Once it was over, there was nothing between us.

The thing that always strikes me as really twisted is that my night with Helen is still the best sex I've ever had. Make of that what you will.

It was over between Denise and I, at any rate. We saw each other one more time, but that was only because I believed there were things left unsaid that I didn't want to carry around with me for years afterward. Once that was done, we went our separate ways.

I never hated her. I never even disliked her. I just think that it's inappropriate to drag a relationship along for the ride when you want to 'find yourself'. Denise is still the strongest woman I have ever met. She was open, she was fearless, and she was incredibly smart. She taught me a lot about sex and a lot about myself. I don't know where she is now, but I hope she's happy and I hope she found whatever it was she was looking for. I wish her well.

As for lessons learned and later experiences and all the webs of theory I intend to weave around these tales...well, those will have to wait for part three.