5 comments/ 7622 views/ 2 favorites Merenda By: songwriter503 1 I'll tell you a story. I live in Portland, Oregon. Nice place. Much of the time I'm off touring the world as a musician, but when I'm home, this is home. I have a lovely little family here. My partner works a more normal type of job, and our son goes to school much of the year, so I usually find myself with weekdays free. The solitude I get like that is such a contrast to the touring life. I like both. Part of my chill routine most weekdays involves taking a walk. I'm a news junky, so I'm often listening to a BBC podcast or something while I'm walking, which is a good chance to catch up on that stuff. Although the act of walking tends to make me zone out and think about other things, so I don't actually catch much of the broadcast after all. My favorite place to walk is to the campus of Reed College, which has a lovely swamp with a circular trail wrapped around it, a sort of forested valley between the two main sections of the campus. If you don't want to walk in the swamp, there's a foot bridge that goes above it, for students who are actually trying to get from from their dorm to a class or something, efficiently. For those just out for a walk, or to smoke a joint or something, there's the swamp. I see interesting-looking people, students and visitors, that I think about saying hi to. I like people. That's why I enjoy touring, among other things. You meet a lot of people, including lots of interesting ones. At a show it's easy to meet people. They're coming to up to me afterward, buying a CD or something. But in other situations I rarely meet people. I don't talk to people I don't know, generally. Usually when I'm walking around there I try to be mindful of other peoples' space, especially women. Parts of the swamp are slightly isolated, and I don't want anyone to feel intimidated. I tend to just keep walking, not really say hi to people much, out of respect for their private swamp experience there. One day last winter, that changed. I had walked around the swamp once, and was considering a second lap, when I saw someone sitting at the picnic table below the bridge. Sometimes in the space of a few seconds, a hell of a lot can happen in one's head. As you approach the picnic table under the bridge, coming from the west, I suppose it is, the path goes directly toward the table, before veering uphill and around it. There's about a ten-foot stretch where you're walking toward it, which would naturally be a time when you might inadvertently get a good look at whoever might be at the table, even if you're trying not to stare. When I saw the woman sitting at the table, I had to pay attention to my footing on the path, as I was suddenly in danger of losing it. To put her in context... I do a lot of traveling and see a lot of different kinds of people. But when I'm home I get used to my surroundings. When walking around the campus of this hippie liberal arts college, I get used to those surroundings. Although hippies have a reputation for being very tactile and with a positive orientation toward bodily pleasures and other good things, I find that they're often actually somewhat traumatized-looking young people with a tendency toward wearing very baggy clothes, and they often look pretty uncomfortable in their bodies. One of the reasons I tend not to say hi to them as I'm walking down the trail is they look so fragile, like they're hiding. She didn't. She did have the trappings of hippiedom, to some extent, in that she had dreads. Long, elegant, very light blonde ones, tied back with a thick black piece of string. But her clothing was black, and aside from the faux leather jacket, it fit tightly around her athletic little body, and she was leaning back with the picnic table behind her, fully in my view. In the space of a millisecond I took in her beauty and self-confidence, felt the powerful desire to say hello, and the equally powerful desire to avoid doing so, since that's what all the guys want to do and she must be tired of it. But then she looked right in my face, and I looked back. And to complicate everything, she looked familiar. Which is often very awkward, when a shockingly beautiful woman looks familiar. Because half the time it ends up that I don't actually know them, on the rare occasions I'm bold enough to actually say to her some pathetic line like "haven't we met before?" But she did look familiar, and I was thinking at high speed about whether I should say hello or keep walking. I made the compromise of smiling at her, acknowledging her presence, but continuing to walk down the trail, up the hill, around the picnic table. Then I heard my name from behind me. "Steve?" I stopped, turned around, walked back to the picnic table. Now she was sitting on top of it, more upright than before, smiling. "Where have we met...?" I was wracking my brain but had no idea. Maybe it was in a past life, and she was one of those women riding the flying horses coming down to Earth to take me to Asgard. As it turned out, I wasn't so far off base. "I'm not sure if we've really met, actually, but last time I saw you you were sitting outside at Cafe Escobar with a friend of my sister's." Cafe Escobar? I was trying to think of a Cafe Escobar and was drawing a blank. And then a little partition inside my brain fell away and I remembered. Her American accent was a little too perfect. It occurred to me, therefore, that she could be from Scandinavia. "You're from Copenhagen?" My memory for people and places is divided geographically, that's how it works. I suddenly remembered the cafe in Blagardslads where I've eaten brunch on so many occasions. And I remembered seeing her, though it was years ago, although Copenhagen is full of gorgeous, black-clad blonde women, the memory stuck like glue, of me sitting with Anna in front of the cafe, and this girl – she was only a teenager then – saying hi to her from about twenty feet away, her mane of blonde dreads washing down her back, upright on top of a bicycle in her tight black clothing. I remember thinking, wow, she's so beautiful, before trying to force my attention back to the conversation at hand. "You're a friend of a good friend of my sister's," she reminded me, as I was recalling that scene in the Norrebro district of Denmark's capital city. My head was reeling, much as I was attempting to get ahold of it and make sense of the situation. I'm on my private, anonymous walk around the swamp. Despite the performing for a living and all that, I'm usually anonymous. People don't recognize me on the street unless it's my neighbors or something, or I'm standing in front of the venue I'm about to do a show in. I've been recognized in airports by fans four times in my entire life. But here we were. I tried to act casual, but my mind was rushing, and I was trying to think of something to say. I knew I needed to say something. All of my initial thoughts and impulses were not at all useful. Trying to shovel the thoughts away that were not related to sex was difficult, but I somehow managed to get to Denmark, which seemed like a safe spot. "You're not in Copenhagen! Are you visiting here?" The question immediately felt like I could have done better, but she was perfectly happy answering it. "Actually I'm a student here now, at Reed." Usually when I'm in Europe and I mention I live in Portland, most people have no idea where that is, and know nothing about the place. Sometimes they're fuzzy about where Seattle is, too, so I've taken to describing it as a city about a long day's drive north of San Francisco. But there are certain places in Europe where people are as clued-in about hipster culture in the US as they might be in the US itself, and one of those places is Denmark. So seeing a Dane at Reed shouldn't be too shocking. But it was, anyway. I felt like I should either know her name, or ask her what it was. I tried to act as if I just needed a little reminder for some reason, but I really had no idea. "What was your name again...?" She looked as if she was about to say something, and then stopped herself before saying, "Merenda." As if she felt like she needed to clarify something, she went on. "My sister used to go to your shows in Copenhagen, so I didn't, I was too cool for that. But actually, I like your music, and I was wondering if I might run into you here. It says on your Facebook page you live in Portland. You don't play much here, though, do you?" Head reeling again. She doesn't just recognize me, she likes my music, and she's visited my Facebook page. Oh, and she's asked me a question. What was that again...? "No, I don't get many gigs here somehow or other. I probably play about as often in Copenhagen." OK now I should ask her a question... Damn I feel stupid. "What are you studying at Reed?" Stupid question. "IT," she responds readily, eyes glistening. Oh shit, I thought. A subject I knew absolutely nothing about. I needed a follow-up question. She seemed to sense me struggling. "Were you walking around the swamp?" she asked. "I'll join you, if you don't mind." Somehow once we started moving, I was able to relax a bit. The conversation became less forced. We talked about Denmark, and the US, and Portland. How easily you could find a good breakfast joint here compared to there. Where they had the best vegan options. She was a vegan. She didn't ask me if I was one, and I probably pretended that I might be, just to impress her. She told me about how dangerous it was to ride a bicycle in the US, by which she meant Portland. I said I thought people here might find that amusing, since Portland is known to be so bicycle-friendly. She quoted one of my songs, where I make reference to this fact. We were about to walk another lap around the swamp when it occurred to me to see what time it was. Two o'clock. "I'm afraid I have to go pick my kid up at school," I said. She nodded. Danes aren't big on niceties like "hope to see you again" or shit like that. But the bright-eyed look on her face told me that if she weren't Danish she'd probably be saying something like that. I said it, anyway, and I hugged her. There are many ways someone might respond to a hug in that situation. Worst case they might freak out and feel terribly violated, but I was confident this wasn't one of those situations. They might do the polite, upper-body kind of hug, or they might completely sink in and make as much contact as possible. Between these two poles, on a scale of 1 to 10, it was a 7 in terms of sinkiness. Fairly intimate, but still respectable for the end of a first encounter of some length. Slightly ambiguous, but by Danish standards of how one might behave at this stage, very promising. I hadn't gotten her phone number or anything, but to say that I very much hoped to run into Merenda again soon would be a serious understatement. 2 Later in the afternoon I let the kid play Minecraft longer than I should have, since I had important things to do like try to find Merenda on Facebook. It seems it's not a very common name, and there was no sign of her there that I could find. But of course people often use different names on Facebook. As I was doing this I was also trying to talk myself down. Maybe she's not interested in this particularly carnal way that I am, I thought. Maybe she's monogamous, and has a boyfriend or girlfriend. Maybe she doesn't have one. But I do, and maybe she's very fragile and needy and can't deal with such situations, and I'll just end up breaking her heart or creating a terribly complicated situation right here in my home town. I thought all these things and more. The next morning after dropping everybody off at their respective destinations – school and work -- I put on my waterproof walking shoes and headed toward Reed. I had mentioned to Merenda that I normally left for my walk around the campus at around 11. Which isn't true. In reality, I leave for my walk anytime between 9 am and 2 pm, and sometimes I walk in the opposite direction for variety's sake, even though there's no lovely swamp with a trail around it that way. But I figured if I tried to be more consistent about when I went there, there might be a better chance of Merenda being there. The sky was drizzling. A common thing in Portland in the winter, especially. Also very common in Denmark, except there it would usually be colder and windier as well as a bit wetter, I reminded myself, hoping the rain wouldn't keep her away, and also figuring that quite likely she had other things to do than walk around the swamp in the rain with a middle-aged dude who very evidently doesn't get nearly as much exercise as she does. She could have classes today, or free lunch in the cafeteria to eat, or a computer to program (if that's what IT majors do), or any number of other things, I thought. Again, walking down the steps beneath the bridge, looking down toward the picnic table below, I had to steady myself and slow down to avoid tripping. There she was. Not sitting on the wet picnic table, but standing, looking at the water. I took the opportunity to stare for a few seconds at her beautiful body, clad once again in tight-fitting black clothing and a faux leather jacket. (Maybe vinyl or something, I thought, given that she's a vegan.) I felt a rush of pleasure like a wave through my entire body. She's here again. It seemed unlikely to be a coincidence. Knowing, or at least strongly suspecting, that she came back at this time because she thought I'd be here, was a very good feeling. I still didn't know the nature of what might be happening, necessarily, and I really didn't want to make any wrong assumptions or otherwise fuck anything up, but I was feeling a lot more confident than the day before, though still nervous and completely distracted by things like my racing heartbeat. "Enjoying the Danish weather?" I asked. She turned around. I felt like my facade of nonchalance must have fallen off of my face like a heavy porcelain mask crashing to the floor. The look on her face when she turned to face me was one of undisguised excitement. "You're back!" she said, quietly, but in an unmistakably happy way. She sort of pranced a bit, in a way that reminded me of American teenagers more than Danish punks, which made it even more adorable somehow. I recovered my decorum enough to think of something to say that wasn't related to to thoughts that were taking up most of the available space in my brain, which all revolved around Merenda and I being naked on a bed together somewhere. "Walk with me?" She smiled and followed me down the trail. "You don't have classes or something this time of day?" I asked. "No, they're all early morning or late afternoon as it happens." The potential implications of this for these walks becoming a regular occurrence were almost too good to dwell on. I shifted the subject. "How do you like Portland?" Boring question, I thought, but at least one I hadn't gotten around to asking the day before. "It's nice," she responded. I could tell she felt like she should say more. But I know from people interviewing me that the broad questions like that can be the hardest to answer. "Do you miss home?" Another boring question. I just couldn't think of anything more interesting to ask. "Sometimes," she answered. Her eyes drifted. It looked like she was thinking of someone, maybe wondering whether she should tell me more. I like more, generally. Looking at her wandering eyes, it occurred to me, too, that this gave me an opening to ask about something that might otherwise seem too early in our friendship to ask about. "Are there any particular people you miss in Denmark?" I asked. She smiled. "My boyfriend in Copenhagen." I tried hard to keep the same facial expression on, whatever it might have been, and not register the dismay that this word immediately filled me with. I don't know whether I succeeded, but a second later she added, "and my boyfriend in Alborg." I went from dismayed to elated just as quickly, and tried to sound like I hadn't just been fishing for information about her love life, make the subject a bit more general again. "Not a fan of monogamy?" I quipped. At this question, Merenda quoted another line in one of my songs to me, one I wrote a long time ago praising polyamory. Then she informed me that I lived with someone named Sachi, and that she knew this because her picture was all over my Facebook page, along with pictures of our little kid. "That's true," I confirmed. "I was looking for you on Facebook yesterday but couldn't find you anywhere." "I'm taking a break from Facebook," she said. "It's too distracting. Too inane, too public." She looked as if she were considering whether to say the next bit for a moment. "Plus, well, I think I'd like to be a little more mysterious." Then she asked me the same question I had asked her, if there were any particular people I missed in Denmark. "Yes," I replied. "Are you and Anna still together?" Her sister's friend. I didn't know if she knew Anna and I had been lovers, but clearly she did. The truth is she broke up with me years ago, and then slept with me a couple times since then for good measure. I think I replied, "not really" – not wanting to say "no," just to emphasize the point that I also really like relationships that are open. "I've never understood monogamy," she said, somewhat randomly. That little sentence made my ears warm. My ears loved to hear it, as did the rest of me. We came back to the picnic table, and then started around the swamp again. Time went somewhere again, and it was getting toward when I needed to start heading home. Merenda knew this. We stood beside the picnic table and talked for another few minutes. "See you tomorrow?" she asked, with a hopeful look on her face. We hadn't talked about making this walk around the swamp a daily thing, but her question tacitly indicated to me that I wasn't the only one thinking about this idea. "Yes, please." She seemed especially happy about my response to her question, and quickly rose to her tiptoes to give me a big hug, and a big kiss on the cheek. For some people – the French, the Spanish – a kiss on the cheek, without a hug, is a standard greeting. But in Denmark a kiss on the cheek is not the norm. It was such an expression of affection, by my interpretation, that I felt emboldened enough to ask what later seemed like a really premature, brash question. "Can I kiss you?" I barely had a chance to look her in the eyes to ask that question, before our mouths were locked together. There was a tingling sensation that made me think of fairy dust and Tinkerbell. (When you have a young child, these sorts of thoughts are more frequent than they might normally be for other adults.) "Are you real?" I found myself asking, while catching my breath. "Last I checked I wasn't a tree nymph," she said, moving to the side a bit and touching a nearby tree. "But I might have certain aspirations in that regard," she added playfully, still holding the tree. Then she smiled. "Go, I'll see you tomorrow." I managed to leave her there, and walk up the stairs, out of the little valley, towards home, and the car, and the school, and the family. 3 Whether or not I really knew what was happening, it felt good. Those "new love" endorphins were going nuts in my brain. Times like these I wished I had a more open open relationship at home. Sachi was willing tolerate anything she didn't have to know about. Which comes with lots of internal and external challenges, that "don't ask, don't tell" understanding, though in some ways it's the easiest way to go. It's a lot like cheating would be in a more standard monogamous relationship. It bears all the trappings. Except that it's not. (Unless you're saying you're in a "don't ask, don't tell" relationship but your partner doesn't know that, which is a whole different form of dishonesty.) Merenda Usually when we attempt to put the kid to bed, Sachi falls asleep first, me second, and the kid last. Which doesn't do wonders for our sex life. Tonight, though, I wasn't at all tired, and I sneakily kept Sachi awake by massaging her while the kid was between us. Once the kid was asleep, I beckoned Sachi into the other room, and made love to her with a bit more intensity than usual. I love making love with Sachi. She's gorgeous. Passionate, in her own quiet way. And she loves me. She shares none of my DS fetishes. I wish she did. I probably hooked up with a Japanese woman in the first place thinking, naively, that her cultural background might make it more likely that she's got her own DS fantasies going on, but this turned out not to be the case at all. But lucky for me -- and hopefully for her, too -- someone being into all of my fetishes is not required to sufficiently stimulate my libido, and we have a very satisfactory sex life. Among our various differences, though, is that while she is perfectly willing to have sex with me every evening that we both manage to stay awake past the kid's bedtime, she is completely uninterested in sex in the morning, or any other time of day. Even when she doesn't have to get up for work, like on the weekends. So, when I'm not distracted with other more productive activities, I spend a chunk of most days fantasizing about a world where I was with someone who liked sex more like twice a day. In any case, the next morning after Sachi went off to work was not a day for those aforementioned productive activities. There were songs to write and tours to book, and all that could wait. I was off to the swamp to see the woman who wasn't a tree nymph. I got to the swamp and started down the stairs, where I had a view of the picnic table. There was no one there, and my heart sank. I was nearly at the table, when I heard a voice. "You're here!" Merenda's smiling face emerged from behind the tree. She had something in one of her hands, I noticed, but I was transfixed by her face. In contrast to her black clothing, her skin seemed even more pale, almost translucent, and her blue eyes the very definition of the notion that eyes can have a window-like quality. We hugged, and kissed. That kiss hadn't been a dream, I thought. We're doing it again, that's proof. Then I noticed what she had in her hand, since she brought it up to her lips. "You want some?" she asked. It was a European-style joint, by all appearances. (That is, tobacco and hash or pot mixed together, rolled into a somewhat conical shape, with a rolled-up cardboard "filter" at the small end, and all of it a bit less than twice the length of a typical cigarette.) "That's one of the many things I miss when I'm not in Europe," I said, truthfully. "But it's something I almost only do when I'm in Europe, despite the availability of both pot and tobacco here, too. Here I just smoke the pot straight. Same with that wonderful dark brown Danish bread. You can't find it anywhere here, so I only eat it there. But yes, I'd love some." Merenda quoted more of my own lyrics at me, this time lines from a silly song about my affection for European-style joints. Something I've discovered, from being on both ends of the equation, is when you know someone's music, or writing, or art or whatever, if you're into it, you naturally feel like you know the artist. Because you do, at least to some extent. But the artist doesn't know you. So you might naturally want to introduce yourself to the artist, so the knowledge of each other is mutual. Feels better that way. I imagined at the time that phenomenon might be happening now. And wow, I sure did want to know her, too, in every way possible, so I hoped powerfully that that might be going on... Merenda lit the joint, and we started walking around the swamp together again. At the smell of the joint, the occasional other person we'd run into walking around the swamp would be more likely to smile. Or maybe it just seemed that way because I was concerned about bothering them with the tobacco smoke. Been on the west coast too long, I thought. It was refreshing that Merenda seemed to have no such concerns. "What does an IT major do?" I asked, trying to ask a semi-intelligent question, not at all sure I had succeeded in doing so. More or less skirting the question entirely, Merenda only said, "my favorite thing to do lately is to program little gadgets." "When you were talking yesterday about avoiding Facebook and being more mysterious, are you concerned about government surveillance and stuff?" I asked. "Among other things," she said, mysteriously. We had arrived back at the picnic table, one loop around the swamp later. "Do you want to see my room?" she asked. "I'd love to," I responded, trying to sound like I wasn't overstating the obvious. Merenda took me by the hand. Such soft hands. I realized it was the first time I had touched them. She led me up the stairs and towards her room. She lived in one of the dorm buildings, several floors up. "I have a single," she said, as we ascended multiple staircases. She opened her door, took off her jacket, and hung it on a hook. It was a small, neat room. Sparsely furnished, not room for much else – a small bed with a window overlooking a green area with students walking back and forth along a sidewalk sort of thing. A desk with a chair in front of it and a laptop on it. There were a few posters on the walls, from events related to the squatters movement in Denmark, including a poster for one event that I sang at. I sat down on the chair, thinking Merenda might sit down across from me on the bed. But as soon as I sat on the chair, she sat on my lap. It was the first time I had really seen or felt her upper body without her jacket covering it up. She was warm, having just taken off the jacket. Seeing and feeling her actual body was much more intense than I imagined it would be, and it was pretty intense in my imaginings. The softness, the curves, the warmth, the perfect muscles. I held her to me, nuzzled my face in her generous breasts. I put my hand under her shirt, and felt her stomach directly. After a minute, she gently pushed my hand up her body, and I reached her one of her breasts. Almost too big to contain in one of my hands, but not quite. I wrapped my hand around it and squeezed hard, and then the other. I lifted up her shirt and kissed, licked and sucked. Her little red nipples started getting harder, and darker. Her heart rate got faster, and louder. I bit one of her nipples. Because I wanted to, and because I was curious how she'd react. It was perfect. The kind of nonverbal communication that is just exquisite. After biting one nipple, she turned a bit and offered me the other one. After biting that one, she offered me the first one again. When I bit it harder, she once again offered me the other one. "Do I get to have something in my mouth, too?" she asked. "My shirt, your pants." With that, she knelt on the floor in front of me, unbuckled my belt, unzipped my jeans, pulled my underwear down a few inches, and put my penis in her mouth. Now at this point in a sexual encounter, things can go in many different directions, obviously. One popular scenario would involve the two of us removing more clothing and ultimately fucking on that little bed beside us. But the way Merenda was eating me, it reminded me of a cat who had been given some catnip. She relaxed into eating me in a way that seemed to indicate real contentment. Like there was something she wanted, and she was now getting it. I made some motions, touching her in ways that might have told her I was very ready to move on to the bed and engage in other sex acts that might be even more satisfying to her than eating me, but she just wrapped her arms around my waist and pushed my dick deeper into her mouth. I gave up on anything else, and just thought I'd let her do this until she got tired of it. But ten minutes turned to forty minutes and she showed no signs of letting up. Forty minutes turned to an hour. "I'm going to come in your mouth if you don't stop." It had come down to that, and it seemed like a good idea to inform her. For the first time in a very long time, she removed her mouth from my cock, drooled a little, and said, "this is my lunch." A few minutes more and I came. She drank each spurt in rhythm – spurt, swallow, spurt, swallow, like she were consuming something that she really liked. And then she kept me in her mouth for several more minutes, until I was getting soft. "Wow," I said, somewhat inarticulately. Merenda could tell I was about to say other nice things about her extremely impressive fellatio skills, and she cut me off. "It's almost time for you to go." She put her shirt back on. Her nipples were still hard. I zipped up my pants. She was right. I had to go. I still wanted to say nice things about her and what had just transpired, but I knew somehow that that wasn't the thing to do. She's hot and talented and she knows it. And it's time for me to go. And if we're going to talk, there are less mundane things to talk about. The other thing I wanted to say was "see you tomorrow." But it seemed altogether too awkward a phrase. Far too over-confident a thing to say as a statement, and far too expectant a phrase to pose as a question. For once I kept my mouth shut rather than saying something unnecessary. But the smile on Merenda's face told me that we weren't going to start being strangers all of a sudden now. Which was an overwhelmingly reassuring thought. 4 That afternoon in my inbox there was an email from Merenda. At least the email address included her name, so presumably it was the one Merenda I had ever met, the Dane at Reed. But the content of the email was short – just her signature line. The subject line just said "yum." Which seemed like a heartwarmingly good sign. And it felt comforting to have her email address, somehow. Like increasing bits of evidence that she wasn't a figment of my imagination. It was all seeming very much like a wild fantasy come true. The next day made that seem much more the case. Not only did Merenda seem to be able to read my mind, but she seemed to have certain sexual fetishes in common with me as well. In the evening after I got the email, my family and I had a bath, as people do every evening in a Japanese household, normally. After the kid was asleep, Sachi and I scurried off and had a downright luxurious night of love-making. Over the years, Sachi has come up with some nice ideas to keep our love life exciting. Mainly different role plays. Some more exciting to me than others, depending on how close they come in terms of orienting toward my particular fetishes. If we're not doing that, though, then sex tends to follow a predictable, and pleasant, pattern, as it did that night. It began with her eating me, then me eating her, then me fucking her, her coming several times in the process, culminating with me coming, followed very quickly by sleep. Actually, Sachi fell asleep and woke up several times after the third orgasm, before I was done with her, and ready to let her sleep for real. I like fucking her when she's sleeping, though, so I don't mind if she becomes somewhat inattentive. (As people tend to be when they're asleep.) Denial of pleasure is a definite fetish of mine (when it comes to denying pleasure to the other person), so my favorite role-plays with Sachi are the ones that involve her being some kind of professional who's not supposed to be enjoying the situation with me. I was wondering whether Merenda was just not wanting to fuck me on a first date, or whether she was more on the kinky side of things in that regard. The next day made me wonder about that more. It started with a jolt. I approached the swamp, wondering as always whether she'd actually be there. Though now that I knew where she lived, and had her email address, I was a bit less worried about such an eventuality. But the regularity of the thing was very attractive. Knowing that your tree nymph will be by her tree when you arrive. But I got to the picnic table, and she wasn't there. I tried not to panic, and just started walking around the swamp as I normally would. Several minutes into my walk, I heard a jogger approaching. It was Merenda. She smiled. "You're back!" she said. And then, in what seemed to be a bit of an apology for her absence at the picnic table when I arrived, she said, "I was working on something." "What were you working on?" I asked. "A gadget," she explained, without elaborating. We walked around the swamp once again. Merenda seemed even happier than usual, more engaged, more talkative. She shared an anecdote from one of her classes earlier that morning, and another about a band that had done a show the night before "For most punk bands, playing music seems to be an afterthought, more just an opportunity to travel and see their friends. But this band was really good." When a Dane says something is "really good," in American that means "fantastic," "amazing," or something along those lines. Understatement is a specialty for them and most of their neighbors in the region. I was waiting for her to make some reference to the evening with the band, about how she wishes I could have joined her there. Not that I thought she should want to spend more time with me in a given day than we had been already spending together. But when looking for any signs that she might be interested in anything more than very regular, very convenient mid-day encounters, I could find none. And I felt no particular desire to talk about having a date some evening, because I already knew my evenings at home were generally taken up by family time – since half of my evenings in a given year were already occupied by being away from home, touring. But I wondered what was coming. And wasn't expecting what did. When we had done one loop around the swamp, Merenda looked at me, looked at the stairs, and with no further prompting, I followed her up them. When we got to her room, she asked me if I wanted something to drink, and walked down the hall to the kitchen she shared with other students on that floor. I waited in her room, and noticed a handwritten piece of mail on her desk. The return address was from Denmark, and the addressee was a student at Reed, but the name was Stine Rasmussen. A very Danish name. Unlike Merenda, I thought. She walked back in the room with a jug of water with lemon slices in it, and two glasses. I asked her if she had named herself Merenda. "Yes," she replied. Then, as if she weren't sure how much of that story she wanted to share with me, she added, "recently. I like the name." "Me, too," I said, not needing to know more, and sensing that that was all she wanted to say about that subject for now. "What's the new gadget you were working on before you came to the swamp?" I asked. Merenda smiled. "I might show it to you." She poured two glasses of water. I sat down in the chair, took a sip, and put the glass down on her desk. She knelt in front of me and reached for my belt. "Do you mind?" she asked. The question seemed sincere, like I might really object. Which I didn't, at all. She began to eat me again, with just as much enthusiasm and expertise as she had the day before. I relaxed into a sort of hypnotized reverie, so glad to be alive. Who needs Ecstacy, I've got this. I did want to fuck her. But I was happy to wait until that happened in some organic way or another. I didn't feel a need to rush her if she just wanted to eat me. But I also had those little pangs of guilt that I would tend to get in similar situations. Like perhaps I should initiate something that might end up with me eating her or fucking her or doing something to her pussy that might cause her to have an orgasm or three, as most women are wont to do on a regular basis. Additionally, I loved her lean body, her angelic face, her voluptuous breasts, and wanted to do more with all of that. So with those three notions in mind, I posed a question. "Do you mind if I ravish your body a bit?" She stopped moving, and then slowly withdrew my dick from her mouth. "I don't mind. But I'm not done." She stood up. I started pulling her shirt up, and she continued removing her clothing without my help. Thankfully, I thought, since it was all pretty tight-fitting clothing that I'd have trouble removing even if I weren't all hot and bothered. She removed two shirts, beneath which her upper body was bare. Her breasts, though fairly large, were too pert to need a bra. They bounced gloriously after she removed her undershirt. The sight was too much for just watching. I pulled her to me, buried my face between her breasts, and proceeded to kiss, lick, suck and bite just about every inch of her upper body. Paying special attention to her breasts, her stomach, and her face, especially her lips. Which seemed especially red this afternoon. I guided her onto the bed, and began to unbutton her stovepipe jeans. This time, she didn't intervene, but allowed me to struggle with them. I unpeeled them, so they were inside-out by the time they were off of her legs. I kissed and nibbled at her bicycle-riding, Copenhagen legs, admiring them for the first time up close and unclothed. She was breathing hard and enjoying my attention. Her nipples were hard, her stomach seemed tense, though it was hard to tell whether it was tense or just muscular. Her legs were definitely tense, though, held stiff, and covered with goose bumps. I made my way up toward the tops of her rippling thighs. It was not until then that I realized that what I had initially thought were panties was actually a chastity belt. I like chastity belts. A lot. I've introduced them to sexual relationships before. I've never met a woman who was wearing one when I first got her undressed. "A chastity belt!" I exclaimed, stating the obvious once again. Merenda smiled down at me. For the first time, her smile seemed slightly pained, but I wasn't sure. Maybe it was just from holding her head up in that position, looking down at my face between her legs. "It's the gadget I was working on." I examined it. It was a fancy, very solid device made of a combination of metal and a leather-ish substance. It was designed in such a way that there appeared to be easy access for doing things you might need to do in the bathroom, but the vaginal entrance and clit were completely inaccessible otherwise. I looked for how it opened, and found the buckle that needed to come undone first. It was locked. Not a padlock, but a small, three-digit combination lock. I wondered to myself if she was planning to open it, or tell me the combination. I thought maybe she needed to be more thoroughly aroused, so she could think about that a little more clearly. Having noticed that she had very sensitive nipples, I focused on those, slowly working on them until they were rock-solid, and she was whimpering a little. "Do you want to take off this lovely device, perhaps?" I asked. "That's a little complicated," she said, with a slight tone of frustration in her voice. "How so?" "Well," she explained, "It only comes off if you know the combination." "And what's the combination?" I asked. "I don't know." Seeing that I was skeptical about the notion that this thing never came off, she elaborated. "I don't have it, but, well, I have a nice little group of friends here, who are kink-friendly, if you know what I mean...?" I indicated that indeed I did, and she went on. "So my girlfriend on the second floor unlocks me when I want to take a shower or something, and helps me lock it back up afterward." "You need help locking it back up..." I wasn't clear on that part. It seemed straightforward enough to do without any assistance. Merenda "It's better for me if she watches and makes sure." She could see my look of uncertainty and she went on. "It's just better that way." I was very intrigued. To say I was aroused wouldn't begin to describe the feeling. It was more like being transported to an alternate universe, my own little Danish fantasy world in fact. "Does anyone else have the combination?" I asked. She smiled. "Maybe" was all she said, before she lifted herself up, swung her legs around so her locked-up pussy was right above my face, and in this "69" position, with her on top, she began to eat me again, with abandon, until I came in her mouth. When she stood up, she was shaking a bit. "Cold?" I asked. She just smiled, a bit meekly. "Time for you to go," she said, as she put her clothing back on. She added, "today's Friday. Have a good weekend." Then, in an extra American-sounding accent, she made fun of what she had just said, and added, "have a nice day!" And smiled a big, fake, department store smile as she opened the door for me to leave. 5 During the weekend I spent more time than I should have catching up on email when I should have been doing things with my family. Normally I'd spend an hour walking and several hours on the computer. Last week these numbers were more than reversed. The following week it was the same. The routine was the same, too. Walk to the swamp. Wonder if Merenda would be there. She would. Walk around the swamp, talk, smoke a European joint oftentimes. Go to her room, where without fail, she'd reach for my belt and ask, "do you mind?" I've had limited real contact with the kink community. I mean I've got an account on FetLife, but I don't do much there. I've never been to any kind of kink-related event in the real world. If there's a particular thing among women imposing chastity belts on themselves while obsessing with fellatio, I've never run across it. I was so glad to have found it – her – though. At first I wondered often what she got out of this. What I got out of it seemed altogether too clear. At first I wondered what she wanted from me, aside from friendship, conversation, sperm in her mouth, and a completely mutual obsession. Mutual obsession, but the very definition of a relationship lacking in certain obvious mutual qualities. After a while, though, I stopped wondering so much. I got very used to treating her stunningly beautiful body as my plaything. A work of art to gaze at, or to undress and lose myself in for a while, before allowing her to fulfill what seemed to be her strongest desire, sometimes lying on the bed, looking at her locked pussy, sometimes sitting on the chair, looking down at Merenda kneeling on the floor. At first I would sometimes ask questions. "When did you start wearing a chastity belt all the time?" She'd respond with some variation of, "Sorry, I can't talk when your dick's in my mouth." Even though she hadn't just been eating me. But then she would be, at least partially to avoid responding to my query. I was just curious. I did want to fuck her, but mostly I just was happy to embrace my new reality as it was, and after getting "maybe" for an answer anytime I brought up the question of anyone else having the combination to the lock, I gave up on that line of questioning. I knew very few people I could really talk about this situation with. Mostly I figure people just wouldn't understand, or they'd be terribly jealous, or both. I had one friend I could talk to, a fellow musician of an older generation who had seen and done a lot in his life. It was during the third weekend after meeting Merenda that I emailed Tim. I met a shockingly beautiful Danish college student named Merenda who seems to derive great pleasure from taking walks with me and performing fellatio on me every weekday afternoon. Never any other time. And she wears a chastity belt, and has never taken it off in my presence. In fact, she says it's locked and she doesn't know the combination. The only person who seems to have the combination is a girlfriend of hers. Any thoughts? Tim wrote back quickly. Definitely sounds like she gets off on giving pleasure and denying it to herself. If it feels good, do it, they say! I don't know about the mid-day thing, but what does jump out at me with regards to that is her name. In Latin, "merenda" is "lunch" or "luncheon." I saw her every day, so I didn't normally feel the need to email her. But I did have her email address, and quite a number of "yum" emails saved up. Your name means "lunch" in Latin? She answered back within minutes. My name is Merenda Tuur, Steve. Your lunch, Steve. I'm your lunch. So that makes you my dessert, perhaps...? This was all seeming even more like a wild fantasy than it had a few minutes earlier. I was gazing at her latest email. I was trying to hit the "reply" button but missed and clicked on the little ellipses that makes the signature line expand. There was her name, Merenda Tuur. Her phone number, a quote from Emma Goldman. I had noticed these things before. But suddenly it jumped out at me that there was a hyperlinked word at the end I hadn't noticed before. The word was "combination." Before I even clicked on it, I had to know if this was in earlier emails from Merenda. Sure enough, it was. Starting with the first one. I just hadn't noticed it til now. I clicked. The website I arrived at was a very simple one that just wanted me to verify my email address, specifically. I did, and was sent another link. Clicking on that link just led to a page that was entirely blank aside from a three-digit number. I emailed Merenda again. I found the combination! Again she answered within minutes. That took you a while! 6 It was Saturday evening when I got the number, so I had two nights and one full day to wait before another walk to the swamp. I was excited. Though I had a bit of trepidation about how this three-digit number was going to change our relationship. Was all this chastity belt and fellatio stuff like a sort of extended form of foreplay, leading up to a more normal kind of relationship...? To the extent that mid-day sexual encounters with a punk rock Danish tree nymph could be considered somewhere within the realm of "normal"... When I got down the stairs to the swamp, Merenda was sitting on the picnic table, again. The day was unseasonably warm, and she wasn't wearing a jacket. Either way, she looked even more beautiful than ever. The notion that I now had the ability to strip her of that final article of clothing was almost too intense to handle. Despite the fact that we were still both clothed. And despite the fact that I had had a very satisfying love-making session with Sachi the night before. "My lunch, eh?" I said. She smiled. "Your lunch." I had a strong desire to suggest that we break with tradition, skip the walk around the swamp, and just head to her bedroom. But I was starting to feel superstitious about the idea of doing anything differently here, lest this wonderful spell be broken. Maybe Reed tree nymphs require a walk around the swamp before they can do anything else, who knows. She seemed to have something on her mind, too. I had been learning that the most forward approach isn't necessarily best with Merenda, so I didn't ask her about what it was that might be bothering her directly. I beat around the bush. "It's been an eventful weekend in the world, eh?" I said. "Situation Normal – All Fucked Up. That's my favorite American saying." I knew we had both watched the same news broadcasts about the escalation in the slaughter in Iraq and Syria, the assassination of the human rights lawyer in Pakistan, the mass stabbing at the train station in western China. "A friend of mine in Copenhagen was caught by the police and deported back to the Ivory Coast yesterday. And they beat him in the plane." The xenophobic policies of Denmark's rightward-moving social democracy intruded on our bucolic reality by the swamp. We talked about European politics, one of our favorite topics of conversation on our daily walks. When we had done one loop we stopped, held each other, and had a long, lingering kiss. "Let's go," Merenda said, as she once again led me up the stairs toward her room. For a moment I couldn't remember what those three numbers were. I hadn't even written them down. I figured I'd remember them – there were only three of them. Knowing that Merenda wouldn't know the numbers either didn't help. But then they came back into my head – 3-6-7. I was again feeling overwhelmed by this new situation. It had been overwhelming enough as it was – in an entirely positive way. Would our new reality be entirely positive? I wanted to fuck her so much, but I also wondered about if or how the dynamics between us might change. I sat in the chair, and Merenda knelt in front of me. This was reassuring somehow. A familiar, lovely pattern. But I didn't let her unzip my jeans. I was too impatient. I lifted her lithe little body and guided her onto the bed beside us. I pulled her shirt up, and she did the rest, undressing herself down to her chastity belt. I took my clothing off, too, until I was just slightly more naked than she was, as usual up til now. Her body silently beckoned me to touch it, kiss it, bite it, which I did. But not for long. I had to try the combination. The numbers on the lock were small, almost too small for my big fingers to fiddle with, but I managed to scroll them until I had the right combination. As soon as the numbers were lined up, the metal latch beside them clicked quietly, and the belt came loose. I pulled it off of her and looked for the first time at her short tuft of blonde pubic hair that looked like it was frequently trimmed. I saw her pink labia for the first time, and the pink, wet entrance to what looked like a very tight little vaginal tunnel. I descended toward it, after putting her chastity belt on the chair. I thought perhaps I would now eat her, for the first time, as she had been eating me daily for weeks now. I wanted to, although at the same time I was already mourning the loss of what had been til now a completely lopsided sexual relationship that some people might consider to be extremely lacking in what they might call mutuality. (Aside from the fact that everything we were doing were acts between very mutually consenting adults. But the fact remained, til now there was only one of us having this little thing a lot of people tend to obsess about, called orgasms.) It was only when I went down to her pussy and my face was a few inches from it that I noticed her piercings. There were little rings on either side of her clit. And they were connected to a shell-shaped thing whose color was very close to the color of Merenda's skin, which was completely covering her clit. "A clit shield?" I asked. She smiled. I had never seen one on an actual person. Only in pictures on fetish websites. I investigated it with my tongue. There was no way to to squeeze it between the shell and her clit. But her pussy was clearly already very wet. I abandoned the effort at cunnilingus and slid my cock inside her. She was so tight, that despite being very wet, I could barely get into her. I pushed in slowly until I was all the way in. Her pussy was pulsating, like a heartbeat, and with each beat it tightened a bit more. I had to relax for a while in order to avoid just coming right away. I lay down on top of her, feeling her gorgeous, warm, lean, naked body beneath mine. Naked except for a little bump that I felt just above my pelvic bone, the bump that covered her clit. I gathered myself together, got up on my knees, and fucked her hard. Merenda gasped. Whether with pleasure or pain I couldn't tell. I was trying to decide whether I should ask her if it felt good, if everything was OK, but then she braced her hands on the wall at the end of the bed, sending a very clear nonverbal message – you keep fucking me like that, and I'll brace myself so that I don't keep drifting up toward the end of the bed. I'll keep myself right here in place, where I clearly belong, her body was saying. Having received that signal, I relaxed into the situation and fucked her with abandon. It felt like I was making up for lost time. I had to move her into several different positions, experiencing all of them for the first time, which felt simultaneously odd and miraculous. Her whole body seemed so tense, but also so inviting. "Does anything make you come?" I found myself inquiring. "I don't have vaginal orgasms. Only clitoral," she said, sounding suddenly a bit clinical, like she was talking about someone else's body. "And at the moment, I can't feel anything in my clit," she informed me. "Can I take that thing off?" I asked. Not that I was at all sure I wanted to. But I wanted to know what the situation here was, exactly, for some reason. "I suppose if you had the right kind of tools you could break the rings," she said. "But probably better to leave that up to a professional piercing artist, you know." "Why don't you want to come?" I asked. I could have just as easily asked myself why I wanted to fuck her so much without making her come. Why did I enjoy the constant tension in her pussy, the throbbing, the obvious desire that was not going to be satisfied, the meal that could never be eaten, not by her, given this state of affairs. "Fuck me harder" was her only reply. Which I did. The days and weeks after that day followed a similar pattern. Merenda got clearly more worked up by intercourse than she had when she was constantly wearing the chastity belt. Her nipples were hard, her pussy so wet, tight, pulsating. Sometimes when I lay on top of her and fucked her, facing her, it seemed like her clit was getting stimulated a little, from below. But never enough for her to come. The tension and the arousal were clearly constant, though. I marveled at how she could maintain this state. For me it was a fantasy experience I thought I'd never have, and also beyond anything I might have imagined. But here she was. Where she came from, I hadn't a clue. Months passed, and Merenda and I grew closer by the day. I looked for signs that she was tiring of any aspect of our arrangement, but the idea that we should ever see each other aside from mid-day during the week, or whether we should ever change our routine, walking around the swamp and talking, then having some kind of sex, never came up. I thought about buying a bolt cutter or something and removing her clit shield. But I don't even know what a bolt cutter looks like. And she told me someone else should do it anyway, if it were to be done. Eventually the time came when I would be leaving town for two months for another tour. This time in Europe, traveling with Kim. I was looking forward to being with Kim immensely, and to the whole touring experience. I like traveling, and I love Kim. But I would miss my family, and my tree nymph, and I was feeling especially philosophical one day before I was going to be leaving town, on one of my last mid-day escapades with Merenda. "How did you get this way?" I asked her one day, while we were walking around the swamp. I had learned not to ask such direct questions with her for the most part, but this day I did. She looked like she was thinking about saying something pithy, and dismissing the question, as she usually would. But then she seemed to think better of it, and answered a bit more directly. "I used to get bored sometimes. I felt directionless sometimes. The world seemed to be too easy, oftentimes. I found a challenge. I found it on the internet, actually. It's helped me focus a lot, given me structure. And purpose. Maybe it's weird, but I don't know what that means. I just know I like it." "What is it, in this case, exactly...?" Another direct question. Too direct, apparently. Merenda just smiled. That evening I found another email from Merenda. Subject line "yum." Sometimes I almost don't look at the content of these emails, because the vast majority of the time there's just that subject line. The emails still have a therapeutic quality in their regularity and predictability, but there's generally not much to them. But I opened it, just in case, and I was glad I did. It is being your lunch. And then the email continued, with another somewhat cryptic line, which was made much less cryptic by what followed it. I found your FetLife profile on the internet. Soon after I moved to Portland. I figured out it was you. I didn't really have a clue what I was doing. But I liked the challenge very much, and I improvised. Beneath that there was a screen shot of a brief journal entry I wrote one time, in the hope that by articulating what I was looking for, I might be more likely to find it. I had posted it on one especially lonely weekday morning, and promptly forgotten about it within a few days. It read: My Lunch What I'd really like is to become lovers with someone who only wants to see me mid-day during the week for walks, conversation and sex. She should ideally be brilliant, beautiful, mysterious, polyamorous, and obsessed with fellatio, chastity belts and female orgasm denial.