4 comments/ 45118 views/ 1 favorites Bi All Means By: Enjoy. She called his number. It had been almost a year since he'd given it to her; he an attractive stranger at a party who didn't know who she was, or he probably wouldn't have pursued her in the first place. It wasn't often that Anna left her insulated world of feminism and women's groups. She had been invited by a distant friend from the S/M scene to a party and, since Shane was in the States for a week, she had said yes. It had been a long time since she'd been to a party filled with eligible bachelors, and even though she wasn't available, she had talked and flirted with them anyway. It was a breath of fresh air really, to be seen through a different lens. None of the men at that party, including John, whose number she had taken, thought twice about her sexual preference. It had been refreshing to be seen as a woman who would flirt with a man. That was only a small part of her, of course, but for the past two years she had been viewed only as part of a unit, Anna and Shane, Shane and Anna. Anna who majored in women's studies and spent her days defending gay marriage and her nights sleeping with a woman. She heard the ring tone, the soft crackling of her cell phone connection. He picked up. A muffled, "Hello?" "Hi, John?" she said, "This is Anna, Anna Sawyer." An awkward pause. Anna sighed, "You probably don't remember me. We met at Taylor Caniglia's party last June. You asked me to call you..." "Oh. Of course I remember you," he chuckled—mellow, "You know, I was hoping you'd call last June, I didn't mean for you to wait a year." "I know. I'm sorry about that. I was just—well occupied for a while there. You must think I'm crazy." "Maybe a little," he said. She thought she heard him smile on the other end of the line. "In any case, what can I do for you, Anna Sawyer?" "Umm." What the hell did she want anyway? What was she doing? " I was wondering if you'd like to go out. Tonight." He laughed out loud. "Tonight? You wait 11 months to call me and you want to set a date for tonight?" Her cheeks flushed and she was struck with relief that he couldn't see her. She almost hung up on him when he said, "Absolutely. I'd love to meet you tonight. There's a bar right around the corner from me. 't Arendsnest. You know the one?" "Yeah, Herengracht, right?" "Yep. Meet you there at 9:30?" he chuckled again. "Sure. 9:30," She replied. "Ok then, bye." And that was that. She flipped her cell phone closed and held it to her forehead, letting out a sigh. Really, what was she doing? It had been only a couple of weeks since Shane had left for San Francisco. They had moved to Holland together, on an adventure to find the most liberal, gay-friendly place in the world. But Shane could only put law school off for so long, and when she had asked Anna to come back to the States with her, Anna, for some reason which now escaped her, had said no. Was she honestly this crazy, to call up a complete stranger whom she hadn't seen in a year? She thought yes, and then the voice came back to her, "You don't really still consider yourself bi, do you?" It was meant to be rhetorical, a comment made by a friend of Anna's earlier that day while they were out for coffee. Seeing the shock on Anna's face, her friend had tried to justify herself, "I mean, it's just that you were with Shane for so long. And everyone knows you're a big women's studies dyke." "I had a boyfriend in high school." Anna had said, a weak defense to her friend's barrage. "Well, didn't we all?" her friend had rebutted. "You didn't have sex with him, did you?" Instead of answering, Anna just played with her tiny coffee spoon. She tried not to let the comment bother her. She knew women in Holland who would go along with a statement like that totally unfazed. Women who knew themselves as bisexual but allowed people to call them lesbians without a blink. Perhaps it was her childhood in the red states of the US that made her so picky, but Anna just couldn't deal with being mis-named. She had been thinking of calling John anyway. The worn slip of paper with his number on it had been sitting next to her phone for a week now, daring her to call it. That comment was all she needed to be motivated. Not that she felt she had something to prove, but it had gotten her thinking about herself, about her identity, about all the sexual experiences she'd thought she would have and hadn't had yet. It made her think it was about time to start having them. As she was getting ready, Anna studied herself in the mirror. She tried to imagine how John would see her, how he had seen her at that party. She was so used to Shane's expectations, not to mention the expectations of all their queer friends, that it was hard to imagine how John would see her. When she had cut her hair last winter, Shane and her friends exclaimed, "Finally!" where Anna's mother, and her high school friends, when she visited, made awkward comments or harangued her for giving up her femininity. Would John react the same way? It had been so long, Anna hardly knew how to be attractive to men. She looked through her closet, at first wondering if each piece was too dykey, too radical, too masculine. That's enough, Anna. She thought. If John found her attractive a year ago, he would find her attractive now, and who was she to change her appearance for a guy? Feminist sin it was. She chose a slinky red top that tied in the back and black pants. She wore makeup and dangling red earrings but spiked her hair in a "fuck the patriarchy" kind of way. She loved this part of herself, she thought as she caught a glimpse of herself in the entryway mirror, the subversive, political, rebellious part. Then she realized that this was the exact outfit she would have worn for Shane anyway. Anna walked into 't Arendsnest at 9:45. She had planned on being early so she could settle in before John showed up, but then she always planned on being early and always ended up being late. She was afraid she wouldn't recognize him. She glanced around the bar anxiously upon entering, but within a second she had spotted him. She recognized him immediately. Blue eyes with a teal ring around the iris, dark brown hair immaculately styled with that hint of metropolitan, Euro-chic. A five-o'clock shadow shading his strong jaw, muscular arms, large hands and impeccable taste in clothing. Anna suddenly realized how much she must have been in love with Shane to pass up such a prospect. "Well, hello," John said as she approached. "Hi," she said, blushing. She hated that. She was always blushing at exactly the wrong moment. "I'm surprised you were free." He pulled out a bar stool for her and she sat next to him. "Hey, I said I'd like to go out with you. I haven't changed my mind. You cut your hair." She touched her head. "Yep. Wanted a change, you know." They talked about their mutual friends, about work and movies and George W., about the things they missed about the US and the things they loved about Holland. Then he asked. "So why did you wait so long to call? Why now?" She had known it was coming but suddenly she didn't know what to say. She hadn't come out in such a long time. She'd been so obviously queer in college, and in her women's organizations, and with Shane, it was a shock to not be read as a lesbian. But then she never was read for what she was. "I was actually in a relationship at the time," she said, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you, I just really liked you and well, it was impossible..." The loose edge of the label on her beer bottle suddenly became very interesting to Anna. "So you kept my number for all this time?" He asked, putting his hand over hers, gently wrestling the bottle away from her. Their eyes met. What beautiful eyes. Like the ocean in an ad for a Tahiti vacation package. "Well yes. I found it in my wallet a couple of weeks ago." "After you broke up with your boyfriend." "No. Well yes, I had just broken up with my girlfriend." "Oh. So you're... bi?" he paused. Anna took the chance to smile confidently at him. Hell, she thought, that's exactly what she was. And proud of it. "Cool," John finished. "No better way to be," she smiled, and grabbed the bottle back. As they walked to his apartment, he put his arm around her. It was so heavy, so strong. "I'm glad you kept it," he whispered to her. "Kept what?" she asked. "My number," he said. "Even after a year I was glad to spend an evening with you." She smiled and snuggled in to his body. She could smell the scent of his deodorant, of his aftershave and his cologne. She loved the way men smelled. She remembered the way her first boyfriend had smelled, like soap and smoke and Old Spice. He had known that she was bi, and had taken advantage of it for his own purposes. She blushed as she remembered kissing her female friend in the back seat of her car, her boyfriend's idea of course. "Aren't you jealous?" she'd asked him. "Of course not," he'd said. "She's a woman." As naive as it may have been, she thought that she would marry him, that they would be high school sweethearts who stayed together forever. But after less than a year he proved her wrong. Heartbreak. She put her arm around John's waist, under his jacket. Heartbreak was not something she needed to think about. "Well, here it is," he swung open the door, switched on the light, and set his keys on the console table. "It's beautiful," she said. He looked at her, his gaze lingering. "Would you like a drink?" he asked. "No, I've had plenty of those," she said. He took her jacket, letting his fingers slide down her bare arms as he removed it. She turned around, touched his cheek with her fingertips. She kissed him. Her passion took over. It was so different from the passion she had for Shane, which was nearly spent by the end of their relationship. It wasn't a bad thing, just comfortable. At the end of two years they knew each other's bodies so well that passion had been replaced by comfort, laughter, love. They had been like an old married couple; at a certain point, getting along and having deep love and respect for one another was just more important than sex. Anna almost laughed at herself for how cliché she was being, but then she remembered what she was doing. Kissing John. So many people had asked her what the difference was—Are female lovers more gentle? Did men use their tongues more? She couldn't comprehend how to answer. Of course not. The roughest sex she'd ever had was with a woman (granted, it was in an S/M club) and some of the most delicate kissers she knew were men. John was right in between. He held her firmly in his arms, his right hand pulling her lower back into him, his left cupping her neck and the curve of her jaw. But his lips were so soft, and when she opened her mouth, his tongue slipped between her lips gently, as if he was trying to whisper a question to her. She took her jacket from his hands and dropped it on the floor of the foyer. Then she slipped his blazer from his shoulders. It fell on the floor behind him, a chocolate brown heap next to the soft black leather of her jacket. She smelled his cologne even more strongly now. She let her hands slip down from his shoulders to his chest. She felt the flat, hard strength of his muscles moving under his shirt. She pulled at the top button on John's shirt until it released, then the second and third came undone under her fingers. She ran her hand down his bare chest. Something about seeing the line of a person's collarbones and the smooth skin below them always got to Anna. She remembered doing this very thing with Shane. They had met two years earlier at a women's discotheek. Anna hadn't been looking for women, in fact at the time she had been totally hetero-oriented. She had gone because she didn't like dancing at straight clubs. She felt safer in women's bars because she wasn't always having to avert the attentions of creepy men in whom she had no interest. Not that women couldn't be creepy, but she felt that the ratio of uncomfortable conversations at women's bars was far fewer. She went to the discotheek with Afke, a close friend a big dyke whom she'd met at an organization for women's issues in psychology. They'd hit it off right away over discussions of gendered diagnosis in psychotherapy, and Afke had gotten Anna involved in a lesbian activist group that became one of her favorite activities. Anna loved the people she met at the group, but she always felt a little uncomfortable there, like she was lying about herself. What if she got a boyfriend while she was going to the lesbian group? How would they react? It was a question that always ran itself through her mind on her way to their meetings. Even Afke was bi-phobic in her way, always referring to Anna's high school years as her "straight period". In the discotheek, Anna had been dancing by herself, Afke having walked off with some Amazon-like femme, when Shane approached her. "Okay if I dance here?" she asked? Anna was struck. Shane was a beautiful woman; tall, blonde, with an angelically feminine face and green eyes. Her personality was anything but feminine. She wore a men's button down shirt and jeans, as well as undeniable confidence, a trait that Anna couldn't resist. Later that night, after Shane had agreed to come to Anna's apartment, she had unbuttoned Shane's shirt, one button at a time, exposing her soft white chest, the firm mounds below her surprisingly delicate collarbones... John's shirt may have reminded her of Shane, but his chest was different. Where the sloping lines of Shane's smooth skin led to the soft curves of her heavy breasts, John's chest remained flat and hard, the skin of his pecs more weathered, darker than Shane's. She unbuttoned the rest of his shirt and opened it. She remembered a bisexual friend from university, Marie, who had mentioned that she was much more attracted to men than women. Marie had stayed away from lesbian groups and stuck mainly to straight circles, finding her female partners through swinger's clubs and other forms of perversion. Anna had always respected her for her ball-busting approach to sexuality; Marie knew what she liked and couldn't care less what anyone else thought about it. She was a person always open to learning more about sexuality (even though she was more of an expert on the subject than anyone Anna knew) and was always open to discovering new parts of her own desire. Standing in John's foyer, their lips touching, their tongues dancing, and her hands pressed against the warm flesh of his bare chest, Anna understood what Marie was always going on about. Anna felt John reach behind her back for the clasps that held her top. The back was a mass of ribbons and ties. John pulled each one apart until a single tie held the top to her neck. He pulled it slowly, methodically, until the knot loosened and the shirt fell away from her body. John pulled back, looking into Anna's face as he gingerly caressed the small of back, her stomach, her breasts. She touched him back, imitating his gestures, trying to feel him the way he felt her. He kissed her again, laughed, then picked her up. She laughed back, squished between his chest and arms as he leaned back so her feet wouldn't drag on the floor. He carried her into the living room and laid her down on his couch. It was buttery leather, soft and warm against her skin. Nice. "You know, I'm a little anxious about this," he said. "Why?" Anna asked, surprised. Generally, the men she met were anything but anxious about sex. "Well, you've had lesbians for lovers. They're supposed to be so good at this stuff," he replied, matter-of-factly. Oh, God. She knew something like this was coming. "Why do you assume I've had lesbians as lovers?" she asked. He looked confused. "Well, you must have, right? Unless... well unless your girlfriend was bisexual." "Why is that so hard to believe?" she asked. "Was she?" he asked. "No, she was a big dyke." His face was a mask of astonishment. Anna had to laugh. "It's ok, I can say that. I am one." She saw confusion again. This was not the time to explain the complexities of her identity to him. Still, how hard was it for a person to understand that a girl could consider herself both bisexual and a dyke, or even bisexual and a lesbian. She had gotten into the habit of calling herself a lesbian in reference to Shane while they were together. After all, she considered, she wasn't in a 'bisexual' relationship, she was in a 'lesbian' one. The fact that the English language didn't have a word for a bisexual involved with a woman (or with a man for that matter) was a pity, but Anna got to the point where it was just easier to refer to Shane and herself as 'lesbians' rather than 'a bisexual and a lesbian'. She even enjoyed the word 'dyke'. It held a political feel, and activist flare, that she identified with. No wonder her friend had commented on her apparent lack of bisexuality. Now that she was single again, her identity had started meaning more to her, which was probably why the comment had gotten to her that night. But it had led her to good things, so who was she to complain? Ignoring the look of consternation on his face, Anna pulled John on top of her, feeling the weight of his body on hers. They kissed, long and deep. His leg was between hers and she could feel the heat in her body rise, the tingling between her legs begin. "Don't worry," she whispered, "I think you'll do fine." Oh, boys. With that comment she saw herself as she acted around men, always saying things to massage their egos. She didn't know if it was just the men she met that were like this, but she realized how different she and Marie were. Marie had always talked about how easy-going men were, how she could understand men so much better than women. She had said once that she thought her bisexuality was partly her manliness, her ability to think like guys and hence understand them better than she understood women. Anna did not understand men. She liked men, and she was definitely attracted to them, but it seemed so much more common to meet wonderful women than wonderful men. Whenever people asked "Which do you like better?", another question she found hard to comprehend, she said that she was equally attracted to men and women. But was that all that mattered, attraction? Certainly not. There were few men in the world that Anna could have a really good conversation with (just as for Marie, there were very few women) and there were even fewer men who didn't offend her feminist sensibilities. It was really so much more complicated than such a simple question, "Which is better?" For what? Anna always wanted to ask. It's not like she just fucked every attractive person she saw on the street (although many people thought that was what bisexuality was all about). There were connections that needed to be made, conversations that needed to be had, and Anna seemed to find those conversations much easier with women. Besides, in her line of study, and with her activist nature, meeting straight men was easier said than done. It wasn't that she wouldn't have liked to have more relationships or more sex with men, she just hadn't had the chance. John unbuttoned her jeans, unzipped them. He smiled up at her as he pulled them off and threw them next to the couch. He kissed her foot, her shins, the inside of her knee. He opened his mouth and tasted her thigh, running his tongue all the way up to the line of her underwear. She put her hands in his hair, clasping the roots, trying to communicate through their skin. He kissed the elastic band of her underwear, then her belly, her chest. He ran his tongue over her breasts and she found it interesting that hers were the only pair in the room. She felt his desire for her body and it made her smile. She felt oddly in power as the only woman in the situation, as if what she had to offer was more valuable because of its scarcity. Bi All Means John seemed to agree. He lingered at the soft mounds of flesh on Anna's chest, his large, strong hands cupping them gently, his fingers fondling the tight pinkness of her nipples. She could not help but respond. She had been kissing his neck, breathing seductively into his ear, but now she couldn't help but use her teeth. She nibbled at the flesh of his neck and his earlobe. "Ow!" he exclaimed. "Oh, sorry," Anna breathed. He pulled away and kissed her firmly, forcing her mouth open with his, penetrating her with his tongue. Then he kissed her ear, nibbling on the lobe here and there. He licked her neck, right beneath the earlobe. Another excellent spot. Anna shivered, and John bit her neck in the same spot. She had a fleeting thought about the hickeys this was going to cause, but immediately decided she didn't care. As she laid beneath him, enjoying the chills he was sending through her neck, Anna pulled John down on to her, feeling the movements of his muscles through her skin. She was holding his head, his beautiful hair, in one hand, and now she put the other between them. She slid her palm down his chest, the back of her hand pressing against her own. She reached between their legs and felt the bulge of solid flesh between them. She felt him react against her neck as she touched him; he bit her and moaned ever so slightly. Se laughed, then pushed him up off of her. She sat up herself, keeping her hand right over that fleshy bulge, rubbing John through his jeans. She smiled mischievously. This was fun! John touched Anna's hair and put his head back. She unbuttoned his fly, four buttons in all, and pulled his jeans and boxers (navy blue) down. He stood up and kicked off the rest of his clothes, then let her pull his hips towards her. He was hard, and of adequate proportions, or so Anna thought. This was another assumption about her "lesbianism" that people always made. "Come on, Anna," they'd say, "How long has it been since you've given a blow job?" "Oh, a couple days ago," Anna always said. And she was telling the truth too. It seemed few people who weren't having it really understood how many elements could go into lesbian sex. She'd given plenty of blow jobs to Shane over the two years they were together. Sure, she couldn't feel them in the same sense that John could feel Anna's hand wrap around his hot, engorged dick, but Shane had felt them in some way. And for that matter, Anna had received quite a few blow jobs herself. In fact, she couldn't help but compare John to her favorite dildo, Champ, from her days with Shane. Champ, if she could recall, had a wider girth than John, but was shorter, and Anna could detect no trace of the blue and black spiral pattern that had decorated Champ on John's skin. In any case, who was measuring bisexuality on the number of blow jobs given? It was amazing to Anna what people would do to categorize each other. Anna was drawn out of her reverie by a tug on her hair from John. She had been slowly massaging his penis, and she saw that it was harder now than before, that John was lost in the sensation that Anna was providing for him. "Oh, God" John moaned. Anna felt the heat of him in her hand, his desire for her and for the ecstasy that she could give him. She moved closer to him and licked his skin; the crease between his thigh and his public bone. His fingers tightened and she heard him moan again. She licked the length of his penis and then took him in her mouth, running her tongue around the softer head of his dick and then taking as much of him in her mouth as she could. She stroked the base of his penis with her hands and flicked her tongue around the head. She felt him tremble every time she did it. He had both hands in her hair and was desperate to grip it, though it was a little short for that. He grasped the hair at the nape of her neck as if he was holding himself from falling. Each time she felt a tug, a wave of heat shot through her. She felt the folds of skin between her legs start to react. She felt the slipperiness of her body's desire for John, felt it preparing itself to open to him. She sucked him harder, moving her hands and her head faster around his cock, enjoying every reaction he expressed. She knew women who said that they fell in love with the person, not the gender, that gender wasn't real anyway and that love transcended sex parts, but for Anna, gender had a hell of a lot to do with it. In this moment, she was excited precisely because she was a woman and John was a man, and she was opening her mouth to take him and he was begging her not to stop. Love perhaps was another thing, but even then, whether she was in love with a woman or a man, or a woman who looked like a man, or a man who looked like a woman, these things all made a difference to Anna. They effected the very nature of the relationship, the interactions and the way in which Anna understood her attractions. Did this make her a bad bisexual, she thought? Leave it to bisexuals to discriminate against their own kind, only after the heteros and the lesbians were done with them. Anna also knew women who considered the terms 'bisexual' and 'lesbian' as pointless epithets. "You're only gay for 10 minutes a day," Afke had always said, "And that's if you're lucky." But didn't it mean more than that? She supposed to some people it didn't. Bisexual could be a term that just meant having sex with men and women. But for Anna, it meant that she was able to love men or women, or perhaps anything else that came her way. It meant that whether or not they did come her way, her propensity to love them, to fuck them, to be with them, was always there. Marie had told her that she didn't consider herself "truly bi" until she had finally had sex with another woman. She had been falling in love with them since grade school, but she needed the physical evidence to feel comfortable calling herself bisexual. Anna understood what it was, to need a physical manifestation of her desire, what else was she doing here with John? But at the same time she felt totally entitled to the identity, no matter what she did. Who's business was it, anyway, to tell her what qualifications she needed to call herself what she wanted to. It was overwhelming sometimes, how many ways someone could live out the terms they went by. So many ways to be a lesbian or a faggot, maybe even more ways to be bi; to the point that Anna didn't even know what it meant anymore when someone introduced themselves as bisexual. "I'm bi," said the high school cheerleader who made out with the other chicks on the squad to impress the football players. "I'm bisexual," said the hard-core women's studies feminist who surely hadn't had a conversation with a man, much less sex with one in 15 years. "I'm bi, too," said the swinger who hooked up with her boyfriend and a variety of women on a regular basis. It was a frustrating phenomenon, but at the same time filled Anna with a feeling of safety. She might not be able to pin anyone else down, but she didn't feel pinned down herself. She could float around the open-air of her identity like a feather escaping from a pillow and drifting over the bed sheets. If she found a comfortable spot, she could let herself waft down and snuggle in with her feather friends on the duvet, warm and comfortable. Anna's jaw was getting tired, and she could feel that John wasn't going to last much longer the way she was going. It was beautiful, really, how their bodies communicated with each other. The speed of her tongue, the pressure of his fingertips, the texture of his cock in her mouth; everything explained to the lovers what was happening, and what should happen next. Anna pulled away, massaging her jaw as she did. John looked down at her and smiled. "Ow," Anna said. John laughed, "I guess it's my turn to apologize," he said. He bent down and kissed her, then picked her up from the couch. "I'm in need of a little scenery change," he said. "What about you?" "This is a change of scenery for me," she chuckled as he carried her over to his bed, pulled back the grey comforter and laid her down on the white sheets. "And do you like what you see?" he asked. She pulled him down on the bed and rolled on top of him. "It's splendid," she replied dramatically, and kissed him. He moved his hand between her legs and pushed aside her underwear. Her skin was warm, almost hot, and wet. His fingers slipped between her lips easily, and as he ran his finger over her clit, she shuddered with passion. "Well you appear to be enjoying yourself," he whispered, laughter in his voice. She gave him a look that said Do what I want or I will hurt you, and kissed him again. He laughed, but he did what she wanted. His fingers slipped over her clit once and again. She was surprised at how talented he was. He ran circles around the tight knot of flesh, then ran his thumb directly over it. He played with different speeds and pressures until he had her gripping the pillow beneath his head, her face hidden in his chest. He slid his fingers back, letting them explore all her crevices, edging closer to penetration. "Please," she whispered. She was shaking. The combination of holding herself above him and the exhaustion of feeling him touch her was draining her energy. "Please what?" he asked, toying with her. She rocked her hips into his hands, trying to push his fingers inside her, but he moved along with her, sliding his hands over her, never allowing her to feel the full pressure of his touch. "Damn it," she growled in frustration, but she bent down so her lips brushed his ear and whispered, "Come inside me." He thrust into her swiftly, making her take a rough breath as he did. She sat up and thrust her body down on top of him, pushing his fingers inside of her. She reached behind her and wrapped her hand around his dick, which was so hard she thought she felt it throbbing. She was not the only one who wanted more. She took the moment to toy back, as John had toyed with her. She pressed his fingers deep inside her with her hips, and stroked his cock slowly, methodically, speeding up only for short seconds. "Anna," he sighed, "God, I want you." She pulled herself up, moving away from his hand. She bent over and kissed him. "Then take me," she said. She sat up again, and he pulled off her underwear, one leg at a time, and threw them on the floor. He sat up against the headboard and reached into his nightstand for a condom. She took it from him and he took her hips in his hands. She bent over to kiss him, rolling the latex onto his penis as she did. He pushed her down onto him, and they shuddered together as he entered her slowly, forcing her open to take him. Her body relaxed and she took him easily. She put all her weight on him, and took all of him inside her. They let out a sigh, and she took comfort in the idea that as she felt him, he was feeling her too. He lifted her from the hips and then brought her down again. They fucked slowly like that until neither of them could stand it any longer. Then he rolled her over and took her legs over his shoulders. He thrust into her faster then, and she pushed against the headboard with each thrust, trying to intensify the effects of his penetration. When he quickened his pace, she could tell he was close, so she let go of the headboard and touched herself as he fucked her. Her clit was totally stimulated now, a hard red marble above the spot where she and John were melting together. She could touch it directly without it hurting her, the sensation inside her was so strong. She rubbed herself to the rhythm of John's movements, and she felt her whole body start to tingle and shake from the ecstasy of it. John noticed her helping out and reached between her legs to touch her. He slowed down as he stroked her clit, watching her face for her reaction. He kissed her forehead, "is this ok?" he asked. She laughed amid the overwhelming sensations coursing through her body, but she felt bad when she saw the look of utter concentration on his face. "Amazing," she said, kissing him back. Then she put her arms around hid back and pulled him deeper inside her. "Faster," she whispered, and he responded, his torso shaking visibly under her fingers as she guided him into her again and again. John was coming, his body stiffened as he pressed himself into her. This wasn't something she was accustomed to, having someone come inside her, but feeling him getting off sent another wave of heat through her body, and she came. Her body pulsated hotly, and she felt the tingling from between her legs spread throughout her body until even her lips and the tips of her toes were tingling. She let the feeling flow its way through her body. Her eyes closed, she imagined hot red waves flowing over her skin, utter satisfaction following in their wake. John pulled out and rolled next to her. They shared the bed, each in their own thoughts, enjoying the afterglow. Anna was surprised at how simple it was. She expected that the first time she had sex with a man would be a stunning, life-changing experience. Or at least would be significantly different than the times she's had sex with women. She turned and looked at John. "Want to know a secret," she asked. "That was my first time," she laughed out loud. John went to the bathroom to clean up and then to the kitchen to make some sandwiches. Anna lay back in bed and wondered at how it was she got here. It was a woman she came to Holland with, and a man who had instigated her first kiss with a woman. She had met John at the party of a mutual friend whom Anna had known because of her interest in S/M, where she'd also met Marie. She was suddenly struck by the path that her life had taken, the minute twists and turns, the way her memory could amplify even the smallest moment of a single day, and the fact that her life already held millions of those miniscule moments. It was this, she thought, the memories, the experiences, the constant monologue that commentated goings on inside her head, that made the richness of her life. She felt full, as full as she had ever been, with all the things she had done and the million more she hadn't. She put her head back against the soft whiteness of the pillow and let out a sigh. Then she let her thoughts slip away and enjoyed a midnight, after sex snack in the bed of a man she'd only known for a few hours, but whom had undoubtedly effected her life in some beautiful, unexpected, unalterable way.