Sacred and Profane

This is the completely true story of the strangest friendship I ever made. Everything about how we met feels both magical and preposterous - and dark and evil. It was love at first sight. It was star-crossed and impossible. It was a daring adventure and I hope never to experience the depths of horror like that again. It was a relationship only possible in the age of the Internet. It was (and still is) a shining bond with someone amazing that we will both cherish for the rest of our lives. And neither of us can ever tell anyone else. Except anonymously, maybe. And that's why I'm writing this today.

It was years ago. I was in my middle 30s and my wife had dragged our marriage into the raging torrent of divorce proceedings. In the middle of that morass that was do cut the middle out of our lives for the next several months, life went on. I had spent several busy weeks traveling on business in China. It was a productive trip from a purely business standpoint but felt emotionally hollow. You have to understand, I was in a pretty dark place, succeeding everywhere except what was actually important in life.

The last few days of my trip were in Hong Kong and unlike the rest of the trip on the mainland, there wasn't much to do. The original meetings were canceled for some stupid reason or another. The weather was miserable and monsoon weather was raining pretty much sideways. I was bored and lonely and feeling pretty pent up.

So what's a boy to do? I started browsing Craigslist. I'm not proud of it. I had already engaged a couple of call girls through that in the states and had had some really positive experiences. I thought so anyway, but in retrospect I'm sad and ashamed. In HK I justified the thought by saying to myself, this is the most capitalist place on earth. The stigma against prostitution is lower here. I felt like it was easier and less risky.

I was a little crazy. I had been a virgin at the time of my very young marriage. Huge mistake! My wife turned out to be largely asexual and treated sex as a boring but inevitable form of rote duty, and years of trying to entice her into any other mindset had taken its toll, until it was a boring rote duty for me as well. Even so, for years I had been determined to be faithful as I had been taught. When the marriage started breaking up after years and years of this, I felt like I had to break out of my shell in the most extreme ways. Among other things, I wanted sex with as many different kinds of women as possible.

After weeks of loneliness on my busy trip, watching the beautiful Chinese girls go by, I set a goal there in Hong Kong. I was going to get laid by two different Asian women in less than 24 hours. Objectifying? Yeah. I'm not proud of it. I'm a very different person now, thanks in part to this story.

The first girl was Thai. She said her name was Pat. Before you make the inevitable joke, no, she was a real female. But it was fun and exactly what I had expected. She told dirty jokes, made me feel really good for the value I paid, and I had my first ever orgasm inside an Asian woman.

It was a very nice experience and I think if that's all there was to my tale, it would be possible to tell a nice ball-busting erotic story about Pat. It was fun and enjoyable but it's like any other erotic story you've ever read, complete with a play by play and a predictable ending. It would be nice, and tame, and ultimately forgettable. I barely remember the details myself. I wonder sometimes if Pat is okay though.

Fortunately that was just prologue to the second night, my last in Hong Kong.

The girl in the ad looked maybe 20 at the oldest. She was gorgeous. The ad claimed she was Korean and that her name was Kim. Neither ended up being true, but I didn't know that at the time, and it captured my imagination. So I called up the agency and asked for her to come.

The knock came on my hotel door. In the peephole I saw her. The pics had been real! She was slim and petite and wearing a fresh but demure yellow floral dress, slightly damp from the short jump from the taxi to the hotel through the rain. Her hair was black and dyed with dark red highlights. She had a lot less makeup than her picture and her skin was a lot darker in person but was still the most beautiful face I had ever seen, round and bright like the moon, with enigmatic folded eyes. I have never seen eyes so beautiful in my life.

She came in and introduced herself as Kim. She spoke excellent English with an accent that was definitely not Korean. Unlike Pat, she was so shy! She met my eyes reluctantly but once she did, neither of us could look away. She was so tiny next to me. I felt a magnetism like I'd never felt in my life. It was emboldening and I felt more confident and masculine than I ever had before.

She said she had to use the shower first. Without thinking I offered to join her. Nervously she grinned and giggled. "Oh my God. No." I was coming on strong, I realized. But she felt the attraction too. I could tell.

It's easy to say that no, she was just playing her part. But I had been with a few courtesans by that point and the ones who were really good had a feeling to them of artifice. They were doing their job to make me feel good. Nothing more. "Kim" didn't have that vibe in the least. She seemed surprised to like me.

She came out of the shower and to try to put her at ease, I decided to reverse roles from what Pat had done.

"Do you give massages?"

Nod.

"Has anyone offered to give you a massage instead?"

There was startle in her eyes. "No!"

"Would you like one?"

"Okay."

"Let me pull this off." I had known her less than ten minutes and she was looking in my eyes and putting her hands up for me to take off her dress.

And she was gorgeous. Stunning!

Her skin was dark yellow brown and smooth and unmarked. The dress had covered up her cleavage too well, and her breasts were much bigger than I had thought they would be.

I told her one of the dirty jokes Pat had told me. I wish I could remember it. She gave me a giggle.

I got on the bed next to her as I rubbed her. Her skin was tactile delight, smooth and soft with firm muscle underneath. My marriage had been so joyless physically. It was then that I realized that not only was I starved for touch, I was desperate to touch someone else to give pleasure. I will never forget the feel of her skin against my hands. Her hair, as I brushed it away from her neck, was soft as silk.

And her body was responding. I could feel her neck and shoulders loosen. As I moved down her back I could feel her breath deepening. Then quickening.

I moved my head down to her shoulder and kissed her where her neck met. The scent of her was overpowering. She wasn't wearing perfume, but that didn't matter. She smelled like essence of woman, like she was made of sex.

My hands went to her ass and it was firm and soft and not too big and not too small and my cock was getting almost painfully hard. I have never wanted anyone as bad as I wanted her.

I unhooked her bra and made to turn her over, and she responded like we were communicating straight through our skins. I don't know how else to describe it.

Her breasts were practically glowing in my eyes. They seemed huge. I mean, this was a very petite girl and while she was very built very well for her height she wasn't monstrous or anything. But the more I inhaled her through my eyes and hands and nose the more her feminine essence seemed to swell in my sight. She was an earth goddess in my arms.

With my hands to her sides I kissed her neck and her breath came faster. I tasted her skin. Heavenly. Moving down to her breasts. It was like suckling the boobs of Eros herself. My hands worked lower to pull off her panties and she wriggled to help them off. My hands found her pussy. She must have just shaved before she came here, vulva smooth as silk. I ran my fingers along her and gently massaged one lip of her labia between my thumb and middle finger, and her knees twitched apart as of their own accord. I felt her grow wet and when I moved up to engage her clitoris, her hips began to rock forward as she breathed out.

I lost track of everything but her as I went lower. Her belly was perfect and smooth and kissing her little inner belly button was like eating the cherry off a sundae.

I went lower and my mouth found heaven.

Listen, I have always liked eating pussy, far more than I ever liked having my dick sucked. There's something that feels transcendent about it, like worshiping at the fount of the altar of womanhood. I get lost in the moment, focusing on her body and her response, on my technique, and of course the flavor. I've eaten the pussy of every woman I've ever been with, and I don't know what it was about this one, but I felt like this one woman was the most important being in the universe. I've never done cocaine but I imagine this is what the experience must be like. She. Was. Everything.

She seemed nervous at first, like no one had ever done this to her before. The more I know about her history, I think maybe no one had never done it gently and with intention of her pleasure. As she relaxed into it, her clit began to swell in my mouth and pop out of her hood. Her thighs gently squeezed my head and she let out a whimper.

Eventually I couldn't hold it anymore. I grabbed a condom and I don't think I've ever slapped one on so fast. Her legs spread and I moved kisses up her body and she guided me as I entered her.

I don't remember it all - it was a dream-like state but I do remember what it felt like to penetrate her that first time. It was warm. And tight. And springy and felt youthful. I don't think my virgin wife many years earlier had ever been as tight. And she certainly had never been as wet.

I rolled her on top of me. She didn't ride me cowgirl style like a porn star. She kept her body contact on mine top to bottom and we kissed lip to lip for the first time as she rocked her hips. As she moved, her weight bearing down on me, I could feel the pain of my failed marriage dissolve for the first time.

I don't know how long it went on. It couldn't have been more than a few minutes objectively but in my memory it feels like this perfect moment outside of time.

I somehow was back on top as I lost control. Our eyes were glued as I felt it build inside me. I will never in my life forget what it felt like to explode inside this goddess of beauty as my eyes drank hers in. I burst.

She never came. I learned later that she had never had an orgasm in her life. Still hasn't. I think she doesn't believe they exist for women. I feel very sad about that now. If we ever get together again, I'm going to make sure she has the time of her life!

But in the moment, greedy boy that I was, I was in post coital bliss.

But that was only, merely, the story of the best sex I've ever had in my life. We started talking. It changed everything in both our lives.

I'll never forget, her first comment after we moved apart was a really random innocuous comment about how much she liked my suitcase, sitting on the table across from the bed. She started talking about how much she loved to travel.

And it just went into a conversation like you'd have just meeting somebody the first time, two people meeting and starting a simple conversation over nothing and having it progress. It was the weirdest most backwards relationship ever - naked immediately followed by almost an almost religious sexual experience followed by small talk and then by genuine friendship.

We lay spooned together. She bent her knees to place her feet flat against my legs to warm them. I don't know why but somehow that felt like the most trusting act of affection I had ever experienced. It's kind of absurd after having sex that something this mundane would feel so intimate. But it did.

Her name was not Kim. And she was not from Korea. I won't write her real name here. But I can say she was from the Philippines and she was in a very dire situation.

She said, "You're good. Really good." I had just a moment to swell with male pride before her look turned dark and the conversation changed completely. "Many men are not. They like to hurt."

As she opened up and began to tell me her life's story I felt my heart break with empathy. And shame. I had participated in human trafficking without realizing it.

She was 26, and had two children back in her home country by an man who had abandoned them several years earlier. She had grown up in absolute poverty in a deeply rural back corner of the Philippines, a middle child in a huge family with too many mouths to feed and few opportunities. And so she had found the strength to stand on her own two feet any way she could. She had found her way to work in Dubai and discovered a love of travel and adventure, working in a salon and sending her money home where her parents tended her children on her dime. She found a relationship in Dubai and it was bad and abusive. So she ran away from her abuser, quit her job, ran home, and decided to find new opportunities elsewhere.

An agency in Hong Kong had promised her a lucrative contract in modeling and entertainment. She jumped at the chance. It was a complete scam. On reaching the island all artifice was stripped away. She owed them money, they said, for her airfare, hotel, food, and board. She had to repay her credit. And as you might expect, she was going to repay it their way. As time went on her debt changed little, because they continued to charge her room and board. It was horrific, and they rented her out on craigslist like a piece of property. At one point they offered to cut her debt in half if she'd smoke something. She never knew what it was. Some girls in the dorm took up the offer. She knew how desperate her situation was. I've since learned this is common, and that this is how a lot of girls in third world countries are tricked into this kind of virtual slavery in Hong Kong.

She'd been on the job for two weeks and already she felt desperate and in constant danger. She was too ashamed to tell her family back home. She had made a couple of friends in the dorm but they were in as desperate shape as she was. This stranger she had just met who treated her gently - me - was the only hope she had in her life.

She never asked me for anything. Ever. She just spilled her story out all in one rush. She wanted to show me pictures of her kids so I pulled out Facebook and looked her up. Her kids were only slightly younger than my own and looked just like her. Without even thinking I facebook-friended her. I'm so glad I did. I hate to think about what could have happened to her if I hadn't. And I wonder about those friends from her dorm, and about Pat.

She stayed far longer than her agency said that she was supposed to. She didn't want to go. I didn't want to let her go. I wanted her to stay in my hotel and I'd pay for extra days as I was due to leave the next day.

"No," she said. "They know where I am. And they hold my passport and everything I own is in that dorm."

I tried to convince her that we should go to the police. But she refused. They would only deport her back to the Philippines, she said, penniless and with no honor at all, and she'd have to tell her family the whole shameful story. She wanted instead to somehow find a way back to Dubai, where she had prospered before, and could support her kids.

I felt so protective of her. I wished I could just hide her in my luggage and spirit her home with me. Instead I found myself promising to help any way I could even though I was due to leave for the states the next day.

As she got up to go, saying they would be looking for her, she looked up into my eyes one more time, and reached up and kissed me full on the lips. She smiled so big and did it again. It wasn't seductive really. But it was still the best two kisses I've ever had in my life before or since. I couldn't believe how hard I had fallen for her. And I felt like she had for me too.

As she went to leave I offered to at least umbrella-escort her to the taxi so she wouldn't get soaked in the wild Hong Kong monsoon.

"Oh my God. No," she said, calling back the beginning of how we had met just a few hours before. But this time smiling and not nervous at all.

She closed the door and that was the last time I ever saw her in person.

Over the next few days, our Facebook messenger was full of us planning her escape, even as I was already on my way back home. I only got hints of her other sexual encounters but from what little I could tell they seemed brutal and I was her only lifeline to hope. We worked out a simple plan. She broke into the mamasan's room while that horrible woman was in the shower, and stole back her passport, and grabbed her luggage. The conversation is still there in messenger. She was so scared. I told her to "Go! Go now". I waited for very tense minutes until she next reported back, "I am in the taxi. I am safe". With the help of a secret stash of cash I had given her, she grabbed a taxi for the airport for a flight I had booked her to Dubai.

She got back to Dubai with the wrong kind of visa, no money, and few prospects. But she persevered and eventually prospered. Over the years I helped her when she really needed it most. And I sponsored her visits home to her family a couple of times. I felt like I owed her for what I had participated in, by just thinking with my dick. And to be honest, giving her money helped keep me out of trouble. Using call girls is a terribly bad habit to get into and I realize now I had been heading down a very dark and dehumanizing (and expensive) road.

And before you call me a fool for giving her money sometimes... Well, maybe some. But she never lied to me. Ever. I was able to independently verify pretty much anything important she ever told me.

It's been more than five years. We still talk frequently on messenger and sometimes by voice or video. We tell each other things, secrets that we could tell nobody else. After what we shared, everything else seems minor? We've both had sexual relationships since, and sometimes we stop talking for a couple months but we never really lost that bond we had getting her out of a desperate awful situation. She had to fall back into prostitution one more time when times got hard and I couldn't help. But for the most part she built her life back up. She's had a hard life but she's doing well.

We've tried to meet again several times, either here or there or in some third place. Visas were denied, timing didn't work out, or either she or I would lose our jobs at the worst possible times. I don't know if we meet that we'll ever be able to capture that magic again. And I sometimes wonder if of off all the women in the world, she's the one, and I had to travel to the ends of the earth to find her just the one time. I wonder, if we meet again, if I'd ever be able to let her go. What would we tell people when they ask how we met? Is this naked longer for her even sane?

I had a few video calls with her a few days ago. She has matured physically and is even more beautiful than ever, and her voice is still honey in my ears. Her physical presence even through the phone still makes my engine roar like no other woman ever. And she's matured in more important ways as well, in wisdom and emotional growth.

She was nervous about a new job and couldn't sleep. I talked her nerves down and we talked until she could close her eyes. She called me her lullabye. I felt like her feet were pressed against me for warmth again.

She asked me to come visit her there. Regretfully I had to tell her no, for now. The timing and budget is as ever not right. We talked for hours, for days in a row. "Did we really have sex as soon as we met?" she asked out of the blue, laughing. We rarely ever talk about the time, I know she wants to forget Hong Kong. But it seems time is healing her to be able to talk about it.