The Black Kite

Prologue

Joanna sat by the riverbank watching the Black Kite dipping and soaring. "How beautiful it looks," she thought, "yet how cruel."

Birds in the trees along the river sounded their alarm cries and took to flight at the approach of the predator. Small animals, if they spotted the raider, fled for burrows or quivered beneath fallen tree trunks and foliage. The unwary continued their foraging.

Suddenly the kite seemed to stop in mid-flight, hovered for a moment, then plunged down, streaking into some bushes and out of Joanna's line of vision. A moment later the kite rose again, in it's claws a small animal, perhaps a mouse or a lizard, still squirming. It flew up to a high branch on a nearby gum tree and there gave the coup de grace to the little creature. The kite gave a long, and rather dreary sounding whistle, perhaps of triumph, or to warn off other predatory rivals, and commenced the meal.

As she rose to walk back to her house Joanna saw in the fate of the little animal a parable of her own plight. "The Black Predator tearing at its victim," she thought.

Joanna the Quarry

That is how Joanna saw herself, as a victim. She felt herself to be the prey of her own sexuality. It was like the predatory Black Kite, swooping on her and tearing her to pieces.

In plain physical terms, Joanna always felt her self to be in the grip of unfulfilled sexual desire. As she stated at a later time, "I was always wet and ready for a man." Her carnal hunger tormented her and was felt almost as pain.

Behind this constant desire for sex was the deeper need for love and security. At thirty-six years of age Joanna could look back on a life laced with sadness. Her mother died before she was one year old leaving Joanna's grandmother to bring her up.

Her father at the time of the death was away in the army. By the time he returned Joanna had bonded with her grandmother, and it was decided she would stay with her. Later her father married again, and Joanna, feeling she was something of a Cinderella, came to call the cold and uncommunicative woman, "wicked stepmother."

The atmosphere in which she grew up was very narrow and religious. She was controlled in her behaviour by a number of pieces of blackmail, one such being "If you don't behave you'll get sent to live with your father." To live with father meant also living with "wicked stepmother", and this was a fearful threat for little Joanna.

As she entered puberty, her grandmother's threat became, "If you have sex before you're married I shall have a heart attack and die." Another blow to Joanna's need for a sense of security.

The Church they attended reinforced these threats. Here the love of God gave place to emphasis on sin and punishment. Joanna, along with most of the membership, was made to feel that if they did something that they enjoyed, they must have been sinning. The received doctrine was, that every pleasure must be paid for, usually through some unpleasant consequences.

Joanna's life revolved around the Church. Apart from attendance at Sunday services morning and evening, there was Sunday School on Sunday afternoons. During the week there was a whole series of church activities like netball, tennis and various church clubs to be attended. She would even have gone to a church school if her grandparents or father had been able to pay the exorbitant fees. As it was, they had to settle for the State School, but they kept a wary eye on whom she associated with.

At seventeen Joanna fell in love with one of the young men in the Church. His name was Don, and he was tall, good-looking, and obviously attracted to Joanna. As she put it, "I only had eyes for Don."

Like Joanna, Don came from a strict religious home, which if anything was narrower than hers was. Their relationship, once discovered by his parents, was strictly controlled. Almost never were they alone together. If they were inside the house they were not left in a room alone unless the door was wide open. If they went out, they had to be accompanied, usually by Don's younger sister. How they were able to discuss getting married is a mystery, but they managed it somehow.

With marriage in view a further parental regime was dumped on them. Joanna was working in a secretarial capacity and Don on his way to becoming an accountant. They must save money to buy a house. They must save money to buy furniture and household appliances. They must save money for when the children arrived and for their old age. They must save money just to save money. So went the parental creed.

They were engaged for six years, then one day as Joanna came into the kitchen for breakfast, she fainted. Her grandmother took her to be examined by a doctor. Being reasonably astute, he was able to diagnose at least some of Joanna's problem. She had been kept waiting for her marriage far too long. What he did not say was that on top of all the other anxieties that had been loaded on to her by church and family, Joanna was extremely frustrated sexually.

At twenty-six Joanna married her hero. Having had no pre-marital sexual experience, she was not sure what to expect. She had some idea gleaned from surreptitious reading of forbidden literature, that there should be a wonderful climacteric moment. Don was equally ignorant of how to conduct operations, also having had no sexual experience, and having done even less covert reading than Joanna had.

The result was a rather messy, painful splitting of Joanna's hymen, leaving her feeling sore, and both of them depressed. During the following weeks and months things sexual did improve but again, in Joanna's own words, "Not much." At the time she concluded this was how things were for everyone, and it was only years later and after she had experienced some truly passionate lovemaking, that she realised how poorly Don had served her sexually.

A major marital crisis erupted when Joanna, coming home unexpectedly early from a church meeting, found Don watching television clad in one of her night gowns. For some time she seemed to keep losing items of nightwear and underwear. Now she discovered why.

Brought up as she had been Joanna was horrified to discover her husband was a cross-dresser. Things got even worse when Don, even in his incompetent manner, found he could not perform sexually at all unless he was dressed in women's underclothes. This repelled Joanna and such sex life as they had began to move towards zero point. Don's plea now was for Joanna to masturbate him, which she did, but he did nothing for her. As she later said, "God knows what he fantasised while I tossed him off, but it wasn't me."

Further woes were piled on to the marriage. When Joanna was thirty-four her grandfather died, followed a few months later by the death of her grandmother. Even after she was married her grandmother had managed to oversee Joanna's life. Not long before her death she said to Joanna, "I'm worried about who is going to look after you when I'm dead."

Her death might have brought Joanna freedom from oppressive oversight, but because this oversight had kept Joanna dependent on her grandmother as her only source of security, it left a raw wound.

In her bereavement she sought comfort from her husband, and got none. Don was, as a lot of men are, unable to face sickness and death. Any attempt by Joanna to gain consolation from Don was repelled, often abusively, as he tried to block out the thoughts of death.

Very soon after these two deaths, Don's mother died and two years later his father. The tyrant had continued to exert his influence over Don's life, but his miserly ways meant that he left Don a considerable amount of money. With the money, and now no longer having the parental eye on him, Don, unlike Joanna, celebrated his freedom.

One of his first acts was to drag Joanna into a women's clothing shop, instructing her to buy underwear, supposedly for her, but really for him. He insisted that she buy sizes that fitted her which, as she later said, "Made him look even more ridiculous, as everything was many sizes too small for him."

Another sign of Don's freedom was his taking to drinking alcohol. In both their families this was a forbidden and sinful substance. Don's first experience with the "demon drink," took place at an office Christmas party. He arrived home a little tipsy much to the amusement of Joanna. In the coming years she ceased being amused as Don's drinking increased. Every evening and weekend he was, and is, drunk, and even he has faced the fact that he is an alcoholic.

Somehow in the early years of their marriage they had produced two children. Joanna, who had more and more grounds for getting out of the relationship, hung in for the sake of the children and, as she believed, because Don might suicide if she left.

In all this time Joanna's Black Kite, her predatory sexuality, still hovered over her. She was still always badly in need of sexual love. She tried to meet her needs with a vibrator, but it made her cry because, as she said, "I need the real flesh and blood thing." So her sexual needs, instead of finding their outcome in a joyful sex life, became a hunter that preyed upon her.

This was her situation as she rose from the riverbank and made her way home.

Breakout

The first sliver of light penetrated her sexual darkness some six months after the death of Joanna's grandmother. She was still nursing the emotional wound the death had inflicted on her, even to the point of making her physically unwell. She had vague pains in her stomach and would suddenly burst into tears unexpectedly, and surprisingly, her sexual drive had got even more urgent.

One day she had a male visitor from the church. He said he had "just dropped in to see how she was." Joanna was not reticent in giving voice to her troubles, and as they sat side by side on the sofa she gave forth with her miseries. This led to weeping and that in turn led to his arm about her. She took one of his hands, and somehow it got placed against her breasts!

The gentleman concerned was in fact a predator in his own right, much given to comforting distressed and attractive women. Joanna was, despite her many woes, still very attractive in a wan, "please comfort and protect me," sort of way.

The gentleman, (I shall we call him "The Hawk") struck. At considerable speed Joanna had her pants removed, her legs parted, and she was given The Hawk's delightful version of the coup de grace, his penis in her vagina. There was little by way of foreplay, it was straight to the objective. The Hawk delivered his load of sperm into Joanna without her having any orgasm.

She had never had an orgasm and was of the opinion that she was the sort that never would. Never the less, this was a sexual intercourse the like of which she had never experienced before. The exercise was carried out with vigour and joy, unlike the dreary and apparently burdensome efforts of Don in the days when sex still happened between them.

The Hawk, having disposed of his immediate carnal needs, elected to depart. Thereafter he visited a few more times, but as he had a number of unhappy and lonely housewives to attend to, and since his occupation allowed him to "go out to see a client," he was kept rather busy. In any case, being a married man, he did not want to be seen visiting one place too often, and like the real Hawk, once he had devoured the prey, he was more intent on finding the next meal than lingering over the one just eaten.

Joanna was not particularly worried by The Hawk's negligence. She was happy to have learned that sex could be so much more than she had previously experienced. In addition, seeing that The Hawk had succumbed so easily, she concluded that there must be other males who would interested.

She was right. After her first experience with The Hawk a number of men came and went in her life. She found no difficulty in attracting them, but it was not easy to arrange times when they could get together for sex. First, they were all married men and at the time Joanna was most available, they were at work. Secondly, she did not want Don or her children to know about her extra marital activities. Thus there were constraints on the frequency and regularity of her sexual intercourse.

A New Dimension

A further change in Joanna's sexual circumstances came about in an unexpected manner and from a surprising source.

Joanna was having a lot of fun with her lovers but her relationship with them had done little to ease her feelings of bereavement, and she was still the victim of the Black Kite, in other words, she was always ready. Her sexual activity had not produced an orgasm, and she went on believing that she was one of those women who would never have one.

The situation was such that most of her partners were hurried in their use of her, and tended to leave fairly soon after they had ejaculated. Still relatively naïve in matters sexual, Joanna did not appreciate that her need was for a real lover, one who would take time with her and care as much about her gratification as his own.

The chance for Joanna to meet her barely understood needs came about with the arrival of a new minister at the church. He was some ten years older than Joanna who was thirty-seven at that time. Chatting with Joanna he quickly perceived that she was a troubled woman and soon paid a visit to her home.

Joanna had now reached a point where she used her troubles as a sort of bait to hook men. She got their sympathy first and their penis second. It had become a sort of reflex action whenever she found herself alone with a man. She went into action with the new minister (I shall call him Andrew). He did not rise to the bait, but simply listened to her problems.

Andrew said he would call again, but before this happened Joanna called on him.

Andrew's house was only about two minutes walk away from Joanna's, and she arrived on his doorstep at around 10 a.m. one Monday morning. Ever since his visit to her she had been sexually fantasising about him, and despite his resistance to her charms during that visit, she was not going to give up without making at least one more effort.

What she did not know at the time, but learned later, was that Andrew's wife had ceased to be sexually active with him for the past five years. They slept in separate bedrooms and she went out to work each weekday.

On being invited in by Andrew, Joanna was escorted to the study. Once more Andrew settled to listen to her story, but this time drawing her out with occasional questions which led to Joanna telling of her life with Don, and the somewhat promiscuous sex life she was now leading.

Joanna had dressed carefully for this visit. It was in the days when skirts were worn very short, and she had put on her see-through blouse, omitting a bra, so her breasts were tantalisingly visible. Her personal grooming had received extra special attention, and on the whole she presented a very desirable picture.

Andrew seemed unmoved by these efforts. Even when she sat so that her skirt "accidentally" rode even further up her thighs to expose the sliver of panty material passing under her crotch, he hardly seemed to notice.

As she tried out all her naive little sexual ploys on him, Joanna got more and more frustrated and angry. How was he able to resist when others had surrendered to her? She concluded that he was cold, impervious and sexless. She left after an hour and a half, to go home and try to ease her frustrations with the vibrator. It helped hardly at all.

A small group of married couples from the church met on a Saturday evening once a month taking it in turns to use one of their homes. The Saturday after Joanna's visit to Andrew was one such occasion. Joanna turned up for the meeting with a more or less sober Don. Andrew also attended with his wife. The subject was something to do with education.

As the evening went on Joanna noticed that Andrew seemed to be looking at her a great deal. It began to occur to her that the seed she had tried to sow on Monday, and which she thought had fallen on barren soil, might after all be flourishing. She clung to this hope for the rest of the weekend, and when Monday arrived she was once more on Andrew's doorstep.

For this occasion Joanna had taken a different approach regarding her appearance. "Perhaps he likes the modest look," she thought. So, while working hard on her grooming, she chose clothing of a non-revealing kind.

The interview began in much the same way as the previous ones. Joanna talked and Andrew listened, throwing in an occasional question for clarification. This went on for about half an hour, then just when Joanna was about to give up her attempt at seduction, Andrew said, "I would like to have a sexual intercourse with you."

Joanna was dumfounded. On previous occasions the arrival at sexual intercourse had been via one of two avenues. There was the Hawk avenue that began with Joanna weeping followed by his arm round her, and then steadily more intimate touching until the goal was arrived at.

The other avenue was the verbal confusion approach with many broken off sentences such as, "I thought you meant…." "When I said what I said I thought you meant that I…" "I didn't mean what you thought I meant when I said…" "You said that you thought what I said was what you meant when…" And so on until the two parties ran out of breath and surrendered to the inevitable.

Andrew's "straight to the point" approach left Joanna floundering for a response. Andrew, no doubt perceiving her confusion, went on, "Don't say yes or no now. Think about it and give me your answer when you are ready."

Little more was said after that, and Joanna made her way home in a mist of bewilderment. The mist did not last for long. Next morning she was again at Andrew's door. When he opened it she said, "Yes, I think we can make music together." Andrew drew her in and there in the hallway kissed her and asked, "Now?" "Yes," she replied.

He led her to his bedroom and undressed her and himself. He laid her gently on the bed and lay beside her.

If Andrew's original request to have sex with her had been laconic, there was nothing laconic about his lovemaking. There now began for Joanna a sexual experience such as she had never had before. There was nothing hurried or fumbling about it, and yet she was not made to feel that she was the subject of clever sexual techniques.

Andrew constantly indicated his joy over her body. He kissed her deep and hungrily, telling her how soft and warm her lips were and how good her tongue felt in his mouth. He kissed her over and over again, moving from her mouth to her eyelids, her forehead, then down to her shoulders, moving gradually to her breasts.

Before taking a nipple into his mouth, he fondled her, telling her how beautiful he found her breasts. He gave the truth to this by spending a long time sucking her and gently caressing her with his hand. Joanna was beside herself with sexual arousal. She thought, "He must enter me any moment now," but he didn't.

To her amazement Andrew did not at that moment touch her vagina. He went to her feet and kissed them, working his way up her legs with his kisses. It was as if her whole body was one great sexual organ that he wanted to possess. He lingered over every part of her, kissing, licking and sucking, until finally he laid his hand tenderly on her pudendum using a gentle pressure that nearly drove Joanna out of her mind.

Andrew's fingers entered her and he sliced them in and out of her, and finally he parted the outer lips and kissed her opening then, lifting the little hood that covered her clitoris, he pressed his lips against it and started to suck and lick.

Joanna was lost in a wild passionate sea of carnal lust. She had done nothing to Andrew but respond to his initiatives. She moaned and whimpered at his tactile stimulation, giving herself up to his possession of her.