I met John online maybe six or seven months ago and we have become very close friends over those months. At 42 he is 21 years older than I am, but we still have found so much common ground that I found myself one day realizing that I had fallen in love with him. At first it was a shock to think that I had fallen for an older and very married man, but then I became depressed because I felt that this love was something that I could never pursue.
My desire for him and my need to simply be loved finally drove me to marry a man who was really less than what I wanted out of life. Although he is a good man who loves me and means well, my husband just isn't John. And he constantly resists my need to have a baby. In our most intimate moments he always denies me at the very last second by pulling out of me just as he comes, leaving me craving so the many needs that a woman finds satisfied in her lover's embrace.
One of the things that had kept us apart was the three thousand miles between us. John's life in Fort Lauderdale was far removed from my world and that distance had served to insulate us from each other.
The breaking point in my marriage came on the morning when I wanted my husband to make love to me and he had already gotten up and into the shower. I thought that I would surprise him and make love to him in the flowing water so I stripped off my night shirt and my panties and made my way to my man. As I turned around the corner of the shower stall there stood my husband masturbating. I was horrified and fascinated all at the same time and couldn't bear to watch...and couldn't force myself to look away. I had found him in the final throes of his efforts and the grimace on his face would've been funny in any other circumstance.
But it was just depressing as I saw his seed erupt onto the tile and then flow down the drain. My heart sank as I thought of how many times he must have satisfied himself this way instead of giving me his love. And his child. In all of our brief marriage he had only come in me twice. The tile got more of him than I did, I thought. To add insult to injury, I was ovulating and today would have had to have been the day.
I faked it well. When my husband went out the door I wished him well for the day and told him that I loved him and that I'd see him that night. He had no sooner left than I got on the web and found a flight to connect to Fort Lauderdale.
Seven and a half hours later I was checking in to the Westin Fort Lauderdale. I'd left a note for my husband telling him not to worry and that I'd be in touch soon, I just had something I had to do first.
I settled in to my room and worked up my courage to make the call. I dialed John's number four, maybe five times before I let it ring.
"Hello?"
It was him, it had to be. Here I was three thousand miles away from home hoping to see a man whose voice I had never heard.
"Is this John?"
He paused, almost knowingly.
"Christie, is this you?"
"Yes."
He launched right into a soliliquy about how wonderful it was to finally hear my voice and how he had dreamed that I would call him someday. We eventually got into a conversation that covered a lot of the same territory our e-mails had covered in the last half-a-year. The whole time we talked I felt like a love-struck teenager pining away for the fantasy boy. All I could think about was my being so close to him.
"This sounds like a great connection we've got here. You'd think you were just across town and not a continent away!"
John had broached the subject first so I figured it was my turn.
"I am."
He caught his breath.
"Christie, where are you?"
"I'm at the Westin Fort Lauderdale on Corporate Drive. Room 414."
"Christie..."
"John, I've waited for you for a long time, how much longer are you going to make me wait?"
"I...uh, I'm on my way."
Click. The line went dead as he hung up and I wondered what was next. I spent the next forty-five minutes wondering what to do, the place was already clean so I didn't need to do that. I decided to really put myself together and I got out my black satin teddy and then made myself up and sprayed on a light perfume. As an afterthought, I turned down the sheets.
Anticipation has the remarkable effect of turning a handful of minutes into a lifetime and I reflected on my life so far as I waited for John. One miserable childhood. My first relationship a fiasco. My marriage a failure. And here I was, a married woman, waiting for John, a married man.
knock knock.
The sound on the door was so quiet, almost hesitant. I got up from the bed and walked to the door.
"Here goes nothing!" I said it to myself as I undid the chain and turned the knob and opened a new chapter of my life.
"Ohmigod, Christie, you're beautiful!"
He stared at me and I stared back, getting my first look at a man who I only knew by his words. He wasn't Harrison Ford, but he had a charming smile, a nice suit, and a dignified salt-and-pepper hair that lent him a certain sophisticated charm.
"John, you look wonderful to me!"
I rushed into his arms and he took me up and we kissed the fervent, fevered kiss of lovers denied their desires for far too long. He picked me up and carried me back into the room and laid me down on the bed.
"I've dreamt of you so many nights, Christie. I never thought this day would come that I'd get to see you."
