Finding Erin

May, 2022 - Nellskitchen. All rights reserved. The writer asserts her rights as the author of 'Finding Erin.' This story or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the author's written permission (except for the use of brief quotations in a review). If this story appears on any website other than Literotica.com, it is pirated.

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Part 1: "I want to know about your affair..."

***

We met in London at one of her customary haunts, a busy little Brazilian place called Bossa Nova. From our table, conveniently located near the front entrance, the crowded market was in full view. Its customers scurried about in what seemed a parallel existence—but absent the chance of intersection with our nearly motionless selves.

At first glance, I had thought the clatter spilling from the street into the restaurant might prove a distraction. It did not. Instead, Erin's arresting presence held my attention as the world outside passed us by.

I could tell she was anxious and tended to fidget. It was understandable. Relating the intimate details of a first sexual experience makes women uneasy. It showed in her gaze, which wandered as if seeking solace in strangers. I detected her disquiet and gave her time to think as I flipped the pages of handwritten notes compiled in anticipation of today's get-together.

Months ago, and as happens in the quirky world of cyber relationships, we had 'met' online. I needed an editor versed in languages; voila, she appeared. A chance thing, I spied her offer in the editor's section of Literotica. Our contrasts proved striking; she was insightful; I was careless; she was precise; I was sloppy; my keyboard-driven fingers outran judicious thought; she picked over my work—her red pen menacing. Back then, though I knew her exclusively through internet dealings, I admired her honesty and Irish politeness.

As trust grew, so did friendship. In the ordinary course of things, we revealed bits of ourselves. She knew I was a writer who dealt exclusively with women's stories. I grew interested in hers.

To promote sales of my novel, Writer's Block, I traveled to Europe. Hours of dust cover signings in stuffy bookstores followed. Despite the volume's commercial success, my thoughts had already settled on a new project. After deciding to publish a collection that involved 'first-time' sexual experiences, I asked Erin for an interview. She said yes, and we met in London, where she worked. "Why do you want to write about me?" she asked. The thought that I might find her interesting puzzled her.

"Erin, you're a special friend, and when you mentioned the incident in Peru, well, I hunched other women might want to know about it. I have a feeling yours is 'every woman's' story."

"What about it?" She hedged.

"I want to know about your affair, the one you mentioned last January."

"Peru? That's just something I want to put behind me," she insisted.

Peru, what happened there? After finishing her university studies, Erin accepted a teaching job at a private school. There, she had a sizzling love affair and lost her virginity to a handsome Latin.

"To Americans, Peru is exotic," I clarified. "Readers like exotic places. Yours is a loss of innocence story. The topic torments every girl who has had sex—which is most of us."

For a long moment, she wavered, then, her eyes welling with tears, she looked out into the crowded street. "Yes, I'll tell you—but I can't say I will permit you to publish it. It's embarrassing, Heather."

Erin had decided to confess. She was willing to do it in my confessional. I was thrilled.

***

Part 2 -- Erin's body language told me she hid parts of herself. Were they worth finding?

*

Erin was a beautiful woman. Her skin was porcelain; her hair auburn. It fell loosely about her shoulders. She was slender, her eyes were green, their aptitude for fathoming others limitless. Her narrow shoulders, I observed, tended to lean inwards, an attempt to understate her ample breasts. She carried herself so that one might easily misperceive their size. Glimpsing their fullness and the way she shifted in her chair, I knew she was self-conscious about them. Erin's body language told me she hid parts of herself. Were they worth finding?

She spoke softly; she was unpretentious. She hid in plain sight and was careful to veil her inner strength. It might have been confusing had she not told me that Gaelic women learn from childhood to suppress a natural urge to display their aptitudes. It felt as if she belonged between the lines of a Jane Austen novel, where her dignity and grace might better fit. I was convinced Erin's contradictions—something I loved about her—might prove fertile ground for literary cultivation.

Unlike most modern girls, Erin had limited sexual experience. Conversely, I found the contrast between her erotic fantasies where she flirted with anal sex and BDSM, and her narrow familiarity, absorbing. She did not trust readily, a sure sign she had been hurt. At times, she gazed at me as if rummaging for clues to hidden motives. I determined that being straight with her was essential if I was to get at the story hiding in her heart.

Erin's faraway eyes concealed more than the saga of the man in far-off Peru, but that was for later. Now, I wanted that story, but expressing inner feelings was not her forte, and shaping a narrative around her would be challenging.

***

Part 3 -- 'Virginity—the gift a woman offers only once.'

*

She was raised Catholic, and, despite recent spiritual dismissiveness, I detected in Erin an urge to confess. Her confessor, however, had to be a stranger—the modern Irish woman's substitute for the unseen priest behind the screen. I accepted that, to some extent, Erin invented me, willing my existence; she spun me into her turnkey whose task it was to unlock her soul.

I was known to overwhelm my subjects through burrowing questions, and the gentle girl needed security against my inclination to intrude. I would have to be at my best to bring her drama to light, especially since I wanted access to the very sexuality she spent much of her life denying.

I liked her, just as I had liked Laya, my Seattle friend and the central character of Writer's Block, my most recent novel. Laya's point that New Yorkers can be snippy and overbearing rang in my head, and I hoped Erin would put up with me; I also hoped that I had learned from my experience with the sexy prostitute in Seattle.

For women, lunch is not lunch. It is gossip, a time to sort out unsortable things. Eating is a secondary exercise. Minutes into the niceties, I opened my laptop. It was an innocent move, but it prompted a stir in Erin. Her unease told me she was a perfect addition to my mosaic, the patchwork of women's stories detailing how, with a single thrust, a girl rises from child to woman.

Her powers of perception were quick to engage. "This isn't just about me, is it, Heather. You have questions on your screen that you ask all the girls on your list."

"Yes," I replied, "I thought you understood. My book is a compilation of various stories about..."

"...about how girls like me get fucked?" Distancing herself, she eased back in her chair, adding, "I don't know about this, Heather. It's humiliating to be lumped together with a bunch of unfortunates—it makes me hate being a woman."

She was right; I viewed her as a slice of femininity's larger picture. I had accumulated folder upon folder, multiple correspondences with women the world over; the ill-fated secretary drugged at the frat house—her video displayed on seedy sites. Another involved a student who was breached by her teacher in eleventh grade, thereby becoming the subject of vicious gossip. The interview was off to a bumpy start.

Two years earlier, and as if happening on her mind's imaginary whiteboard, Erin had shaped the Peruvian, his purpose: to hijack her virginity—the gift a woman offers only once. Was the occurrence an anomaly—or was it a case of first intercourse turned disappointing? The question was foremost in my mind.

Feeling I was losing her at the starting gate, I strove to shed light on my broader picture. "Your saga will be individual, Erin. I will write exclusively about you; each girl has a distinct chapter. Each story is singular—mine included." That final statement resonated; she relaxed. "So please," I continued, "let's start over and see where it goes. Please?" Remembering how I had similarly come close to losing Laya, I decided against putting questions to her. Instead, I gave Erin the floor.

After hesitating another moment, she nodded. "I'll do it, but it makes me uncomfortable. Lately, I've dreamt about the man who fucked me. Thoughts of him come and go. What I allowed him to do bothers me, and the more I think about it, the more it upsets me."

A moment's silence followed. It would be the last for a while.

***

Part 4 -- "With him, I was more alone than I had ever been."

*

"I was confused long before I left for South America, Heather. Ireland, my parents, my place as the eldest of three girls; there are limits for first-born daughters. Even college had rigid boundaries compared to American girls. It's just a cultural thing, but it's important, and you need to know about it."

"I understand," I said, nodding.

"I grew up with safety nets I didn't challenge. My decision to leave Ireland, to exit my comfort zone for South America, had everything to do with escaping safety—to be daring. I did not admit it to myself, but I wanted excitement, risk—lots of risk."

"Anyway, there was this guy, Hernan. He taught at the school where I worked. He was easy on the eyes, dark, secretive, and he knew it. I like tall men, and he stood almost six feet. He had black hair and a muscular build; his T-shirts and jeans highlighted his physique; looks turn me on; he affected me. He was mysterious; when he spoke, he left much unsaid. The less he said, the more I was interested. Every girl on staff chased him. When I talked to him, I left subtle openings. I wanted him to probe with me, and he did." Erin hesitated, appearing to recoil from something important. Then, looking straight at me, she said, "He scared me."

"How so?" I asked.

"That's just it, Heather. I don't know why I was drawn to him. He didn't treat people nicely, women in particular. An Irishman acting the same way would turn me off. But I was not afraid of him; his misbehavior gave me a tingle. He was all I thought about.

"I was afraid of myself, of what I might do. I set the thing in motion. I still do not know if I've ever been honest about Hernan. Think about it; I traveled to a place on the other side of the world. I did it for privacy. I found someone I would eventually leave behind and completely underestimated the first time effect sex has on a girl. Looking back, it's clear. Back then, I saw nothing.

"Anyhow," she continued, "he attracted me, and I set aside my cultural values about men and sex. I opened myself, made myself defenseless—free. The weird thing is; that it was liberating and scary, but scary in a good way. I saw how Hernan used women; I heard rumors. I didn't care. There was uncertainty with him. I wanted uncertainty—to place my trust in a dangerous man I could not trust.

"I knew he was sleeping with any number of girls, which I ignored. I told myself it was exciting, that accepting the danger of being with him was just another way of breaking from the upbringing I thought to escape."

With a delicate nod, I acknowledged her point. Finding her hesitant matter-of-factness gripping, I asked, "Erin, somewhere way back in your mind, did you think you could establish a relationship with Hernan beyond what the other women at the school had?"

Embarrassed, she looked away. "I hate to admit it, Heather, but yes. I rationalized that whatever I had might make him stay with me. I guess it's normal to think that when we get into these things. Anyway," she continued, "no one back in Ireland would ever know what I did with him unless I chose to tell. So I was safe; I obsessed about getting him to fuck me. He's a man; how hard could it be? But, yes, I wanted more and was willing to give up a lot to get it. It was that simple, Heather."

"How did you view virginity at the time you left Ireland?" I asked.

Mulling the question, she smiled her signature half-smile. "As what my church taught me, it was a gift for my husband. Even now, I'm not sure there is anything wrong with that. I went back and forth, but then I thought, maybe virginity is just something to get rid of, a step forward in my flight to freedom. I know I'm all over the place with this, Heather, but it's where my head was—or wasn't—then."

I had taken several women through this process. Gift, stigma, rite of passage, an impediment to one's development as an adult—each surfaced in previous interviews, with American women more often than not, regarding their hymens as hindrances. In a broader sense, however, it became clear there was greater continuity between European and American women than I had expected from an ocean away, with the sex act's frightening attraction the core issue.

"Despite his shocking reputation," Erin continued, "or maybe because of it, we all wanted him. The more wicked the stories, the more women were drawn. It seems silly as I look back, but we swooned; eyes followed his every move."

"And you were a swooner?" I asked, only half-seriously.

Laughing mildly, she admitted the obvious: "Not publicly. I had too much pride to throw myself at him in front of the others. He saw two, even three different women in a single evening—he fucked all of them—us.

"I had been warned the day he kissed me. That night, Andrea Pendleton—she is this girl I worked with; she gave him a blowjob in his car; it happened in the school parking lot. People were everywhere; some of the other girls saw Andrea's head bobbing up and down. After she, ahh...after they finished, Hernan bought her a snack in the cafeteria, well, another snack."

"Andrea told you about the blowjob?"

"The next day, yes; it was no big deal to her. But I figured she was American, and maybe that is how American girls did things. She said a blowjob wasn't sex."

"You had never heard that one before?"

"No! It's silly. Fellatio, Irish girls assume—is sex! If a guy puts his dick in you, it's sex, right?" We chuckled over the odd question. Pitifully, neither of us was sure about the answer.

"Soon after, he asked me to go to a hotel with him," Erin explained. "Once alone, we did it. It hurt, but it felt good. Men do not understand penetration, what it is to undergo intimacy so completely—to be taken. Hernan fondled my breasts and then hesitated. "Don't stop," I heard myself say. He reached down, grasped my ankle, and ran his fingers up my leg, stopping at my knee. Another moment later, he was in me. I was compliant, sensing he wanted me to open even more; I stretched out my legs for him. I would have done anything.

"I held onto him, clutching him with my knees, but he wanted more, and he reached down again, grabbed my leg, shoved it aside, and spread me till I hurt. There was ferocity; I felt myself break. I bled and never felt more vulnerable. I wondered how many virgins he had taken.

"The thing a woman does not want to feel happened almost immediately with Hernan. He was like a fighter pilot, 'fitting' his plane—I was the cockpit. It was mechanical for him." Erin's frank characterization, offered blushingly, gave me pause to think about men and how they expertly position themselves—and us, for insertion. "I had no awareness of a man's strength until the moment he drove himself into me, Heather," she went on. "In an instant—with a lunge, I turned into a third person; it was as if my soul disengaged from my body; that woman witnessed the spectacle from the side of the bed.

From there, I watched Hernan's back, his butt, his powerful legs. I watched as the girl under him struggled against herself when she had grown up thinking lovers struggled as one. Alone in that darkened hotel room, a stranger permitted a stranger to fuck her contrary to everything she was taught. I had never seen that version of myself. Defenseless, exposed, the girl who had stared back at me in the mirror a gazillion times seemed far away.

"There was pain; you know how it is, some of it went away; I was sore, and the frightened little girl in me wanted him to stop, not to pull out—but to stop fucking me, to kiss me, to signal that he cared about what I had given him. I wanted him to stay in me, Heather. I was even ready to accept lies. I wanted him to know I was different from others; I was special. I thought back the two hours to when he said, 'I love you.' Don't men remember saying, 'I love you,' two hours ago?

"I was glad that I bled. It made me feel less a 'thing' and more like a woman. It scared me, even though I knew bleeding was common. I remember thinking, this is supposed to feel better than it does! It was not a good thing.

"The week before, Hernan had voiced those words, whispered them into my ear. His breath seared my senses. 'Te quiero con todo mi corazón, mujer guapa,'* he said. Hearing it sent me into orbit. Men say things casually—they know girls will do almost anything once they hear the 'L' word. After that, knowing he was lying, I wanted sex with him; I manipulated him into fucking me.

•['I love you with all my heart, beautiful woman.']

"'¡Te adoro!' His words rained a storm of emotion down on me. It meant that I pleased him, right? I mean—that pleased me. As happened with Andrea Pendleton, as happened with all the others, I gave my body over to this man I did not know because he said he loved me.

•['I adore you']

"I struggled more; I searched the blackness of a Latin man's open but impenetrable eyes for a sign he might cherish me for giving him the power to break me. But there was nothing. It happened so fast. I never saw his cock. I wondered what it even looked like. I turned away as the razor-sharpness of his stubble scuffed my burning skin. Hiding in the hair of his chest, I thought about what I must look like with the hem of my skirt pushed up over my breasts—breasts sore from the battering his powerful body inflicted. It had taken him seconds to strip away the protective shield of my childhood—my religion, my education, stood for nothing. I faced the predicament of not wanting what I wanted so badly. With him, I was more alone than I had ever been.

"I remember his mouth on mine; he breathed through my lungs, I gasped and whimpered through his. He had driven deep into me, Heather, touched me where not even I had touched myself—I liked that and wanted him to stay there.

"Pathetically, he did not try to hide that nothing about him was authentic. When it ended, I knew he would do what men do after getting what they want—nothing."

"So, did you feel anything for him afterward?" I asked.

"No, Heather and Hernan felt nothing either; he never once lifted his head. He didn't look into my eyes, never tried to find out who I was. Desperate, I did something outrageous. I grabbed the hair on the back of his head, forced his head back, and for a second, we locked eyes. I saw into him, searched him—he was horrified.

"Like he was hiding my insubordination, he put his hand over my eyes—but it was too late. He could not make me unsee what I had seen, his hollowness, his empty obsessions. That's when he lifted away—and collapsed. Hyde reverted to Jekyll. He knew I knew it. I turned away from him. It was over.

***

Part 5 -- "I'm a woman. I'm vulnerable—I accept that."

*

With her story told, Erin, detecting my sadness, rushed to comfort me. "Don't be upset, Heather. It was my doing," she lamented. "Foolishness left me with nothing. The thing is, before I let Hernan fuck me, I didn't know there could be such bleakness after sex. Like every girl, I had read endless accounts of seduction. I had sneaked into the library's adult section back in Ireland. I searched for novels about other women. I scrutinized their warnings, delight, admonishments, and, yes, their fears.