You can't change past events, but you can change your perspective of them. I am a passionate, adventurous woman, characteristics which have led me into some hot sticky situations, some good, and some bad. I used to look back on some of my not so savoury adventures and feel embarrassed, even ashamed. However with the dimension of time to focus my perspective, I now look back and see how the choices I made have created who I am today.
I have found that some people do not wish to acknowledge, let alone know any details about your history. My husband Jeff is not one of those blinkered people. He revels in who I am now, and likes to hear stories of my past escapades. He says it helps him to get to know me better, and besides, it turns him on incredibly. There is definitely something of the voyeur in Jeff, and I enjoy performing for him, in many different ways. Last Sunday morning as the rain lashed against the windows, we lay comfortably in bed and I told him this 'bedtime story', of once upon a time in a faraway land...
I was 20 years old, au-pairing in Madrid for a year. The vibrancy, heat and passion of Spain had lured me to its shores as soon as I had finished my nurse training. While other class mates had taken jobs straight away, I needed to escape the rigid routines and explore life.
There is a blatant sexuality that encompasses Spanish men, something almost animalistic in their assumption that it is expected that they strut and preen, hunt and lure naΓ―ve prey into their lairs. And at the tender age of 20, I was still very naΓ―ve, a late developer let's say.
Juan had pounced the first time I visited 'La Guitarra' bar in Old Madrid. He laced me with Sangria, sweet talked me in his deep broken English, and won me with his fingers flying over the battered frets of the guitar, the raw power, passion and rhythm of the gypsy Flamenco bringing something alive in me.
Over the next few weeks, we met casually in the meson at the back of the Plaza Major. Nothing was ever planned, but each time I arrived unannounced, he would make room for me to sit nearby while he played. I felt proud and privileged, a witness to the uncensored spontaneous cacophony of guitars, hands, feet and the harsh wailing of the singers, producing a rich beauty, which stirred me beyond words. A pattern to these evenings formed. After a few hours of music and Sangria, he would turn his smoky eyes to me and with a barely decipherable nod, he would pack his guitar, and we would leave to shouts and back slapping from the other players.
He lived nearby, and it wasn't long before we were alone in that dimly lit little apartment, street sounds and smells wafting in through the open windows, hoping to catch a breeze in the hot sticky night.
The passion of the music still pulsed through our bodies, and he would take me rough and deep, his thick dark body moving hard and rhythmic and fast. His male dominance overwhelmed me at times, but bit by bit it tore away my previous naΓ―ve toying with making love, and revealed my own passion and power as a hot blooded woman. Through those summer nights I revelled in discovering the power which a woman holds over a man, and also the pleasure a woman can have, succumbing to the power of her lover.