It all started with an ad. I had just passed my fortieth birthday, was still not married but had enjoyed the company of many interesting and attractive women over the years and had a level of income sufficient to more than meet all my material and intellectual needs. I had not been with a woman for about six months which I had learned was a normal part of the on-again-off-again rhythm of single life. This time, however, I found myself thinking more and more about what I wanted in a relationship.
For the last few years there had been a vague but deep dissatisfaction at the centre of each relationship that was the measure of a need in me that wasn't being met. There was clearly a connection between this lack of satisfaction in my relationships with woman and a feeling that had been growing in me through most of my thirties and was only becoming stronger. It had started with the recognition that I responded with fear and fascination to any story of homosexuality in the news. After I had finished reading or hearing the story, it would reverberate in my mind for days. I even found myself fantasizing about being with naked men; not sexually engaged but just standing in their presence.
As the years went by I found myself fantasizing about erect cocks and finally about sucking them. I wanted to incorporate these fantasies into my sex play with my female lovers but usually felt inhibited from mentioning it. When I did venture to say something about it in the excitement of the moment, the women usually just let it pass without comment and it never came up again. One woman who herself enjoyed anal intercourse used to finger my anus on these occasions but never tried to develop this theme for which she obviously felt nothing.
The failure to connect on this increasingly important matter was leaving a silence at the centre of every relationship. I desperately wanted to find a woman who understood my need and catered to it by playing to my fantasies even if she wasn't interested in helping me work it out in reality. This was when I realized that the hit-and-miss process of meeting datable women by chance at parties was perhaps never going to provide the woman I needed. The answer clearly was to find some screening method whereby I could be put in contact with women who already understood my situation.
This was when I decided to try an online dating service, a telephone service where people could advertise anonymously in numbered voice-mail boxes for whatever they wanted. My advertisement read as follows:
"Forty-year-old man seeks university-educated WASP woman of about the same age who hates camping, is allergic to animals, doesn't smoke, hates to cook, loves to eat, is a couch potato except for basic-maintenance workouts, is well-read and widely travelled, has dark hair, stands 5'7" or so, weighs 135-140 pounds, is vain about her legs and C-cup and is bisexual or at least bi-curious. As for me, I am 6' tall, 170 pounds, work out regularly, own a graduate degree, have all my hair except on my face, enjoy my work and have a strong bisexual inclination that needs some understanding and attention by a similarly inclined and attractive woman. No vegetarians, New Agers or astrologers need apply."
At first there was a number of obviously unsuitable replies from women who tried to explain that education wasn't everything or that I was missing out on golden opportunities among shorter heavier women (a lot heavier in some cases!). It wasn't until the ad had been running for about two weeks that the reply that changed my life arrived. She started off by saying her name was Anne, that she loved my voice, had heard my ad just before leaving for a couple of weeks vacation and hadn't been able to get it out of her mind all the time she was away. She thought she met most of my criteria and was especially sympathetic to my need for someone who understood my bisexual side as she had the same need.
Getting to Know Ms. Right
I left my number in her box and she called the next night. We had an immediate rapport and talked for almost four hours before setting up a date to meet for dinner. She had a degree in English, was certainly well spoken, had a good job with a public relations firm yet, like myself, had never found that perfect bisexual balance that allowed her to feel sexually whole. She was thirty-eight, had been married once for about five years, had no children and had been divorced for the last seven years. She had had the usual longer and shorter heterosexual relationships before and after her marriage. She had also recently had one, first, brief, physical relationship for about eight months with a bisexual woman friend she had met at her athletic club but it had ended when the woman was transferred to Vancouver.
She was very understanding of my bisexuality since she had had the same problems herself. She had certainly enjoyed her times with her bisexual friend but, like me, had come to realize that she was predominantly heterosexual with a strong bisexual streak and not fully homosexual. The presence of a man, she felt, would be essential to the fullest enjoyment of another woman's body and she was bisexual enough to want to have that complete experience. Her fantasies, also like mine, always included both men and women.