A Wider Middle Path

What initially struck me about him was how he walked into a room and immediately assessed you from head to toe in a way that dripped machismo and sexism. I am sure this behavior is explained in great detail in some policy manual as harassment of some kind.

And worse, he would follow his assessment by patting your shoulder. He did it in a way that left you never doubting he genuinely cared for your mind, your person. For quite awhile I was never sure if he wanted to fuck me or be my father-figure. Or both. Either way the confidence he exuded was a heady aphrodisiac.

Men my age never acted like this. They were too fearful of being sued-- or worse to even attempt to pull off this level of confidence. In an effort for equality as a gender, we have trained each other through the threat of lawsuit to white-wash their baser emotions and instincts. Sometimes I wonder if we've taught them to treat us as objects of fear instead of objects of desire. Though both emotions are great motivators, being feared only leads to lonely nights.

I wasn't in the market for a father figure but that tangible manliness just dripped off of him. You could almost touch it and taste it. He was a big man, barrel-chested the way men some men are at his age. He worked out like he was my age and it showed. My role was eager impatience in our love-making. His role was steady, methodical and patient. As opposites, we pushed each other.

Late one afternoon last January, the college shut down due to inclement weather. The snow was already piled up and the wind chill was 30 below zero. I was sitting in my tiny little car trying to turn over a battery that died in the cold.

I tried beating the steering wheel and crying. Neither of which worked. Tears streamed down my face while I yanked on the hood, frozen shut. I banged on it with my mittened fists trying to crack the ice. The wind was a real bitch on my wet cheeks. But this is where he found me when he came out to his truck, not parked all that far away.

"What the hell are you doing?" He asked me.

"It... wo...won't .. stt... start." I answered. My teeth chattered through my answer. I am an excellent teeth chatterer. It's a talent. And I think on that day the tears really added an extra edge.

"That's apparent. Is it your battery?" He asked.

"I... don't know..." I answered. I wiped my face and cried out at the frozen scratchy yarn of my mittens on my face. "God. Damn. IT." I smacked the hood again and started for the driver side door as the tears started to really well up. I couldn't stay with my car, but I didn't want to break down in front of him.

"Now where are you going in a car that won't start?" He asked as followed me to the door.

"Noooo... wh.. wh...where!" I managed to get out before I sobbed. He smiled a little and pulled me away from the door.

"Let's get your backpack and I'll take you home," he said and opened the door of my little car.

He handed over my backpack. "The pay...pay.... papers," I reminded him.

"Oh yes. We can't forget that, not can we?" he said.

He reached in and grabbed my bag that I kept all my student's stuff in, my associate instructor bag. Besides being piss poor, being a part time instructor at a big university meant carrying around all your grad school crap on top of the crap from the classes you helped teach. And, if I was going to be snowed in for a couple days, I wanted the chance to catch up on at least one thing.

He locked my car and led me to his truck, carrying my AI bag. "Here, hop in. We can figure out what to do with you while the truck warms up." He said and held the passenger door open.

I climbed in and he got in from his side and turned the truck on, blasting the heat. I shivered when the first cold blasts from the heater hit me. I was calming down a little, but my teeth still chattered.

The windows around us were white with frost and snow. He adjusted the heat to work on them, as well as us. It was actually smart. I'd cracked my windshield the year before by going straight to chipping away at the ice.

"After my truck warms up, I'll drive you home," he said. "You can call someone to come out after the snow breaks. No one is going to come out before then whatever you say."

I nodded and looked away and started to cry again. There was no way I could pay for fixing my car at that time.

"What? You want me to leave you here?" he asked when I started to cry.

"Nnnoooo!" I said. "I just... It's just not my week." I didn't want to admit how poor I was. It was no secret to him what they paid us but still.

"Aw hey. Come here," he said. He pushed the divider up and scooted over a little on the seat. He patted the area next to him.

I looked at him through tears and then at the empty area beside him, considering. No one could see us because the windows were iced over. I moved closer to him.

He put his arm around my shoulder and pulled my head down to his shoulder with his other hand. "Alright, you go ahead and cry," he whispered.

And I did. I cried about my car and my classes and about just everything. I hugged him back, curling into him, buring my face in his shoulder. He told me that things were going to be okay and stroked my hair.

I eventually quieted down and looked up at him. "I'm sorry," I said, my voice was creaky.

"Shhh.. don't be sorry," he said. He was looking down into my eyes. He wiped a tear away with his thumb. I felt one of my eyebrows raise up in an involuntary question.

I watched his eyes dart back and forth between mine and then down to my mouth. Inside my head, my internal voice was screaming that he was going to kiss me. My tongue darted out over my lips and my head fell back a little. I thought about kissing him first but wasn't sure that was what he intended.

When he didn't do anything, my eyes fell away and I noticed the windows were clearing. I pulled away from him. "Mmmmm.... It looks like your defrost is working," I said.

He jerked his head and pulled away sharply. Our veil of safety had passed.

I wiggled back into my seat and pulled the belt on. "Thank you... " I said. I felt awkward because I had cried and because I had wanted to kiss him.

"Hey, its no problem," he said. "Where is your place?"

"Hmmm. Outside of town. It’s kind of a drive," I said.

"That's alright. Happy to do it," he said. He was running the wipers. "I'm going to brush some of this snow off." He got out and I sighed, glad for a moment alone.

I pulled down the passenger side visor and found a mirror. Things did not look good. I had dark mascara circles and red blotchy cheeks from both the crying and the cold. No wonder he didn't kiss me. I looked like something a sasquatch would pass up. Oh well. He was obviously not interested or he would have taken his shot while he'd had it.

I watched him finish brushing the snow from the hood of the truck. When he got back in and pulled out of the faculty lot, he asked me exactly where my place was. When I told him, he looked sharply at me.

"I am not taking you all the way out there and leaving you in the middle of a storm with no transportation," he said.

"Well.. well.," I started to reply. I really didn't know what to say.

"You can stay at my place until and tomorrow we can get your car working," he said.

Part of me thought I should protest but the other part of me that really wanted him thought what a great chance to get him alone. That part won.

"Is that okay with you?" He asked since I didn't say anything.

"Ummm. As long as it isn't an imposition?" I said.

"Less of an imposition than getting both of us stranded in the sticks with this storm headed in," he said. "The ploughs won't be out that way until at least tomorrow. Why didn’t you say something? I never would have kept you here."

I was quiet on the way to his house.

When we got there, we dragged my bags in. His house was very dark and woodsy. I could see that he hunted and that he probably had a maid.

I pulled my shoes and coat off.

I asked to take shower and if he had anything I could hang out in. I got a towel, a pair of long johns and giant sweatshirt with the college's logo on it. I had a vague memory of that I wore a similar outfit every day of the winter of my freshman year in the dorms years earlier.

I padded out to find him on the couch, in front of a fire with a stack of research papers and a beer.

"Would you like a beer?" he asked. He looked me up and down.

"I would love one... and some socks, if you have some. Mine are wet from the snow," I sounded a little weak.

His eyes were on my red toenails. I wiggled them. He looked up at me and cleared his throat. "Sure."

I grabbed my backpack and AI bag and dragged them the couch. I sat opposite of where he was and got my glasses out and put them on. I pulled out a stack of papers from my bag and my grading pen. We graded papers into the night. Hours later, I'd grown comfortable with him again since the almost kiss. He's gone out of his way to keep us working. I sat the papers aside and pulled my glasses off.

As I had graded, I’d turned to sit with my back against the arm of the couch, the papers on my knees. I yawned and stretched my legs out over the middle cushion, my feet hitting his thigh.

"Oh, sorry." I said. I pulled one foot back, but he grabbed the other one and rubbed it in his hands. He put aside his papers and glasses, then he pulled on my foot dumping me on my back on the couch.

He crawled over the top of me and kissed me. There was no pretense about it, he just did it. He settled his weight over me. "You okay?" he whispered to my lips.

"Yeah. Better than alright." I answered him.

"I've wanted to do this for a long time." He said, sounding almost apologetic.

"Well it took you long enough," I answered, then I grinned at him.

He growled and pulled me up from the couch after him. He lead me to the rug in front of the fireplace. He pulled the sweatshirt and then the long johns after that. I grasped at his jeans unbuckling them while I leaned up to kiss him. He made fast work of my bra in while I fumbled with his buckle.

I sank to my knees in my panties and his athletic socks and guided his jeans to the floor. I snapped the band of his tighty-whities and grinned up at him. Then I slipped my fingers under the edge of the band and peeled them down. First in back, over his ass and then in front, detangling his stiff cock from the mix. I took his dick in my hand and stroked him while I looked up into his face looking down at me. I knew I had his attention but I got a kick out of seeing it. I started by timidly licking the head before I sucked him into my mouth.

My hands explored the tops of his thighs. His thighs are like tree trunks covered with springy, wiry hair- one of my favorite features. Since that night, I love to lock my legs around one and hump one of his thighs rubbing my warm wet pussy against his leg sending him a message that I want him and I want him soon. But that night I explored them with my hands, scratching them with my nails while I loved his cock with my mouth.

He eventually pushed me back onto the rug following me. After spending a fair amount of time fascinated with my breasts, his mouth trailed down over my stomach. His hairline was receding in so many directions that he kept his hair cut in a way that made it appear somewhat like a military cut. Maybe it was a throw back to an earlier time. It wasn't something he talked about and that fit. He would a young buck in the Viet Nam draft.

I wondered about it that night, as I have since. I've come to the place now that I can't look at the top of his head without wanting to slip my hand down into my jeans and twirl my finger around my clit. I'd grown used to tracing that hairline with my fingers while he worked me into a frenzy his mouth. I couldn't watch him speak a full lecture without my mind drifting to the image of watching him work quite differently over the landscape of stomach. He wore no moustache and I can't image one looking better than my pubic hair cresting his upper lip.

He and I have learned from each other. Often now, he will slip a finger up my ass while probing me with his tongue. He really gets off on the dichotomy of how readily willing I am to accept this while at the same time I get so turned on by the forbidden nature of it.

I can't really say he was quite as willing the first time I nudged one of my fingers in his ass. But he stretched his personal sexual boundaries and over-looked that long believed taboo in lieu of the sensuality of a woman fingering his ass while she swallowed his cock.

I'd had boyfriends before him that were almost 10 years younger than me. They seemed to think anal sex was a flavor of the month. For me, I was of the generation where anal was just bad enough to be damn exciting but not taboo.

As for him, he thought I'd offered him the arc of the covenant one night when I turned my back on him and swayed my rear end at him and asked him if he would fuck my ass. No woman had ever offered it to him. He has just enough straight-laced small-town Midwest in him to never have asked.

That first night we made love stretched out in front of the fireplace, it was in a nice safe missionary position. But it was some of the best nice, safe, missionary sex I have ever had. He tried not to crush me with his weight and I tried to cradle him between my legs. In the awkward manner that new lovers have of not quite knowing where extremities like noses, arms and legs go. He was a gentleman who made sure I came first and I was a hellion who left nail scratches down his back. The middle path with us is a wide one. But with oh so many places to travel.

I've traced the lines on his face and body with my fingers and tongue, treasuring that each of them for adding another layer of knowledge and depth to his ability to love and appreciate me. Some days I wonder what he was like when he was younger and I am sure he wonders what I will be like in twenty years.