Our physical difference was striking.
I'm a bruteāat least I look like one. Over six feet, with broad shoulders and thick legs, I dwarfed her barely five foot frame. Where I loom, all burliness and beard and full, round ass, she receded, her thin arms and legs topped by a spindly bottom and slightly sunken cheeks that were the most obvious sign of her fifty-nine years. Seen together, we'd look like a mother and her overgrown sonāsomeone in the building trade, perhaps. But we were never seen by other peopleāour entire relationship was founded on secrets, from the world and from each other.
We met online, of course, that invaluable place of secret lives and secret desires for people who needed them. You're on the site now, so you knowāanyone can find a match, no matter what the stipulations. For me, it wasn't overly specific. I slotted myself in the "dom" check-box but explained further how open I was to others' needs. I suppose I'm not unusual in this worldāa lonely man in middle age, looking for furtive contact to numb the pain of a life turned sour and painful.
Her needs were more focused. While she, too, has picked a box (the "sub" and her age piqued my interest, as did her location, a mere half hour drive from my Portland apartment), she, too, had more to say about what she wanted. Her description hinted at suchābut in oblique terms with the promise of more should prospective suitors ask, and answer, the right questions. After a month of intermittent and escalating messages, I passed the test. Somehow. As I saidāsecrets.
When she decidedāand up 'til a specific point in each encounter, she decided most thingsāwe bypassed much of the online safety protocols everyone advises you to follow. She was no-nonsense like thatāonce she decided what she wanted to happen, she didn't waste time. As for meānursing a broken heart, a constant hangover, and mounting depressionāI just didn't much care what happened to me.
She cared more about her safetyāand her secrecyābut she was also pragmatic about the risks involved in arranging to meet a strange man for...what she wanted. Plus, there were elements to her needs that could only be fulfilled by allowing that stranger (me) to invade her life to a dangerous degree. And so she told me where she lived.
She told me the layout of her yard, her home, her bedroom. She enumerated potential obstacles to my ingress, and possible dangers to being spotted. She didn't tell me much about herselfāexcept that she lived alone in that small, cozy house with the concealing hedge. And I didn't press her for moreāI knew what was expected of me, and that was a lot to take in. The controlled terseness of her emails didn't invite further probing and, in fact, carried the implicit admonition that such curiosity would queer the arrangement before it began. And so I held my tongue.
When the day came, we finalized our carefully agreed-upon conditions and limits (most were hers, as made sense). We set the time, and both printed out our agreement. I took the precaution of saving her messages in a separate email as wellāher fears were real, but so were mineāand then I waited for the appointed hour. Lateāmidnight. Her decision as well. And then we did what we had agreed upon.