The following week, again I was able to keep my clothes on. It was nice to get a little break from having to strip in front of Dr. Drew every time, but this also meant that my pent-up sexual arousal -- which was inevitable from this particular part of the lesson plan -- had to wait until I got home and into my room.
This time, we watched videos of women giving handjobs to men. "You need to learn what turns you on about touching a man," Dr. Drew observed, "because men just adore it when they can tell that you're into what you're doing to them."
As with the videos we'd watched of women pleasuring themselves, it seemed that every woman had her own special technique. Some used both hands, some were rougher, while some just gently massaged the man in his most sensitive spot. Some used lubrication -- even if only their saliva, applied in various ways -- and some used a finger, as Dr. Drew explained to me, to give a prostate massage.
I was pretty sure I wasn't ready for that, nor for letting the man ejaculate on my face, as some of the women in the videos had done. Certainly not with a man I knew nothing about.
But Dr. Drew eased that fear as we watched a woman actually pointing the stream of ejaculation right at her wide-open mouth. "Just as we protect your privacy absolutely," she assured me, "we also protect your safety. The man will always be wearing a condom in any of our contact activities."
Contact activities. I squirmed a little bit in my chair as I envisioned the many things that could describe.
We stepped out of the room for a moment to let the naked man come in and position himself on the bed, half behind the curtain as before.
When we returned, he was already erect, and lightly touching himself to maintain that condition. I was pretty sure I recognized the same penis from the previous week. Sure enough, under the condom I could see the little birthmark just above his pubic hair.
Last week, he had brought himself to his own orgasm with his hand. This week, it was my turn.
Obviously, up to that point, I had not spent a lot of time with an erect penis in my hand, and I have to confess that I spent a fair amount of my time just exploring how it felt on my skin. It was warm and dynamic. It responded immediately to my touch. It was thick and insistently firm, smooth and soft in a way, and yet rough with a system of bulging veins.
I enjoyed stroking its length with my fingertips, and I especially liked encircling it in my hand and using just my thumb to stimulate that obviously special spot just under the head. In fact, I was doing just that when I felt his body convulse and his penis throb urgently in my hand. I could see his semen oozing into the condom, completely filling the space he had left at the tip.
I had done it! I had given him an orgasm with only my hand. And it hadn't taken as long as that horrible blowjob I'd suffered in college. I must have been doing it right.
Dr. Drew placed on finger on the dark-haired man's thigh, as if to say "wait here for a minute," and she led me back out of the room.
"That was good," she praised me, "you clearly picked up some techniques from the things you've been seeing." She was right, and not the least from watching what the man actually liked to do to himself.
The next week's lesson was a repeat of this one, except that Dr. Drew instructed me to use what I had learned to prevent the man from reaching climax until she told me to.
Again, it was the same dark-haired man, and this time, I have to say, I felt so sorry for him. My confidence was growing, and each time I brought him just to that point and then lightened up, or slowed down, or even took my hand away, his plaintive whimpers sent spikes through my heart, and someplace lower down as well.
I could understand the lower-down part. But why through my heart?
I was beginning to see why so many societies frowned on casual sex. Sex was a powerful thing, connecting more than just bodies together. The way that it entangled our hearts probably stemmed from generations upon generations for whom casual sex meant not-so-casual babies. It was good for our babies that the sexual act tended to draw us together, to make us want more of each other.
The following week, the lesson was oral. That is to say, I gave him a blowjob and, in his condom, he came in my mouth.
I wondered briefly if the latex would be unpleasant to taste, but as I leaned in closer to the lovely erection, I became aware that it was a mint-flavored condom.
And that is a wonderful thing. It transformed the act of giving a blowjob into a pleasant act of giving pleasure, and I mean from start to finish.
Especially the finish. I said a silent word of thanks to the woman who invented the things.
Once we had stepped out of the room, Dr. Drew once again spoke to me. "All right," she said with a serious look. "The next time, you're going to do mutual oral stimulation, or what they call 'sixty-nine.' I trust that you know what that is?"
She waited for me to nod that I did before she continued.
"I told you there wasn't much you needed to know about receiving oral pleasure from a man, but I think it's worth working on doing it while you're pleasuring him."
She smiled knowingly and added, "doing it well requires a certain amount of ... balancing your concentration. The trick is to focus on him, and just let the rest happen."
So a man was going to be putting his mouth right up against my private parts. This was something I had never experienced before. As the ensuing days ticked by, I decided to do something to groom myself down there, since a man would be seeing me there, and up very close in fact, during my next lesson.
One evening, when Daniel was out, I took scissors and trimmed the unruly reddish-blonde bush as much as I could. Having done so, I paused to admire my work. I had never done this before, and I just couldn't get over the fact that -- even without being particularly aroused -- I had a slit formed by my outer labia that was now clearly visible, with even just the slightest hint of my more delicate inner lips peeking out.
It seemed so indecent, seeing myself that way for the first time as a fully-grown woman, but it was nothing compared to what was yet in store.
I stopped for another moment and thought about why I was doing this. I was doing this for him. I realized that I was beginning to care what this man -- my dark-haired man -- thought about me. And he had not yet pleasured me. How could desire and bonding bring me to this state before I'd even had one orgasm?
I sighed then and wondered if I might get the chance to meet him once this was all over.
That was probably not a good way for me to be thinking. For weeks, now, my girlfriends at work had been trying to get me to go on a blind date with this guy who they knew, and I had been putting them off. I told myself that I was waiting to complete my lessons with Dr. Drew, but as I caught myself thinking again about my dark-haired man, I knew what the truth was.
And the truth was that I was never going to meet him. I was never supposed to meet him.
I gathered the abundant reddish clippings up with my fingers and flushed them down the commode. I resolved that, when my lessons were nearing their end, I would tell the girls to set something up.
Sitting on the edge of the tub with warm water running, I went ahead and soaped myself up and reached for a brand new disposable razor.
Let me tell you how cautious and clumsy I was, trying to figure out how to maneuver a razor blade so close to such sensitive parts. It seemed to take me forever to work out every angle and direction and finally -- and safely -- get the job done. Then I brought up warm water from the faucet and rinsed away the soapy lather and looked at myself.
I couldn't help thinking that it looked kind of pretty down there. It exemplified the smoothness and soft curviness of being a woman. I know some women object to shaving themselves clean the way I just had, on the ground that it simulated childhood. But as I looked at my newly-bare lady-parts, I thought there was no mistaking the fact that I was a grown woman. There were other, unmistakable signs.
I rubbed myself softly with one hand, and I reveled in the unusual, smooth feeling. I thought that I just might do this again.
I guess I had been in the bathroom for a while, because I was snapped out of my thoughts by Daniel's insistent tapping on the door. I hadn't even heard him come into the house.
"Do you need any help in there, sis? Um, I've really got to go."