An epitaph for Heidi.

The Fates have an interesting way of interweaving places, experiences, and time. Lately, I've found myself driving in various areas of the Annex where, seven years ago, my life and world were very different. This, plus recent unrelated discussions with some of my friends, have been reminding me of Heidi.

While not my first long-term real-relationship partner, Heidi did become my first and yet-only wife, if only for a few years. There was a time when she meant the world to me.

I met her when I was first visiting Canada to conduct some workshops and lectures. She came to me, starry-eyed, to show me some related projects she was working on and asking for my perspective. She would later tell me that throughout my lecture, she was constantly checking out the outline of my cock and balls as she sat on the floor of the crowded room. She was involved with another man at the time, but soon she told me that that had ended, and soon after that, we were exchanging hot and tawdry emails and long, latenight sessions of phonesex. I would read erotic fiction to her. Soon, she visited me in New York.

At the time, Heidi could be best described as having a classical bodytype. She was tall with broad shoulders. Once a contender for the Canadian Olympic swimming team, she retained her strong thighs and legs that permitted her larger bottom to stay rounded and firm. Her body was almost squarish, and when she was at her peak physical shape, she easily reminded me of a Roman statue of Juno, or of Gérôme's Galatea.

After picking her up at the airport, the sexual tension in my car was deliciously palpable as we drove along the Belt Parkway. Our first time together was at a swanky New York hotel near the Metropolitan Opera House. The room was ridiculously small, but we laughed about it as we greeted each other, nude for the first time together, in the shower.

I should have heeded the Fates' warning when, in the hotel lobby, I clumsily dropped and shattered the bottle of the wine I had saved for the occasion. I also remember that the sex wasn't quite was I had hoped it would be, although I have a nice memory of her casually sucking my cock as I reclined in the overstuffed chair next to the bed.

The sex seemed to get better after I started to visit her in Toronto, and one afternoon of having her bent over the dining table remains a nice memory. The table shook uncontrollably as I took her from behind, grasping her strong hips and pounding myself into her as she clutched, scratched, and screamed over the table. Evenings on the livingroom futon in that tight, narrow house with its unfinished wooden flooring were also fun. Eventually I took the plunge and moved north. This is how I came to Canada.

I was the first, and perhaps to date the only, man to take her ass. A lot of patience, gentility, and attention was given her over several weeks, and since she was already enjoying stimulation at her rosebud, I rightly suspected that she harbored fantasies of being fucked in her swimmer's ass anyway. I still remember how and when she was overcome with the change in sensation, when her sense of cautious acceptance at feeling cock in her tunnel shifted into a sudden wave of wanton craving for it. She was gasping at the time, clenching her fists, when at once particular slow-but-firm thrust she went over the edge of discomfort into ecstacy. She howled about how incredible it felt for her at that moment, her voice full of surprise. For days after, she was sexual putty in my hands, eager to re-experience my thick cock taking her that way. She was like a puppy who wanted more of a new toy. It was fun.

We moved from Toronto to a suburb. Bigger house, chance for a better life, lovely things like jacuzzi and inground pool. We got married: my first and her third. Yet another warning from the Fates that I foolishly left unheeded. Things degenerated from there.

It had been years since I had good opportunity to engage in bdsm play with a partner, and Heidi had expressed enough desire in it that I felt I hit the jackpot with her. After long discussions about desires and limits and experiences, I quickly learned that our interests weren't terribly compatible in this spectrum of our sexuality. She enjoyed spankings, and we did this often enough, but most other activities simply brought up enough other alarm bells inside her that I simply couldn't see myself pursuing more advanced play of any kind. I accepted this, tried to be good, giving and game, and as a result I shelved my bdsm self for a long, long time.

We experimented with polyamory; I was the one with more experience in it, and she expressed eager interest. On two, otherwise tender and enjoyable occasions, we did some limited group play with two other couples who were friends of ours. With both Phoenix and her husband, and Kelly and her partner, we enjoyed evenings of sensual games and oral. I regret to say it, but neither Phoenix nor Kelly seemed expecially talented, although I remember having a great time with these evenings overall. Sometimes just the pleasure of being in a sensual, shared space can be enough for me to have some fun.

Soon, however, it became apparent to me that for Heidi, polyamory was just a means to legitmizing an end that she already had designs for. As our relationship degenerated over a year or two, the sexuality became dangerously pathetic. I kept my patience because I was committed to making the marriage work... it was, after all, my first and after many years of me telling myself that I would never likely marry until I felt absolutely ready for it. But I was using a squirtgun on a burning house.

Events and experiences made it clear to me that, as a lover, as a sexual being, Heidi's primary fetish was illicitness. Not content with 'mere' fantasy play, I eventually learned that Heidi's sexuality fundamentally depended on her consciously pursuing activities that, in some way, could only be best described as inappropriate while in a healthy relationship, regardless of how open or adventurous.

Like most couples, we had certain fundamental rules to our "polyamory", such as it was. Most of them were reasonable conditions that she herself insisted upon, such as not taking a secondary lover into our bed, effective communication with each other when we were potentially interested in someone else, and not doing anything with anyone else while our own relationship might be having trouble.

And then I learned that she had not once, but twice, brought a mutual male friend of ours into our bed, without any prior discussion with me, during periods when we were having problems. I learned that Heidi made sexual boundaries to restrict and control her primary partners, not to maintain healthy dynamics in a relationship.

Not long after, I learned how she had always done this sort of thing in every relationship she had had. I learned that her relationship with the man she was with before me was not over when she and I met, and that this poor man had discovered our tawdry emails on her computer and was crushed by them, that when she visited me in New York she had lied to him to say she was visiting a female friend. I learned that she had done virtually the same thing with the man she was with before this man, and on and on throughout her sexual history.

I learned that she was sexually pursuing a man while we were allegedly working on our marriage, and not the one she had already taken to our bed. This person was, and remains, in a federal prison, convicted of murder and drug trafficking, and supposedly was part of a support program we both were involved with at the time. Prior to our divorce, she acquired conjugal-visitation privileges, and on several occasions had trailer visits with him.


They say that conjugal trailer sex with a convict is not unheard of as a sexual fantasy for some women, and that supposedly the sex can be pretty intense, given the character and living conditions of the man. I'm confident that she had a blissful time, if only because I've experienced her passion when she was knowingly lying to one man and enjoying her illicitness fetish with another. I suppose, had it not been myself who had been played the fool of by my then-wife, I'd think it was pretty goddamn hot. Especially when, later, I heard stories at how he had passed her around among his buddies. Yeah, it an entirely different context, I'd agree that it's hot. But, hey.

After our separation, that her sexuality was founded on illicitness was further demonstrated to me during a phone conversation were were having. She was missing me, she told me, and that if I wanted, I could come over and fuck her... if I had fifty dollars.

I didn't go.

This post isn't about the failed love that was there, or at least that I seem to have thought was there. This is simply about the sex because this journal is about sex. As a lover, Heidi was passionate and zealous and experimental, but only so long as she felt she was maintaining a level of deceptive control and consciously lying to her partner at the time. Heidi is the ideal lover for a man who doesn't care about anyone, including himself, and I'm certain that many men in the world would leap at the chance to be with someone like her. As a sexual partner, as a sexually ethical being, Heidi is a complete failure, and in any context other than illicitness, her sexual prowess is limited at best. Fun to be with for an evening maybe, fun to objectify as a fantasy persona if one were so inclined, but completely toxic and damaging to any self-respecting safe, sane, and consensual person. I'm confident that she has personality disorder.

Sometimes I think about her, and I wonder how she'll manage when what sexual prowess she has finally eludes her entirely. The better angels of my nature want to hope the best for her, but the deeper truth is that I'm so much happier without her now and sex is so much better these days.