Sex.

There, I've said it.

The word. Sex. How that one word once seemed so forbidden, so exotic, so mysterious.

In junior high school, I remember, the health teacher stood before a room of giggling, red-faced children and professed that sex was really not much more than a biological act to ensure the continuation of the species. It's about the build up of tensions within the body and then their release, he told us.

I had no idea what he meant.

But I think I now understand the point he might have been trying to make. Sex can be just about friction and two bodies coming together and a release of the tension created.

But it should be more than that.

Or, at least, I like it to be more than that.

Other people, I have heard, say that sex takes place in the brain as much as in the body. I think that is part of it.

I think something else though: even if love doesn't enter into sex, it can be more than its parts.

I'm in love with Johnny. But I don't think he feels love for me in the same way. I don't know how he could, considering all that he went through the first time he gave himself over to love and then to see what came of it. But he is a man now so somewhere inside him lurks the capacity, even the need, to love again. It may not be me whom he will love. That's okay because that's life, in that sometimes someone enters your life just to show you that you can still love even when you think you won't ever again. Maybe this is what I am for him: the person who will help him see his capacity to love remains steady and true, waiting for him when he's ready.

He treats me as if I am very special to him; that's enough for me. That's just how special he is. That's the truth.

Johnny Ryan will be important in my life. I like that I know this. No matter what comes, he will be for me a man who makes me feel special and who puts a smile on my face and who opens me up in ways I never knew were possible. I hate to say this is fun because that makes it sound trivial.

But, boy, is it ever fun.

It's hard to explain, I realize. But it's like every single time I am with him, I find myself immersed in the moment. I have never laughed so much. I have never come so deep. I have never smiled so hard. I have never before really cried when I come. I have never sighed way down inside a part of me I wouldn't have imagined was capable of sighing. I have never watched a man sleep as I held him. I have never felt that madness for a man's body that I feel for his the moment he comes near me.

It is fun. Such fun.

He makes me enjoy thinking of trying things when it comes to sex that I never have before. I might have fantasized or imagined...but I've never conjectured about really doing it with a specific person. He makes me feel free. He asked me once, not too long after I fell for him, if I'd ever done anything wild with a man.

I am not totally experienced, this I know. One of the ways that shows, I have to admit, is that I've never quite been sure how you ask for what you want if what you want seems to be nothing like what you've been doing with a guy.

But when he asked me that about this "wild" bit, I had one thought of one wild thing I'd never had asked for because I just didn't know how to: I wanted to be tied up.

Handcuffs, scarves, ties--I didn't care. And I didn't care why. Isn't that okay when it's a fantasy?

We were both nude when he asked me that question and I had that immediate thought. I almost voiced it. But then I'd glanced at him, nervous, as if he could read my thoughts and wouldn't approve. He was blushing so I figured he might have been thinking of something he'd like to ask me to do with him. I should have just asked. I didn't. But I did tell him that I trusted him. That I knew he wouldn't hurt me. That I would consider any request from him.

He hadn't made a request.

It was a feint, I would suppose, on both our parts. We were testing the waters.

Later, he told me about himself. About where he'd been after he left his hometown. About the things that went into making him the man I came to know. It made me feel as if he'd given me the greatest gift any man ever had presented to any woman. He told me about that part of his life because it was important to him that I see him for who he was and that he be able to see himself when he looked in my eyes.

How I treasured this.

Oddly enough, it also was titillating to imagine him as a young, single man on the prowl after leaving Junee. I wondered about how many women he'd had during those years. It titillated me to imagine the things he must have done with them. I envisioned him in untold hotel rooms with unknown women doing scandalous things.

Our lovemaking was free. It was fun. More than that, since this time, it has often delved into such depth that I cry. Sometimes, after, he would touch my body with no reverence whatsoever. It made me writhe and moan.

And I never again was able to fantasize without seeing him binding my wrists to the bedposts. It loomed over me sometimes so large and so real that I would grasp the bedposts just before he would dive in over me. I would will him to see what I wanted.

I may have been nervous to ask but I was never ashamed of what I wanted. I just didn't know how to ask. I kept hoping that some sort of osmosis would take place and he would simply say, "Ery, where are your silk scarves?"

After all, I had confessed to him that even a nice girl likes to be wild every once in a while.

Then one night, he came to see me after being out carousing with a bunch of the men from the Pub. I didn't find out until the next night that all the thinking I'd been doing, Johnny had been doing some of his own...and, further, he'd shared with the men that night that he wasn't quite sure what kind of exotic things I might have been expecting out of him.

When he arrived, he was flat out gorgeous. He was not at all clean-shaven; his hair was mussed; his body smelled of cigarettes, booze and testosterone. He murmured to me of needing me. He picked me up, wrapped my legs around his waist and then brought me to my bedroom. We fucked. We had sex. We screwed. What is it called when it's purely physical?

It is the difference, I remember a college psychology instructor in human sexuality telling us, between sex and eros. Sex, Freud had said, was the reduction of tension. Eros, the professor said, was the wish to not be released from the excitement but to hang on to it, to bask in it, to want to increase it. Sex is gratification. Eros is desiring, longing, forever reaching out, seeking to expand.

The point I'm making is that that night we had sex.

But the next night, we took Eros for a ride.

And all because the next morning, after that night of "I have to fuck you" and me feeling as if a door had been opened, this was when I asked.

We had rolled into each other as sleep began to leave us both. Our limbs were entwined. He rolled to his back, taking me with him. We moved against each other, creating friction. He stopped me by putting both hands on my face and staring into me. He apologized if he'd been rough the night before; he said he'd been drinking and had been so horny just thinking of me that he couldn't stop once he actually got his hands on me.

"I liked it," I said. "And I like that I make you horny."

"Yeah?" He licked his lips. His soft voice asked me, "You ever think I'm boring, Ery? In bed, I mean. I was talking to the guys..."

He was so hard against me. I kept rubbing myself over him. It must have gotten to him, in a nasty way. He pulled my head down until his mouth was right under my ear. He whispered, all hoarse, about experimenting with me...about unspoken 'things' he could do for me if I wanted.

All this time, the friction between us was building.

For the first time with him, I understood that I wanted eros...I wanted to extend the friction to the point where giving in to it was going to take us new places.

"Do you want to do something to me?" I asked him.

"With you," he said back. His tongue licked behind my ear. I shivered and wiggled. He groaned.

"I don't know how to ask," I said, desperate for him to help me past this.

"We could experiment," he said, his voice a bit tentative. "Just ask me."

"Would you tie me up?" I asked. My voice sounded like a girl's to my ear but inside me, a woman was in need.

He breathed in, deep. I could hear the air going in his nose; I could feel his chest expand to take it in. His hands slipped down to my waist and he turned me onto my back. He never looked right in my eyes. He just zeroed in on my breasts. He put out his tongue and let the tip of it meet the tip of my nipple. My nipple peaked instantly. He did it to the other breast but this time, the nipple peaked at just the approach of his tongue. I wiggled against his groin, seeking it out.

"You'd do that?" he asked me, his mouth now on my navel, kissing slow. "You'd like that?"

My voice trembled. "Please?"

He slid from the bed. I closed my eyes as I wondered what would happen. Would we do it? Would I survive if we did? What happens after he ties me up? My eyes flew open. I looked for him. He was near the door; his jeans in his hands. When he turned back to me, he was dangling a pair of handcuffs.

My hands were over my breasts, playing with the erect nipples he'd caused. I know I smiled at him; he told me later, that it was a smile that was at once an invitation as much as it was an invocation. Maybe that's why his smile was slow and sure; a male animal in full.

"You'll be in my power, Ery. You sure you trust me that much?" he asked and he stood at the side of the bed and drew the cold steel of the cuffs up from my crotch to where my hands were atop my breasts.

"I haven't done this before," I said. "I'm just a little nervous."

He took over...I was very grateful to him for that. We took a shower together. He washed me; I washed him. Nothing overtly sexual happened, but he was hard and I was hot, sensitive, languid.

As he toweled my body dry, he said, "We should learn together, you know? I'm a bit old-fashioned, I know, but I think sex and love are how it should be...not that I've got anything against sex, but...you know what I mean?"

"I'm not sure."

"I don't want my memorable experience to be with a woman whose name I don't even know."

"I feel the same way...I want to trust the man or I couldn't do it, could I?" I looked off for a moment. It was now or maybe never. So it was now. I looked at him; I hoped he saw the importance of this that I would say to him: "Will you think I'm awful if I admit how much I've wanted this ever since the first time you said something about tying me down? Oh...the way you're looking at me...have I shocked you?"

"Not shock...well, a little bit shock...I mean...good shock...Ery...I'm gonna be really honest now...you'll probably hit me across the face but...I do sometimes think about stuff with you that is a bit...you know...kinky? I mean it's just guy stuff...I wouldn't normally admit it to a girl...but, yeah...cuffs...they've been on my mind lately..."

"Well, I guess so if you went to all the trouble of getting a pair," I said, smiling at him, for some reason turned on that he was as eager to break through with me and find something that he'd not had with another woman. "Where'd you get them, anyway?"

He grinned, suddenly looking so knowing and so dangerous. "Biebe got a bit of a snoot on last night."

"You didn't!"

"I did."

"You're in so much trouble, Johnny Ryan."

"I think it's you who's in trouble, Ery."

He took my hand, just like that, like I was in trouble. Like I was in danger. He led me back into the bedroom. I had one glance at the tussled sheets before he picked me up and dropped me backwards on the mattress.

His hands travelled hard up my sides, from my thighs to my hips to my waist to my armpits. It's how he drew my arms up taut over my head. He told me not to move; he reached for the cuffs; made a show of testing the links between, to demonstrate there would be no release possible once they were around my wrists. I moaned. He told me again that I would be helpless. I nodded my head.

They were cold. They were hard. The sound of them being closed was a rasp against the soft shuffle of the sheets as Johnny leaned in to bind the first wrist, then pass the remaining cuff behind the middle bar of the headboard...and then he snapped the second cuff around my other wrist.

He moved to sit next to me.

"What do you want now?" he asked. I couldn't really hear the inflections in his voice over the thudding pulse vibrating in my head.

"Just don't hurt me," I said. I blushed. He tilted his chin down. "Otherwise..."

"Otherwise?"

"Make me sweat, Johnny."

"Oh, love, I intend to."

Probably the first drop of sweat formed between my breasts because that's where his finger trailed, ever so light, ever so lingering.

Perhaps I sweat under my arms after that because he leaned over my chest and licked there after he asked me if I was ticklish there.

Can your tummy sweat? Can your sides? Can your ribs? Because he asked where else I was ticklish; when I didn't respond, he said he'd just have to find out. I bit my lip but I cried out when his rough fingers stroked so gently over my ribs and then down to my navel.

My eyes were shut. There were tears. I was praying he didn't discover just how sensitive I was on the soles of my feet.

It was torture but he never hurt me.

The delicacy of his touch made my skin feel it was on fire.

He said he was going to turn me over; onto my stomach. I said why because I wasn't sure what he had in mind; he said that I was at his mercy. But I got scared; he could tell. He wrapped his arms around my waist, whispered to me to calm. I did. I told him...some day. He looked up at me.

"Only when you want," he said.

This is what he wants, I realized. And I was not ready. Our eyes held tight. He told me it was okay.

For some reason, that excited me. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I now knew one of his desires. All this time, I've teased myself with abstruse images of him doing unknown things to faceless women. Here was one I had been a little afraid he'd want to try with me. Here it was, out in the open between us. He did want it. He was man enough to wait but he was also man enough to make sure I knew he wanted it.

"You make me feel things," I said. I wondered when my voice got so hoarse.

"Things? What kind of things, Ery?"

I swallowed. He went lower. My stomach fluttered beneath his touch.

"I like how this makes me concentrate on every single place you touch me."

"Like here?" he said, using his forefinger to draw a slow, lazy line all around my pubic hair. His finger glanced over wetness. I shivered hard. I looked up at the ceiling. "Like here?" he repeated, this time demanding a reply.

"Like there. And like where your chin is grinding in over my thigh." He pressed down with his chin. "And like where your other hand is."

His other hand...it was on my ass. That I would mention it seemed I was tempting him just after denying him access to that one place on my body. It seemed dangerous to do. I held my breath.

"I have that hand there to keep you still when I do this..."

He said it; without hesitation he put his mouth over the part of me that maybe had sweated most of all except it's not really sweating that a woman does between her legs when she is excited.

I think he would have had to peel me off the ceiling after he started sucking and his tongue entered me...except he had that hand gripping into my ass and so I wasn't going anywhere no matter how I bucked as I came.

When I was really aware again, when I could think, I opened my eyes. He was over me, on his hands and knees. He looked down my body. I felt myself stretch under his gaze. I looked down. I didn't see myself, not really. What I really saw was his anatomy.

"You're so beautiful," I told him. "I love the way you look. I love the way you feel. I love the way you taste. I love the way you make love to me."

"All that love," he said.

I looked in his eyes. "That's what I feel for you."

"Do you want to touch me?"

"Yes. I love to touch you."

"What do you love to touch most of all, Ery?"

He was testing me. I would have liked to have answered with the truth: that what I would have loved to touch most of all was his heart. For the first time since I'd known him, I felt reluctant to say what was in my heart because I thought maybe it was wrong to put some new burden on a man who's been through what this man has.

"I love to touch your cock," I said. "Hard or soft."

"I like to touch your cunnie."

We both kind of giggled, like we'd just been naughty kids to say that to each other. But instantly, we sobered and just looked at each other. I felt this panting breath come from me.

"And your ass," I said, feeling so bold and wicked to say such words.

"Like yours, too, Ery," he moaned as his hand dug in there and his hips dipped down so near that cunnie of mine he liked so much.

"I like to grab hold of your hair when you're fucking me and just hold on and..."

"And?" His voice was darkness and temptation.

"When you're inside me, sometimes I think I'll go crazy with how good you make me feel."

His mouth opened. I thought he was going to kiss me to shut me up. Instead, he sucked on my breast and grunted. I don't know where I got the guts to say all this to him but it didn't seem to do much more than excite him.

"I like to feel you all hard and hot and those drops that come out of you before you even know you're doing it."

He let my breast go; it popped out of his mouth from the suction's release. He lowered his head slowly; I could only see his hair. I longed to grab him there. I can't even say where I would have shoved his head if my hands had been free to do that.

Then one of his fingers came inside me. My body arched under his.

"What else?" he asked me.

"I don't know," I whimpered, wanting to come again.

"What else?" he repeated.

I felt in some panic. I said the first thing that came to my mind. "I never mean to scratch your back and bite your neck. I don't. But when I am, I'm in some other place and it just happens. I can't control myself. But then I like it when you look in the mirror the next day and see that I can't hold back sometimes."

My voice rose as I told him; it ended in a cry.

This was when he entered me.

He took so much time.

He muttered to me of how he wanted this...just this time to just have me helpless before him and to see what he'd do with me.

What he did was bring me to a place I hadn't gone before. Beyond this barrier where you don't have to be polite anymore to still be loving.

My wrists were bruised when he released them from the cuffs. He teased me that he'd lost the key. I'd whimpered at the very idea we may have to call John Biebe to get the key to the cuffs. But then Johnny had pulled it from his jacket pocket.

He'd been smiling, that little boy smile. But then he frowned as he released my wrists because he saw the bruises and felt like he'd just committed a crime against me. But all I wanted was to hold him and to be held. It was an all encompassing experience; I need that connection with him.

The evening, we sprawled on the couch to watch a DVD. He folded his body around mine; every so often, he whispered nonsense love thoughts in my ear. He was as moved as I was by what we'd done together.

When the movie got boring, I turned in his arms and put my hand on his cheek. "Promise me?"

"Anything, love," he said.

"Promise me we'll do things like that again?"

His face changed, like he grew suddenly older, more serious. "We'll do things we both want. Ery, I been thinking...maybe there's a book?"

I grinned at his serious tone. "You know what I want? Next time, I want to tie you up. Would you let me do that, Johnny? Just let me do whatever I wanted to your body?"

His voice was just husky enough that I figured he'd gotten an instant feel for being bound by me. He said, "Well...depends if you're going to go all feminine and womanly on me. I've got no objection to a woman on top...or down below..."

For some reason, I found myself feeling serious...probably like he just had been with me. I looked in his eyes to say, "I feel so close to you right now...that we reached this place...together. That we let each see this side to us. It was...so much more than I thought it'd be."

He gave me a soft smile; it fluttered around his lips; it turned into a kiss that lingered on my heart.

I put my head on his chest as the DVD played on; I let him hold me. I could hear his heart. It soothed me. It opened me even further. When the movie ended, he pressed the TV off with the remote. Silence and darkness settled in around where we were on the couch.

"Tell me a dream you have, Johnny...that place inside you where you think about silly things that end up not being so silly after all. I'll tell you one of mine, shall I? Sometimes, I dream that I'm going to find out that I was meant to do something important...and then I worry that I might never find out what it was I was meant to do. Silly, huh? I don't know why I thought about that just now."

His arms gripped me tightly. He stroked my hair. I felt so safe there. His voice sounded as if he were far away, musing. "Dreams? Yeah...? I was never much of a one for talking when I was younger. Kept it all inside. But I always felt it. I used to think I felt it more because I couldn't talk about it. My Mum...my Dad...M..."

He stopped abruptly, choking the last name off. I reached my arms around his back and held him as tightly as he was holding me.

"I used to have a dream but then I woke up. I think I stopped dreaming then. For a long time...until I met you," he finally said.

I murmured his name. I told him how wonderful that made me feel. He may think he says not a lot, but he does. "If I make you dream again, that's the nicest thing I think anyone has ever said to me."

We settled more solidly into each other. I surprised myself, but it was such a tender moment between us, and this simply slipped out of me: "Do I ever feature in your dreams, Johnny?"

There was a slight pause; I had this mental image of the cogs in his brain clicking and sliding about to figure out what to say. I held my breath as I hoped I hadn't just blown it all by making him feel awkward after all the new intimacies we've shared this day.

But then I felt his body shift beneath me; he lowered his lips until they were so close to my ear. I could feel the vibrations in his chest as he spoke in such deep, low whisper. "My dreams? Feature in my dreams? You're the only thing in my dreams these days...waking or sleeping."

There is sex: stimulus and response. There is eros: a state of being.

How does it feel to know a man dreams only of you? All I feel safe saying is that I think that's eros. I think it's that we have moved beyond just "the act" and graduated to the meaning of the act.

I'm in his dreams now. Just the thought of that makes me feel as if I'm doing cartwheels through the wind.