Okay, I said that.Okay, I said that. What next? I just don't know where to start. Earnest Hemingway said always start with the first true thing. I guess I'll begin at the beginning, and when I come to the end, I'll stop. Hey, it worked for Alice in Wonderland, someone I have a lot in common with at the moment. Six months ago, we were living together in Chicago where I was working as a nurse. He got a terrific job offer and had to move. I didn't want to give up the security of my job, so we split up. We said it would somehow only be temporary, and I stayed behind in the windy city. Neither of us was particularly happy with the separation, and we wrote to each other almost daily. The letters got pretty steamy, and we began trading fantasies--fantasies we had never discussed when we lived together. We started with pretty tame stuff like being on a tropical island together, or in a snowbound cabin, but gradually we escalated to fantasies of being each other's slaves, B&D, and so forth. Every letter I wrote included comments on his last letter and a new fantasy of my own. He did the same. We became a two-person liter- ary critics circle. I think it was easier to write about these things than to talk about them face to face, maybe because broaching a subject like this for the first time requires such delicacy. You have to be absolutely sure you get the words right before you say them. |