Lauren writes to her penpal, bootleg trader Nikki. NSFW, so it’s sexual. 

Wednesday 6 April, 1997 

Dear Nikki,

I think I owe you an apology. As I probably owed Bear an apology too, but considering we had such great sex – great but with enough rawness and unfinished endings, to keep it on our mind and come back for more soon to smooth it over and push for a deeper level of satisfaction- I ll consider that score settled.
I don’t have to say to Bear: “I m sorry I wasn’t really there to enjoy in full, because I was so obsessed with my weight”.
My enthusiasm when he came over said it. My willingness to try something we had only did once before, and take that further, was all the “Motherfucking Let’s Forget About All This Shit And Move The Fuck On!” I ever needed to say.
Well, that didn’t really sound like an apology. But you know what I mean. You’re either going to have a serious talk or serious sex, and Bear and me did the latter. Which I prefer, anyway.

But you and me can’t have serious sex, or any sex, because you don’t live in the Netherlands. Yet I did share my insecurity about my weight with you, and that I wanted to lose weight and get my pre-college body back.
The virgin body I had when me and Bear started having sex.

Well: My apologies!
Not just was it an entire waste of my time to worry about it; A waste of dates with Bear that probably could have been even better (although my anxiety about my weight did translate to arousal as well!); But in the case of you and me it was a waste of chances to talk about sex with you.
Because I find everything fascinating about you: That you re an American living in London. That you own a record store. That you trade bootlegs and that I still get the cassettes from you to review for the fan club.
It’s all so exotic.

I like that you re older than I am, and are no longer caught up in that whole trying to figure out what job you re going to do.
In particular since it landed at owning a record store and not at working in an office.

But most of all I like that you have a girlfriend, although we ignore her in our letters don’t we? I do that out of courtesy, as I imagine, so do you.
I imagine you and her living above the record store, in a messy way both in your house as well as in your relationship.
I imagine it as chaos and drama, with plenty of make up sex.
Like True Romance.
Oh now I remember! I once wrote you a whole letter about that movie I think! Damn. You being Californian is setting off a whole string of erotically charged fantasies.

So my apologies you got mingled up in me feeling insecure about my body, and trying to get you on board on the idea that I should be losing the weight.
That was not yours to deal with.
And ultimately, as it turned out, my weight is not mine to deal with either. It’s always exactly as it should be. And the sex Bear and me had, was a celebration of that.

It was the first time in years that I had sex without the idea that this was a temporarily heavy body; That I should be losing weight, but that this was “okay for now”.
Now I know I m not going to change it, and I m also not going to write body complaints-letters to you. 

But all this could be the great sex talking, really.
Our prostitute role playing.
The anal sex.
The orgasms.
The way he filled me up (my pussy) as I requested, without first licking or fingering me, so that it would hurt a bit because it was so tight.

Of course I feel like I m healed of my body issues; I m still as radiant, and satisfied as yesterday.

Bear came in the evening yesterday. He usually comes during the day.
After he had left, I got ready for bed and watched myself in the bathroom mirror.  My face had the intense happy after-sex glow, but now that I had decided I wasn’t going to change my weight, I could also appreciate the fat on my face. Its roundness and fullness. I loved it.
I smiled at her while I thought:
“We’re going to have such a good time.”
And I didn’t even mean Bear. I didn’t mean that I had interpreted the sex as something that had been so smashing he would definitely come back for more, and that we were a solid “mistress and lover” from this day forward.

I meant that I felt so good in my own skin, I knew the future would always look bright.
And the sex had had a difficult part to it – maybe I needed to reassure myself that even if the worst case scenario came true and I would not see Bear again, I would still be okay. That no one could take this newfound happiness away from me.
Not even the man who had brought the smile on my face.

So now the date, and why it was such a turning point.

When I was getting ready in the shower, I knew something was up, because I was totally indecisive about what I wanted.
It went from ideas of keeping it platonic with a little kissing, and giving our affair an exciting “catch me if you can”  “hard to get” phase – which had the added benefit of not having to deal with my body – to catching myself hoping all my holes would be filled. That it would be one of those dates where we would plunge into wildly erotic fantasies, that would make me feel vulnerable and take me days to recover from.
So when he came over I still had not made up my mind.

When he stood in my hallway and I hugged his big strong body, beautifully dressed as always, and when I put my nose into the collar of his winter coat, I knew what I hoped for.
It was of course the second. To be filled up in all my holes and to drift away, together, in intoxicating fantasies that would leave me shaky for days.
I wanted to bite off more than I could chew, experience more than I knew how to deal with.
I wanted to be fucked, poked, entered, held. Melt together, which would be even sweeter because I would know how temporary it was. 
That he would go home, and I would be alone again.

And although at that moment, in our hug, I still had no idea how we were going to get to that point; We did get to that point.
This is where I credit him. This is one of those sequences he just knows how to play, how to setup. He’s like an actor in one of those improvised art house movies. And then of course, so am I.
Pretending you re actors having sex on screen, appeals to voyeurism and exhibitionism. Even though no one else is there of course. It’s a mechanism that is always present on the background, and I credit it for why I like having sex with him so much. 
It’s on the foreground, when we role play.
First we talk about what we would like to do, where we refine the scene we “one day” want to set up (we specifically talk about this in some unnamed future; or non-specifically then obviously).
And then there is that magical moment when he takes it into the now, by taking on the role and talking to me in character.

Yesterday I shared with him the want-you-in-all-my-holes desire.
(In case you re wondering: Do I feel comfortable sharing this with you? No. I don’t! But I think it’s part of savoring it happened.)
And I told him I had liked it so much last year, when we did the prostitute role playing.
It had been a role that had put me in a position of power. He was a longtime client of mine and he wanted anal sex.
It turned out as the best times we ever had it. Absolutely unbelievable, it was that good.
It were those two things – the all my holes thing, as well as the prostitute fantasy – that I brought in yesterday, and that became the building blocks of our new fantasy.

As honest as I like to be, and not just to you but also because these letters will be all that remains, so if I don’t write it down now it will be lost for myself as well, but I cannot tell all of the dimensions.
Not the entire fantasy.
It is too personal, for me.

But what I can share is that it worked. And for the first time, in I think half a year or maybe even longer, we repeated the fantasy and had anal sex.
Until, unfortunately, he slipped out. Still not entirely sure what caused it, all I remember is that I would have wanted to continue, but he chose to finish it differently.
Like an actor doing improv, he really did what was best for the story as a whole. What would have been the most likely ending, the most logical way to make it a well-rounded, satisfying, experience between a prostitute who had trusted her client and a client who did not want to extend his stay.
But I lay in his arms later and cried. Because I was no prostitute, and wasn’t paid, I was just pretending.
And I had wanted him inside of me, longer, but I had no way to ask for it, because it wasn’t in the script.

The prostitute and her client had negotiated a price, and what he would do to her. He had “warned her” about specifics, and since this was all play; Yes of course that made me horny.  
Yet, I was sensible, both in my role as well as myself, that I understood we needed a safe word. Something I would be able to say, at which he would stop.
So for the first time in over seven years, we had sex with a safe word in place. I could tell him to stop.

When I opened this letter I know I tried to describe a sense of rawness, of it not being finished. And because it was so extremely intimate, there is always the chance of it being the last time, I think. That he pulls away.
I know I wrote something about that too: How vulnerable this feels. In bed, but more so afterwards. There is this incredible pain of feeling so lonely, you just think you re gonna die, figuratively speaking.
Or never going to do this again, more literally.
That I m not cut out for this, and should stop being a mistress, or that I should at least stop having this deeply intimate sex that screws with my head, and I have no one to share this with.
And that’s all so true.

But in retrospect, I also think that in addition to a safe word, I need something that says: 
“Don’t stop.”

And maybe the reason it hurt so much, when he didn’t continue the intercourse that way, didn’t try again, is that it felt like I was being rejected. 
That ultimately, I not just wanted it more than he did. But that it was one big metaphor, for the mind fuck that has been the last seven years.
It was the pain of being the one who wants it more.

And knowing there was no word to ever prevent that from happening again.

.
Take care.
XX
Lauren

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Nothin’s For Free (NSFW) | 1997 diary
is the fourth chapter to book 3, diary 1997