“I know, baby, what I’m saying is…” He trailed off and then the gentle left his expression and I got concerned because he looked…not right.
“Boone,” I called, pressing a hand against his chest.
“Okay, I’ll get if you’re not down with this, and I’ve touched on it, but we’re here, and in truth, I’d like to avoid it, just see where we got to naturally, and tackle it only if it becomes an issue. But that isn’t right or fair for you. So I have to put it out there.”
Uh-oh.
I wasn’t liking this.
“Put what out there?” I prompted when he didn’t continue.
“I need it a lot, Ryn, and I also need a woman in my life that can keep up with me,” he said.
“You’re a guy, and that tends to be how guys are,” I told him. “But just to say, I’ve got a pretty strong libido too.”
He shook his head. “It’s not me being a guy. It’s my therapy. It’s not an addiction. It’s a choice. I like how I am, but more, I’ve found a way that works for me to keep shit at bay that is never really going to go away.”
Okay.
We’d hit the meat of the matter.
Before I could say anything, he went on.
“It’s important, with the situation with your brother, that you get that. It isn’t uncontrolled. I could shift. I could get into bodybuilding or something like that. But I don’t want to. I like how I am, and it works for me.”
“Okay,” I said.
“And straight up, it’s how I am. I didn’t get it until my early twenties, which is good, because when I got it, it helped me work through some things. But it started early for me. We had a teacher in high school. Mrs. Steiner. Chemistry. She was hot. All the guys talked about jacking off, thinking about her. But I never told the guys I jacked off thinking about fucking her tied down to a chemistry bench.”
Hmm.
Maybe time for me to find a teacher outfit.
“I think I’m like I am because I had to have so much control over the other parts of my life, I need to let it go during sex,” I shared.
“Maybe,” he replied. “And I hear that. Especially after watching how you deal, but I think we’re born this way, Rynnie. I think there are things that enhance it, or guide it, but it’s just who we are. It’s not an abnormality or a coping mechanism. Turning it into that kind of thing cheapens it or gives other people a reason to twist it into what they want to believe it is, weird, not right, when it’s not.”
I liked the way he thought of it.
“And I’m the kind of a guy,” he continued, “always have been, who needs to connect sexually with a woman, more even than most guys. It isn’t a hobby. It’s something that feeds me. Like others meditate. I fuck. For the shit that can start messing with my head, I have that, as well as other coping mechanisms. Talking with my brothers. Working out. But sex evens me out most of all because it’s a big part of who I am.”
He shifted so he was resting some of his weight on me and kept speaking.
“Back then, jacking off to Mrs. Steiner, thinking of how I wanted to do that, I thought I was a freak. That’s what people like us learn about our kink. And I thought there was something wrong with me that I could get off with a girl, but I got off more if I held her down. And my mind was always straying to other stuff I wanted to do. Totally did not work for me if I had an assertive woman, not in bed. It wasn’t until I let that shit go after I got out of the military, which, before that, I had some minor scenes with some partners, but it wasn’t anything real because I still had hang-ups about it. I felt trapped in a lot of things I was feeling with what I’d seen and done. And coming to terms with who I was, was freeing.”
“That totally makes sense,” I told him.
He smiled. “Yeah. And it wasn’t like the floodgates were opened, though at that time, they kinda were.”
He smiled bigger, and I returned it.
He kept going.
“It was that I got what was a part of me. Like some guys need to play golf because they need to be in their head about the course and their game and the mental mojo that gives them. They can’t not do that. They can’t not play golf. And thinking on it, I’d put money on the fact there are a lot more people like you and me. But others don’t look on it like playing golf, which is acceptable. They look at it as wrong or deviant. Unacceptable. When it’s really pretty normal. So there’d be a lot of folks who are wound up, who would probably be a lot more smoothed out if they let themselves be who they are.”