Leah Hickey

I'm emailing someone at the moment and this experience has swelled within me a buried memory of a time not too long ago. Still in this same box room that I'm typing from. Same bed, same four walls, furniture not too dissimilar. I couldn't even begin to tell you how we met, perhaps because I've erased that from my memory, but he was beautifully charming. Tall, broad shouldered, well endowed... all traits that I'm most likely embellishing to sweeten the memory. Very bizarre things happened, briefly, over a period of a few months. One of my many escapades that I may or may not have grown out of. In sending new emails now, back and forth correspondence with witty insights, I feel that burning ache begin to reform itself. Unbridled lust or attention, I don't know what it is, but it's deeply enjoyable. He lived in Paris and through the miracle of the Internet we found one another. I think to begin with it felt like purely flirtatious conversation, which largely due to my preoccupation with porn, unravelled rather quickly. Rather than coming and going, he stayed and chatted. Idled away a few hours just getting to know me. No predatory intentions, no pressure to travel the ocean and meet in person. No sordid talk of hotel rooms and other foul things from much crueler men. It was sexual but I had pushed it there and I tugged and poked and pulled at his strings. Correspondence ensued, which I strangely wish I had a record of, gradually becoming more and more flush inducing. Rub-yourself-against-the-chair kind of energy. We spoke of love with intention, in retrospect naively, but nothing felt artificial in spite of our virtual encounter. Men are so strange to me. With talk of rules and lessons it gradually ventured into plaything territory, using a compact camera to articulate my desire. The colour of my underwear was picked out but it never at all felt controlling. I look up and glance over to the corner of my room where I took those photos and I don't feel sorry for her, she was just learning - nothing bad happened. I can't tell you his name, only that he might have been 30. I always used to imagine a future of an older me, secure and dominant, with unabashed independence swanning around in central London. She is still yet to form in front of me, but perhaps that was somebody else. Sex games can go too far and they can get weird, make you wince, cringe, cry. There's nothing quite as bizarre as spanking yourself in an empty room. So many instructions - how to pose, how to be, this presentation of Woman which is so hard to achieve. Stockings, or maybe white cotton knee-highs. The turning point was towards the end of the trail, emails flung back and forth with fervent readiness began to run dry. Boredom, lack of spontaneity, too much routine as a pet? 'I want you to do something for me', he types. I am on the edge of my seat, fit to burst, barely controlling myself. Attached, an unsolicited image. 'I want you to print this out', he continues. 'Place it over your stomach and think of me.' Just like that, all feeling leaps out the window. I couldn't decide whether it was our age gap, our approach to role-play or something else in the underbelly but it felt uncomfortable. All that sexiness I had bolstered, the erotic bubbling over inside of me dissipated away within moments. So, I never replied. No follow up emails, no pestering, nothing. We just went our separate ways. Should I do it again?