Personal Journal

The Day I Met Jean

It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn

I met Jean for the first time on June 7, 2002.

She and I met on Free Open Diary, in early February of that year. Through noting her, she started reading me, and we just made a strong connection. We admired one another. My journal entries at the time were about how I was waiting for my wife to find a job before I told her that I wanted to divorce. Hers were about politics, cats, and also how her husband was becoming a big problem with the direction she wanted her life to go.

I really wanted to encourage her to break that off, for selfish reasons, because I thought she and I had something of a possibility. I really remember that feeling. I remember writing in my journal, a private entry, now lost unfortunately, in which I said “If she were a single woman, I would make my move.” I’d never had that feeling about a woman before – almost predatory. I WANTED her to be with me.

You look back on this stuff now and there are so many questions about destiny and god. It makes me want to cry all over again.

She and I started e-mailing, and I have most of those e-mails still saved. I remember her asking me one time what I would think if she offered to fly out here, have a wild and sexual weekend, and then let her leave to return to her life. I told her I don’t sleep with married women. I won’t be “the other man.” I won’t do that to another man. But I said that I had a strong attraction to her, and I wished there was a way to act upon it.

Within a few days, really, our emotional connection was built, and we came to depend on one another. I prepared to tell my wife that we had to divorce, despite the fact that she didn’t have a job, because in my heart, I was in love with Jean, which was de facto infidelity to her, and I had to reconcile that. I couldn’t lie to my wife and tell her I loved her if in fact I was in love with another. So I took care of that in late March, and my wife was rather expecting it. It was rather a relief to us both.

The night I told my wife I wanted a divorce, I told her that I was going to spend the night in a hotel (this is a tangent) to give her time and space to talk to her friends and seek support without me around. I checked into a hotel, I called jean for comfort, and I watched some hockey or something. In the middle of the night, the couple in the next hotel room woke me up because they were seriously fucking. F U C K I N G. It was actually very erotic just to hear it in the next room, I’m not ashamed to say. The woman was saying to him in that carnal, husky voice that women get when they really WANT it, “Give it to me Steve, Give it to me Steve.” Jeez. Is it odd that that was kind of a turn on for me? Anyhow, the running joke about that night was how I learned the guy’s name in the next room. I wanted to slip a note under the door “Way to go, Steve!” But I decided against it.

So Jean was still struggling with what to do with Tom. We made plans to meet in June in New Jersey. To consummate our love and to see New York City and to see what was really going on between us. I remember talking to my friend Deb about this, and the fact that at the time we were discussing it, Jean and I were essentially planning on having an affair (with regard to her husband) because she didn’t intent to tell him until the time was right. Deb, who is pretty moral and a good person to talk to when you’re hedging your own morality, made me realize that I had to tell Jean that we couldn’t sleep together until Tom knew that Jean wanted a divorce. Anything else made me “the other man”. And while I could live with being one of the primary reasons she wanted a divorce, I couldn’t live with the fact that Jean’s and my “first time” occurred under the umbrella of deceit and lies.

So, with a lot of fear, I told Jean that I would still come out, but that we would not be able to make love unless she told Tom she wanted a divorce.

She saw my point, and said that she would do it, more for my sake than anything, because she was still uncomfortable with how to approach that subject. Her birthday was June 4th, and Tom went to some lengths to try to make up for the shit he had been to her in the previous weeks or months or years, and I remember Jean receiving his surprise flowers and birthday card and such with a lot of guilt and sadness. Because he tried, but it was already too late for him, but she hadn’t told him. And she had 3 days to tell him between her birthday and the time I arrived.
She did it, though. She stood for herself and what she believed, but I know she did feel sadness at having to hurt him. We all dislike hurting people, even when it’s for the greater good of everyone involved.

For both Jean and I, we had to end a cycle of lies that we were interested in our spouses. The lies were told so as not to hurt, but because they were lies, they were delayed hurt. Because when the truth comes out, the other person is hurt that much more knowing they had been lied to. And whereas the truth that we want to go separate ways is a rejection, and that hurts terribly worse than the cumulative effect of the lies, it is that hurt that frees you from being hurt again. It is that hurt which gives you the opportunity to begin to heal, and grow, and learn to love again. I know that it’s best to do that hurting, rather than the lying, because it’s more fair. The lies deprive the person of time they can never get back – time they could use to build their own life into something they truly want and deserve.

So on June 7th, I flew out to New Jersey. I had told Jean that I didn’t know when I would give her a kiss. Having met with people I knew via internet only, I knew that I had a sort of alienation period where I had to reconcile the person I imagined in my mind with the person who was really there in reality. Even with pictures, I had to do some work to reconcile, because my normal shyness kicked in as soon as the real person appeared, because it’s not the person in my mind’s eye, so she would initially appear as a stranger to my eyes. I had to wait for my spirit to recognize the person I’d been talking to and loving for the last couple of months in words only.

I remember when I saw her, with her spiky hair, and her soft blue blouse, and blue jeans and sandals. She smiled and opened her arms, and I gave her a big hug. Jean’s hugs were the absolute best. She seemed to have the perfect width for me, and her breasts met my chest in a way that made me feel strengthened, though that doesn’t make sense. I loved the way her chest felt against mine. For the rest of our days, I loved that.

We held hands and walked to her car after I got my bags. As she opened the hatchback of the X-Terra and I put my bags inside, I felt that recognition of who she was to me. My love. And I said to her, to her surprise, “I’m ready for that kiss now.”

And we kissed. I swear to god I can remember the smell of her – not smell. Scent – the essence of her. And I remember a sweetness to her mouth that reminded me of an Easter candy on a sunny morning. The softness of her lips and the warmth of her tongue on mine were frankly debilitating. I felt a surge of sexual energy in me, and I felt the chemistry of raw, physical and spiritual attraction gripping me. She smiled as she kissed me. I felt from her how rewarding it was to share that kiss.

And there was something about Jean’s kisses that I can never forget, which is how our mouths sealed with one another. There was some magical glue in our lips meeting, whether we were open mouthed or closed, it was immaculate. It was one of the ways we became one, enmeshed. And when our lips parted, there was a smacking sound as the vacuum was broken. It was gentle and beautiful. Her lips were soft and full, so inviting. Honestly, it had more of a sexual element to it than anyone I’ve ever kissed. I think it was because we belonged with one another.

We got into the car, and we had planned to drive to get something to eat. We checked into the hotel real quick and then went to a restaurant to go eat. But when we parked, we stopped to kiss some more. And those kisses turned into gentle groping and caressing, with verbal coos and ahhs, and the desire for sexual union was filling the car with a steamy, thick musk, and we both realized it together that we needed to go back to the hotel and act on those impulses. So we agreed to do that.

I’m not one to talk about my sexual encounters. How do you do it without being crass and sounding like a cheap Penthouse Letter?

What I can tell you, as a man, is that sometimes a woman wants you so much that her vagina seems to be hot when you enter her, much hotter than body temperature alone can explain. I remember that first time she brought me into her. For my life I will never forget, the first time, nor the last. That heat is beyond physical. It reaches inward through my body and envelops me, and I think of it as a presence of the divine component of human sexuality. Proper, and spiritual, and enabling the deepest human connection people can make through their bodies.

I can feel her body against mine, the gliding feeling of my body in hers and how light and heavenly that was, and the warm smell of her physical presence. The kisses, with her eyes closed and she allowed herself to be enveloped by me. The desperation we seemed to feel to show with our bodies how deeply pleased we were to love one another, how we wished to shed the tension of having been apart for those few months. And we did release tension. Jean is the first woman I ever brought to orgasm with penetration alone. I remember her laugh when she climaxed. It was odd to me, but she had prepared me. And it made me smile, because at its root, it was nothing but innocent delight at a human pleasure. My own climax was shortly thereafter, rich and full and touching to my heart. It had been so many years since I had made love with my soul.

That was truly a beautiful day.
A day I remember like few others.
A day I wish I could relive like no other.

When I die, I want to relive that day.