IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES, IT WAS…

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,

it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness”

Charles Dickens: A tale of two cities

I’ve been spending time in my blog lately, hiding from my present by wandering though my past; visiting again the people and the experiences; feeling, once again, the feelings. Distance, sometimes two years, sometimes nearly five, lends a fresh perspective on the time I spent seeing sex workers regularly and writing about it.

As my use of Mr Dickens’ quote suggests, my feelings about that time are somewhat complex. Let me explore them a little, with the help of his wonderful words.

It was the best of times…

Well, yes. I did rather have some fun. Hot kinky sex with beautiful women; how could I not have had fun? Hotel rooms, dungeons and tucked away little Airbnb cottages. A pretty girl on my arm for dinner, the opera or the circus. A glorious exploration of pain and pleasure, of dominance and submission, of intimacy and desire. The writing has kept those memories gleaming with their original lustre; I just open the blog and search for “Dungeon” or “Lilly” or “Spanking” and there they lie: mint condition, original packaging; perfect, kinky little vignettes where the featured actor is always me.

It was the worst of times…

There are aspects of that time I look on with the side-eyes, or even with solid regret. Instead of galivanting around London, looking for the next thrill, I could have been working to rescue my marriage. Working to end my marriage would, perhaps, have been a more realistic goal, but still an honourable one; working to avoid another three or four years of stagnation, neither moving forward to divorce or back to partnership, both of us lonely while not being alone. I could have freed us from that, if only I had engaged in the process instead of hiding from it. I regret the lies too. I’ll always regret the lies.

It was the age of wisdom…

I learnt so much from Elita and Lilly and the others. I certainly learnt about myself: about the nature of my kinks, and how my body works, but the real learning was deeper and more important. I learnt how to allow myself emotions and how to express them; I discovered that it was OK to feel fear, lust, joy, ecstasy; that it was OK to be vulnerable and OK to cry. And I learnt something of sex; sex beyond the “man fucks woman, man orgasms” of all pornography and, if I’m brutally honest, of my earlier life. I discovered something of how a woman experiences sex, of what she might seek in those most intimate moments. I learned how to take pleasure in giving her those things and, in the process, discovered how to really connect with another human being on that intimate, visceral level.

It was the age of foolishness…

Excess. So much excess. Two days after one session, I’d be planning the next. Somehow, an occasional hour with a Dominatrix to scratch my masochistic itch, became several hours with two women, became overnight in a rental dungeon. And, after the sessions, I wouldn’t go home or back to work; I’d stay in London playing poker til the sun was up, living as if I had no responsibilities, when I had many. Real life became flat and dull in comparison and my motivation for it waned. How much more fun it was to plan my next kinky adventure than to write staff appraisals or tidy the garage. So, it’s hard to be proud of this period, hard to be 100% OK with the things I did.

So how are the scales balanced between the best and the worst; between the wisdom and the foolishness?

When I do think of those times with regret, it’s from the recognition that others might have been damaged or disadvantaged by the way I turned away from them, in order to seek my own pleasure.

That, I am sorry for.

But, we are only given one life and, for a while, I sucked the juice out of mine until it ran down my chin.

It’s hard to regret that!