I Dream of Her

J,

I've been thinking a lot about your question, the one about what I really want, and the answer has been writing itself in my head for weeks. It's time for me to put it into words for you. You asked: "What is it that you want — in your heart of hearts — that would make you really super happy? A rich woman to keep you and encourage you to pick up hot men? Someone sweet to cuddle? An intellectual equal?" You asked me that question around the time you encouraged me to write a story, an essay — something. Anything. Your suggestion: "Maybe write about a sweet, kind, smart guy who is sad about his life and has a small cock that only works when it wants to, who's obsessed with this forced-bi stuff ... and yet seeking a true soulmate. Super personal. I'd love to read that."

Combining the two, question and suggestion, here I go:

I want ... her. Who? I don't know her name, and I don't know what she looks like, but I know what her voice sounds like, what her eyes convey, what she tastes like, and how it feels to be with her.

Home.

I know the parts of me that are soothed by her laugh, the closed-off places in me that come alive when she whispers my name, the demons that gain no entry into my anxious mind after she kisses me and holds me, and the forgotten strength that comes rushing back to me when she needs me to hold her, or to let her rest her head on my shoulder, or on my chest, or in my lap. I know what it will mean to the two of us, in our private, shared vernacular, when she leaves sticky notes or cards or texts for me, calling me her "little-dick boy." I know how I will smile when she shortens it to LDB, and how she will smile when I refuse to put use uppercase for it, because I am, and always will be, c... "with a small c." I imagine the giggles that would ripple out from her inner circle were she to tell her girlfriends about that part of me, and although I dare not ask her to refrain from sharing that little nugget, I imagine her heart being so taken with mine that I become the one man in her life that she doesn't reveal all about to her friends, instead smiling and holding a good thought for me as the mystery of her affection for me grows with each refusal to kiss and tell. That said, if she wants to torture me with threats of telling them everything, I've a feeling I would surrender completely to that, too.

What is our life together like? Hmm. There's no all-inclusive answer, but there are little flashes I've had from time to time. Call them hunger pangs. Call them items on my bucket list. The spirit, if not the letter, of my wish list. We read to each other — in bed, over the phone, while the other bathes, maybe even while the other sleeps. We discover the world together. Its music. Its art. Its beautiful souls. We walk to the coffee shop and sit together, sometimes in silence, sometimes exchanging caffeinated chatter. I write stories for her. I'm terrible at verse, so the short pieces I scribble for her could not be called poetry, but she will admit to loving the unexpected haiku, the slipped-into-her-purse essay, the email out of the blue, the heart traced on the bathroom mirror, only to appear in the steamy aftermath of her next hot shower. I'm a writer, so I'm sworn to uphold the directive "show, don't tell," yet I will mix the two, showing and telling, in the most artful, loving ways I can create, inspired by her tenderness and love for me.

We share our fantasies, the fuel of the fires that burned before we met, and we give them space to breathe and continue burning, whether we ever act on them (alone or together) or simply let them be what they are — even as we embrace what they do for the fires that ignited when we came together. I might be her "dirty little cocksucker" in name only, or for her viewing pleasure, or for her and for her friends, or I might be her "good boy," rewarded for the control I surrender to her over my tiny little thing. We give each other a wide berth for our play time, because who would have imagined how hot it would be for her to send me to work wearing a pair of scandalously red panties, or what innocent, child-like dress-up fun it would be for her to let me feel what it's like to allow her to help me put lipstick on, or whatever she wants me to experience? She might not own a strap-on, but she might — and she may well, now and again, want to connect with me by bending me over, taking me, and bonding with me in a way that evokes a type of tender empathy and caring for me that she cannot feel when she is not fucking me that way. When it suits her mood, she teases me, undressing for me, masturbating for me, wanting me to kiss her when she climaxes, or to clean her up with my tongue, which in turn would create more to lick up, which would lead to more climaxes, which would be my ecstasy as much it would be hers. She might talk about — and maybe insist upon — me watching her be filled by another man, a man with the size and girth I do not have, and from a place of strength built by the rock of our love together, be grateful that she is able to find that satisfaction and comfortable enough with me to know she can have it. And maybe, just maybe, she will want me to lick her clean after that as well.

Or maybe all of that will be fodder for our fantasies, as we keep our real-world play just between us.

We won't be afraid to talk about the things that couples all too often hide from each other — that person we saw who turned us on, that quirk we've always had that we never let a lover know about, that secret Hall Pass list we've constructed only in our minds, or where we think the restlessness comes from when we find ourselves looking but not touching. We will allow each other space and time to be with our selves, which everyone needs, and to decompress away from each other. That healthy time will make us stronger together as well as individually, because neither of us wants to lose sight that ultimately, regardless of our bond, regardless of what the romance novels say, we came into this world alone, and we will leave it that way. We lose ourselves in each other only in the sense of the poem we are writing with our shared life together, but never in that ways that rob us of the ability to nurture and heal each other with those things that make us who we are, separately.

She will not need to be told the things you have said to me lately — "You are not your organ or your obsessions. Or your circumstances." That is how she will feel about me. As for the other things I perceive as my other shortcomings or limitations, she will fulfill the promise inherent in these words you once said to me about my view of myself: "I know a few things about you, and I still think you are adorable. Am I not right??" She will make me wonder why I ever worried about what anyone else would think of me, or how they would see me.

I help her dress for her girls' night out. I brush her hair when she wants me to. I paint her toenails. Maybe she paints mine.

As I reflect on what I've said so far, I realize it makes me seem like a delicate flower, a sissy boy. And yet, the woman I want takes comfort in the fact that I am a big man, and in the safety net I offer in walking with her at night or in new places is an odd counterpoint to the secret she and I will share about my one tiny feature. I will be, always, her little-dick boy and her big man. Both. And she will be my goddess, my queen, when she's queening me, and when she's not.

Am I being too general? I am trying to answer your question but leave enough room in my answer for the possibility of a very real woman, out there somewhere, who would pick up the vibrations of my words to you, as if they are a wish sent out into the universe in the hope of a reply. If I were to tell you the laughs we'd have together would be inspired by a certain comedian or movie or play or situation, I might not be allowing for the flesh-and-blood reality I sometimes breathlessly imagine coming into my life. If I were to frame things in terms of specific cultural and social structures within which we'd engage with the world, I would be limiting the possibilities. The details matter far less than the soul. I'm reminded of the wisdom I once heard spoken by a man about his wife: "I don't have to believe in what she believes in; I just have to believe in her."

—

As I write this, I realize there is context you lack to fully integrate this letter into your mental picture of me. I can share with you a personals ad I once posted, when the submissive side of me was as profoundly aching as the broken side, and let you see that part of me in ways you may not already understand. Before I do that, there are basic facts you should know, J, especially pertaining to the side of me that's deferential and submissive.

I grew up in a house full of women and largely absent a male presence. Including my mother, there were four older females at home, and when you consider their friends, and female relatives, and how often my father was away on business or some form of escape, when you think about my formative years being shaped by an abundance of all things female, the picture should start to fill out for you. Yes, there was doll play. Yes, there was dress-up. Certainly, there were dares, and there was smothering, and extra mothering, sometimes in a domineering way, sometimes in a sweet, protective older-sister way.

J, you're an educated woman. I can't imagine it would be hard for you to connect the dots from my early years to the time, decades later, of submitting to a woman, of dressing how she tells me, of slipping into a pair of panties because she tells me my little dick will feel so much cozier that way. I'm willing to bet you've got a better handle now on how coming of age amid dresses and other lacy things, with bath oils and perfumes and lotions and heels and handbags and lipstick and so many girly things that innately felt to me like the materials of construction of a safe, warm cocoon. For the first 12 years of my schooling, most of my teachers were women. At gatherings, it has always felt normal for me to gravitate toward the women in the room, and to become a part of their conversations, and over the years, I have heard frank discussions as I seemed to all but blend into the population of females on that side of the room. And being raised to be a good boy, a good little gentleman, I always did their bidding, going above and beyond to please.

Did I ever doubt my manhood, my gender, my sex? I can't say that. I do know I somehow sensed early on that I was different, but not in a way I or my therapist would call gay. In fact, through all of the stories my sex therapist has heard about my oral skills and fixations, including the one about why I love to give oral pleasure to women, and about my submission to toys and strap-on play, she has maintained that she has never doubted that I am a man. A man, she says, genteel and sweet, kind, with empathy and an above average understanding of women, and with an openness to play and creative expression and new experiences - all of them under the guidance or the command of an open-minded, strong woman.

Along the way, my dick felt like it was disappearing, and the dominance took on a more blunt tone, with me relegated to being useful primarily through my oral skills. And as I felt more and more broken, I longed for the familiar, for some updated version of that safe, warm cocoon.

Now that you know all of that, I will let you read what I posted in that ad more than a year ago:

This will not be for everyone. It might not be for anyone. But, a boy can dream.

Are you dominant, with a tender, nurturing core? Looking for a project, something you can watch grow, like a seedling that flourishes and blooms slowly, over time and under your capable watch? For the right woman, that can be me. But, this is not for everyone who sees herself as dominant.

The right gardener might have other trees that bend to her command, or tower magnificently for her pleasure, or do both to suit her varying moods. No, she will not seek in me, nor find in me, the completion of all of her needs as a dominant. Maybe she has been there and done that, and she seeks a new voyage. Or, she has a nearly full garden but has need for something special in a previously dark corner now revealing a void in new sunlight. At any rate, she is not without experience, and she is not lacking in choices. But, she may very well derive the right combination of satisfaction in the nourishment and guidance that brings together her public persona and her private domain for this new project.

She will see what's broken in her new pet and know what can be fixed and what can't. She will teach him to learn to accept himself for who he is, at the same time she guides him toward the inevitable discovery of exactly who that person is, has always been evolving toward - even as he has been fighting it, resisting it. She will have to have the patience necessary to slowly discover that he cannot answer what she likely wants to know right away: what his limits are. But, she is the teacher, the absolute perfect teacher, to lead him to this discovery as well.

She will come to see that his whole life has been leading him to her. From his early days surrounded by women, in a house in which he was the only male 90 percent of the time, surrounded by them at school and at work, he has within him the innate sense that the intoxication of doing as commanded, of following instruction, of pleasing by doing and by learning, is the only intoxication that has any real meaning. But, to find his one true liquor never brewed, he has trekked through mountains and oh-so-many valleys.

She will see the shadow of the glorious creation he could become, and she will set him on that path, under her firm and gentle touch. She will see him as more than a project - he will get inside her heart and provoke a tenderness she once had but perhaps lost along the way, or maybe displaced for self-preservation. And she will know what it feels to care enough to take control for all the right reasons. But, this is not for everybody, and maybe not for anybody, so this will have to strike a note of instant recognition for the right dominant, the one who knows something has been missing but, until now, did not know how to articulate what it was.

She will understand, as she always has, that it is not about the destination, but rather, the journey. But, ultimately, she recognizes, she has always been his destination.

She will find it adorable the way he blushes, and how in little-boy shyness he can have the most awkward way of trying to express his needs. But, she will teach him to think about her needs, and to communicate to her, with and without words, his desire to fulfill them.

She has learned from her mistakes, learned all of the lessons inherent in what she often has called "the lifestyle," and she has come full circle to an appreciation for the way the dynamics of such a relationship are simple in their complexity and yet fraught with peril because of the way they challenge conventional thinking. But, on the other side of that mine field, intact and informed and invested in her new reality, she is empowered by what her mistakes have taught her.

She will be patient with the real-world demands upon his time, and with his need to gradually submit to her. But, she will never let him take his eye off the ball.

She will see him as he is. But, she will see him as she will cultivate him, liberate him, nurture him into the best version of himself.

She might not find him. But, she might.

How will they know each other? They will know.

—

J, I honestly can't say how much of the person who wrote that ad is still me. There are aspects I didn't share in it, and there are things about me that you know that someone reading that ad wouldn't know. What do I want, J? Taking into account the person who wrote that ad and the person who is writing this letter to you, I can say this: I want to feel loved, and to love. I want to feel lovable. Little dick, big heart, with a strong submissive side but a hidden strength waiting to be set free, much like the form an ice sculptor brings out of a big, frozen block. What is frozen in me thirsts for the thaw, and the warmth that will bring it, and will be her prize sculpture, proud and grateful in those fleeting moments before I melt at her feet.

Oh, and about that little dick of mine ... that part of me that has long been broken, and feels like it will eventually disappear ... it's funny how, when I talk with women on chat lines and they talk dirty to me, explicitly telling me what they would do to me, or what they want me to do to them (often in voices of faux arousal), their overtures don't register a blip on my radar. But the strangest thing happens when I hear a sweet voice, a sincere voice, describing affection and love and gentleness and how she wants to be someone's safe harbor — that part of me stirs, awakens, swells, remembering the way things once were, springing to life in a way that catches me by surprise. Just the other day, I woke up to a miracle, one I first thought was a dream — a full-on erection, strong, thick, eager, apparently brought on by nothing more suggestive than my brief acceptance of the possibility that the woman I am describing to you does, in fact, exist, and has been waiting to find me and love me.

How about that, huh?

J, I wonder about her, now. Is it possible that looking at big, hard cocks or at porn videos or having phone sex with macho men fail to arouse her passions, but what really gets her wet and tingly is to imagine someone sweet, in love with her, devoted, someone who is like me, someone with so many facets and quirks and peccadilloes, yet with so much love to give? Is her body waiting to come alive again at the thought of me? At the reality of me? I wonder, J. Maybe she needs her shoulders and back and neck and tummy and thighs and feet and arms touched, maybe even her nipples and vulva, but in less a sexual way than in a way that acknowledges they are all parts of the vessel that carries her soul. And maybe in that touching, she will also need the explosion, and I will be all too eager to make it happen with my devotion to her, with my lips, tongue, fingers and love.

And yet, that surprise hard-on notwithstanding, there will be more times, I'm sure, far more, when we are next to each other, and it's tiny, limp, almost impossibly small, maybe even clit-like, and she knows I still need her to touch me there. There would be nothing to stroke, no expectation of an intense, pulsating explosion, but instead, a recognition that this is part of my body, a part that like any other, craves human contact, love, touch, and needs to feel her fingers on me down there. Even if she only lightly teases me, with fingertips and nails, it will make me feel alive again. If she cups her hand around my balls and little dick, it will be comforting, like that protective cocoon. And I will feel safe. I've run from that part of myself. I've covered up that part of myself. I've denied that part of myself. Now I feel ready to feel safe enough with the right woman to trust that I can be naked with her, with no need to hide, and we can laugh about it and play together, and every time she teases me, it will feel like warm, healing love.

Maybe the reason it took me this long to answer your question is because I was afraid to see it in words on a page, knowing full well that to some, it reads like something ripe for mockery. Or that when I'd read it back to myself, it would make me cringe with the full force and effect of all of my self-doubt. Or that what the dominant women I have met have said is true: that men with little dicks don't deserve anything because they have nothing to give. Or, maybe, it's because I wasn't ready to believe that if I sent these words to you and put them out into the cosmos, I just might find who I am looking for, or she might find me, and I might finally know it feels to be happy again. Maybe it's the impossible dream.