Kissing Women
In college, I was required to take a health course to graduate, and I chose Human Sexuality because it was the most interesting offering available. One of the most impactful things I learned in that class was that human sexuality is basically a continuum. A few people are completely heterosexual or homosexual, but the vast majority of people are somewhere in the middle. This made sense to me at the time, but in a kind of abstract way. At that point in my life, I’d never thought of myself as anything but solidly heterosexual. I’ve always been attracted to men, although I could definitely appreciate women.
I’d just never really had the opportunity or the inclination to create an opportunity around being with another woman, and so it wasn’t until I was in my 40s that I guessed there was anything to be done about that.
I believe that for the preponderance of people who are not at the extreme poles of the human sexuality spectrum, who you find sexually attractive is largely a function of conditioning and opportunity. Living in a hetero-oriented world, it’s not surprising that most people, if they don’t know they are gay, think that they are entirely heterosexual. Growing up, it was always kind of an either/or. Which team are you on, rather than considering who is attractive in the moment, with gender not being a baseline factor. That was me, until a few years ago.
Twenty years into a pretty darn good marriage, I suddenly got the yen to bring another guy into our relationship. I wasn’t entirely sure why at the time, but it was like a call that was outside myself, and I really wanted to follow it. I found out later on that I was looking for a particular man, but that’s another story. When I finally got the drunken courage to tell my partner that I wanted to see what it would be like to have sex with him and another guy, he told me, “Sure, we can do that. No problem.” The only caveat was that he also wanted to try an FMF as well, and although I’d never been with a woman before, that seemed only fair. James wasn’t going to be sexually intimate with the guy, but he was going to willingly and enthusiastically participate in a three-way with me and another man. I figured that FMF was something that I’d be willing to try for his sake since he was being so generous about my fantasy, but I was still a little bit nervous at that point.
This is a good place to point out that although sexual fluidity has become much more accepted in recent years, this still applies a lot more readily to women. There are plenty of otherwise open-minded men and women alike who think that the idea of two men being sexually intimate is just plain wrong and gross. Jokes about what happens if you accidentally “cross swords” or otherwise touch another guy in passing are ubiquitous and lots of guys won’t even consider an MFM because they just can’t deal with the thought of being naked in bed with another guy, even if there is no expectation of sexual contact.
This is a huge loss on their part because as I’ve heard several other women agree, nothing makes me hotter than being at the center of attention in an MFM and if I’m happy, they are darn sure gonna end up being really happy as well!
In any case, we went looking for the guy, but as I said, it isn’t necessarily the easiest thing to find (especially since we were actually looking for a very specific guy), and we were new to the best places to look so we started with a couple. They were younger than us but nice and really easy-going. Mostly, I was with him and James was with her, but there was a little bit of kissing and contact between me and the woman — just enough to get my confidence up. It kind of broke the initial ice for me. A few weeks later we went to a “lifestyle” club in a nearby city, and I saw a woman who really appealed to me, much more than any man in the club that night. She had her white tailored blouse unbuttoned to her navel with nothing on underneath and her small, but nicely shaped breasts periodically came into view as she danced. I liked her confidence even more than I liked her perfect little tits, and I realized that I liked those a lot! After a while, she and her husband sat down near us and we started a conversation. I could have cared less about him. She and I were flirting in the way I’d only ever done with a man before. Our faces were close together as we talked, and after a time I leaned in and asked if I could kiss her. It was completely uncharted territory for me but it was also very exciting for that very reason. I’m not particularly shy, but growing up in a hetero world, the guy was always kind of expected to be the one taking the lead, and I had had a couple of experiences where if I bucked that at all, the guy didn’t always appreciate it.
It seems that many men want women to be sexually available but not sexually confident, or as it’s more often pejoratively termed, sexually aggressive. But I was getting the opportunity to do that now, without being told it was wrong, and I liked the adventure of it.
Her name was Susan— just a nice looking late 30s woman with shoulder length blonde hair and a lot of sexual energy going on. We kissed and talked a little more until the kissing became more insistent and the talking stopped. We were sitting in a crowded club, with our husbands on either side of us, but at that moment, no-one else was around. I asked her if I could put my hands inside her shirt and touch those beautiful breasts. She nodded assent, and I ran my hands along the undersides, cupping them and then fingered the nipples just in the same way that I liked to be touched. The only thing I knew about touching women was by going on what I liked. So far, so good. In fact, after a while, she pulled me down until we were laying on the padded bench that we’d been sitting on. By then, she had partially unzipped my bustier and her hands were exploring my bare breasts as well. I started to play with the waistband on her jeans and after a while, I unbuckled her belt. A bit later I reached my hands inside her partially opened jeans and rubbed the top of her pubic bone. I wanted to see what it was like to put my hands there but to also give her the opportunity to stop me before I reached any further down. She let me rub her there for a while but then eventually moved my hand away. I don’t know if she got scared or if her husband intervened, or if she’d just gone far enough. In any case, we stopped and sat back up. It was a little bit awkward coming back to reality after such a heady experience, but since the entire thing was completely consensual and ended when she wanted it to, I had no regrets. In a few minutes she and her husband had gone back out on to the dance floor and the moment was over, but it didn’t matter; I’d had my first real experience with a woman. We had all of our clothes mostly on, but it is not an overstatement to say that it opened up a whole new world for me. Given the opportunity and the lack of censure or judgment, I discovered that I was actually quite interested in women also and that I liked being able to be the initiator some times.
James really enjoyed watching me with Susan in the club, but next, he wanted the opportunity to be included as well. Soon after, we met someone online and made plans to get together. Based on my club experiences I was anticipating wanting to go “all in” this time. I didn’t feel that nervous anymore — only a little bit, or so I thought. A few days before our date, James brought me a half mango that he’d carved into the shape of a vulva. It looked very realistic. He told me to start licking and encouraged me in my technique as I did so. After the initial rush of surprise and laughter, I burst into tears — I wasn’t entirely sure why.
James said, “I knew this would be a lot to experience, and I didn’t want you to be embarrassed on our date, so that’s why I thought you should practice with a mango first.”
It wasn’t that I was trying to force myself to do something that I didn’t really want to do. I very much wanted to know what it was like to lick a pussy, it’s just that in order to actually do it, I was going to have to break through 40 years of conditioning that women don’t have sex with other women, except for lesbians and porn stars. I was going to have to shift all of my previous paradigms and that was more daunting than I’d realized. James knew that I’d be alright after I got over the initial hurdle, and I appreciate that he wanted to give me an opportunity to do that, although he still likes to make jokes from time to time about how much I like mangos. Still, I was very grateful that he was insightful enough to understand, even when I didn’t, and to look out for me in that way.
The further I go along, the more I realize that labels tend to constrict things in a way that isn’t necessarily helpful. Am I heterosexual bi-romatic, meaning that I mostly am interested in men but occasionally enjoy the attention of women? Am I bisexual? Is pansexual a better term? Or are these labels largely irrelevant? The way I described it to a vanilla friend, at this juncture, I’m attracted to who I’m attracted to. What their gender is is not as important to me as whether or not they have some interesting quality about them.
After being with several women and men, I can say that I’d rather kiss a woman than any other man except for my husband. The women I’ve kissed — across the board — well, I could kiss them all day long. In general, I prefer a woman with a lot of confidence and a certain amount of masculine energy — not butch or manish but someone who can take up space in a room and who knows who she is and what she is about. Still, there is something about the softness and tenderness of kissing a woman that is very appealing. I could do that for a very long time, and on occasion, I have. I like kissing guys too, but there is just something wonderful about kissing another woman, and I’m very glad that I have gotten to a place in my life where I have the opportunity to do that. Five years ago, I never would have imagined being anything but monogamous and entirely heterosexual, but when I opened myself up to discovering what I actually enjoyed, rather than what I had been conditioned to, I found a whole array of other possibilities. And fortunately, I’m with a man who is also adventurous, and we’ve been able to expand our horizons together. It hasn’t always been a bump-free road, but we both feel like more authentic versions of ourselves now, and that has ultimately been good for us both on a variety of levels. The world is just not nearly as binary a place as we’ve been led to believe, and I’m happy that more and more people are realizing that, because living life according to preconditioned labels is not nearly as fun as kissing women.
