My first husband Jim was born and raised in Palo Alto, California, very close to a university where his father had been a very well-paid administrator. His parents had bought their home in the 1950s and it was worth over two million dollars when they died in a car accident. It quickly doubled in value again before Jim worked through the will and finished moving in. Palo Alto, it seemed, had become the preferred address of the newly wealthy tech millionaires in the area referred to as "Silicon Valley."
Jim borrowed against the property to pay off some inheritance taxes, and also borrowed several hundred thousand dollars more. He quit his job with the small clothing import company he worked for and bought a garment factory in the Philippines and designs from a shop in Paris. It took just a single "back to school" season to earn his money back. From there he just kept building. He became quite wealthy. This all happened before we met, but I think it says a lot about what kind of man Jim was.
How Jim and I found each other was like the movie "Pretty Woman." Except instead of the rich guy meeting the hooker he eventually marries in on a street corner, we met playing a poker game on an early on-line service. It was love at first text.
We liked each other immediately and we'd trade barbs and trash talk as we played for hours each night. Chatting turned first to flirting and eventually some pretty hot sexting. To the extent you can have an intimate relationship and sex life with a man you've only met online, we had one.
This was years before video chat. It was all via text and imagination. We swapped a few very innocent pictures through the mail, but never really thought we would meet in real life. That changed when I had a medical emergency that landed me in the hospital for weeks. He surprised me by coming to the hospital in Iowa to see me.
Yes, just to say it, I really had been a small-town hooker, and I was well known even outside the taverns and truck stops I called home. Because of some legal trouble thatI'd been in, even the nurses who were taking care of me knew who and what I was.
Soon enough Jim did too. It was all a surprise to him of course, but he had to admit that I had warned him. I had told him what I did for a living while we chatted on-line, but he'd thought I was just talking dirty to him.
It should have been awkward, but it wasn't. That night we talked until the nurses threw him out, and the next day I greeted him with the kind of warmth that gave him the message that I was interested in him as more than just a poker partner.
We kissed and made out like teenagers when we could get away with it, and finally went farther one night when the night nurse gave him permission to stay. She even detached the heart and blood-pressure monitoring equipment that would have surely gone haywire while we were getting busy.
It was like I was having sex or the first time. I actually cared for the man I was fucking.
When I was finally ready to leave the hospital, Jim proposed to me right there in front of the nurses, who had been tipped off in advance and stole flowers from other guests so they could throw petals in the air when I said yes.
We left immediately. No forwarding address. No discussion with my estranged family. The old me simply ceased to exist. We married less than a month after meeting for the first time in real life.
Jim worked long hours and traveled a lot. I didn't know what to do with myself in those early months so I finished up the high school education. I had been a horrible student but found that going to school free of drugs, alcohol, horny boys and a sexually and mentally abusive dad did wonders for my ability to study and make good grades.
When Jim was home from his travels, things were good, but he took some getting used to. He was over a decade older than me. Smart. Driven. Handsome in his own way. Most surprising though, he was dependable, kind and considerate. I had never met a man like him.
Jim and I discussed a bit about my life, and then made me promise not to tell him anymore. He said it made him angry. I found out that he'd been married before -he said she was something of an ice princess. (I had to figure out for myself that meant that she was a bitch who used money and sex as a weapon against her husband.)
His perfect life and his perfect first wife had been boring for him, and our on-line chats had revealed to him that I represented a different way of living life. He'd delighted in my "earthy" view of the world, my nasty wit, and my "sass." I guess I had a knack for making men comfortable telling me what they want sexually. (I had made good money from those kinds of things as a working girl.)
Over time, Jim opened up to me about what he wanted and desired. He had grown up near San Francisco at a time when it was ground zero for the sexual revolution. It was the wild, wild west of sex, and he felt like he had missed it all. He wanted to experience it for himself.
It was an easy enough thing to give him, and so I indulged him.
At first, it was a home-based exploration. We had met playing poker and still enjoyed it. Our games became about power. You lose, and you were the slave for the rest of the night. With no kids at home, it got very rowdy.
Jim, I found, enjoyed bondage and had a deep-rooted need for some sexual teasing and even humiliation in his life. He enjoyed both giving and being on the receiving end.
It began with simple bondage. He'd tie me down and make me suck his cock or I'd tie him up and sit on his face. It progressed. Nipple pinches. Squeezing of balls. Hickey's on the inside of the thigh. A heavy facial that got in my eyes. A painfully slow blowjob to completion followed by a deep, white and wet kiss that he was too restrained to avoid.