By Mezmerelda

 

Yesterday I had the best cup of coffee of my life.  I went to a café in the suburbs of Boston to interview someone about her wish to attend a skirt club party.  I use the generic reference of “skirt club” since there is in fact a UK based organization that goes by that title.   For those reading this and are as yet unaware, skirt club parties are events hosted for women in committed heterosexual relationships who desire the company of another woman.  Perhaps they have tried that sort of relationship and perhaps not.  The events are private, moderately priced, and those desiring entrance are properly vetted, even to the extent of a criminal background check.  Above all else, the identity of the woman is sacrosanct.  A false identity is a requirement.  I had originally sent out feelers in the hopes of attending such an event but all quiet on the eastern front for a while, and I reminded myself this is chilly New England so getting a response might not be easy.  All I got were bites from those asking me to let them know when I found an occasion.  To date I have not attended, but the future looks bright!  I decided talking to a hopeful attendant was easily just as good for now, and a good beginning to a series.

Anyway, I ordered my coffee, sat at a back table and waited.  I had not conducted this type of interview before, or really any sort of sex related writing, so this was an interesting gig.   I didn’t have to wait long and I knew it was her when she walked in.  Petite, long dark hair and polite to the barista, I took a deep and satisfying sip of my coffee and waited for the meeting to unfold.

Once we were settled, we began the dance that would continue for almost an hour and a half.

Mez:  “So are you married?”

Ángelita:  “Yes.  I have four children.  We were married when I was 18, he is my best friend, a very good man, a very cerebral man, but we have gone separate ways sexually.  We haven’t been together in four years.”

Mez:  Stunned silence.  If I didn’t say it already, this woman is very attractive.  “So you are looking to attend one of the parties I had listed on the website?”

Ángelita:  “Yes, I’d love to.  I actually almost found such a venue, I think, but when I started to hear more about it, I decided it could be risky or just weird.”

Mez:  “Weird?”

Ángelita:  “Well she said it was all about love, respect, privacy, and all things that makes sense, but then she said once you were in attendance you were not allowed to say “no.””  She was very cute (the girl with whom she had been corresponding via skype) , and quite young, but that just isn’t enough.  Not being able to say “no”?  Too weird.  I have other things I can tell you that are also very interesting.

Mez:  “You mentioned you are in or have been in a three year relationship with another man.  Tell me about that and how it relates to your current journey.”

Ángelita:  “Yes.  This man is also very cerebral but in a different way.  He studies many things, one of which is sex and how to please women.  We drove to Jersey to a club where couples swapped and had sex there.

Mez:  A regular club?

Ángelita:  “Yup.  You paid a cover charge and then people were swapping partners inside.  I don’t want to sound, whatever, but let’s just say I am a little picky and so is he so we decided swapping would not be part of our night.  I gave him oral and then he played with me.”

Mez:  “Only in Jersey”.

Ángelita:  (laughter).  Only in Jersey.  But he has taught me a lot and I can tell him everything.  When it first started out I didn’t mind too much that he was also married with children.  My husband and I have conversations about my needs and he knows I need to find other outlets, and this other man and I still have a relationship, but it has been evolving.  It feels like sometimes we are playing kick the can, each taking turns kicking the can, but I feel like one of these days the can will get kicked too far and the other won’t be able to kick it back.  He is a great friend of mine and I value him a great deal but we are on different journeys.  We are still very good friends and he was supportive of this interview and supportive of all the things I want to try on the journey I am on.  I am a very sexual being and I very much need to connect with a person I am having sex with.  It is not just about the sex.  I need to feel something else, I need to connect.”

Ángelita would talk in a beautiful, almost hypnotizing way.  She has a form of purring I don’t know she is aware of, but every time she spoke of her handsome husband or someone she found attractive, she would insert this kind of feisty purr along with a tiger-like expression that was quite frankly tantalizing.  This interviewer was swept off her feet several times.

Mez:  You have alluded to your childhood a few times as far as its influence on who you are now sexually.  Can you tell me about that?

Ángelita:  I was born in Columbia and things are different there.  At age 10 I was aware of my father’s affairs with other women, of my mother’s boyfriend, really of a lot of different affairs between the adult men in my life and other women.  A woman is subservient to a man.  A man is called “Papi” by his wife and a wife is “Mami”.  It is a very clear line of respect and of subservience, but as a young girl of 10, I was only on my way to that.  I had a big family, and my father had lots of friends.  He coached a soccer team and the men would come over, and they all loved me, told me I was beautiful.  I remember being dressed up, getting passed around – not in a bad way, but an adoring way.  I was definitely in a state of euphoria during those parties.   There was lots of drinking and smoking and sometimes I would fall asleep on the metal tables in the restaurant.  But I loved it.  I felt so much love through this attention, and I was so much the center of attention, well, because I was.  And while there was nothing that could be taken as any misbehavior by these men, I know it is part of why I am who I am.  The part that loves to touch, be touched, and like I said, to connect.  It is a childhood I would never let my own daughter experience but I wouldn’t trade a day of it for anything.  Then we moved to the states and everything changed.  Both my parents worked to provide and the nurturing from the rest of the family was gone now since they were back home.

Mez:  So you had to find a different way of satisfying your curiosities?

Ángelita:  Yes.   I became a volunteer at the library when I was twelve so I could read things that would have been noticed had I just been checking the material out.  That way I didn’t have to look the librarians in the eyes.  Novellas that were totally inappropriate.  Marquis De Sade.  Anything like that.

Mez:  You have four children.

Ángelita:  Yes.  Three sons, 24, 22 and 18.  My daughter is 10.

Mez:  10?  Hmmm.

Ángelita:  My husband realized I was going through something.  I was literally in the closet with toys and contacting other people, watching others have sex on various sites and using that as an outlet for my desire.  He said “Okay, it’s time to have another child.  You need to settle down.”  And he’s right in the sense that my children come first.  I am totally focused on being a good mother, but that does not mean that everything else goes away.  So that’s what I mean about being on a journey.  I told him what I wanted.  He told me what he was willing to do, and there is just too huge of a gap in between those things.  Everyone tells me how lucky I am.  He’s handsome, is an engineer.  And he can fix things.

Mez:  Well that really does sound ideal.  Can’t you just maintain that and then do something else on the side since that seems to be approved by him?

Ángelita:  No.  I don’t want that.  There was a time, before my daughter, when we could have been divorced but it wouldn’t have been a good divorce and it would have been an ugly ending to what so far had been a beautiful life together.  When my parents came here, there was a definite role reversal.  Here in the US women have power, or at least that is the spin my mother had on it, and she didn’t treat my dad well.  Punished him and didn’t seem to realize doing that is also punishing herself.  I told myself I will not repeat that behavior.  I will not punish my husband.

Ángelita and I talked for a long while about some of her adventures, of while on one hand she was treated as a princess, she was also taught to fend for herself.  She got in fights with her brothers, and she held her own.  I mentioned my wish to go to several other events in addition to the women only party scheduled for later this summer, and she volunteered to be my bodyguard.

Ángelita:  I’m tough, and I’ll go with you for free just to also have the experience.  I have volunteered at several events.  As I said, I’m a nurse and I noticed there seem to be quite a few nurses who volunteer for some of these events where people get together.  In this particular case she was referring to a bondage event where she had helped people to check in, administration, as needed.

The writing of this article eventually led to a couple of conversations since I won’t publish anything my interviewee does not approve, so we chatted.  I realized I had left out a key question.

Mez:  Have you ever been with a woman?

Ángelita:  Yes, well just fooling around a little but not to completion.

Mez:  To climax?

Ángelita:  No.  Well not yet.

We laughed.  That is what August will be about, after all.  As she pointed out to me, that journey is not yet over either.

 

What a varied soul, this Ángelita.  A nurse, photographer, spit-fire of a woman.  What she wants is what most of us want – a full life.  A sense of completeness that is not easy to achieve with one given partner for an extended period of time.  She is on a journey to find that, and the journey is something else and something wonderful, and this interviewer is glad to have been a small part of it.  Thank you Ángelita.