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Johnny- My Friend with Benefits  

kzoopair 72M/71F
8365 posts
2/9/2016 10:49 am
Johnny- My Friend with Benefits


Unknown
"Friends With Benefits" Is The Topic For The Sixteenth Virtual Symposium

Johnny- My Friend with Benefits

Friends with benefits is kind of a cool, detached term. When we talk about friends with benefits we’re thinking of “Sex in the City” with hip and beautiful career women in a trendy and slick metropolis who don’t need men for anything but sex. They’re self contained and self absorbed and they need each other more than they’ll ever need any man. Their friends with benefits are fit, well attired and well coiffed, sensitive to a woman’s needs but never quite sensitive enough, and they’re very successful in business or the arts. There’s an underculture though, a hidden class, with little access to cash, who didn’t go to expensive schools and don’t have careers, and they fuck too. “Blue Velvet”. They have friends with benefits too, and they and their kin have been doing it for generations. A “Walk on the Wild Side”.

I first met Johnny in 1969. I’d seen her around before. She was quite slender and very pretty, too. She must have been fourteen or fifteen when we met, but she already had a reputation as the neighborhood slut. I wasn’t from that neighborhood, but she was beginning to branch out a bit, expanding her horizons. Her name was Juanita Robb but everyone called her Johnny.

I was just turned eighteen and had a room in an old boarding house in Johnny’s part of town, where the factories were, and a third shift job in a wire mill. Reaching eighteen was a big deal then. It meant I could quit the small change minimum wage part time jobs I was stuck with and get that factory job, working eight hours a night for twice the money- about three bucks an hour. Men supported families on that wage in 1969. They didn’t get rich, but they paid for the rent and the groceries with it, and had . So I clocked in at the wire plant at eleven every night and had to try every trick I could think of to keep my eyes open till morning, when I punched out again at seven. It was only eight or ten blocks to school from the mill and on the way was a mom and pop greasy spoon called the Dairy Bar. I began stopping there for breakfast every morning. I had over an hour to kill before my first class anyway and the hot meal refreshed me enough to make it til school began. Once I got to class I could sleep in nearly one hour shifts. I only had three classes and I only needed to pass one to graduate. I had made a deal with the Mass Media teacher that she’d pass me if I kept my mouth shut and didn’t disrupt the class. She’d also agreed to sign me out to the men’s room once a day so I could go outside and burn one. All I had to do was show up and shut up.

One morning, after I’d been stopping at the Dairy Bar for about a week, Johnny and her two brothers asked if I wanted some company at my table. I said sure- I could use the company. The Robb brothers were a couple of white trash jerks, but apparently they had scoped me out and figured I was OK. I was quiet in new surroundings and never gave anyone any shit unless they started something first, and then I was savvy enough to count heads before lipping off. Johnny on the other hand was pretty bright, and quite engaging, actually. I remember finding it hard to square her with her reputation. She seemed to be a pretty good to me, and we started having fun talking every morning. She kept a bit of a rein on her brothers- those two were a real brain trust. I tried to be polite and non committal with them for the most part. These weren’t the first inbred goobers I’d met, and I knew they were just the kind of clannish clowns who’d take offense at the drop of a hat and then feud with you for life. They were careful to make certain I wasn’t hitting on their sister. I reckon they were worried about competition. Wanted to mark their territory.

School ended- I just managed to graduate- and we drifted apart. I got kicked out of my room in the boarding house for having women in my room and had to move. It meant a five mile walk to work and another five home again, but it was summer and I was young. I used that time to think, and I used to cut across country, stomping through the woods and fields and staying out of sight of farmers. In the late summer I got a car, and I felt free. I drove that car to a community college in the fall after work, but I quickly dropped out. I had got myself a new girlfriend, a dancer with a fine big ass, and I had also discovered heroin. They were more compelling than creative writing and art.

I didn’t bump into Johnny anymore, but word of her was around town anyway. She was using drugs by then too and I heard of her from time to time. She’d had a in the late winter, Ralph, and no one was surprised. She’d been the entertainment at the local swimming hole since she was ten or eleven and it was only a matter of time before she’d turn up pregnant and not know who the daddy was. But she did know. My mom was a case worker and Johnny was one of her cases. Ralph’s daddy was Johnny’s daddy- Norbert. Johnny was cagey about how long he’d been screwing her, but she’d admitted that it was him. Johnny was just another one of those hillbilly girls to become irresistible to her kin, and to Johnny, it worked out that if you fucked her, it meant you liked her.

I headed out west. I wanted to see San Francisco and the Pacific Ocean. Haight Ashbury was done by then and the Summer of Love was three years gone. The Haight was full of junkies and hookers. I got a fleabag hotel room over a strip joint, but I didn’t stay long. There’s urban decay nearly everywhere in the country, and finding it in San Fransisco was depressing. When the weather was good I landed at some rock festivals and otherwise just drifted. I eventually drifted back east again.

Johnny had started taking a succession of boyfriends, some of them nice enough guys, but she was one of those girls who couldn’t say no, and all those pairings ended up badly, with hard feelings and recriminations. Johnny was fun, and funny. She was pretty and sexy and guys were bound to want to keep her, but she really couldn’t be kept. It wasn’t her fault. She’d learned early that she was all about sex, and she was good at sex. She liked it too. I had it on good authority that she did. A number of my friends had made it with Johnny.

We finally drifted into sight of one another again after a couple of years apart. Once again it was a shitty job of mine that brought us together. I had got a job assembling brake adjusters- the screw mechanism that keeps brake shoes close enough to the drum to enable them to squeeze against the drum and stop your car, and it was mind numbingly boring. You were supposed to be able to screw six hundred of those things together in an hour. Why anyone would actually attempt that feat escaped me, when it would have been easy just to hang yourself instead. Just a few hundred feet from the factory, a friend of mine had started a drug abuse clinic, the first one in our town. My friend was a sociology major and had been a member of a task force investigating drug abuse sponsored by the state attorney general. He was rewarded with the clinic to run. I used to hang out at the clinic at dinner break, and as I had no place to stay yet my buddy told me I could crash there at night, but I had to wait til closing time at nine.

The meetings were running late one night when I showed up at nine, and Johnny was there, so I sat in on the group and talked with them til everyone left, but she hung around and wouldn’t leave. My buddy finally managed to get her out the door and rolled his eyes at me. We got high in his office and he headed home. Finally I got a chance to roll out my sleeping bag and collapsed on it.

Just as I was about to drift off I heard a tapping at the front door. It was Johnny. I tried to get her to go away- I really did. I didn’t want to screw up my only sleeping arrangements. But she made it clear she wasn’t interested in whether I got any sleep or not. And she looked good. I let her in. She laid right down on my sleeping bag. I joined her. We cuddled there on the sleeping bag and talked, and pawed each other. She started kissing me. I did not know until that night that Johnny had had a - we had some catching up to do. It had been rumored and I’d heard the rumors, but I was never sure what I could believe. Johnny had stretch marks though, and she explained matter of factly why.

She stayed for a couple of hours and left as perfunctorily as she had come. It had all been easy. I was to learn that fucking Johnny was always easy. It was as natural as fucking was ever meant to be. We’d talk and joke and laugh and touch each other without pretense, having fun. I don’t recall it ever being so intense and passionate that we didn’t talk and laugh. We never really stopped being friends. There was intensity and passion, certainly, but we just didn’t take it that seriously. And we always finished laughing.

Johnny was crazy for butt fucking. She loved anal sex, and she prompted me to it. She was my anal mentor. There was no discussion. She just grabbed my dick and aimed it at her anus and said “There”. I was already well lubed from her juices and she knew what she was doing. I fucked her like that for a while- I have no idea how long- when she got a smirk on her face and began masturbating me with her sphincter. She held my face so she could see my eyes and watched me lose control. And I lost control quickly. I begged her to let up and she laughed and I knew she wasn’t going to let me rest. I exploded inside her and she was clearly well satisfied with herself. She must have enjoyed that. She’d had so little control and this was one little way she could be in charge. She had owned me, that much was certain.

We drifted apart again. I got clean, and got married. Johnny didn’t quit shooting smack, but she did get married. She met Sam Brundage, and he was a hateful -of-a-bitch. I had known Sam’s sister, in a biblical sense, and I had worked with his little brother. They were from the same clannish and distrustful gene pool as the Robb family, but Sam was one of the ones who are just plain mean. He’d done time and came out meaner than Clyde Barrow without being as smart and if that bastard loved anything I can’t guess what it might have been. The fucker had cold reptile eyes and lank greasy hair, and I think Johnny must have thought she’d finally be safe as his wife. If she did she was wrong. No one was ever safe in the same room with that twisted prick and once married he would never allow her to sleep around and live. She hadn’t thought that through.

I didn’t see much of Johnny during her Sam phase, but it didn’t last that long. Their brief union produced another , Jimmy, and Sam headed out for parts unknown. Johnny started dealing dope, and when my own marriage failed I used to visit her from time to time. She was still good company and we’d get high and hang out, or not get high and fuck, but it wasn’t a regular thing. When I felt like seeing her I’d drop by, and she was always glad to see me, and I always left laughing and feeling better. I couldn’t change anything for Johnny and I never tried. We liked each other and we hooked up from time to time. I didn’t know much, but I knew better than to try to make a permanent thing with Johnny. As long as I didn’t get too close, she could trust me. And I didn’t dare get too close to her. That way lay madness.

After a couple of years of this, Johnny began keeping company with Ray, a close friend of mine, and Ray regularly fielded threats of violent retribution from Sam, who’d show up from time to time to assert his rights. Johnny fended him off pretty well- she surprised me. She stood her ground and told him he was through and for some reason he took it. I never did understand what went on between those two. Ray talked a good game but I knew he was just as wary of that psycho motherfucker as I was. You didn’t want to be around Sam when you were unarmed.

Along about this time Johnny fucked up and sold a bag of heroin to a narcotics agent. That agent was a user himself and not much more than a rat, but that’s how it’s done. They get close to people, gain their trust however briefly and then snitch once they’ve scored. She was a very small time dealer but still counted as another notch on his gunstock. Narcs aren’t looking to stop the drug trade. They’re just parasites, leeching both sides for whatever drops of blood they can suck up and then moving on of necessity because they burn up their welcome quickly everywhere they go. Even the cops hate them. It’s a dangerous way to live- somebody is always wanting to kill them.

Johnny went to prison. She didn’t like it there, so she didn’t stay. Her sentence was relatively lenient. She was a mother of two sons, and she was as charming in court as she ever was with anyone- she was very, very charming and disarming, and cute too. That little thing, when she got dolled up she looked as innocent as a skinny Shirley Temple. She knew how to charm the pants off men. She’d done it with me, and dozens of others. After not much more than a year she got assigned to a halfway house in Grand Rapids, and she walked away. I got a call from Ray one night and he said “Johnny’s escaped.” I drove to meet him and discovered it wasn’t exactly “Escape from Alcatraz”- she’d simply walked away from a halfway house. This was bad, and I tried to explain my point of view. She had six months to spend in that place, and although I believed her when she said it was miserable, who the hell can’t put up with six months?

I wasn’t about to turn her in, which was why I was the guy they’d called, but this couldn’t end well. I talked til my jaw hurt, and I repeated myself til I was sick of my own voice and everything I was saying, but I wasn’t getting any traction. A smart friend would have picked up the phone and called a cop, but I wasn’t that friend. I valued their trust. Lord help me, I was honored that they trusted me, that Johnny trusted me to do as she asked. I might have to pay for this. I guess that if I had it to do over again, I’d do the same thing. I kept their secret.

Reunited with Ray on the lam, Johnny got pregnant, and had a beautiful little blonde girl, Louanne. Ray was as proud and doting a father as you could ask for, but by this time, Ray was a patient at a methadone clinic, and he was fast becoming an alcoholic. He was a Vietnam veteran, and he managed to land a job at the post office due to that, but at thirty three years old he’d managed to abuse himself into impotency. After Louanne’s arrival, he lost all interest in sex because he was seldom capable of it. I continued visiting them once or twice a week, and I spent a lot of holidays with Johnny and Ray. I was their family, the only one who knew where they were and what they were up to. Ray was working the night shift unloading mail trucks, and he encouraged me to stay with Johnny on Friday nights when he went off to work. He knew she liked me and trusted me, and he knew she was lonely. He also figured he could trust me too.

I was between wives. I had asked my second wife to vacate the premises, and my love life was at low tide. I couldn’t even see the fucking water from where I was standing. My sex life was parched. It was comforting to me to have this particular connection with Johnny and Ray, to be the one person they could count on. It was little enough to be proud of, but I didn’t have a lot otherwise.

One January night, Ray got ready for work, and I got up to go home. He told me he wanted me to stay with Johnny and Louanne. They’d rented movies, and he wanted me to keep Johnny company while he was at work. “Watch a movie with her” he said. “It’s cool.” I wanted to go home- I was tired. But I said I’d stay. He told me to spend the night, but I begged off. “I’ve got my dogs to take care of” I told him.

Ray wasn’t out the door ten minutes when Johnny beckoned to me to come sit on the couch beside her. I knew what this meant, but I did it anyway. She talked about how she missed sex. She said Ray never fucked her anymore. I babbled about how it was the meds, and the booze, and what they could do to fix that, how it wouldn’t be easy, but if they worked at it, it could work out again. I was talking to myself, trying to fend off the inevitable, trying to distract myself. Johnny sure as hell wasn’t buying it. When she put her arms around me I gave up. Fuck it- I’m only human, and not an especially disciplined human at that. She had broached this subject with me before, but had never suggested that I was the remedy. Now I was more than willing to minister to her needs.

It’s remarkable what insane shit you can talk yourself into believing if your need is great enough. I must have fucked Johnny three times that night. And I managed to convince myself that I was doing a good deed. It’s easy for you, the reader, to see how full of shit I was. It’s easy for me too, now, thirty years later. But when the sap is rising in you, and there’s a warm and loving woman before you, and she is no stranger to you but a lover and friend of many years, what would you do? I had said no to sex plenty of times when the price was too high, but I couldn’t do it that night.

So Johnny and I became regulars finally. We fucked every chance we got for the next two years. All with Ray’s “blessing”. That’s what we told ourselves. I know I told myself that so much that I came to think it was true. He couldn’t do it, and I did it for him. I kept Johnny close to him. All three of us got closer. I became Louanne’s godfather. I was still the one most trusted friend.

Johnny and Ray got careless. They wanted to start reconnecting with family, and that led to reconnecting with a few friends. One of those friends had a big mouth, and the law tracked Johnny down. She wasn’t a dangerous felon, but she was still a fugitive. She was an escaped con. Johnny went back to prison. She did her time, and was released again to another halfway house. She did get a small amount of free time, and I met her and took her to dinner when Ray couldn’t.

I assumed that we would continue where we had left off. She, for her part, had decided she wanted to be married to Ray. I was good with that. But she had also decided that she had to confess her sins to Ray. “What sins?” I asked. “You” she said. Bad idea, I thought! And I said so. But now I was back in the position of trying to plead my case to Johnny again about why what she contemplated was a lousy plan. And we all know how well that had always worked. She had a bug up her ass to unburden her soul to Ray, and there I stood with nothing in my hands but my dick. For the last two years I had thought we had had an arrangement. Really, all I had was a hard on.

Ray was mad. He denied any knowledge of our affair, and even denied being impotent. He denied being a drunk. He denied having been a methadone junkie. What he did acknowledge was that I had betrayed his trust. On that point, we agreed. It was one thing to know it was happening and not have to look at it. It was another thing entirely to have it rubbed in your face by Johnny, anxious to wipe the slate clean and claim she was seduced. He had to react, and he had to be able to hold his head up with her clan. I never saw either of them again. Years later, Ray found me, and sent me a letter absolving me of my sins. He told me he’d never really loved her. I didn’t believe him. I declined the reunion he had planned. I couldn’t think of a single reason why I’d want to revisit any of that.

Ray died a few years ago of liver failure, and Johnny married a cop.


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tickles4us 62M
7262 posts
2/9/2016 12:09 pm

Life and even FWB can be a complicated business.

Vive La Difference


NaughtyInSO 113F
9755 posts
2/9/2016 12:31 pm

This piece is superb. The image of life you painted took my breath away with it's grim reality so masterfully portrayed here. There's no right or wrong, it just is. And that floors me.

I haven't read anything this powerful, this honest in a long time, maybe ever.
I'm not saying this because I'm your friend and long time admirer, but because this piece touched and moved me in a way that made me gasp for air. And to hug you.

Visit my blog It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World of NaughtyInSO, leave a comment, become a watcher.
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LIVE AND LET LIVE Be happy!
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kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
2/9/2016 2:00 pm

    Quoting tickles4us:
    Life and even FWB can be a complicated business.
It is. It isn't all glitz and expensive clothes and meaningful discussions about where the relationship is going either.

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kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
2/9/2016 2:07 pm

    Quoting NaughtyInSO:
    This piece is superb. The image of life you painted took my breath away with it's grim reality so masterfully portrayed here. There's no right or wrong, it just is. And that floors me.

    I haven't read anything this powerful, this honest in a long time, maybe ever.
    I'm not saying this because I'm your friend and long time admirer, but because this piece touched and moved me in a way that made me gasp for air. And to hug you.
Thank you so much, Pet. I think this does say how it was, for good or ill. She was a part of my life for sixteen years, and I never thought of her as a friend with benefits until this Symposium. Now I think that's exactly what she was. We got each other through some rough times.
You are dear to me also, Pet!

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kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
2/9/2016 2:12 pm

    Quoting  :

I liked her too. It wouldn't be wrong to say I also loved her, but it was never something that came up. When we were each at loose ends, we had each other, and when we were otherwise attached, we respected that, until the end. I've wondered where we'd be today if we hadn't made that final mistake.

I never saw the cop coming either. It floored me.

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kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
2/9/2016 2:16 pm

    Quoting  :

I have to laugh. If you'd known her, it was the absolute last thing you'd have expected.

Thank you very much Spunky. This was a hard one for me to write- I still feel guilty over my part in wrecking our friendship. I would ask "What were we thinking?" but we weren't doing a lot of critical thinking.

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kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
2/9/2016 2:19 pm

    Quoting  :

Then this is the proper time to tell you how much I enjoy your writing, and how much I love your sense of humor. Thank you again for your wonderful remarks.

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kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
2/9/2016 2:49 pm

    Quoting  :

I doubt that she was ever completely happy. Some things you can't fix. But if you asked her, she always said she was happy. A start like hers in life is gonna leave a mark. She was a very likable, very personable young woman. I do think there was some poetic justice in her enjoyment of sex. They couldn't take that away from her, and I respected her for that.

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sweet_VM 65F
81699 posts
2/9/2016 2:49 pm

Johnny is cool. We can only hope her marriage will be a happy one. Great post here KZ.. loved it! This could have been a movie as well. hugssssssssssss V

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kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
2/9/2016 2:53 pm

    Quoting sweet_VM:
    Johnny is cool. We can only hope her marriage will be a happy one. Great post here KZ.. loved it! This could have been a movie as well. hugssssssssssss V
Well, if Scarlett Johansson plays Johnny, I want to play myself. I don't want no stand-in, either.

Thanks, V! I hope she's happy too.
Huggggggs B

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kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
2/9/2016 5:51 pm

    Quoting  :

Thank you! As I said to Spunky, this one was hard to write. I think I'm starting to feel better about it now that I've got it out of my system. I really appreciate your kind comment!

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Booksong 72F
13 posts
2/9/2016 5:51 pm

Wow. Such a powerful story, and so masterfully written! You created such a strong reality that I could see everything clearly - I'm with the others who felt this piece was cinematic. Thank you for sharing this story with us; you made us care for Johnny and want the best for her by the way you wrote of her with such caring and compassion.


kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
2/9/2016 5:58 pm

    Quoting Booksong:
    Wow. Such a powerful story, and so masterfully written! You created such a strong reality that I could see everything clearly - I'm with the others who felt this piece was cinematic. Thank you for sharing this story with us; you made us care for Johnny and want the best for her by the way you wrote of her with such caring and compassion.
Thank you very much! It's so nice to see you here! Johnny was a piece of work, for sure. With her charm and good looks, she could have done anything in other circumstances. She was never boring. I couldn't forget her if I tried.

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kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
2/9/2016 6:00 pm

    Quoting  :

I am somewhat sedate, by comparison, ain't I? But I was one of the well behaved ones in that crowd!

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kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
2/9/2016 6:14 pm

    Quoting mcmaniac:
    "It’s easy for you, the reader, to see how full of shit I was. It’s easy for me too, now, thirty years later. But when the sap is rising in you, and there’s a warm and loving woman before you, and she is no stranger to you but a lover and friend of many years, what would you do?"

    It's easy for me to see where your coming from because I've been there, too. I fucked up, too. What's funny, when I did the right thing, now looking back, I wish I'd done the fun thing. Great story! I've known a few Johnnies in my life, irresistible little bundles of fuck, mmmmmmmmmmm , memories....
I look back at it and I wonder how we could have thought it would end better than it did. Not one of us was thirty five years old yet. We didn't think, we acted. I just told myself I was thinking.

Mac, she had a smile as bright as the sunshine, the wispy little thing. At thirty, after all the shit she'd been through she still looked like a mere girl. I was smitten with her the first day I saw her. And she got some mileage out of that, she did. That last couple of years she had the two of us wrapped around her little finger.

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kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
2/9/2016 6:17 pm

Bravo! Brave story well told. I love you. Pam <3

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kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
2/9/2016 7:06 pm

    Quoting kzoopair:
    Bravo! Brave story well told. I love you. Pam <3
Thank you sweetheart. I love you too.- Bill

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kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
2/9/2016 7:28 pm

    Quoting  :

You write beautifully, Kinky. We just go about it differently. Thank you, sweetheart.

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nightsoul1962 61F
17828 posts
2/9/2016 7:41 pm

I've always being fascinated by real stories, never really into fiction, and I simply found this one to be awesome!!!! A very special contribution to this month symposium!!!!!

WITHOUT PASSION LIFE IS NOTHING


kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
2/9/2016 7:48 pm

    Quoting nightsoul1962:
    I've always being fascinated by real stories, never really into fiction, and I simply found this one to be awesome!!!! A very special contribution to this month symposium!!!!!
Thank you honey. The best fiction is the truth with the names changed to protect the guilty. It felt good to get this off my chest.

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khuXBFXM8u 62M
10296 posts
2/9/2016 9:02 pm

You have lived a life

Find pleasure in giving pleasure


kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
2/9/2016 9:41 pm

Don't rush me- I'm still doing it! The pace is a bit slower, but I'm still trundling along.

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08540Tantrafun 60M  
1072 posts
2/10/2016 8:42 am

Awesome piece. Isn't it amazing how we get sucked into other people's reality and we justify our actions as an act of our free will. I have learned that it is not the lie that we tell others that get us into trouble, but the lie we tell ourselves.

"Rules for happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.”― Immanuel Kant .


kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
2/10/2016 9:30 am

    Quoting 08540Tantrafun:
    Awesome piece. Isn't it amazing how we get sucked into other people's reality and we justify our actions as an act of our free will. I have learned that it is not the lie that we tell others that get us into trouble, but the lie we tell ourselves.
Thanks, Kama. That's a good way to put it.

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Furbal1972 51M
18571 posts
2/10/2016 7:50 pm

I want to say something besides that was great writing, but I'm about speechless.

Looking back, wondering if we would have done something different. It's nice to know that we probably would have made the same "mistakes" anyway. Because they weren't really mistakes. It was just what felt right at the time.

I know that I couldn't have resisted Johnny.
"Helping a friend". Unless permission is explicitly granted beforehand, it never end well when someone clears their conscious. (Any somehow, someone always does.)

Those are the lessons we learn.

Read my diary Journal of a Taxi Driver for taxi stories and pictures of flowers and trees.


kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
2/10/2016 7:58 pm

    Quoting Furbal1972:
    I want to say something besides that was great writing, but I'm about speechless.

    Looking back, wondering if we would have done something different. It's nice to know that we probably would have made the same "mistakes" anyway. Because they weren't really mistakes. It was just what felt right at the time.

    I know that I couldn't have resisted Johnny.
    "Helping a friend". Unless permission is explicitly granted beforehand, it never end well when someone clears their conscious. (Any somehow, someone always does.)

    Those are the lessons we learn.
Back then, we thought we were adults. I know now we were only children.

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kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
2/11/2016 8:02 am

    Quoting  :

Thank you Lala. I think what you say is true, about acceptance. You could play this over a million times in your head- I have- and it still comes out the same.

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kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
2/11/2016 3:40 pm

    Quoting  :

Thanks Vixen.

No movie deal yet. You have acting experience- you want to play Johnny?

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kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
2/11/2016 3:45 pm

    Quoting  :

Thank you, dear. It wasn't something I shared easily, for just those reasons. It all happened thirty years ago and it was still hard to confront. I have no idea who would want to publish it though.

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kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
2/12/2016 8:27 am

    Quoting  :

You look quite a lot like she did- short, slender, long brown hair and exceptionally pretty. A decent cameraman can make this work. No body double- there'd go all the fun. Can you do an American accent?

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kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
2/12/2016 11:51 am

    Quoting  :

Well, thank you too, sweetheart! We celebrate Valentine's Day as our anniversary. We met on the old YP on Valentine's Day 2005.

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kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
2/12/2016 9:38 pm

    Quoting  :

Thank you Annette. Ah, the memories! I landed in a very good place, though. All of that is what got me here.
Thanks for being part of my story.

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humorlife 56M
5710 posts
2/13/2016 2:52 pm

No, man, you didn’t have anything to say on this month’s topic.

Wow. Poignant, personal, illustrative, and beautifully written. I know this was a difficult topic… and the subject you chose even more so. We’re all the richer for your having made the effort.

Odd that several people described this as cinematic… it certainly does have a narrative arc, and even a happy, if ambiguous ending for Johnny. (And, of course, regardless of what happened between you and her, you seem to have done all right in the happy ending department, too…)

You’ve tangoed here with your experiences with heroin before… while the drug is only a side actor as opposed to a star in this tale, it does play a crucial role. That, too, could not have been easy to revisit.

And wow… you’ve pushed yourself to draw some powerful characters in this. Friends with benefits, indeed… you certainly liked her, and it sounds as though she enjoyed you... up until the end with Ray.

This was a wrenching piece. I’m really, really glad you wrote it. I hope, now that it’s out and you start to get some distance from actually having written the words, that you get a little more peace/resolution.

Stop in, read, and offer comments at my "swinging as seen in the media" blog, "Confessions of a Lifestyle Man" humorlife, which is also the home of the monthly virtual symposium. New post: The Virtual Symposium Returns Lets Pick A Topic


kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
2/13/2016 3:13 pm

    Quoting humorlife:
    No, man, you didn’t have anything to say on this month’s topic.

    Wow. Poignant, personal, illustrative, and beautifully written. I know this was a difficult topic… and the subject you chose even more so. We’re all the richer for your having made the effort.

    Odd that several people described this as cinematic… it certainly does have a narrative arc, and even a happy, if ambiguous ending for Johnny. (And, of course, regardless of what happened between you and her, you seem to have done all right in the happy ending department, too…)

    You’ve tangoed here with your experiences with heroin before… while the drug is only a side actor as opposed to a star in this tale, it does play a crucial role. That, too, could not have been easy to revisit.

    And wow… you’ve pushed yourself to draw some powerful characters in this. Friends with benefits, indeed… you certainly liked her, and it sounds as though she enjoyed you... up until the end with Ray.

    This was a wrenching piece. I’m really, really glad you wrote it. I hope, now that it’s out and you start to get some distance from actually having written the words, that you get a little more peace/resolution.
Thank you, HG.

Well, you know, I didn't think I did have much to say about FWB. I don't especially like the term, but that's neither here nor there. It occurred to me as I thought about it that a friend with benefits was exactly what she was to me, for something like sixteen years. Friends first and we eventually benefited. Quite a few times. I'm glad now that I posted it. It's a side to FWB that people don't often think of. If Fifty Shades of Grey had taken place in a trailer park, would it have had the same appeal to suburban housewives? I think instead someone would have ended up in County. The poor and the chronically alternative in lifestyle have sex and they love each other too.

I came to terms with past drug use years ago, and I have no particular grief over it. Many people become dependent on various substances and never even recognize it.

What was painful to me about this was my failure to live by my rules. I'm not responsible for Johnny's or Ray's shortcomings. It's one thing to break rules you neither respect nor believe in, but quite another to fail to measure up to your own standards. I think I've resolved that to my satisfaction too, but telling that story was a different matter.

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kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
2/15/2016 2:33 pm

    Quoting  :

Thanks! I had a dear friend who, when the day was going badly, would look at me and say "Just remember, it's only a movie." The passage of time- lots of time- has changed the way I think about those events, and the way I think about my friends and myself. I'm delighted to still be able to see the sunrise.

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kzoopair 72M/71F
25831 posts
3/3/2016 8:36 pm

    Quoting oral4ya765:
    sorry I am so late to respond or read this...

    Damn you have done some living brother! I really love your stories and have missed reading them
I've missed you. I figured you were busy living- the best excuse there is.

It's really good to see you back.Thanks, Oral. Really, thanks.

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