An Angel in the Hot Tub
By Sensuous Sadie
SensuousSadie@aol.com 
www.sensuoussadie.com 

Read the first article in this series, A Devil in the Hot Tub 

This is one of several postscripts to my column series called "My Travels with Griffin ." It's the story of my relationship with Griffin  with a focus on our mutual exploration of BDSM and spirituality. You don't have to read them in order, but it might make more sense to do so. While Griffin probably does not like what I wrote, he did have the opportunity to review it and make corrections.

I have an adversarial intimacy with my friend Diego; adversarial in that we seem to be in a perpetual tango over who's going to seduce who. Neither of us have succeeded, but Diego's gentle energy is just the thing to help heal a broken heart.
 
A few months ago I visited Diego in his hot tub on an icy Vermont night. At the time, I was ravaged by the loss of my Dominant, Griffin. This time when I slipped into the steaming water, winter's growl had turned into the purr of spring and I found myself suggesting a little tête-à-tête; no sex, no play, just a little affection. Diego was understandably perplexed and spent most of the night avoiding intimacy, grasping his beer bottle like he might have to fend me off bodily.
 
Eventually he relented and we slipped into a little submerged smooching with me on top. Even so, he negotiated payment in two ways. First, I agreed to pay up a buck, which would be the first time I paid for nookie, not to mention the first time he accepted money for it. A dollar notwithstanding, Diego would actually make a good gigolo, a community service for those of us in the lonely hearts club.
 
For the second recompense, he asked me to write about what had changed in the last few months that made it okay to be smooching with a man who I had described as "some guy with big balls in a hot tub; an image so cliché I'm embarrassed to even write it down." I probably did look hypocritical after all that crowing about my strength of purpose in rejecting him in the first go round. Diego was right though, there was a significant shift in my inner landscape.
 
I guess you could say that there was a certain romance in standing by my man (Griffin), even if it was misdirected. I believed in Griffin, and I simply could not believe he'd abandon me. I thought perhaps it was his depression speaking, and that surely, surely, when he came to his senses he'd remember how much he loved me. I wrote many flowery promises about my faith in him no matter what, about how love would triumph over fear.
 
Sadly, months after Griffin went out in a blaze of drama, he has never even acknowledged the trauma he put me through. In retrospect I'm a little embarrassed for the innocence of my faith in him. Whatever naïve notions I had about standing by anyone are gone. It was that loss that caused me to change my mind about Diego. I finally got it about Griffin, and when I finally got it, there was nothing left to be faithful to.

Now I can only focus on healing my own heart using whatever help is at hand, which happens in this case to be Diego. This is not to say that I'm just using him, but rather that if God sent Diego to patch me up, it would be imprudent to refuse. So it was that we ended up sharing a few hot sauce moments even as Orion slid down the spring skies to a darkening horizon. As Dominant du jour, I pressed my attention, and my tongue upon him. When I saw his reaction to nipple play, I twisted them cruelly until he gave it up to me with a breathy murmur of surrender. Only then did he kiss me as if he meant it, mending me along with his own hunger healed.
 
As the evening quieted and we floated languidly and loosely, I sang a line from a Donald Fagen song: "Snowbound, let's sleep in today. Wake me up, when the wolves come out to play." The minor notes of my tune sang a bittersweet goodbye to an icy winter of love lost. Wake me up Diego, when spring has melted the snow still blocking my heart. Wake me up when the wolves' sad cry vibrates over the dark sky and under a nighttime cicada's song. Be with me until I heal, and only a hint of snow tickles the Vermont hills.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

REFERENCES

Donald Fagen's "Snowbound" is from his Kamikirad album

Sensuous Sadie is the author of It's Not About the Whip: Love, Sex, and Spirituality in the BDSM Scene ( http://www.trafford.com/robots/03-0551.html ). She is the founder and leader (1999 - 2001) of Rose & Thorn, Vermont's first BDSM group. Comments, compliments and complaints, as well as requests for reprinting can be addressed to her at SensuousSadie@aol.com  or visit her website at www.sensuoussadie.com . Sadie believes the universe is abundant, and that sharing information freely is part of this abundance, so she allows reprints of her writing in most venues.

Copyright May 2004 Sadie Sez Publications