Here again was a beautiful woman beaten into submission by the will of a man who wanted someone to screw and cook his meals, not wanting her to realize who she really was. Why do women allow such things to happen?

I touched her face softly as we kissed. I encouraged her to start painting again now that he wasn't around, there was no one to stop her. She started crying again, this time her reason was her family was giving her a hard time. I asked why, and she said her husband had come back... she let him back in because he was good to their sons. She had stood by him when he went to prison (for cocaine distribution). She let him go for two years to be with another woman... and when he said he missed his boys, she let him back home. There was no way she would be allowed to paint.

Judy said he had gone away for the weekend to fool around with his stripper... that she hadn't had sex in six months... she had the house to herself for the evening and she didn't want me to go. I know, you're saying...

...but this time I have no reason other than to say that Judy and I each deserved better than the hands we'd been dealt. I had just written a treatise on how a woman should be made to feel, and I was ready to show what I meant. We made love for about three hours.

In the few days since, I've felt both the elation of being with someone who wanted me and the despair of not being able to see a relationship grow. I hope on the one hand that it wasn't just a one-night stand (my first since I was 19), yet on the other that it doesn't grow so serious as to derail my plans to move closer to my daughter.

In the meantime, the dry-spell is over and I felt, for the heat of the moment, like a man. In the morning I had to leave to go to work, and kissing me as I got up from her bed, Judy very sincerely thanked me. I've the feeling that she hadn't felt like a woman in just as long a time.

The only guilt I feel about the entire affair is that we don't even know each others' last names, yet.

Continue...