Cum to Thailand

​And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud
was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
~ Anais Nin

I've been wanting to write more in this space and also participate in some of the weekly blogger memes. When I saw the "Risk" prompt over at Brigit Delaney's Erotic Journal Challenge, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to start sharing this particular story. I mention a few men who are peripheral to the story and if you need to know who they are, you can find a cheat sheet here.

Cum to Thailand
 A daring fellow is the jewel of the world.
- J.M. Synge

I planned my trip to Thailand by myself. I had never traveled alone internationally and solo travel seemed terrifying but I wanted to see the world and I was tired of waiting for my friend’s schedules to align with mine. I also felt like it was an important step to conquer my fear, travel by myself and survive. Emphasis on the surviving...

But despite my solo plans, I wasn't opposed to other people joining me for this trip if they could make it happen. I told my lover, Daredevil, about the trip and he said he was definitely interested. Since he'd actually met me in Alaska and we'd had a really nice week, I figured I had a good chance of him following thru. But as time went on he wanted more from me than I was willing to give him and he was unhappy. I think it pissed him off that we weren't in the same place with our relationship but he didn't want to stop seeing me either. 

I saw him in April and things were ok but by the time I finished that weekend, I was ready to be done. He mentioned that he was still interested in Thailand and I said “ok” and left it at that. We didn’t talk much in the next few months. I felt like I’d been pretty clear that I wasn’t in a space for a long term steady monogamous anything and he was fine with that initially but then he wasn’t. Instead of having that conversation directly, he got passive aggressive and I got more distant and unreachable. I should have been more direct with him about our relationship and the trip but I wasn't sure what to say except that I didn’t want to be with him anymore and I didn't want him to go with me.  Instead of saying that, I just left the country... which is also pretty direct.

In June, I talked to a different former lover of mine, Austin 31,  and mentioned Thailand and he said  “I've always wanted to go to Thailand!” and I said, “You should! Come to Thailand...!!!” And this time I meant “Please cum to Thailand!” I thought he would be a great traveling companion, he's hot and the sex is amazing and I knew that if things went south he’d just take off and do his own thing rather than stick around and make me miserable. Plus I liked him and enjoyed his company. Between those two guys, he was the one that I most hoped would actually make it. 

But then... I met a guy. Or rather, I reencountered a guy.

Jack was someone I'd known for a long time. I'd dated his brother and his sister was one of my best friends so I was all up this family's business. At that point Jack’s and my paths hadn't crossed much though. I'd mostly heard about him through his family members and had met him only a couple of times. 

However, he joined Myspace and friend requested me around January and then emailed me and we talked on and off for a few months, nothing flirty just sort of talking about this and that. Then there was a long lull and one day in June I opened my email one day to see this message:

I know we are not close like this...But if you were here I would stick my tongue so far up your ass...

That’s a fucking bold statement to come out of the blue but he caught me at just the right exact moment and so I responded:

If you were here I might let you...
 
And it was on.

Things got hot and heavy quickly by email and IM. I was bored and not working and had plenty of time to enjoy the flirting. He had separated from his wife for reasons he declined to get into but it was clear that he was bored and lonely, deployed in the sandbox of the Middle East and we were both looking for something new and fun.

I remembered that he’d lived in Thailand so I told him I was going and asked for advice. He responded “I should just meet you there. I speak Thai and could really show you Thailand, the Thailand you wouldn't see otherwise...” That seemed like an amazing offer. I told him I would love to see him in Thailand. And so began the back and forth.

He didn't think he could actually go because of his deployment. He gave it a 20% chance at the beginning of June, but then his deployment plans changed and all of sudden we were up to an 80% chance at the end of the month. By the end of June, Jack started asking if I was actually serious about wanting him to come to Thailand and I told him I was. The opportunity to see the country with someone who knows it couldn't be passed up.

However, Austin31 was still trying to work it out as well. 

When I considered that I might have two men meeting me in Thailand, I actually thought I could juggle them so their paths wouldn't cross. In retrospect that’s completely absurd, obviously, but then it ceased to be a problem because Austin31 told me he couldn't make it. Money was the main problem and no matter how he finagled it, he couldn't make it couldn’t happen. This time I was relieved because I knew that juggling Austin31 and Jack was likely to end in some kind of disaster. 

Jack and I began to make serious plans and the longer we talked, the more things changed. In the course of a month, the trip to Thailand moved from sexy easy breezy fun and games to an epic love affair where we actually made plans to fall passionately, hopelessly, impossibly in love in Thailand. We knew it would be impossible for so many reasons but we decided to deal with the after effects later. To not let the fact that there would be consequences stop us from taking this big risk. 

Jack can be quoted as saying “I want to be so wrecked that I cry in the airport when I leave you... ”

If you’re asking yourself how in the world that escalated so fast, I would point you to IM and video chat and the ability to create a little online fantasy world inhabited by only two people who talk to each other for hours every day but whose real lives never actually intersect. He was the first person I talked to in the morning when I got up and he was finishing work and he was the last person I talked to at night when he was just getting to work in his morning on the other side of the world. We talked while he was at work and he even jerked off on camera behind his work desk when the office was deserted.  

The connection was about sex but we both craved something more. I wanted a chance to fall in love. I feared that the wreckage from my breakup with the Blacksmith had killed my ability to be close to someone. That I was walled up in a ivory tower, playing around with guys but never letting anyone get close enough to hurt me. The way I had abandoned the Daredevil haunted me a bit. I felt terrible about it but I still didn’t want to talk to him. 

IMing with Jack was the first time I understood how easy it can be to say things to a screen instead of a person. I could tell him how wrecked I was and how scared I was of getting close to someone and getting hurt again. He could tell me how deeply he regretted the way his marriage had ended, full of duplicity and cheating and lies. We both wanted a new start. 

He said  “I want to take this chance to do and say things with you, someone I really like. If you don't like what or who I am at the end of all this then at least once in my life I can say I really put it out there in way that was real.”

Jack knew he’d made mistakes. He spoke of atonement. He wanted to move on. He wanted what we all want but are afraid to ask for, to confess our sins and have someone love us for them and in spite of them. 

I found myself in the rare unexpected position of being able to really be there for him. To give him a chance to be himself, and in the process open myself up to possibility. He was very perceptive about my closed heart and said things like:

“Be mine for 2 weeks. Be my soulmate. Let me kiss you where the light never reaches and embrace the things about you that you thought were gone or you thought you did not need”

It’s a very odd thing to plan a love affair. But it’s a very great thing to be honest and truthful and ask for what you want. And then of course when we weren’t talking about love and light and broken hearts, we were planning all the taboo, insane, sexy, illicit things we could think of and get away with on this vacation. Thailand was the perfect playground for this kind of sacred and profane behavior and we wanted to cut the leash, go off the grid and see how far we could go.

The ultimate consequence of this madness was anyone's guess.