[interesting]

No one ever assumes, going into a new relationship, that things are going to be easy all the time. If they do, then they're fooling themselves. Of course, no one expects the relationship to be impossible to bridge. There is always a way to make things better, to make things right.

That being said, I'm not one to preach by example for either scenario. I realize, now after the fact, that most of my relationships have ended badly, but without violence. I know it is not recommended to generalize but it is a fact that I have come to accept.

When I was seven, my best friend was a boy whose name need not be mentioned here. One day, he stole my bike - that is, he borrowed it for weeks at a time, never giving it back. Our friendship did not survive the third grade, and I never did get my bike back. Of course, if I'd involved my parents in the ordeal, they might have helped me reclaim it. That would have been the smart thing to do.

When I moved away towards the end of my elementary school, I left behind a girl friend who was one year my senior. We played together, and sometimes she'd actually let me win. We promised we would never lose touch. We would be best friends forever. I wrote to her twice, and she never wrote back.

The relationship with my first girlfriend lasted about a week. We kissed at a dance organized by our local church, then spent the week going out to play. For an obscure unfathomable reason, we pretended not to be together, and eventually, it so happened that we weren't anymore. I kept seeing her at mass until the end of my high school, when I stopped going because my parents stopped forcing me. Maybe we could have tried again, but I never made the effort to go see her.

First semester of college was intense. New place, new girl, and new situations. Rituals galore. I was fresh out of my catholic upbringing, fresh into a new way of thinking and trying to cope with a girl more spiritual than I had ever been in my life. I didn't fit in her surreal world of magic and incantations. I could have tried to adapt, I could have tried to bring her back to a form of sanity.

She was just too strange for me.

While I was in college, I lived with two to three other guys and we were the best of friends, inseparable. We did everything together, from studying to partying, and all the nooks and crannies in between. Liberated from parental constraints, able to move about at any time of the day and night and go practically anywhere, having just turned eighteen, sky was the limit. I stayed with these guys until they either graduated or dropped out. Again, the bonds that united us would keep us close forever. Yet, I have not seen one of them in six years. They all went their separate ways.

In my next to last semester, I met Kim. We had the same classes, hung out in the same places, did our homework together. After a party, she came back to my place, as restless as I am. My roommates were out. We started talking literature, citing poetry and love stories, until we started kissing, made out, stripped, had sex and then went to bed. She stayed with me for six months and we started talking plans for the future. Hers took her to Seattle; mine kept me in California. At the end of the final semester, right before graduation, we parted ways amicably. We wrote to each other for about one year, then she met someone else and I have never heard from her since.

The last straw was four years ago. I had just started working as a T.A. I had been living with my roommate at the time for two years before I started to realize some of my things were disappearing. I can be pretty oblivious at times. First, it was food. Next, my towels. Then some of my clothes. Finally, I lost my wallet for about a week, only to find it in his dirty laundry. He tried to explain he had picked it up for me and forgotten to give it back, but by that time, I had become aware of his misdeeds. I tried to get him to confess but he refused to acknowledge his guilt. I felt violated. I took him to court. Small claims. To this day, I still don't know what I did wrong. Was I not convincing enough? I probably should have pressed criminal charges. I moved my stuff out of the apartment and into storage, and I lived out of that storage for two weeks before finding my current place. I have not seen him since the trial, and good riddance.

I am telling you all this so you'll better understand the dilemma I am now facing with Sarah, my new girlfriend. We have been going out since three weeks now, and at any moment, I'm expecting the other shoe to drop. She has been great all this time, and all our activities are amazing. I had several days off before returning to work which we spent at my place, cuddling, talking, eating and making love. We barely got out to get groceries. As the new semester rolled around, she returned to her own place and we started seeing each other only at nights and weekends (and the occasional afternoon). We alternate sleeping between her place and mine, though I prefer to be at my place because we have to share the room with her roommate Jennifer at her place. Not that I don't like Jennifer, it's just that it helps to encourage intimacy when we're only the two of us.

Everyday I wake up, with or without her at my side, I ask myself: is this the last time you get to spend with Sarah? Why should this relationship be any different than your previous others? I have way too much time to think.

I started feeling things were getting complicated, and at first I did not know why. Then, a few days ago, something happened that suddenly put our situation in perspective.

It was the middle of Saturday afternoon. Sarah and I were in her room, engaged in erotic activities. We had spent the night apart because I had work to do and so did she, so that day, I had gotten up around ten and called her. We had met for brunch, then taken a walk in the park. Eventually ending up at her place. Her roommates are almost always gone on the weekends, and Jennifer was out, so we decided to take advantage of it.

She put on some lascive music while I sat on her bed. She started dancing to it, slowly stripping her white blouse, black skirt, white bra and panties, knee high black socks. After a while, she danced naked for me, bringing my arousal to its peak. She started to do undress me, socks first, then my t-shirt, pants. She played around with my underwear before removing it. I started kissing her nipples and she did the same. We lay down on her bed and started making out. We began to tease each other with our hands, knowing full well where this one was going.

And that's when she entered.

At first, we didn't actually stop, simply slowed down and looked at her. She remained in the door and stared. This caused two very disparate reactions in me. Sarah kept fondling me, and I felt excitement at the notion of being caught; yet, at the same time, we had been intruded upon and I sensed anxiety, which was a definite turn off.

Silence crept in the room, as Jennifer slowly walked towards her bed, suddenly looking away from us. Sarah stopped what she was doing, to both my dismay and my well-being. Jennifer dropped her handbag besides her bed. It was Sarah who broke the silence.

"Jenn... huh... sorry.
"No, it's okay, I mean, I should have knocked.
"No, this is your room too, we should have put a sock on the door, something.
"Hey... no problem. You guys are together. I get that."

Jennifer hurried out of the room. Whatever mood had been there previously had now eroded completely. I was going limp and Sarah was definitely disturbed. We looked at each other.

"What do we do? I asked.
"Well... she's my best friend; I should go talk to her.
"Do I stay here?
"No... you should come along. This concerns you too."

I agreed. She picked up her blouse and put it on without buttoning it; I borrowed her bathrobe and covered myself. We moved out of the room and found Jennifer in the living room, staring at the television set.

"Jenn?"

She turns to face us.

"Listen, Jenn, I'm sorry. I am.
"Don't be. I'm back early; the shoot took less time than expected.
"How did it go?
"Okay, I guess."

Jennifer was coming back from a nude photoshoot. She knew this photographer who took pictures of girls for a website and Jennifer was one of his models, although she used an alias for the website. I knew, both because I had been told but also because I had seen her naked previously on the internet, as model 'Sasha' from Europe. She had also given me a nice picture of herself (with the face blurred out)

some weeks ago, while I was being tested by Sarah and her friends.

"Tell me about it."

The girls needed to bond. I went to get myself something to drink, while listening in on the conversation.

"He had me do this shoot with two other girls. We were at a private pool, playing and prancing about in the water.
"New girls?
"No. I did a shoot with one of them last October; he just added another of his models. We posed as if we were... you know.
"I've seen some of your pics, I know."

They laughed. Good. The tension was melting away.

"Did you get samples?
"I did. Wanna see?
"Of course."

She opened an envelope lying on the living room table. I decided I wanted to see too.

"These are just snapshots, not the real deal."

She had five pictures to show. Three are of the girls standing around the pool, each one in a different naked pose. The fourth one showed them hugging. The fifth one had them faking oral stimulation on each other. Very stimulating.

"What do you think, Jim? asks Sarah.
"Very hot."

Jennifer almost blushed.

"Sorry I... broke your play, there.
"Don't worry about it; we can pick it up later. Right Jim?
"Yeah... no sweat."

For a moment, everything seemed fine. Then Jennifer picked up the conversation.

"You know, you could still do it."

Sarah looked at her, than at me.

"I mean, I know I broke the mood and all, but there's a way we could get it back, if you want to, of course."

I must have looked puzzled because Sarah spoke directly to me.

"Maybe she can ask for forgiveness by putting on a show for us?"

The idea intrigued me. I remembered the games from a few weeks past, the daring and the visual stimulation, the nudity and the eroticism of it all. Sarah and I had not indulged in anything like that since the party. Jennifer continued.

"Actually, I was thinking the show could be threefold."

Her comment hung in mid air, as I considered the implications. They were difficult to grasp. Sarah brought me back to the moment.

"What do you think, Jim? You wanna try it?"