Three Sides of the Coin (Catherine I)

by Lennon, Carole J

  The phone was quiet for awhile before Mike replied, "Maybe your little tirade will make him dominate you with a vengeance. Perhaps this could elevate the game, deepen the discovery of the submissive Catherine. Aren't you curious of what lies beyond? I know I am."

  "I would hope that this world shaking event of mine hasn't ruined your voyeuristic cinema world. I'd hate to have the 'Theatre of Catherine, now running for 6 months’ screech to an early close."

  "That was bit harsh." Mike sounded hurt.

  "I'm sorry, Mike. This has been a load on me. You know I need you to hear me out. With Steven so far on one side and Captain Jack on the other, I feel like I'd get lost flitting back and forth without you to land on every so often."

  "Perhaps, I have been selfish too," he replied. “You know I spend so much time with my work. I sort of need you to live an interesting life for us both. If you ever quit the Agency, I'd probably have to go back to reading French novels and going to the opera. You are more convenient, and in English."

  "And cheaper." She replied. They said their goodnights and after they hung up, she wondered why he did not agree when she said cheaper. After a moment, she realized he probably hadn't heard her and dismissed the thought.

  Chapter 18: Mike-5

  After Catherine’s first episode with Captain Jack, she came alive with questions about herself and the very dynamic of interplay between man and woman. After her second, she began to wonder more about the interplay between dominance and submission, an interplay that according to her began to grow in her relationship with her husband. What she didn't realize, but was something I had long ago imagined to be true, is that a third side was emerging, a portion of her abandoned by the two extremes.

  I have known many women who moved from dominance to submission, or from the other way, but seldom had I seen anything like this at all. In fact, the only time I found I could truly enjoy a woman, was when she was in this middle part of her rainbow of dominance. It is a truly peaceful place to be, cuddling up close and enjoying the tranquility of life.

  Unfortunately, women who have no delight in either submission or dominance, also tend to have little of the latent tension that I love finding just under the surface. Either they have to finish with some sort of sex act, or they don't feel it at all. And if they want the sex act, then there is always some expectation that they lead, or they follow. So even the most vanilla of sex demands some of the spice. And those who want no sex at all, see all men as a pathway to sex and they fear any intimacy would lead to the act, the act that disappoints or they fear. That particular anxiety ruins the peace of the middle.

  Up until the point where I developed my theory, when I was just dating around, I found dating in the middle to be a fencing match, with her probing and trying to find out how I wanted to play, and me trying to advance the cause of what I called tantric non-sex. Tantric sex, as I understood it, is sex delayed to build up the suspense. Those who utilize it a lot, swear by it. But I found the buildup was a letdown, just like knowing at the end of the journey, it would all be over. I want the trip to last forever.

  It dawned on me, especially as I pretended to be gay, that my ability to be seen as a non-sex partner enhanced everything for me. The women who not only believed I was gay, but were also content to let me stay that way, were my best avenue to my own, non-sexual sexual pleasure. It was not perfect, but was the best I could come up with. It was like a forever trip that is interrupted every so often. And, of course, the trip would have to change, even though the destination would never be obtained.

  So, as you can probably figure out, two problems constantly came up. One, a goodly portion of good looking women believe that their sexuality should be significant enough to turn me on and convert me. And, since I am not gay, they certainly could do so. In turn, I was forced to hide the conversion success, lest they achieve their particular destination and ruin the trip. Once a woman finds she can make me hard, she will either abandon me as her mission is now accomplished, or she will then feel obligated to move to the next step, which is a relationship, a sexual relationship.

  The second problem lies with the other women, the ones who were content to have no sex with me. For them, sex was a necessary part of their eventual partner’s life and they would most certainly intend to be a part of that. Once they met these men, (or occasionally, women), they put away their childish toys, me being foremost among them.

  But I got used to it and found that the best, most consistent way around most of this problem was to find a woman who was having edge sex and wanted some quiet time away from that. That meant that she was already in the long, (for the most part), term relationship that she sought and needed something else. But any of these women of quality would be harder to find. It was for this reason that I founded the Agency. With the Agency, it was much simpler to ask questions that would be way too personal when asked by a date, and the service the Agency was to render blurred the purpose for what I had founded it. I had the advantage of knowing what they looked like, how they thought, and what they wanted. And because most of them did not suit my needs, the Agency did provide the connection for them with other men, who also had needs and wants. And because we found the best combination of questions, answers, services and wealth, the Agency made an incredible amount of money for me. Money, ironically, I did not need.

  My overarching Three Sided Coin theory was the basis for my search. I believe we all, to one extent or another, have three sides to our sexual being: a dominant, a submissive, and best of all, a middle. Further, the more we explore the edges, the more the middle separates out. Picture ourselves as that old grade school math thing called the bell curve. We aren't a single point in the middle of our lives, but we are a range of values. Sometimes we swallow our pride and let someone chew us out; and sometimes we are the ones chewing others out. And we all know that some people spend a lot of time on the short end of the stick and others spend a lot of time telling everyone else off. But those last couple of people interest me less than anyone. Those milquetoasts and egotistic jerks don't spend much time in the middle. Their bell curves are shifted too far one way or the other. It is amazing they get by in life. And a lot of people, well balanced people like me, spend a lot of time in the middle. I pride myself on being able to get along with anyone and maintaining a calm demeanor at all times. My bell curve is very well centered, and very narrow.

  As you can imagine, people whose bell curves are very dominant would very nicely match up with people whose bell curves are very submissive. But one could see that it isn't just the middle of the bell curve that has to match, but the width of the thing also. One person with great range will not match well with one whose bell curve has little diversity. At least that was my belief, until I met Catherine.

  I had long ago abandoned my hope of finding another middle person with a narrow width to her bell curve. Though I knew that I wasn't without sexual desire, sex, for me, was a biological duty like eating or sleeping. So to use my trip analogy one more time, acknowledging that analogy is the weakest form of argument, I had to periodically get out of the car and get sexual relief, and then come back to the car and continue the trip with my partner. The Agency also provided me with plenty of women who could provide this anonymous function. However, the narrow bell curve women in the middle had to also do this same thing. As a result, the perfect relationship for me would require us both to go have periodic affairs and then come home and snuggle. I never found that woman, and quickly realized that I never would.

  So the best practical woman for me was one with a wide bell curve, who I could catch between bouts at the edge. The edge, apparently, is fatiguing and I was pretty much guaranteed to eventually, if unpredictably, have some time while she gathered her breath. I had come to believe, however, that all good things must come to an end and most all of these women stopped "spinning" from one side to the other, and just took the most natural position for them, and their bell curves would shrink and move away from the middle.

>   So the Agency was constantly looking for that near impossible woman for me, the one who was so warped that she flipped from dominant to submissive and back, feeling equally comfortable with both. We had found two of them before Catherine. One moved out of sight on us suddenly, (I suspect some skullduggery there), and the other went into the loony bin. That gave us an idea to look in the loony bin, but after a few so-so leads and a great deal of ethical soul searching, we abandoned the idea entirely.

  Catherine sent our entire search algorithm on its head. Up until I accidently sent her to the Agency, we were looking for someone who lived on the edges, leaving them some time in the middle. That meant searching for people who were temporally out of balance on both ends of the scale. It seems obvious now. The place to search was in the middle, with some desire to explore the far ends of the bell curve. And that was where Catherine existed. All her history did was indicate she would never leave the middle and explore the far ends. A calm, well executed childhood by incredibly normal parents set her up to have such wonderful self esteem that she could easily take a dominant role, (No real surprise there in a world full of hesitant, fearful people.), but also to act the role of a submissive, which was due to a confident mind with no fear of losing her true self in the role. If I ever lose Catherine, we certainly will change the search algorithm.

  Catherine exhibited the three sides of the sexual coin. The dominant side with her husband, the submissive side with Captain Jack, and the middle side with me. And she did all three sides easily. The other two we had found were really two split personality bell curves that overlapped in the middle, causing me to believe there was only one wide bell curve to them. Other women that I had played with had a more skewed view on life that had a big extreme end, a small middle, and an even tinier opposite extreme. It was no wonder they never lasted long. But we didn't realize any of this until Catherine.

  Now you might start to think that any well balanced person in the middle could expand themselves to enjoy the edges in their life. I, being well balanced, if I am allowed to say so, would be such a candidate. But it is not the case. I thought about being a dominant and imagined what it would be like. But because my penis tends to be on the lower of the average scale, and I am not very tall, I always imagined the submissive having trouble being intimidated by either size. So while I am content and fully at peace with my size, the subs could have trouble being fearful. On the submissive side, I am afraid the dominant woman would make way too big of my size and the whole scene would dissolve to inanity. Besides, I whimper for days after a paper cut and if there is anything I have learned from Catherine's descriptions of sessions with Steven, is how much pain one must be able to tolerate to make a sensual deal of the arrangement. So no, I don't think every person in the middle can widen their bell curve. But the ones who can will certainly find a much more interesting world out there.

  I bring all of this up because of the phone call I got from Catherine when Captain Jack had met her in Scottsdale. I had to agree with her that he was out of line risking her exposure to her community. And it certainly meant that I had to suggest to the Agency to start a search for a potential replacement for him, should Catherine choose not to see Captain Jack anymore. They would have to have a plan B in place should the unthinkable happen. I was grateful that I was not employing the Agency to obtain her for myself, because as long as she was working for our firm in San Francisco, I would have unabridged contact with her. But if she lost interest in her submissive side, now that she had found her dominant side with Steven, her bell curve would shift away from the middle, and I would find myself on the edge of her skew. I suppose a little of her is better than nothing, but I certainly was better off with her very wide and balanced bell curve.

  Occasionally a woman will criticize me for being standoffish and not wanting to participate in her life. I like to think of myself as one of the last of the stoics. In our very self focused and instant gratification world these days, it makes sense to go back to how the ancient philosophers dealt with life. For them, they felt they could only view the world effectively through objective eyes. Once they involved themselves with the subject they were studying, they feared they would not see it properly. So they would sit on the porch, which in Greek is called a 'stoa' and observe life, speculating at what it might be. It was from the porch they sent out their assistants to gather data and report back their findings. It was from the porch they figured out that the earth was round. They sent their assistants down various wells and had them draw the night time sky from the wells. It was from these overlapped maps that they deduced that if the pictures were changing as one went from east to west, then the earth had to be round. They even knew within a few miles, how far around it was. It was later that we lost this knowledge and it took Chris Columbus' journey to document that the earth was a big ball. Of course, he missed the size by a great deal, which is why he thought he was in India, about twelve thousand miles away.

  You have heard the saying, "If you can't run with the big dogs, stay on the porch." Well, I say, "If you can't think with the big brains, get off the porch." Of course, most people don't get the joke. That's okay; I usually explain it to anyone who will listen. If their attention wanders before I am done, it is time for them to move on. Catherine not only got the joke, when I explained it, but was fascinated by it. I find talking to her is fun. She listens, adds to the story, expands it, and takes it another direction. Every conversation is interesting, every quiet moment is peaceful, rather than tense and every touch of her is soft and warm and sincere and stable. I don't have to perform for her. I don't have to move our relationship along. I am fine watching her life from my porch.

  Chapter 19: Steven-6

  Steven couldn't think much of anything he didn't find fascinating about his wife. Of course he found her sexy and beautiful, but he believed that he would think that of her even when she became an old raisin.

  He enjoyed the fact that she was almost always happy. The longer they were together the more he appreciated that fact. The more unhappy complaining people he met, the more he loved her. And when her rare bouts of sadness struck, he would do anything he could to return her good humor. And fortunately, it didn't take much, because she wanted to be happy. Even when she ranted on some topic, often starting with a low growl as she would see some child not properly dressed, or hear a crying baby whose mother did not understand the difference in a hungry cry and a tired cry, even then she would launch a humorous tirade. "I think we ought to start a class on having children before we allow people to reproduce. If we had, that woman over there gets a big fat 'F.' In fact, I think I should go over there and put her in detention, right now."

  But his very favorite thing about her was the little girl inside her. When some random thing would go against her, she might spout out with a little pout, "But it doesn't make me a bad person." Or when she would do something silly like drop an item behind the dryer or over tighten a screw, she would come close to him and twist a toe into the ground, look down and twirl a little loop of her hair and confess her 'sin' to him. He wanted to sigh and forgive her before she ever began her explanation, which often ended with her claim that she really wasn't a bad person.

  He loved the fact that she liked babies and small animals and hated any cruelty to either. He loved coming into the bedroom to see the small stuffed bunny rabbit, which bore the name of 'Bashful Cream Bunny' lying on the made bed, its little paws peeking over the covers, and he noticed that Bashful Cream would always be on his side of the bed when he returned from being out of town. He never grew tired of how she would take a stuffed animal and entertain children by making it slowly turn its neck and look curiously at the wide eyed children. He loved to hear her read Beatrice Potter to children and how they would sit listening to her talk about Hunka-Munka and Tom Thumb. He loved hearing the children mull the words Hunka-Munka over in their mouths, and how quiet they got when she sat down for the reading.

  These were all the icing on the wonderful cake
he knew as Catherine. None of it would be enough if that was all there was about her, but with everything else, these were dimensions that made him want to make her forever happy.

  When he returned from Miami, he was not quite sure of the jet lag, as the three hour shift from West Coast to East Coast was offset by the fact that he only spent two days there. As was his habit, he was not very good at giving Cat a good narrative of what happened. At times, it took days for him to get all the relevant data out of his mind and into her ears. Part of it was the jet lag, but most of it was the different way the two of them compartmentalized information, and even how they set priorities.

  He was absolutely stunned when she asked questions, like which color shirt he wore on Thursday and even whether it was tucked in properly when he returned from lunch. He would have thought it obvious that if he did not know if he was even wearing a shirt on a particular day, surely he couldn't be expected to know whether it was tucked in, after lunch or any other time. And she should stop asking questions about whether person A or person B was married, or with children, and no, he had no idea whether they were dressed more appropriately than he.

  But even he noticed that her questions were even farther afield when she asked if he, or an administrative assistant had booked his flight, (he had), and who else knew about the trip, (just him, the two execs in Miami and Catherine), and whether people outside the airline could access his trip schedule, (He supposed Homeland Security, but only if there was some court order to do so, but he wasn't sure). Eventually, that line of questioning died off and she refocused on the 'big secret' meeting.