The Celibacy Goddess
Iris of Brussels
Note, I am gradually removing typos.
Across Canada, and in Paris, London, Amsterdam and into Brussels, I explored photographing many beautiful women and the occasional man. They faced into the mirror and acknowledged themselves in some way. Some of them masturbated to the sight of themselves as I observed and documented them.
There was the unspoken agreement that there would be no sex, no matter how easygoing the chemistry. With existing lovers, it was different; we could do anything. Most of the photo sessions involved models I did not know, whom I met the same day, usually by Craig’s List. Through this experience, I was learning that I would be exposed to the most glorious female eroticism and would be containing myself.
There were occasional models who turned me on so completely I politely asked them for cunnilingus. Raquel was one of them, the Scorpio sphinx who allowed me to photograph her face while she spread her vulva open. She said no. And yet I knew she understood my need, and I felt a certain delight in asking, whatever her reply. For the rest of the session, she sat on a stool with her yoni stretched wide before me, feeling the tension of what I could not have and must accept as such.
Ruchma was more generous and offered herself to me when I confessed my desire.
It was not until I met Iris that the experience of being left to my own private pleasure became conscious. I first encountered her in a place called Aqua Massage, an elaborate happy ending studio in Saint Gilles, a few blocks from where I lived. The theme was massage rooms set up for wet massage — all waterproof plastic.
I was friends with the owner, Yvonne, and had done many sessions with women there. I was also the house tarot card reader. This was an elaborate place with maybe 20 treatment rooms and 10 women working at any time. A spiral staircase behind the service counter seemed to lead to another dimension.
One afternoon I stopped into the lobby and was introduced to the new girl, Iris. She had never done a session alone, only one training session with another practitioner. She was a delicious beauty, demur and introspective, yet aware of her presence. I took my opportunity to be her first.
She had never been alone with a client before. We chose to take a “dry” type room. Somehow in this session, I never undressed. I was curious about her and wanted to get her talking. I did not need any sexual activity. Being with her was enough. Once we were in a treatment room, she asked me if she could take her clothes off because she wanted to be naked; she said she would feel more comfortable. I did not object.
We sat for a while in awkward silence, wondering what would happen. Her English was not perfect; she was Flemish and mostly spoke Dutch. I told her I was a photographer and asked if I could show her my portfolio, which I had in my bag. I said if you like my work, maybe you can model.
I showed her the book. She turned through the pages, and approved of what she saw. We sat and talked for a while, and made plans to get together later that week.
She entered my studio, set down her bag, and slipped out of her clothes as I photographed her. We barely spoke. Our conversation was visual, intuitive and emotional. It went on for several sessions. In the first, she tentatively explored herself in the mirror. The delicacy of her self-relating was so sweet to experience, as she let herself see, feel and acknowledge who she was.
She was so very beautiful, and she was comfortable in admitting that to herself in my presence. Some of the most attractive women are uncertain where they stand in the world, and with themselves. In my presence, Iris could acknowledge who she was.
Her aura has a way of refracting light in the most sublime way. And as the first session progressed, I began to brush against and feel the delight of who she was, emboldened in her self-affirmation by my presence. I knew she could feel me responding to her. Simmering gently, wanting to smell and taste every molecule of her and take a sip of her gathering water.
And though I felt she was reading my emotions, and my desire, I surrendered to her autonmy of being. That was the joy of being with her. I knew she drew strength from my unrequited desire for her, and from her power to set the boundary between us.
When the session was over, she slipped into her sheer panties and sat down otherwise naked at my dining room table. She rolled a joint with weed and crumbled hashish, lit it, took a drag and passed it to me. How I might feel did not occur to me, though I might have predicted it. My desire ignited to white hot and with my whole being I wanted to press my mouth into her vulva and drink.
I was transfixed by her breasts, small and also full, beginning to slope outward a touch lower on her chest in that enticing way, and then rising to pristine areolae and protruding suddenly into a plump, magnificent nipple.
And her eyes. She held her own gaze so comfortably, and I gasped a little every time I so much as glanced at the green hazel light coming from her.
I could do nothing but allow myself to feel, and she skimmed the froth and nourished herself on my lust. As she got up to get dressed, she faced away from me and then all but brushed her ass against my face. Instinctively, I drew in a sniff, barely connecting, and allowing her to rev me with her little tease. As she did so I imagined plunging my tongue deep into her ass and swirling us both with bliss.
Her clothing slipped on as I watched, tidy and with the touch of fashionable European, ending with black stiped socks and black, slip on sneakers.
As she stepped lightly out the door, she turned to me and smiled with the hint of a wink. We knew she was leaving me alone to enter the hall of mirrors where I had just seen and felt her explore for the past hour. Desperately thirsty, facing into the cosmos of reflections that were still doused with her essence, we both knew I was going to strip and mirror masturbate to the thought of her. I dropped my clothes to the floor, relaxing into her approval and understanding, and then, my own.
What I knew and she did not was that I was beginning to collect my first-ever cum mirror, which I would use to help me gratify myself. And I did so allowing myself to swim in the feeling that I had her not just her approval but her understanding.
This became a mode of play for us. It worked because we were together to make art and that means exploring unusual territory. I was willing to be subject to her sexual power, granting her the experience of exploring the effect of her compelling beauty. She trusted me to facilitate this and to do my part, and she could therefore be more daring.
In exchange, I could yearn for her, long for her, imagine her, and need her…I could thirst for and see her blissed out face as I licked her deeply or filled her up and let go, releasing myself into her snug body as I gazed into her eyes. Or masturbated on her gorgeous belly — swimming in an unusual freedom that this would never happen.
I imagined her at Aqua Massage, giving many men a day the privilege of her witness, and with her small delightful hands grasping them and inviting them to relax and orgasm and ejaculate to her beauty and then she cleaning up their mess with a towel.
I imagined she must have a lover, hoping she would feel more confident in her beauty with him thanks to our exchanges. More than anything I wanted to know about the self-given ecstasy she could only have when she was alone. I imagined her fingers spreading her vulva and digging into her clit, and her back arching as she panted in her solitary orgasm.
When she returned the next time, I left my cum mirror on the table as if it were an ordinary household object. It was obviously what it was, the glass smeared in partially licked-back semen, painted with tongue streaks, and featuring the long spurts of one full ejaculation drying on it from the day before.
Most of those were about her, though in the sense of surrendering to not tasting or fucking her and also feeling the beauty of that experience. Experiencing the fully expressed orgasm that would soon be licked back, I imagined she could see me in the height of my drama of desire and then finally let go, spurting and grunting shamelessly, needing some experience of her.
She picked the mirror up, looked at it, looked at me, and put it down gently with a little smile. Then she undressed and stepped into the studio area and studied her face and her body, a little more confidently than last time.
All of this conscious acknowledgment had me on fire, and she knew it. She could hear my breathing and must have been aware that with all my desire I wanted to swallow her whole. I would have been satisfied to touch the tip of my tongue to her asshole for a fleeting instant.
At the end of the session, she slipped into sheer yellow panties and sat down at the table, casually using my cum mirror to crumble some weed and roll a joint. I was stunned that she was so comfortable handling a little platter of my dried cum, tongue streaks and all. We smoked and I was soaring in a wind of desire and submission. She dressed in front of me, fitting her breasts in to a thin little brassier, wriggling into her skirt and dropping on her blouse and disappearing out the door and to the summer street below.
Moments after she sweetly said goodbye, I was in the space where she had just been with my cum mirror, now dusty with weed, and did what she knew I would be doing, which was lick back my orgasm from the day before. Then facing into the mirror I fucked myself by sitting on a dildo and cried out in lust gratitude for her. This time I licked my fresh orgasm back immediately, feeling so very real and naked.
The very next day in that space, I had what I call my first contact experience.
This was all at the end of my 18-month stay in London, Paris and Brussels. When I got back to the United States, my intimacy with Iris morphed into the image of her face. And she became a kind of iconic expression of my own. Her face was permission to love myself freely; it still is.
Around this time, at the end of my stay in Europe, I began to explore my long-simmering need and desire to not have sex with women. I had lovers and some beautiful experiences with them, but mostly my eroticism involved masturbating with them, including together.
With some of the new Book of Blue women in New York, we explored my self-eroticism in the context of my desire for them, desire which would not be fulfilled in the way it ordinarily might. I grew the future based on my experience of Iris and what we learned together. There were also group masturbation sessions in Blue Studio. Some models were bold about holding the mirror for me.
They were bold about masturbating in my presence, and we looked at the resulting images with deep curiosity. And we delighted in the trust of not fucking and no cunnilingus that translated into ecstatic surrender and mutual acknowledgement.
If I ever doubted what I was doing, I would gaze into Iris’s face and love and enjoy her cool, gentle self awareness. Her breasts in particular would lead me to cry out and let go and nourish myself with my fresh semen, surrendering to the beauty of no sex with her, and gradually, with any woman. In this way, Iris became the Celibacy Goddess.
Love this.