Problematic Pirate Pants

Dear Robert,

I have a problem, and that problem is your pants.

I'm not going to lie, getting to hang out with a bunch of men in tight pants who honed their muscles swinging swords was nearly as big a draw for me joining our renaissance recreation group as the chance to camp and show off my archery skills. After three years, not every pair of comely buns turns my head. But...wow! Have you seen you? Maybe caught your reflection in two closing glass doors when you go into a store or something? Those long, lean-muscled thighs and your butt are just too much. I've found myself looking a lot more than I used to, probably more than I should. I definitely know I should spend less time trying to figure out just how much your cheeks would give in my hand before I hit unyielding muscle, but here I am, doing it anyway.

I've always thought you were handsome, always, from that first camping trip when the friend who was supposed to share a tent with me bailed at the last minute and you came over to help me set up. In my journal that day, I wrote that I met a man who had kind hands and kind eyes and that I thought maybe I'd fit in with this group, after all. The entry didn't mention how you looked in your swashbuckling pants. Maybe I hadn't seen you in them yet, or maybe I didn't think of you that way yet. The more I did see you, though, the more there was to notice. You weren't just welcoming to me, you welcomed everyone: young, old, women, men. New people are somehow old friends whenever they meet you, even though you have a reserved nature I like. It's like it's easy to become your friend, but takes time and steadfastness to be let into some measure of real intimacy. I feel like you and I have that, and I'm proud of it. That's also why I'm shaking a little as I write this. I'm scared to damage it, but I feel like if I don't try, I'll just burst like an overripe peach.

I have the most problem with your pants when we're all by the fire and you stand to tell stories. It doesn't matter where I sit, I get a great view. If you're facing me, I get to see how expressive your hands and eyes are, how they can be as kind as when we first met or as cruel as one of your dread pirates or Bluebeards with his locked room full of trophies. If you're to one side of me or the other, I get to admire the handsome cut of your profile. If I'm behind you, well...if I'm behind you I'm not sure how much of the story I actually absorb.

You know I'm shy sometimes, but I'd love to be able to stand up and tell a story half as well as you do. I think about stories, I write down ideas for them in my journal, sometimes I even rehearse them in my car when I'm driving out to an event just so I can tell one that hits something in you like the ways yours hit me. I lose my nerve a lot around the fire, though. I have a hard time following you because, well, who wouldn't? But also because when I've watched you, my head is so full of stories too dirty to tell, even in our motley crew of pirates, gypsies, tramps and thieves. I thought if I wrote this down, it might be easier and I wouldn't have to worry about my nerve failing. As it is, my hands are ice cold with adrenaline just putting this to paper. So, let me tell you a story, a true one, but one you don't know from my perspective and, for all I know, may not even remember.

In October, we went on the last renaissance recreation camping trip I took before this one. I know how to set up my own tent now, thankfully, and the weather was mild and clear. The food was good and the mead came out early and got passed around liberally. The anticipation of great ghost stories to come was hanging in the air like the crisp between the yellow leaves and everyone was looking at you from time to time, waiting for you to start the tales, since your scary ones are the best there are. I could tell the time was close and I didn't want to have to miss a word once you started, so I volunteered to go get more wood off the pile for the fire. You jumped up to help because, and I think I've covered this, that's how you are.

Away from the fire it was darker and colder than I'd realized from within the ring of light and mead and laughter. I've never understood people who are afraid of the woods, or of the quiet, so I'm not sure why I jumped so when I felt you brush against my ass while I was picking up the log. Maybe it was because I just didn't hear you come up that close behind me or because I was a little (drunk) off balance, leaning over. Maybe it was something else entirely, an electric prickle across all my skin that my brain mistook for fear. Whatever it was, I snapped up straight and dropped the log. I was lucky I didn't drop it on my fool toes, but I did stumble backwards into you. You lost your footing and went down gracelessly into the pile of leaves we'd swept away from the camp. At least I'd pushed you over onto a soft place to land! As soon as you got over the shock of suddenly looking up at the stars, you were laughing and I was apologizing faster than my mouth could actually form around the words.

When I leaned over to grab your outstretched hand and help you up, you got your revenge. You yanked me down on top of you and dug your fingers into my ribs to tickle me. Let me tell you, of all the times I ever imagined bucking and thrashing on top of you, that was not one of the scenarios I'd imagined. My memory was like soft wax, though, taking impressions of the sensations of you holding tight against my back with one hand while your other roamed over my side. I still don't know if it was intentional, an accident, or a complete fabrication of my lust-boiled brain that you cupped your palm against the side of my breast and swept it down from just under my armpit to where it rested, full and waiting, in your hand. Whatever it was, I've replayed it in my mind many times while stroking my breast with my own hand while my other is...otherwise occupied.

I finally got you to stop when I touched your chest with one flat hand - I think I surprised us both with the heat of it against your bare skin. The laces on your shirt had worked their way open, more than either of us realized. Your skin was colder that I thought it would be, the hair on your chest softer. We were both panting from laughter, nose to nose, and my hair had come loose from its tie and fallen down in a curtain to either side of our faces. We could have done anything with our mouths at that moment, and no one would have seen at all.

That's when you said, "Want to hear a funny story?"

I did. I wanted it so badly, not the least because I though, for a moment, that it might be a funny story about how much you wanted to kiss me. The only thing I've probably rehearsed more in my head than the stories I want to tell around the fire is exactly what I'd do if presented with your willing, waiting lips.

But my courage failed me again. I couldn't do it, couldn't stop my thoughts from tumbling all over each other like things falling out an overstuffed closet. I couldn't stop the hot chain wrapped around my insides from being pulled tight at both ends.

"I do," I said, as I stood up. "Let's grab the wood so you can tell it around the fire."

As you know, I haven't been to any renaissance recreation events since then, at least not overnight ones, before today. It's not because of what happened at the woodpile! I know you knew about my mom getting sick because I got your card. She's doing a lot better and I don't have to spend so much time taking her to the doctor and helping out around her house, but it was really bad for a while. All that time sitting beside her bed in the hospital, waiting for more tests results to come back, that's when I found out what real fear is. It made me rethink a lot of what I thought I was afraid of in my life before and realize how useless it is to be afraid of not telling the best story there ever was to people who love me (and are drunk). Most especially, it made me realize how much I didn't want to be afraid of something I wanted, like your lips pressed against mine by the woodpile, or your kind hands exploring the curves of my body with no question of it being intentional.

Here's the part I am afraid of that's worth the fear. You and Karen and me, we've always been friends, all of us. I would never want that to change, which is why I wrote all of this down in an old-school letter. Unlike an e-mail, you can throw this in the fire and it will be like it never existed, if that's what you want. It's clear to me that the two of you are bonkers about each other and always will be, which, if you can believe it, makes me want you more. I don't want anything to change with the two of you, whether you want me, too, or not. But part of the way you are with each other is that you both flirt, a lot. Sometimes with couples who've been together a long time there's just flirting and sometimes there's...more. If you aren't one of those couples, or if you don't want me, I promise you, you're too dear to me as a friend for me to be upset that your pants, and my reaction to them, are my problem to deal with on my own. Nothing has to change between us at all. I hope it doesn't, no matter what you decide.

But if I've been making your pants a problem for you, too?

I have a solution, and that solution is in my tent.

Always Yours,

Sarah