If you’re reading this, you’ve found the new home of phone sex operator and erotica author Secondhand Rose. Hip-hip-whore-ay!

The launch of this long-overdue new site announces my triumphant return to phone sex. (Well, at least it is supposed to… But, in all honesty, I have been around for a bit now, working with VIPs, writing custom erotica, and even sneaking in a few new callers too. In fact, that’s what has kept me from actually making this new site!) But here it is, the Ruined Boudoir,  in all it’s not-yet-finished, imperfect glory.

[Out of some neurotic need, I feel compelled to express devout mea culpas over what little bugs may exist, or what bits of information may yet be missing, here at my new digital boudoir… However, I expect you will understand and contact me to alert me to issues — while sending warm greetings, I hope!]

Then again, no website or blog is really ever done. Just like interesting people, websites are works in progress, with quirks and even down-right flaws. True, we are supposed to work on our flaws — at least some of them. The one’s we can control. The one’s which are doing harm to ourselves or others. But not all flaws are bad.

I was reminded of this one night as I took a little break from working on this new site.

***

I sat as I usually do on the sofa, with my legs curled up at my side. I was wearing my usual “work at home” attire, a vintage full-slip. This one was a black beauty with a lovely lace hem. Apparently, I was unconsciously playing with the hem of my slip, because I suddenly found my hand held still by my husband. I looked at him and found that he wore that inquisitive spousal look of eyebrows raised in a silent question.

“What?” I replied.

“You are fussing again…” he said in a concerned, not aggravated, voice.

“Fussing?”

“Yes.” He said it as a statement, but I could feel that there was more left unsaid. It was my turn to silently raise the inquisitive eyebrows.

He gently lifted my hand and looked at my exposed left knee. Reflexively I moved to cover it with the hem of my slip — and it was then that I realized what I must have been doing unconsciously. No. What I had been doing self-consciously.

You see, my left knee bears a scar. Physically the scar is quite small, perhaps an inch and a half long if you really took a measuring tape to task and stretched it from barely-pinker-than-my-skin jagged edge at the top to barely-pinker-than-my-skin jagged edge at the bottom. And truth be told, my fingers barely register the wrinkled lump of it against my smooth skin anymore… It has healed well enough and, after nearly a year, the familiarity of it has fooled my sense of touch into accepting it as “normal”.  But to me this scar is huge and ugly. As huge and ugly and frozen in time as as the specific single moment in which it arrived. And that moment, a physical attack, was just one of the dark and scary events that occurred during the 18 month long period we simply refer to as “The Incident.” That single scar marks a very bad spot, full of fear, pain, loss, death, sorrow — and the worst one, hate. Unlike the one and a half inches of physical space, that scar covers huge emotional territory. That scar is huge and ugly. And so deep that I always feel it.

What’s worse, you see, is this latest discovery.  I must be feeling something else about this scar, this very bad time in the not-so-distant past… I am not so shallow and vain that I believe this small scar makes me hideous. And even if it did, I know my worth is greater than my physical charms. I know that those who love me, those who adore and respect me, feel the same. So what is it that makes me want to hide this scar from the very man who lived through all of The Incident with me?

I look up at his face and I see something that stops me in my self-reflecting mind-tracks.

His handsome face bears a look which I have not seen since they wheeled him into my hospital room. It is the look of a man who feels shame — the very specific shame of not being able to protect the woman he loves. And in that moment, I realized what my self-conscious fussing had done to him.

Now I was the one who was filled with shame, and more than a touch of regret.

I reached up and touched his face. He brought his face closer to mine. We bowed our heads and brought them towards one another, resting with our foreheads touching, and just sat there silently for a time in some sort of a marital mind meld.

After a few minutes he brought his right hand over, and with just the tip of his forefinger, he tenderly traced the track of the scar.

There was no distinct movement. I didn’t flinch. He didn’t change his position. Our foreheads remained touching. But something had changed. The proverbial world left our shoulders, I suppose. I know I felt lighter somehow. Warmer too. I gently removed my head from its resting position against his and looked him full in the face.  Gone was the shame, or any signs of real anguish as far as I could see. Just that intoxicating mixture of bitter-sweetness and a lust born of intimacy. I imagine mine looked much the same.

He turned his head and looked at his right hand which was now resting on my left knee. We both watched as he raised his hand and once again gently traced the scar with his finger. It was a soft stroke, rather like one would pet a small animal. This time I made a small shudder — not in pain, or fear, or disgust, but the kind a girl makes when a man gently traces his fingers along her neck…

He knew exactly what that slight shiver meant too. In a single moment (one that seemed entirely too smooth to be as fast as it was!) we were kissing. Kissing like long parted lovers who had traveled great time and distance to keep promises.

And why not? After all, we had not only survived The Incident together, but we had been brave enough to battle against our internal fears, share our battle scars, and be vulnerable with one another.

Vulnerability is sexy. Sexier still are those who see our vulnerability and reach out to tenderly touch.