None of the wedding gifts bore the names of Lisa or Allison, or even of a Ms. or Mrs. Carter. I learned months later that Diana had insisted they not bring one when she made the invitation. However, Lisa did bring me a gift that day that was second only to the gift that Diana had given me when she entrusted her heart and future to me: renewed friendship.

Thankfully, there was no similar opportunity for a reconciliation scene with Diana's ex. Diana invited Lisa because she understood how much I cared about Lisa and regretted how things ended, and she got a sense of the same when she talked to Lisa that night while I was scribbling out invitation envelopes. My Angel was trying to give both of us an opportunity for closure. The only closure she cared about with Peter was the nailing shut of his coffin lid.

We have only met with Lisa and Allison once since, after Diana and I emptied our bank accounts to purchase a house in the outer suburbs and invited friends over to the housewarming. It was a warm and fun reunion, but I could sense that they felt alone in a small crowd of our family and my geek friends. We might have chances to meet up again, but we don't move in the same circles anymore and we are not the same people we were seven years ago. That is not a bad thing. People evolve; they don't necessarily change entirely, but they grow enough that tastes and experiences change. That change does not weaken a friendship, even if it makes it somewhat less present.

We trade the occasional e-mail with each other, and send anniversary, birthday and holiday cards. Allison has e-mailed me a couple of times for gift ideas for her wife and I tried to help, but being a few years removed from doing that for Lisa, my ideas are a little out-dated. Diana now keeps entries for both Allison and Lisa in her cellphone, and jokingly threatens to use them to get dirt on my past when I start being a nuisance. Yes, I still have Lisa's number in mine, but now when I look at it, I remember that smile in the reception hall lobby, not the Medusa glare that she flashed when we ended our relationship.

Lisa tried to deflect my e-mailed inquiries into her writing career, claiming that she had not "found the right words yet." I knew how important it was for authors to write something - anything - on a daily basis if they wanted to make a career of it, because Lisa had harped on that while we were a couple. I was certain she was publishing something, even if it was fan fiction on the Internet, anonymous advice in trashy women's magazines, or advertising on cereal boxes. I wanted to support her in her art, so I kept pestering her as best as one can pester someone through e-mail and not be routed automatically to the Spam folder. After about a year's worth of e-mails, she finally divulged the location of her Internet fiction archive.

Eye-opening does not begin to describe it.

Of course, I read it. I am a man and therefore a pig, and Lisa's stories appealed to the perverted pig DNA in my cellular structure. I more than read; I binged. Diana didn't read any further than the first paragraph of the first story; she still leans to the conservative side of the middle of the road, so erotica tends to repulse her more than it entices her, which is okay. To each their own...

Lisa painted scenes with words, even if they were scenes that I could not possibly imagine occurring anywhere outside of very bad Internet video releases from the Czech Republic. It was all too easy to imagine Lisa in the scenes she crafted out of those words, because even the blissful love of my wife cannot cause me to forget the sight of that redhead's body naked. That memory made it all that much harder to pull my attention away from her stories. It was also hard...

Whoops, I started devolving into Beavis and Butthead territory there... cough... okay, moving on...

Even if eighty percent of the work was the product of an overactive imagination, the amount of research necessary to deliver these detailed, absorbing, convincing stories could only be done by someone enthralled with the subject. She also hardly hid the players in the drama, keeping Allison's name and changing hers into a mockery of that derisive nickname her brothers had for her. Allison, the domme; Lizbeth, the sub...

Thankfully, none of the losers in her stories were named Dave. Somehow, I think that if a Dave suddenly showed up in her fiction now, he'd be boringly normal... except for a guilt complex the size of the Pentagon Building that he carried around inside of him.

I found Lisa's fiction enlightening and far more than wack-off porn. It delved into the mysteries and the truths about a subculture instead of going for the cheap thrill that was easily achieved by perpetuating its stereotypes. It was not a story focused on the subculture itself, but a story of people in love who happen to enjoy the subculture. I have to admit that the sex was the initial hook into the stories for me, but in the end I was skipping over the sex scenes to find where the personal drama resumed. I needed to know what happened to these people, whether they shattered the stereotypes and conquered their demons. Judging from My Jealousy, My Appreciation, and My Ally, it worked out, but not before going through a ton of heartache before truths were revealed. Reading the impassioned writing in those pieces, I am guessing that there was a great deal of real life influencing those three stories, including the heartache of lost love and the triumph of love restored.

Just like my life. Go figure.

After reading, it became obvious what the "nothing" was that came between us, even to a dunce like me. Lizbeth, the avatar for Lisa; Lizbeth, the submissive. Seeing that distant stare in her eyes those nights was painful enough for me, but it was probably a fraction of the agony that the "nothing" wrecked in Lisa's heart when we were together . Of course she was scared of it, with the shame that mainstream society heaped upon people with those desires. Of course she was scared of what I - a simple, mainstream-type of guy - would think of her if she confided in me. Who wouldn't be? Even without a minor in Mathematics, you can see that the likely sum of those two operands is disaster. So Lisa did what any uncertain and afraid person would do: she hid it.

I now understand her fear, if only a tiny portion of it. Even so, I wish now more than ever that Lisa had confided in me. I could have softened the impact, ending our relationship in a fender-bender instead of a ten-car pile-up.

You see, I held a secret as well. It is a secret that I have never shared with anyone except Diana, because it is not my secret to reveal but one that I was entrusted to keep.

Give me a moment for me to figure out how to explain this...

Perhaps I could be a reasonable submissive. Guilt is essential for a submissive, and given how I elevated guilt to an art-form after our breakup, I'm real good at it.

However, I cannot dominate. Not because I think BDSM is perverted; I am a man and therefore a pig and a pervert by definition. No, I cannot dominate because I know someone who was abused. Someone I have loved all my life was abused by someone in whom they should have been able to place complete trust, someone who hid their evil from society but not from immediate family, and the family was too shamed by society to admit it and stop it.

If Lisa had confided this secret desire to me back when we were a couple, if she begged me to help her satisfy that urge, I could only fail her. Oh, I would have tried, because I was falling in love with her and wanted to please her. I would have failed. Every act that would have put Lisa more at my mercy - even something so simple as tying her wrists to a bedpost with a scarf - would have only reminded me of that evil perpetrated on that person I love. Instead of satisfying her needs, I would have gravitated towards one of two extremes: I would be so overcome with disgust and shame at that old evil that I would be unable to dominate and satisfy her; or we both would have discovered to my horror that the evil was hereditary and that it was not bound to the limits of the safeword.

Even if I had managed to pull it off convincingly? The memory of that past evil would have turned my heart to stone. I'd still lose her. Even if I managed to avoid that? Lisa was going to eventually discover her true orientation, because I'm reasonable sure that she experienced a sexual epiphany and was not "changed" by something beyond her control. Lisa would eventually have to choose between living out a lie or destroying a relationship.

But perhaps it was always meant to be this way? No matter what, Lisa and I were going to end. Yes, I wound up losing Lisa's love because of the "nothing," but I did not lose her friendship or her caring. I almost lost her entirely, if not for a moment of utter desperation and the kindness of a wonderful young woman named Allison. At least we ended in a way where we could piece together a friendship out of the fragments. It turns out that everything worked out for the best, exactly as it should have.

I just wish it didn't have to hurt so damned much for so damned long in the process, but perhaps it had to emotionally hurt like Hell first so that both Lisa and I could fully appreciate the ecstasy of Heaven.

Diana insists that I have to tell Lisa all of this, so that Lisa can heal completely from that old lingering wound. As usual, Diana's right, but I'm not sure that's the wisest thing to do. Would telling Lisa all of this close the wound, or reopen it? She's happy now, she's found contentment, and so have I. Why poke at the old wound?

Perhaps Lisa's birthday in December will give me the perfect excuse to call and talk to her about it. Provided, of course, Lisa's not "tied up" with Allison at the time. Also, provided that I've made up my mind before then.

I still think about Lisa occasionally, what was and what might have been, but the memory is no longer bitter. Yes, sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have helped her explore that part of her sexuality, especially when I compare our married, vanilla sex life to the one Lisa and I shared, or to the excitement and thrill Lisa's fiction portrays. But thanks to Lisa, I met Allison. Thanks to Allison, I found Diana. In Diana, I found an Angel from Heaven that loves me for the man I am, faults and all. I love Diana like the gift from Heaven that she is, and I work to be worthy of it.

That is far more than nothing. It is more than I could ever ask.

It is Everything.

Fin