Anne was very withdrawn when she first joined the group; she said
that she was an artist, into jewelry design, but that she usually
worked as a sales clerk in a jewelery store because her artwork didn't
support her. When she explained that she'd just arrived from Chicago,
having fled the city when her best friend was diagnosed with AIDS, I'm
sorry to say that we weren't a very supportive group.

While the rest of the group came down on her for abandoning her
friend, I admired her. She was stunning looking, if plainly dressed.
Her long hair was tied back in a ponytail to show her ears, and in each
ear, she wore a row of gold earrings that ran from the earlobe right up
over the top, as many as twenty in each ear.

I still remember Anne's outburst at her first meeting. "Damn
you!" she screamed. "Don't you understand? Janet and I," she sobbed,
"Janet and I shared all the same lovers." She paused for a ragged
breath. "How can I make you understand? See these rings?" She ran her
finger over the arc of rings in one ear. "Janet and I had this deal.
Everytime we had a new guy, we'd put in a new pair of earrings, one
ring for each of us. Now she's got AIDS, damn it, but I didn't run away
from her, I ran away from all of our lovers! Janet I could face, I
couldn't face all the guys!"

She was so different from me, but somehow over the months that
followed, we found that we had something in common. We weren't the only
straights in the survivors of AIDS group, but mabe the fact that most
of the group was gay did help push us together. The first thing we
discovered we had in common was an aversion to everything we associated
with our encounter with AIDS, and that included sex.

A few weeks after she joined our support group, we ended up
walking out to the parking lot together after a meeting. It was
January, but above freezing, and after the recent cold spell, we both
found it pleasantly warm, enough so that we stood outside and chated a
bit before we got in our cars to drive home.

"By the way," I asked. "I remember you said you did jewelry
design; got any of your work to show off?"

"Other than my earrings, Nope," she said, and then paused
thoughtfully. "It's funny, I used to like flashy jewelry, but since
Janet got AIDS ... well, I guess I've tried to avoid being flashy. I
guess I'm one of the new puritans the minister talked about at the
meeting. It sure sounds odd saying it, though, I mean, my self-image is
about as far from that as possible."

"I guess it's about the same with me," I said as I fished in my
pocket for my keys. "How come you still wear the earrings?"

She looked oddly at me for a moment before she answered. "They're
in permanently; I'd have to cut them to get them out."

Can you call it dating when neither partner is interested in
making any sexual advances? In March, a few months after Anne joined
our survivors support group, we started going out together. I think we
were both using our relationship defensively; by staying together when
we were in social settings, we could were shield each other from sexual
pressure.

I remember one night after we left a meeting of the survivors,
Anne gave a good summary of her feelings. "You know, Jeff, there are
times I wish I could become a nun, I wish I could live in an isolated
world where sex didn't exist."

"Why not marry me?" I joked.

"What?" she said, stopping me on the street and staring at me.

"Like you said at the meeting," I said. "You said you'd always
thought that marriage was a trap to be avoided, that marriage would
mean the end of your sexuality. Wouldn't marriage be more fun than a
convent?"

She smiled at me and chuckled. "It probably would, but you're so
..." She paused, her voice trailing off. "Damn it, you're so straight
that I'm afraid I'd offend you."

I couldn't imagine what she meant by straight, but she didn't say
more until a few weeks later. We'd gone out to a late movie after one
of the meetings of our support group, and as we walked back to the
parking lot where we'd left our cars, we talked.

"It's been a few months since I left Janet," Anne said, "and
still, it's hard for me to face it."

"You should call her up, talk to her," I suggested.

"It's not that," she said, chuckling. "I've been phoning Janet
once a week for a while now. What I can't do is imagine me living the
rest of my life monogamously or without sex."

"Don't take it so seriously," I said. "You could always marry
me."

Anne turned to me and took my hands in hers, something she'd never
done before. "Look, you're nice, but do you really want to live with a
girl like me?"

I held her hands as I answered. "Look, I didn't mean you to take
me so seriously. What's so awful about you that you think I'd have a
problem with?"

She said she'd tell me later, but it was to be more than a month
before she said anything more. By then, we sometimes ended up holding
hands when we walked together, and one of the guys at the support group
had joked as we left that evening that we looked like we were getting a
bit romantic with each other. I jokingly suggested that we get married,
and although she knew I was teasing, she stopped me outside looked at
me with a serious look.

"Look, this teasing's got to stop."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because you don't want to marry me."

"Why not?" I asked, realizing that I was serious. "Really, why
not. I think I really like you enough that I could live with you 'till
death do us part' if I had to."

"You don't want to do it!"

"Why?"

"OK," she said, sighing. "I haven't been entirely open with you or
with the support group. Yes, Janet and I were promiscuous, but there
was more to it than that."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

She looked down at herself. "I used to dress the part, I used to
really like seeing men react to my body, but now I'm scared. I guess
I've been dressing pretty prudishly ever since Janet got AIDS, part of
being a new puritan, like the minister said at the meeting."

She paused to collect her thoughts before she continued. "Janet
and I were roommates, you know, and we shared our men. We made love
together, in the same bed, sometimes with one man and sometimes with
more, and sometimes just the two of us. We made love to each other
fairly often; at first, we only did it when we shared a man, but it was
fun enough that we did it when we were alone together, although that
wasn't often."

I could tell that there was real regret in her voice, that she'd
really enjoyed the lifestyle she was describing. At the same time, I
was a bit shocked. I knew that some of the gays in our support group
had enjoyed something of a similar lifestyle, but I had a hard time
facing the fact that someone I was attracted to was like that. As a
result, I stopped my offers of marriage for a month or so, but by the
time June arrived, I'd come to face the fact that I liked Anne despite
what she'd told me.

Anne always brushed me off the same way when I proposed marriage;
she'd always tell me that there was more about her that she didn't want
me to know for fear that it would end a pleasant friendship.

I asked her again today, July third, while we were on our way back
from the local clinic where we got our periodic HIV screenings; neither
of us had had any sexual contacts for six months, but we were scared
enough by our experiences to keep going back to the clinic every month.
On the way out, we agreed to get together for a picnic dinner tomorrow,
before the fireworks on the fourth. I made my usual proposal, half in
jest but half seriously, and Anne surpirsed me completely by answering
yes.

She drove us immediately to the county courthouse. I was still in
a daze as she marched us up to the clerk's office and rang the bell.
I'd made my usual offer of marriage, but I hadn't expected her to
accept on the spot, and her fast followthrough left me reeling. She
filled out as much of the form the clerk handed her as she could, then
handed it to me to fill out my part.

I'm not sure I fully realized what I was doing, but when the clerk
asked for medical lab reports certifying that we were free of the
diseases the state cares about, I felt a wave of relief as I realized
that we hadn't taken care of that formality. I was wrong. Anne answered
the clerk's request by pulling a form out of her purse.

It took me a while to realize that our paranoid visits to the
clinic for AIDS testing every month had included tests for all the
other diseases the state might care about. The form I had in my shirt
pocket was more than enough to satisfy the clerk.

"When's the wedding?" The clerk asked.

"How about now?" Anne replied. "Is there anyone around here who
can do it?"

There was; a judge had some free time. I went through the entire
thing in a daze, and then Anne drove me back to her place, not saying a
word until she let me out of the car.

"Well hubby," she said, holding the car door open for me, "come on
up and see what you've gotten yourself into."

"OK," I said, following her up the stairs. We'd never seen each
others' rooms before, I'd never done more than hold her hands, and now
we were married. I'd been serially monogamous all my adult life, but
I'd always checked out the wares, as the saying goes, before I moved in
with any of my previous lovers.

As Anne led me into her apartment, she gave me a brief tour. The
place was a recently rehabbed loft over a bookstore. There was one
window, a picture window looking out over the street; the rest of the
light came from skylights in the flat roof. It was a one-room
apartment, but a big one, with a kitchenette filling one of the back
corners, modern bathroom fixtures in another corner, and a large
waterbed under the window. Her only other furnature was a large
drafting table along one wall next to a workbench cluttered with the
tools of her jewelry making business.

"No wall around your bathroom?" I asked, surprised.

"They hadn't finished the place yet when they showed it to me, and
they cut the rent when I agreed to take it without internal walls. Like
it?"

She didn't give me a chance to answer her question. She was facing
me, standing a few paces away, and with a swift gesture, she unzipped
her modest denim dress. As she pulled the zipper down, my first
impression was that she didn't wear anything under it, but as she
tossed the dress on the floor, I saw that I was wrong; she wore
jewelry.

She stood definatly in front of me with her feet apart and her
hands on her hips, and I just stared. She had beautiful breasts, big
enough to enjoy without being large enough to need support. Large dark
areolas surrounded her large nipples, but I wasn't looking at them.
Well, I was, but not in the way you might imagine. I was looking at
what she wore on them, rings, a largish one on each breast, and it was
obvious that they passed right through each nipple.

When I finally looked down from her breasts, I saw that she also
wore rings in the hairless lips of her vagina. Body-piercing jewelry
was something I'd heard of, but I'd never imagined that I'd find it in,
my God, my wife!

She finally spoke. "I warned you! You want me to explain?"

I nodded silently.

"Janet and I were running out of space in our ears when we made it
with this guy who was in the piercing business, and he suggested other
places for rings and helped us with them. How do you like 'em?"

I finally found words. "They're interesting to look at, but what
about, I mean, aren't they inconvenient?"

"You take your clothes off too," Anne scolded. "I want to see what
I've gotten for myself."

I started undressing, still looking at the bizarre rings in her
nipples and crotch.

"OK," she said as I undressed. "I guess I owe you something.
They'd be inconvenient if I were into pants or underwear, but I don't
wear those."

My mind was still reeling as I undressed, but she didn't give me
time to catch my balance. "Come on," she said, leading me to her, no,
our bed. "Let's do it. I've been celebate for over six months now, and
I was fourteen the last time I went that long without a man. I need
you!"

I looked at her profile outlined against the bright window behind
her as she led me to the bed. "Don't you want to shut the drapes?"

She smiled at me. "I like to see what I'm doing, and besides," she
said turning to point out the window behind her, "who's there to see
in?"

I looked; there was a park across the street, and unless someone
climbed a tree, we had privacy. Even so, I was uncomfortable as I
turned back to Anne. She stood in a patch of sunlight, and her rings
sparkled, but as I looked at the rings between her legs, I was puzzled.
"How do they come out so we can make love?"

She chuckled as she looked down at me as I sat on the edge of the
bed. "They don't come out. Remember, I was in the jewelry business.
Janet and I welded all our rings. They don't get in the way and I'd
like it if you played with them; I'll teach you how to use them to make
things more fun once you get used to me. Come on!"

She was still standing in front of me as I sat on the bed, so I
reached out to touch her nipples and gently fingered the rings through
them. As I touched them, I wondered how she'd managed to weld the rings
without burning herself.

Her nipples grew erect as I fingered the rings. "Does this feel
good?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "If you want to kiss my nipples, take the ring in
your mouth and play with it with your tongue. Don't be shy."

I wasn't ready for that yet, but I was curious about the rings
between her legs. She lay on the bed in a patch of sun from a skylight
and let me look at them. "I hope I'm not making you feel too
clinical," I said. "Do you mind if I touch?"

Her voice was husky when she answered. "I want you to touch! Put
your thumbs through the rings, pull gently on them!"

I did. At first, I was merely expressing my curiosity, but as I
noticed the way Anne reacted to my touch, I began to get excited. As I
felt the soft hairless skin between her legs, she reached out and held
my penis, and I could feel it growing as she held it and gently stroked
it.

"Do you like oral sex?" Anne asked.

"I don't know," I said. Most of my past lovers had been
conventional in their sexual interests, and the few times I'd had oral
sex hadn't been worth repeating. "I don't think I'm ready to try it
with you."

"Too bad," she said, sounding regretful. "Kiss me!"

I did, kissing my way up her stomach from her pubic mound to her
breasts and nipples. The rings in her nipples fit comfortably in my
mouth, and while I kissed her, she ran her hands through my hair and
down my back. It had been too long since I'd had a woman, and even with
her strange rings, the feel of her nipples in my mouth was heavenly.

I kissed my way up her throat and nibbled briefly at the fringe of
rings in her ear before kissing her lips. Her tongue slid warmly
between my teeth, and the taste of our first kiss was heavenly. She
held my erect penis in her hand and gently massaged it while while we
locked our lips together, and I used my free hand to play with the
rings in her nipples until she pulled my hand between her legs.

The rings between her legs were fascinating, but I didn't know
what to with them so I just slid my index finger between the rows and
began to massage. She was soft and moist inside, and she thrust her
hips gently up against my hand in response to my touch.

I started to slide on top of her so I could enter her, but she
pushed me off. "My way," she said, rolling me onto my back. She
squatted over me and tickled the end of my erect penis with her rings,
then reached down and carefully threaded an index finger through each
row of rings, using the rings to spread the lips of her vagina as she
slowly lowered herself onto me.

"You'd use your thumbs to do it," she said as she pulled out her
fingers and sat down.

I could feel the rings against my crotch, but more than that, I
felt the wonderful softness of Anne engulfing my penis. She began to
rock as she sat on me, and the the sight of her sitting there in the
bright sunlight was almost too much for me. The rings in her ears and
nipples shone in the light, and as the tension of orgasm approached,
they sparkled as she shivvered.

I was relaxed and content as she approached her first orgasm, but
as I reached up to finger her nipple rings, she began to pump her hips
and do something I've never experienced before with the muscles inside
her. It was too intense, she was too bright in the light, and I
couldn't control myself as I exploded inside her. I think she had a
second orgasm then, but I couldn't tell.

She leaned over me and kissed me, still holding my penis inside
her, and we kissed for a long time before she sat up and began fondling
my chest. She looked down at where our pubic bones met, then looked up
at my face while I admired the sparkle of the rings in her ears and
nipples. She saw my smile and the direction of my glance and playfully
wiggled her hips, calling my attention to the rings pressed against the
base of my penis.

I could sense my penis trying tentatively to expand within her as
she smiled down at me. Her voice was soft. "I guess I'll have to get
another ring, I wonder where we'll put it?"