My life is boring, and I wasn’t sexually adventurous even before I got married. Marriage completely ended my sex life, as it is wont to do, and when I got divorced at 54, I didn’t expect any sexual miracles to come my way.

I recently attended a phlebotomy conference. Phlebotomy is basically the practice of drawing blood for medical reasons. It’s my job, to be clear, not just a weird hobby. These conferences aren’t particularly exciting, but it’s good to see colleagues.

We were stationed at a hotel, per usual, but something extremely exciting and unexpected happened: Another convention was also using the hotel. A BDSM convention.

The first hint was the leather. The next was the black latex. Then I got lost and ended up at the wrong conference room, only to witness a man getting pegged in front of a rapt audience. That was an eye-opener, let me tell you.

It was apparently either a sales pitch for a strap-on company or a guide to using them, because someone was droning on about materials and proper technique, but I didn’t absorb any of it. I stared, transfixed. I’d never wanted to have anything in my ass, but the woman wielding the strap-on was gorgeous. She was wearing a corset and skintight leather pants, and the look on her face as she fucked that man was…

Well, I got an erection.

Not from the ass stuff, to clarify. But as I stood in the doorway in my tweed jacket, I had a sudden overwhelming desire for that woman to dominate me. I’d never moved much past missionary, and though I’d seen my share of porn, it had never seemed like it might happen to me. But here I was, watching another middle-aged man get fucked up the ass.

The woman demonstrating the strap-on looked up at one point. Her eyes coasted over the audience, almost looking bored despite how wild this all seemed to me. Then her eyes locked on mine. I stared back, fully aware that my jaw was hanging open and I was beginning to sweat. She smirked, then returned her attention to her partner. I swore she knew my dick was hard in my slacks.

I left the room, but the memory wouldn’t leave me. I thought about it through a series of technical discussions, and I even skipped the post-conference excursion to a nearby bar, choosing instead to stay at the hotel bar. There were plenty of leather-clad people there, but not the one I most wanted to see.

Then she stepped up beside me and ordered a whiskey neat, and I pretty much fell in love.

“Hey,” she said, grinning at me.

“Hey,” I said back weakly. I was still wearing tweed, and I felt pathetic compared to this radiant woman, but she didn’t seem to mind. She leaned against the bar and fixed me with her full attention.

“Is this your first convention?” she asked.

I laughed awkwardly. “No. I’m here for a different conference, actually. It’s about phlebotomy. Drawing blood,” I added when she looked confused.

She smiled. “We have a session on that, too, but it’s probably not one you’d be interested in.”

I cleared my throat. “I don’t know. Today was certainly eye-opening.”

She grinned and eyed me up and down. “Want to have your eyes opened even more?”

How could I possibly say no to that? I don’t remember what I said or how exactly it happened, but we ended up in the elevator, heading to her room. Her name was Crystal, and she worked part-time at a dungeon while also working as an adjunct professor. She told me the basics of BDSM while we traveled — everything needed to be safe, sane, and consensual — and she established ground rules. If I wanted to explore this, she was happy to give me a primer, with or without sex. I requested sex, naturally. There would be no strap-ons, because that was something I wasn’t nearly comfortable enough to attempt, but she promised a little pain. My safe word was “tarragon.”

We reached her room, and it was like a switch had been flipped. As soon as the door shut, she took on this even more powerful persona. I don’t know how else to describe it — she just seemed taller, meaner, and totally in control. And I liked it.

“Take off your clothes,” she ordered.

I hastily complied, although I was nervous about having a woman see my body. She was a few decades younger than me, and I wasn’t in the best shape. Thankfully, she looked at my nude body like she enjoyed it, and that helped me relax.

“Bend over the bed,” she said. “Ass up.”

I obeyed her, leaning over so my elbows were planted on the bedspread. I felt even more stupid and vulnerable like that, but the second she trailed a hand down my back to cup my ass, I got so aroused that feeling stupid no longer mattered. I hadn’t been touched intimately by another person in years, and the scratch of her long nails was heavenly.

She slapped my ass, and it was startling but also pleasant. She rubbed the sting out with her palm before slapping me again. “You want me to hit you,” she said as she delivered a series of moderately hard blows. “You want to take this for me.”

“Yes,” I agreed, and although this hadn’t been a kink of mine a day ago, it certainly was now.

“I’m going to use the flogger,” she said, retrieving the implement from the nightstand. I was nervous, but she trailed it over me gently at first, letting me get accustomed to the heavy drag of leather against my back and shoulders. When she finally wound up and smacked my ass, I shouted with pleasure. It hurt, but it also felt amazing in a way I couldn’t articulate. My skin was hot and tingling.

She whirled the flogger in arcs I could just catch out of the corner of my eye, peppering my ass and thighs with hits of varying force. A few were so hard I jolted forward and had to bite my tongue not to ask her to stop. We were way beyond my comfort zone, but I’d never wanted anything more.

She stopped flogging me and dragged her tongue up my spine. I shivered and clutched at the bedspread. My dick was already incredibly hard, and she hadn’t even touched it yet.

Crystal reached between my legs from the back, coasting over my asshole before fondling my balls. “You like this, don’t you?” she said as she caged my balls in her fingers and tugged lightly. “You want me to make you my fuck toy.”

“Yes,” I gasped. My balls were swollen and tender with the need to come, and the way she was deftly manhandling me was perfect. No woman had ever touched me so roughly before, but that slight pain made it a thousand times better.

She raked her nails down my back, then started back in with the flogger. I pushed back into every stroke, wanting more pain from her. It was sending me out of my mind into some hot, floating mental state. How had it taken over fifty years of my life to get to this point? How had I never understood or been curious about BDSM before?

Eventually, the blows against my ass got so painful that I was whimpering and cringing away from them. There was still pleasure in that pain, oddly enough, but I was about to lose my mind.

She pulled out another implement. She called it a pinwheel. It was a little disk with spokes on it that she rolled over my skin, and it provided a sharper, more subtle pain than the flogger. When she wielded it lightly, it felt like a caress. When she went a little harder, it was almost like being cut. She rolled it over my back and from my thighs up to my ass, and the pain was extra sharp where she’d already beaten me.

“Are you ready to get fucked?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, desperate for it.

The pinwheel went away. “Too bad. Raise your torso more and curve your shoulders in.”

I propped myself up on my arms, and then the flogger came down on my upper back. I loved it even more than having it hit my ass. The blows were solid enough to feel like punches, and adrenaline and endorphins pumped through me, making me feel high. No wonder people did this.

Crystal alternated between flogging my ass and my back, and I took it until my arms were shaking and my skin felt like it was on fire. Finally, right when I started worrying I wouldn’t be able to take it anymore, she stopped.

“This is making me wet,” she told me. “Get on your back on the bed.”

I would have done anything she asked at that point. I arranged myself on my back, my dick sticking up straight and hard. She stripped off her pants but left the corset on, and when she straddled me, I was enraptured by the wet gleam of her pussy. “Can I touch you?” I asked.

“Only if you make it good.”

I reached between her legs to rub her clit, and touching a woman’s aroused body after so many years was amazing. She was dripping-wet, and when I slid a finger into her pussy, her body squeezed around it.

“I’m going to ride your face,” she said, shifting up to straddle my mouth. That hot, delicious pussy lowered over me, and I licked her ravenously, desperate for more of her sour-sweet taste. She was a goddess sent to Earth, and I would have done anything to make her come.

I focused on her clit, and she orgasmed with a moan, grinding her cunt against my mouth. Then she grabbed a condom from the nightstand, rolled it over me, and sat on my dick. She was so wet that she sank all the way down immediately.

She rode me aggressively, her hips rolling as her hands pinned me down. I wasn’t going to last long, but she was thankfully greedy and rubbed her clit as she rode me. Tension crept up on me, and soon I was bucking into her forcefully, desperate to come. When she put her hand around my throat and squeezed, I couldn’t hold out anymore. I came with a shout, emptying my come into her. She orgasmed immediately after, her body rippling around my dick. It was the most intense sexual experience I’d ever had.

Then she grinned at me. “Welcome to the world of kink,” she said. “That was just your first lesson.”