[This is my first real story in years, although I’ve fancied myself a writer this entire time, and have taken classes and the like. I used to be pretty good, or at least my friends and teachers thought so. I’m technically published, but in a way irrelevant to the work at hand.
This is also my first time writing erotica, ever, although I’ve been reading since the first ‘Whats New’ back in 1997 or whenever it was. I did once submit a piece I’d worked on, but didn’t write, in 2000 (the intro in that story will explain why it is attributed to me, and why I haven’t cleaned it up since that time).
There are way too many inspirations to list for this story—ten years worth of tales, the quality only getting better every year, the best of them helping to nudge me towards this point. I don’t mean to slight any author by not giving them credit, and would like to thank everyone who’s written for this site.
Gentle reader, I hope you enjoy this humble tale. It’s ambitious to start off with what’s meant to be something of an epic, but this is the way the story came to me. This is turning out to be maybe the longest thing I’ve written. Let me know what I’m doing wrong—and if I’m doing anything right.
Oh, and I promise my intros will be shorter in the future. Well, I’ll try anyway.]
My life was almost half over before it really began. Even before then, I was marching down the road less traveled, but it wasn’t until that summer that my future became clear. It’s kind of a long story.
I was a college drop-out, and didn’t go back until I was 28. I was stuck in Phoenix, Arizona, so my only reasonable choice was Arizona State. I was pursuing two degrees: Architecture and Urban Design—minoring in sculpture.
On the bright side, I had a baby face—I managed to fit in with most of the 18-22 crowd; mostly surprising them with my actual age. My mother was Italian, and I’d picked up enough of the language from her side of the family to test out of basic Italian—but to finish my language requirements, I had to take the advanced levels. Mom died before we could visit Italy, so I decided to do a summer abroad, and immerse myself in my mother tongue, so to speak. It was probably unwise, pursuing Italian while living in Arizona, but I had my reasons.
We spent a week in Italy, scouting and taking classes, then a small group of us arranged a trip across the Mediterranean to Africa. It was an overnight ferry ride, followed by a night in Tunisia, and finally an overnight ferry ride.