Carl was beautiful to look at, built like an Adonis, and stylishly dressed in custom-made clothes. He was very virile-looking. On top of all that, he lived alone in a fabulous mansion of a house with twin tennis courts and an Olympic-size swimming pool.

“Aubrey” – I nudged my escort – “Carl is the most divine man I have ever seen; how can I get to know him?”

Aubrey was pessimistic. “Don’t waste your time, his Greek girl friend, Elly, sticks to him like glue.”

How right he was. From seven P.M. when the party started until it was about to break up, she watched him like a hawk, and it was only a wicked plot hatched by Aubrey and me – to spike her Irish coffees with triple shots of whiskey – that made her fade from the picture.

Carl, I could sense, was also interested in me, but he barely had time to take down my telephone number and make a tentative date for Sunday, before it was time for everyone to go home.

The rest of the week dragged by. I would sit at my desk during the day or lie in bed at night fantasizing about what a beautiful romance we would have. Sunday could not come fast enough.

The day finally dawned, and I was jolted from my sleep at eight o’clock to answer the jangling phone. But it wasn’t Carl. It was Jurgen, a German pilot I had promised weeks before to go horseback-riding with that day. There was no wriggling out of it, and even though I loved going to bed with this man, my thoughts were elsewhere that day.

Around five P.M. I insisted he take me home, and just as I inserted my key in my front door, the telephone rang. This time it was Carl.

At six P.M. he arrived at my house, preceded through the door by a huge bunch of yellow roses with a cute little poem attached saying he had been calling all day and was dying to see me.

That evening I found out Carl was just as I had fantasized him. Intelligent, world-traveled, courteous, and considerate. How utterly different from the uncouth run-of-the-mill local male.

Our first date was dinner and dancing at Johannesburg’s most fashionable restaurant, and I was so turned on when he held me against his strong chest that my nipples were in constant erection throughout the night. That is as far as it went though, because I had just started menstruating, and in those days I didn’t know how to cope with the situation and would have been acutely embarrassed if he had suggested going to bed.

However, Carl was understanding and didn’t push me, and remained as patient as any man could be as we wined and dined together for the next five nights.

By the sixth evening when both of us were almost clawing the walls, it happened, and it was – as the kids say – like, wow!

Sometimes, when you really dig somebody and for some reason have to resist making love, the beautiful torment of restraint can make the act fantastic when it finally happens.

And it was not that Carl was a very skillful lover. In fact, he was rather clumsy and came one-two-three. But so did I, because I was so overcome with passion and the desire to have him inside me that I didn’t last any longer than he did at first.

Later on I would teach him how to make love properly, just as I have done with almost all of my men – as long as they had the potentials, which include a good body and a strong penis.

And Carl was really shaped huge. Even to this day I have seen only two other men endowed like him. However, generous sexual endowments don’t specifically make a man a good lover, but it helps as long as he uses it gently and doesn’t crudely bang away, because that can certainly hurt the woman.

With Carl that first night I was lucky I was so turned on and therefore lubricated; otherwise I probably would not have been able to accommodate all of him.

Gradually we became used to each other and each other’s bodies, and as our romance progressed, I let it be known to all the old crowd that I was no longer in circulation. “Don’t drop by anymore, or call me up,” I told them all; “I’ve met my man, and I am in love now.”

As might be expected, they made a lot of crude remarks, which I chose to ignore, but eventually they at least got the message and kept away. It would have been more convenient for us both had I moved in with Carl, but we wanted our love affair to get off on the right footing. My mother used to caution me about that.

“Xaviera, I can’t blame you if you don’t manage to keep your virginity until you are married in these modern times, but try never to live with a man,” she said. “You’ll give away the best years of your life if you let him have his cake and eat it too and get nothing in return, because a man never marries a woman who allows him to live with her.”

Her sentiments seemed quaint at the time, but I was to recall them as being not so old-fashioned, after all.

We moved in a respectable circle of businessmen and their wives, and our affair was indeed on a discreet basis. We respected each other tremendously, and I was very glad he never got to know about my nymphomaniacal background. The chances were he never would. Within five weeks of our first meeting Carl was to be transferred to the Oceanside city of Durban, eight hours’ drive away.

In the meantime, after a few idyllic weeks I was dying to hear from him the words “I love you.” It may sound somehow infantile, but when you’re in love these three words really mean something, emotionally.

The time went all too fast, and suddenly it was Carl’s last weekend in Johannesburg. We decided to spend it in the romantic resort hotel just outside the city called Kyalamy Ranch.

It rained most of the weekend, but it made our togetherness more intense. Some of the most beautiful moments lovers can spend in bed are when the rain is splashing on the roof and beating against the windows. It was this way, just before dinner on Sunday night, that Carl declared his feelings.

“Xaviera,” he started, cradling me in his arms, “I haven’t told you how I felt before this because I wanted to be sure myself. I am not like some kid who makes rash statements to every woman he meets so he can get her into bed.

“The truth is that I love you.”

I thought I would sail through the ceiling. I was like a teen-ager; I never felt those emotions before. Everything I ever wanted in my life was wrapped up in that moment in the cottage. For me this was the beginning of my life.

Then Carl went on, “And I would like to ask you whether you would consider becoming my wife.”

Would I? If it had been up to me, I would have married him that day. That minute. But his idea was to spend more time together and get married, after I came to the States and met his family.

In order that we would get to know each other better, Carl suggested I join him in Durban, where he was to stay for another two months, and just as soon as I could get free of my job and sublet my apartment, that’s just what I did.

A few days before Christmas I joined Carl in Durban and moved into his airy apartment that we never did bother to furnish because we wouldn’t be staying there very long. We never even had a gas stove, so we had all our meals in the best local restaurants.

Durban is a picturesque city with magnificent surfing beaches that are regarded as among the best in the world. I used to love going to them and watching the young, strong boys with their sun-bleached hair carrying wooden surfboards under their arms. Dotted along the beaches were colorful kiosks belonging to the Indians selling hot dogs, pastries, and ice creams. Gypsy women would wander up and down selling their merchandise as well, which was usually dresses, sandals, or flowers.

The weather was hot and humid, and the strong sun streaming through the curtainless windows would wake us up, bathed in sweat, very early in the mornings. But it didn’t bother us – we would make passionate love, then run across the road and jump into the ocean.