They e-mailed for several months. "We're so cool," Dodson laughs. "We met in cyberspace." She loved his e-mails. Eric was an English major, a gifted writer, and he related his sexual experiences with the young women he was seeing. His e-mails became Dodson's favorite porn: "I'd get turned on and masturbate fantasizing sex with a handsome young man."

Wilkinson asked if he could visit. Dodson declined. She wasn't into complications, especially heterosexual complications with a man young enough to be her grandson. But Wilkinson persisted. Eventually she relented but insisted on keeping him at arm's length. The deal was that he would stay with a friend, and they would just have lunch.

Wilkinson had other ideas. He wanted to have sex: "Women lovers my own age were not sexually experienced. They were inhibited, not very creative. What I wanted was a sexual mentor, and Betty seemed like the perfect woman."

Dodson's resolve to keep her distance quickly evaporated when Wilkinson walked into her apartment. "The kid was so desirable, a gorgeous 6-foot hunk. He wanted me to be his sex teacher. It was very flattering. We went out to lunch, returned to my apartment and had four hours of very hot sex. Eric went to his friend's place, got his suitcase and spent the weekend with me. We had all kinds of sex he'd never had before: I did deep-throat on him. I played with his balls, and slid a dildo up his butt while he played with his peter. It was not only great fun, it was first-rate sex."

In addition to his sexual curiosity and enthusiasm, Wilkinson endeared himself to Dodson by saying he'd always wanted to use a vibrator during sex. "Many men feel threatened if a woman pulls out a vibrator during partner sex," Dodson says. "They feel like she's saying: You're not good enough. But Eric welcomed the vibrator. His cock was inside my pussy, and I had my Magic Wand on my clit. It had been a long time since I'd had a penis-vagina orgasm with a man."

Dodson also enjoyed Wilkinson's sexual sophistication. "Eric was more advanced sexually than lots of men who were my contemporaries. He's a dedicated student of sexuality. And he's fantastic in bed: sweet, sensual, playful, experimental, and he has great ejaculatory control."

Wilkinson wondered what it would be like having sex with a woman so much older than himself: "When we got naked that first time, I was very pleasantly surprised. Betty looked nothing like my vision of what a 69-year-old woman ought to look like. She's taken very good care of herself. She's definitely not an old lady. She looks like she's in her mid-50s."

In Dodson's mind, her weekend with Wilkinson was a lark. She had no interest in a long-term relationship, and even less in having him move into her apartment, the private sanctuary that had been shared with hundreds of workshop women for decades.

After Wilkinson returned to Virginia, they stayed in touch. "We e-mailed and talked on the phone," Dodson recalls. "He pressed me for another visit. He wanted to stay a week. I told him he could stay a weekend. He came up and wound up staying a week."

Their sex was fabulous, but even committed sensualists like Dodson and Wilkinson spend more time together out of bed than in it. Dodson was equally astonished how comfortable it felt having him around. "Beyond the sex, we're remarkably compatible," she explains. "We have similar personal habits. Neither of us is a morning person. We're both night owls. We're both hard workers, but we like lots of time off to play. I grew up with three brothers, so having Eric around struck a familiar, familial chord for me. I'm not only his lover, I'm his big sister, mother, granny and auntie. In any of those roles, we're both very playful."

A few months later, Wilkinson graduated from college and wanted to spend more time with Dodson. She agreed to let him stay one month: "I said, OK. I need an editor to go over my memoir [still unpublished]. I gave him the job. It worked out well."

At the end of the month, Wilkinson asked to be Dodson's apprentice, to carry on her sex education work. "It was very flattering," she recalls. "Of course, I hadn't lived with a man since 1970. No one bad-mouthed heterosexual relationships -- which I called 'pair bondage' -- more than I did. But Eric is very sweet and helpful and smart. When he saw how conflicted I felt about his request to stay, he suggested that we could stay in the moment and take things one day at a time. He swore that the minute I wanted him to leave, he'd go." That reassured Dodson.

So did the fact that Wilkinson took his position as her business assistant seriously. "I'm not a boy toy on the dole. I have the self-respect that comes from working productively and earning a salary."

The months passed. Wilkinson told his parents about his relationship: "They were shocked. At first, my mom was afraid Betty was taking advantage of me. She's from the South and saw our relationship as evidence of the evils of New York City. My dad didn't say much beyond, Come on home. Drop this fantasy. Get a life. For a while, Betty's friends thought I was taking advantage of her, that I was sponging off her. That stopped when they saw how much help I was and how happy we both were."

"Age is just a number," Dodson insists. "I feel more comfortable, more compatible with Eric than I do with most men my age. He's more alive, more interesting, more energetic and absolutely beautiful to look at. People ask me: What do you see in this kid? He doesn't have the big job, the big salary. I don't care. I don't need a man to pay my rent or take care of me. I want a young man who's interested in what interests me and who wants to learn. Our society forgets that the mentor/student friendships of the ancient Greek philosophers are a time-honored tradition. The way the world sees it today, Eric is my boy toy, so I'm taking advantage of him. Or I'm his sugar mama so he's taking advantage of me. Guess what? We are both taking advantage of each other and enjoying every minute.

"I've never met Eric's father," Dodson explains, "but once his mother realized I had her son's best interest at heart, we became good friends. When she visits, she stays with us. We talk on the phone. One of the many things I like about her is that for a fairly conventional Southern gal, she's quietly sexually progressive. She never had a problem with Eric masturbating as a child, which is a major issue for many parents."

Dodson continued to view the relationship as a transitional arrangement until he got his own apartment. A year after Wilkinson moved in, a few close friends sat her down. "They said 'Why do you keep saying Eric is a temporary fling? He's devoted to you. You've never been happier.' It was true. There was no reason to push him out of my life. So he stayed."

Then Dodson had an epiphany: "I realized that Eric was my reward for 30 years of service, being a sex educator, teaching women about orgasm and masturbation. He found me because of my work. Finally, I accepted his delightful presence."

Her publisher approached her about writing another book, and she agreed to write "Orgasms for Two." "In the new book, I revisit heterosexuality from the perspective of a wise woman, an elder of the tribe, and Honey, by now I've got grandmotherly wisdom up the wazoo."

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