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Passion & Perspective
copyright 2013 Chapter 5 This is a chapter of a novel. Click here to go to the first chapter |
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A month went by, six weeks. The sexual boost we'd felt after Molly's exploits with Keith and Colin wore off in the heat of summer, she no longer wanted to make love at the drop of the hat or in different places, such as the cabin of a boat I was sailing. We talked about another lover for her, but she seemed hesitant. "It's not that I don't want to," she explained one night, "I'm just not sure about it. There's the moral issue, of course." "That's silly," I argued. "I don't mind, you don't seem to mind, who else's business is it?" "A point. But is it right for me to have other lovers when you don't? I know, you say you don't want a woman, but eventually I wonder if that won't change. And then what?" "Would you mind if I went to bed with someone else?" "Of course not," she repeated. "Well then, if I change my mind I'll let you know, okay? Until then, don't worry about it." "All right. But there are other concerns. What if it gets to be a habit. Like drugs. Maybe I'll want it all the time, and then what'll happen? I can't let myself get careless." "I can't ever see you getting careless," I countered, "you're one of the most careful people in the world." "That's what you think, but I know how I can be sometime. And there's one more problem, if we do go ahead, we've got to find a better way to get a man. This idea of picking guys up at the hotel is going to be a problem sooner or later. A guy won't be what I want him to be once I get up to the room, I worry about getting hurt or something, and what if somebody we know happens into the bar while I'm talking with a guy? Think of the rumors that would start! That's something we don't need." The last point was valid, and so I looked for a solution. The first idea I had was a craigslist personal. I soon convinced myself that was a bad idea. There's plenty of flakes out there, and anecdotes I read on forums told me that using that medium seemed to attract each one of them. But the hotwife forum did have a good idea, use a swinger's site. So I went looking for one, and found SwingLifeStyle.com, which will be known forthwith as SLS. Although the site was mainly for couples, I found that within fifty miles of us, there were more than four hundred guys that wanted to 'play.' Surely, we should be able to find one that would be suitable. I shared my research with Molly, and this time she was more positive, if not giddy about the prospects. "Let me take a look at it," she demanded, "I'll get back to you." I thought she was treating it like a project proposed by an intern - in retrospect, that's pretty much what it was. And so I waited, four days. Over a dinner at home she told me, "Okay, SLS looks fine, maybe you can find a guy there, maybe you can't. Go ahead a create a profile, but make sure you don't use any information that anybody could identify us with, absolutely no pictures." She agreed that we should pay for three months of access. Well I did what she said, I saw the wisdom in being cautious, and within a day we had fourteen offers. Most of them said things like, 'i wanna fuk ur wife,' not the most erudite fellows around, two were from guys that were frankly fat and one, perhaps, was from a man that knew how to spell and used more than one sentence. Molly and I talked about it. "Okay," she said, "It's got possibilities. Write up a real profile, but don't post it. Let me edit it first." So I did, and this is what I came up with. What we are looking for: A single gentleman, good looking and fit, who is rather tall. He should be polite. If, after meeting, we feel you are compatible, we may invite you into a situation where you will please the wife while the husband watches. Description: We are a couple in our fifties, she is quite fit. She has some experience with men outside the marriage. We like theatre, fine dining, sailing the bay and long walks in the woods. She likes romance, candles and superb wine. A refined man might find her quite receptive. I left the fantasies section blank and in the other section I put 'If you've got any questions, please contact us.' She told me to lose the stilted language and the sentence about experience, and after another review she okayed it. Offers continued to pour in, a lot of junk mostly, and when I showed Molly the ones I liked, she winnowed them down to two. "Are there any guys out there we should be looking at, ones that haven't sent us an email?" I did some searching, and within twenty-five miles, I found eight. They were based on height and weight, an interesting and well written profile, pictures we could see, and the fact that they were paid members on the site - we figured that guys who paid were less likely to be fake, and possibly experienced, although that wasn't a necessary attribute. Molly reviewed my list, vetoed two of them for no particular reason, and told me to write the other six, inviting them to enter a dialogue. So I did. The exact phrasing was, "Dear <x>, we have seen your profile, and think you are interesting. We are relative beginners in this sport, and would like someone to show us the ropes. We hope you might be the one. If you are interested, please write and tell us more about yourself." Within a week, all but two had responded. I reviewed them, was fairly sure that two would be nixed by Molly on the basis that they were too crude in the reply, I was proved correct. So Molly said to write the remaining guys and see if they'd like to meet us for a drink without obligation for anything more. In the three weeks it took for all this, Molly and I discussed a few other details we winnowed from various forums in which people discussed their experiences, deciding what might or might not work for us. We thought that some of the restrictions other people had were just plain silly. For example, some people didn't mind screwing somebody, but they didn't want to kiss. "Hell," Molly said, "I went to bed with Keith simply because he was a good kisser." Some people didn't want to go further than a handshake on the first date, and we decided that if all went well, why not just go for it on the spot? On the other hand, if either of us was unsure, we should take some time to think about it. Where to meet was a hot topic. We saw three options: a hotel bar where we could just bounce up and get a room if we felt like it, a restaurant near our place, or someplace near him. Molly didn't feel like the hotel, she thought it might be interpreted as a presumption that we would play, and said other than that the choice was mine. Did that mean that if things went well, we might invite him back here? "Why not?" Molly conjectured, "We have lots of people coming all the time, the neighbors won't think anything about it." One guy never responded to our invitation, the other two wanted to meet. We found we had a weekend open two weeks out, and decided to invite Mark, who was six feet one, 185 pounds, a single gentleman for Friday night. Mark wrote back and said he was attending a concert that night, would Saturday work? We agreed. But Mark also wanted a picture of Molly. I told her the conundrum. "He has pictures on his profile, I'm sure he wants to believe you aren't a four-foot, 800 pound gnome." Since we had insisted on pictures of him, Molly let me take a few pictures of her at a park, then had me crop her head off before I posted them. Since Mark couldn't make it Friday night we offered Steve, five feet eleven, 170 pounds, the first shot. He quickly accepted. "What are we going to do if Steve pans out," I asked, "and everything works well? Are we going to cancel Mark at the last moment?" Molly just laughed. "I hope we have that problem. Maybe we should keep the Saturday night date, too, and have a really, really great weekend?" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ All this preparation, advance planning, making of plans had almost sucked the life out of a fling that was supposed to be fun, and Molly seemed nonchalant about her dates as they approached, nearly oblivious, I thought. She didn't want to play the what-are-we-going-to-do game in bed, and I wondered if perhaps I'd done something wrong. But during the days preceding the twin dates, I could tell that Molly was becoming fitful. It didn't hit full stride until the night of the first date, and to make it worse Molly had a problem at work and had to stay forty-five minutes late. She rushed through her bath, threw clothes on, took little time with her makeup, but even if she didn't radiate sheer allure as we drove to the restaurant where we planned to meet Steve she was, at least to me, still fetching. On the way I remarked, "You know, we need some sort of a code to figure out how we're feeling, without giving it up to Steve." "I thought about that, too. Here's my idea: At some point, I'll bring up things we like to do, if we like the guy we'll say we like monkeys. But if he's a dud, it's elephants. What do you think?" "As good as anything else, I guess. Monkeys good, elephants bad." We entered the bistro, and I searched faces for someone I could recognize from the photographs. We were finally greeted by a man who almost whispered, "Anne? Don?" Cautious Molly had decided to use her 'stage name.' "That's us," I agreed, as I was shocked by the diversity between what we were led to expect and what was presented. Steve's picture had to be taken at least twenty years prior, he wasn't as tall as he'd led us to believe, a couple inches shorter than Molly. He wasn't exactly portly, but he could have lost twenty pounds without missing it. His clothes were obviously purchased a few years ago, he needed a trim. Molly later confided that her first response was even harsher than mine. We sat at a table, I was continually jostled by other people trying to find a place to sip drinks before dinner, the noise was abnormally high. That didn't stop Steve. Within a few moments he was loudly dropping sexual innuendoes, "Do you like the beach? 'Cause I really, really like to swim deep." We found out more about him but nothing that attracted him to me. He focused almost exclusively on Molly, never asking a question of me, when I tried to insert myself into the conversation he answered almost in a syllable then went back trying to impress Molly. A half hour after we'd sat, Molly said, "You know, one of the things we like to do is go to the zoo. Steve, what's your favorite animal?" "Oh, I guess the anteater. He's got a really long tongue." I laughed out loud. Molly turned to me, "Dear, I don't really know what your favorite one is." I admit it. Although I wasn't fond of Steve, I was still excited about the chance of seeing my love laid, and I dodged the issue. "Well, I like monkeys but I think the elephants are cute, too." "Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Elephants are just so big!" Steve nearly split a gut on that one, I'm sure he was thinking Molly was returning it as good a she was getting. It took us another fifteen minutes, but Molly finally swallowed the last of her wine quickly and said, "Steve, thanks so much for meeting with us. Don and I need to think about this - you know it's something we've never done, and we need to be sure." For having been shot down, Steve was certainly composed. "I figured it was going to end this way. It's not the first time. But, listen, if you guys decide you want to get together . . ." He laid a few dollars on the table, barely enough to cover his two beers. After we got in the car, Molly and I had a good laugh. "Did you see the indentation on his finger? I wonder what his wife's doing tonight!" It was still early, we decided to grab a sandwich and then see the new super-hero flick. It wasn't a good movie, we decided the protagonist's name should have been Steve. |
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