My wife has a little-girl-lost-in-the-woods quality about her. Except she's not little. Not big, mind you, but very buxom, very blond, very demure behind her owl-like glasses and of course, very married.

She's also a totally hopeless romantic nymph. When I first met her, sitting next to her in the pew at a mutual friend's wedding, and managed to charm the socks and a few other items of clothing off her, I thought it was me, but I finally realized that if the right guy, and he doesn't have to be that right, just the right side of charming and good looking, if the right guy gets her alone in the right setting, something romantic and sexually charged like a party or a wedding, says the right things, touches her in the right places, she'll be riding him in an instant like there's no tomorrow.

Which makes taking her out in public an interesting exercise, especially to parties and weddings and, worst of all, parties after weddings. And worse than that, yes worst of all, is that she makes her living performing at weddings.

She's a flautist, you see, and her partner, of whom I am very suspicious, but say nothing, for what would be the point? Her partner plays the classical guitar. He looks the part too, bohemian, mustachioed, very early sixties in appearance and mannerisms, just the kind of guy to fuck my wife silly and view it as an act of spirituality, free love and resistance of the dominant paradigm.

I've got him to contend with, I've got the whole natural slut thing, the turned on by weddings thing, and of course the flute thing, in which she sits up in front of a bunch of horny guys intentionally flashing as much breast as possible while her mouth and hands are suggestively all over her instrument for an hour.

Fortunately for her there isn't a lot of call for repeat business in the wedding industry. People see her at other people's weddings. They love her. They hire her. They fail to notice that the men are paying more attention to her than the bride until their own weddings, and by then it's too late to do anything about.

This wedding is no exception, and this one has the potential to be much messier, since she's playing for one of her best friends. (In case you're wondering she goes through best friends almost as fast as she goes through clients). That means I will get to be a guest, and check out all the sexy dolled-up women, which I would be looking forward to if I weren't thinking instead that I will also be watching my wife's musical partner, the best man, all the male guests and the groom following my wife's every move like slobbering dogs.

I should learn to go with it, to accept it, to get into it, to be turned on by it. I am not that morally advanced.

Instead I leave only half an hour after her suspiciously early departure time, fret through the short drive, approach the church with fear and trepidation, enter the building, and do not find her practicing in the pre-wedding chaos of the sanctuary. She has set up, all thirty seconds of preparation complete: two chairs, two music stands, a guitar case and a flute case neatly arranged, which means she is not practicing somewhere else.

Clearly she is not expecting me. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Or the comfy chair. Which is where I find her, on the comfy chair in the office where the groom is preparing for a lifetime of wedded bliss, or would be if he weren't sitting in the comfy chair, my wife astride him, her skirt pulled up around her waist and down beneath her bouncing breasts, cheered on by her musical partner and the best man whose jackets are off, whose shirts are unbuttoned, and who look for all the world as though they are waiting a turn.

I am ready to scream to shout, to throw a fit, to leave quietly and never look back, to feel anger, rage, jealousy, even just sick or better yet, dead.

But watching her, watching her bounce, seeing the look of total abandoned pleasure on her still innocent face I am instead turned on. She is more beautiful like this than I have ever seen her, more enthralled, enraptured, entranced, and intoxicating.

I am hard.

I do not shout. I do not throw a fit. I do not leave. I am not angry, enraged, jealous, sick, or dead.

I am alive.

Very alive.

I step fully into the room, remove my jacket, unbutton my shirt, join the cheers, and wait my turn.