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Sex on the Rocks
During my thirty-year marriage I was
as experienced as your average swinger in my sexual fantasies, but in real life
I stuck to the role of dutiful wife and mother. Temptations had cropped up now and then, but I felt I couldn't
betray darling Tom. Hah! Tom, I
eventually learned, was of the what-she-doesn't-know-won't-hurt-her persuasion.
I remember getting up on one elbow
and looking at my husband’s face, composed in sleep on the pillow next to
mine. Dear Tom, I thought, dear
true-blue Tom. He was a virgin when he
met me (so he told me, and why would a man lie?), never unfaithful, never
knowing the thrill of intimacy with another woman. It was kind of sad, in a way, that his life had been so limited
because of his single-minded love for me.
A tear welled up in my eye, so touched was I by my train of
thought.
Boy, was I off the track! A virgin?
Hogwash! Faithful? Balderdash!
A con artist? You bet! Give the silver dollar to that middle-aged
woman with the faded rose-colored glasses.
What does a woman do when she is
jolted from a dream world and discovers her marriage was built on lies from the
start? If she's like me, she goes a bit
crazy with shock and despair. I spent a
lot of time curled up in bed, thinking about suicide. I tried alcohol. A
moderate drinker in the past, I started boozing—not so much to drown my sorrows
as to get attention from Tom.
"He wants a different
woman? By God, I'll give him a
different woman!" I scowled into
the mirror, toasting my bleary-eyed image with a third double martini.
My alcoholic phase didn't last
long. For one thing, Tom was disgusted
with my drinking and reported it to our grown children. For another, I couldn't stand the hangovers. Alcoholism wasn't my bag.
My reveries shifted from suicide to
murder. One of us would have to go;
there wasn't room on this painful planet for both of us. "I didn't do anything, why
should I be the one to die!"
In my favorite fantasy, my husband was walking across the yard to the
greenhouse. He passed a birdfeeder
strung on a line between the greenhouse and the porch. "Officer," I pictured myself
saying
to the policeman who was examining the 22 rifle, "I was shooting at a
starling, and my husband happened to walk by when I pulled the
trigger." Nah, they'd never buy
it, and besides, I wasn't comfortable with the idea of murdering anyone, even
if he deserved it.
What about other men? Might this be a way of killing two birds
with one bullet? Male chauvinist that
he was, Tom would be devastated if I started screwing around, and the act of
lust might temporarily, at least, block the pain that continued to gnaw at the
core of my being.
With one exception, I had never had
sex with anyone but Tom. I don't regard
myself as unfaithful because not only was Tom present for the occasion, he was
egging me on. The three of us had gone
out to dinner, and now George was loading his friend's drinks with one hand
while squeezing my ass with the other.
At one time I had been attracted to
our guest, and often, when Tom and I were making love, it was George I was
thinking of. Maybe extra-marital
involvements are a matter of timing.
There's no doubt that if I had had the chance to jump into bed with
Tom's best friend, I would have jumped first and had second thoughts
later. So why did I rail at Tom for
lying and cheating, why did I sue him for divorce when I would have gone the
same route, had the opportunity arisen? Because I missed the fucking
opportunity, that's why. I would
have been more understanding and forgiving if I'd had some wicked memories of
my own.
I am digressing. George is squeezing my ass and making lewd
suggestions about a jolly threesome. He
had put on a lot of weight in the last decade, and I no longer desired to jump
into bed with him—even with Tom drunkenly encouraging me to go ahead and lose
my marital cherry. If there was one
thing that turned me off, it was a man with a king-sized belly. No matter how much liquor those two lechers
plied me with, I remained pleasantly adamant.
Be a good boy, George, your bed is turned down in the guest room; come
on, Tom, I'm tired, let's go to bed.
Whenever I attempted to retire with
my lawfully wedded, George's belly, followed by George, would intrude itself
into our king-sized bed. "It's all right with me," Tom
whispered. "I'll pretend I'm
asleep, then you and I will do it after he leaves."
"It's not all right with
me!" I hissed. "It's two a.m.
and I'm not interested in this little game."
When I couldn't persuade my suitors to
leave me alone, I grabbed a pillow, ran into the bathroom, and locked the
door. For the next hour there were
rappings and pleas for me to come out, interspersed with sounds of clinking ice
dropping into fresh drinks. I lay on
the bath mat, hugged my pillow, and prayed they would both pass out.
When Tom and his buddy continued to
harass me, I suddenly realized there was only one way I was going to get any
sleep, and that was their way.
To hell with Tom, goddam him and his screwy ideas, I was going to ball
George like he'd never been balled before.
Which I did.
I was surprised to find that
George's penis was different from Tom's.
I had assumed one erection was pretty much like another, but George's
was shorter and stubbier, and his belly made it difficult for us to make
contact. But contact we did, climax he
did, and as for me, I had my usual series of orgasms. I was bound I'd get something out of this silly
performance. Tom's contribution was a
deep snore.
The next morning he couldn't
remember anything that occurred after midnight. "Oh, we all just went to bed," I said, ever honest and
truthful.
If I'd known the score in George's
youthful years, I would have enjoyed his body until his belly overshadowed his
penis. An affair would have been a welcome
diversion while Tom was off on his monkey-business trips. It's too late now.
After my recent suicide attempt, I
was committed to a psychiatric hospital—a jail, really— for two weeks. I had to agree to regular visits with a
psychiatrist before I was allowed to go home.
I sit in his office and feed him stuff about my childhood. I don't tell him I'm still fantasizing about
Tom and the Birdfeeder.
Barbara Malley's book, Take My Ex-Husband, Please--But Not Too Far,
was published by Little Brown in 1991. A number of tongue-in-cheek articles appeared
in boating and flying magazines in the 50s and 60s. She has also published two activity
books for children, based on the whimsical verses of her mother, Ernestine Cobern Beyer.
A third, Read Me a Rhyme, Please, was accepted by Humanics and is in the works.
E-mail Barbara Malley
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