We were going airborne.
For me and Ava, this was a new chapter of our sexual journey. Like many weary middle-aged couples, we were looking for a new way to spice up our sex lives. We'd tried everything-- light bondage, spanking, and an incident with a backyard trampoline and several bottles of olive oil that we don't talk about anymore.
As you would expect, things weren't going well so far. Ava had her needs, and so did I. Even as she reached her fortieth birthday, Ava was a wiry woman with straight, silky black hair-- Joan Baez style-- beautiful blue eyes like gemstones, and the obligatory double D-cup description you'll find in every bad smut story. Fortunately, hers were real, and I had spent many a night enjoying myself in the company of those two friends of mine, who loved a good squeeze.
I'd also tell you what her height was in feet and inches and her weight, but Ava can get self-conscious about that, and I don't want to make her upset. She's one of those people who stand in front of a mirror wearing a pair of stunning pleated trousers which accentuated her curves nicely, and would invariably ask me something like "Does this make me look fat?" and expect me to give her a straight answer.
Thankfully, I never had to lie. Ava had a figure like a Greek goddess, and she often got looks from other men when we went outside, which was both a constant source of indirect flattery and irritation from me, who felt like a celebrity each time I went shopping with her at Giant Eagle. It was only when people began to whistle at her that I genuinely became annoyed, but that was a rare occurrence when you lived in suburban Nevada.
So Ava and I were in a hurry to figure something out, because even our next-door neighbors, Adam and Sarah Jones, who we had over for dinner every two weeks, were starting to give us these polite, pitying looks that are almost exclusively reserved for middle-aged couples going through an unhappy dry spell and the terminally ill. They were nice enough not to say it out loud, but the last time we had them over for dinner, Sarah took Ava by the wrist and led her into the kitchen for a one-on-one conference on male and female pleasure while Adam and I discussed football and politics in the living room over a couple of beers.
"Where do you see yourself in five years?" Sarah asked her, as if she were giving a job interview to a potential employee.
Ava seemed momentarily startled. "What do you mean?"
Sarah was a yoga instructor at the local fitness center, which meant that, in addition to having the lithe, lean figure of a gymnast, she also knew more positions in the bedroom than any other person in town and was therefore the more sexually experienced of the two. She laughed with an open-hearted charity and placed a sisterly hand on Ava's arm. "Does he ever go down on you?" she said, getting straight to the point.
Ava's face turned beet red. "Well, no, but--"
Sarah took both of Ava's hands in her own and looked her straight in the eye. "Listen, Ava. I make a living teaching women the things they can do with their bodies. Every time I see a young college girl walk into that door, I think to myself, that's one brave woman. No matter what they say, I know what they're really there for: to please their men.
"What makes you think everything will magically be better if you don't do something? You'll just be five years older and just as miserable as you are now."
"I'm not miserable," Ava said, with a naïve arrogance that made Sarah cackle with joy. "So he's never went down on you, not even once, and you think you're not miserable."
"We do a lot of other things," Ava said, desperately trying to regain her foothold in the conversation. Even as she said it, she knew it sounded sad, almost pathetic.
"You have to make a leap of faith, Ava," Sarah said. "Try something new. He'll thank you for it."
Meanwhile, me and Adam were in the living room, both of us distracted by the two hot women in the kitchen trading secrets and gossip as if they had just met. Adam fixed Sarah with a studious, sidelong stare. "You should see her in bed," he said, with a trace of pride in his voice. "It's like playing Twister, only way hotter."
"I can imagine," I said, trying to conjure up an image of Sarah and Adam enmeshed in a human pretzel. I closed my eyes and pushed the thought out of my mind, simultaneously aroused and thoroughly disturbed, but Adam didn't notice me.
"She does this thing with her tongue, you know, that drives me crazy," he said, lost in his own private recollection. "I was hesitant about anal at first, but she talked me into it one night, and it was the best decision I ever made."
I had to do a double take. "Anal?" I said, bewildered. "I thought you were talking about oral sex."
Adam laughed. "That's what I thought, too. But after Sarah showed me what a rimjob was, it was like discovering a whole new galaxy of pleasure." He shook his head, grinning, and took a sip of his beer. "Man."
Sarah and Ava walked into the living room, their faces flushed, their heads tilted back in laughter. When Ava saw me, her blue eyes fixed on me with an unsettling openness, and I knew that things in the bedroom would never be the same again.
