Almost there.
I went up to the University of Alaska campus in Anchorage for my Education Masters, and was there for three years. I enjoyed the program, and spending time on a larger campus and in a more cosmopolitan city. My big find there, though, was Ginny, a short, slight redhead with a spray of freckles and a bit of a potty mouth, but also someone who became a fast, tight, and trusted friend. She's never let me down. You'll meet Ginny further along in the story. When I got back to Juneau it was a year and a half before I landed my first teaching job with the district. It was a fill-in for a teacher who had to leave after the first trimester, but then I got my own full-time job the following year, and I've been teaching in the district ever since. I met Steven shortly after returning to Juneau. He was new to Southeast Alaska, transferred here by Hecla Mining to work at its Greens Creek Mine on Admiralty Island. We married two years and eleven days after we met.
Hecla has another mine, The Lucky Friday Mine in Idaho that was closed for most of 2012 for reclamation work. They wanted Steven down there to work on the management team for a part of the project. So he was gone for May, June, and July.
Also, if you're on the ball you've probably wondered, 'So this woman must be what? About thirty-two or so? No kids?' It's a fair question and one I try to avoid addressing, but I guess you have a right to know since you're reading this. Our first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage just short of viability. I grieved for a long time, and I suffered, and the result was I decided I never wanted to risk that hurt again. Is that selfish? Steven supported me totally; so, I got tied, and he got snipped. We've discussed perhaps having a discussion someday about adoption.
Anyway, all of that is why Bradley and I pulled into the driveway beside an entirely empty house. No husband or kids to shake a finger at us.
What do I want to tell you about that night? We put paid to the account we'd opened ten years before. We got that done, for what it's worth. I really wanted to do it out on the couch, but after I'd poured some wine I had to use the bathroom. I used the bath in the master bedroom, and after I'd shut off the lights and the fan, opened the door, and stepped into the bedroom there was Bradley on the bed, on his back and up on his elbows, legs half over the side. You'd think he could have figured out I'd not want to do it in my marital bed. But there he was. The wedding really did its job. It revved my engine. I'd known I was going to do it from the moment I'd written
'Hey Brad!'
, but the wedding added some sort of sweetness, made me feel a bit more urgency, and informed me that perhaps I didn't need to split hairs quite so much about where to do it.
My dress was already back in the closet and my heels were in the entry hall. Exiting the bathroom, I had on just my bra, panties, and a full slip, and all of that was soon on the floor. Bradley opened his pants and fitted on a condom. While he did that, I went to the window and drew closed the wide-open drapes. I came back to Bradley's feet, grabbed a double handful of waistband and pulled his slacks and boxers down and off.
You remember how we almost did it ten years before? Me on top? Well, after Steven and I were into our relationship and sex became an all-the-time part of my life I found I like it on top. Steven calls it Annie's Sexual Weirdness #1. From behind - it goes by the dreadful name 'doggie' - is good for me, too. Missionary is at the bottom (no pun intended) of my list, but it's okay when I'm feeling a little sub or, more often, when I want to be accommodating. Steven is easy to please but tends to like being on top, so I often enjoy surrendering.
But that explains why I climbed onto Bradley without preamble and without pausing to solicit any second opinions. I knew I wanted to do it, but I also knew I didn't want to do it face-to-face. Had we done it face-to-face the position would be called 'cowgirl.' Facing the other way is called 'reverse cowgirl', and I rather like either appellation and the mental image they conjure. Yee-Haw! and Yippy-I-A! One of these days I'm going to get a Stetson hat to wave around while I do it.
Let's see. What boxes do I have to check off?
It took a while.
Can't say I had anything in particular on my mind.
Yes, I enjoyed the physical sensations.
And, yeah, I came. Doing it my favorite way, and not having to look at someone-who-wasn't-Steven while I did it, got me eighty percent of the way. And from there I just needed to attend to myself with some determined rubbing and a bit of flicking, and I was over the top. It was the coldest, shallowest, most pathetically utilitarian orgasm I've ever experienced. It did nothing for me. While Steven was gone I got much better orgasms out of my magic wand.
While I waited for Bradley to finish, I returned to the state of rationality one reassumes after an orgasm, even a crappy one. My refocused mind told me how much I didn't want to be sitting where I was sitting. Being done, I suppose I could have just gotten off but, hey, fair is fair. After Bradley finally finished, with a crescendo of sound and hands tightly clasping my hips, I lifted myself off, hoping I wasn't recoiling too quickly or obviously. I spent a few minutes in the bathroom, and then visited the walk-in to slip my dress back on. When I emerged he was pulling up his slacks.
I took him by the hand, "Let's go drink our wine," and I led him down the hall. Bradley didn't exactly put a funnel in his mouth, but his wine was gone in a few large but well-controlled gulps. After very little, very awkward, very halting attempts at conversation we were at the door.
"Coming by tomorrow?" I asked.
He shook his head. "Got a flight at three in the afternoon. There's a day-after bridal brunch for the newly-weds, and then we're putting them on a plane at one. I'll just stay at the airport."
I hope I hid my relief well enough. Then we were hugging and smooching cheeks.
"Bye, love," Bradley said. "Good to see you. Thanks."
"Thanks?" I said. "Get the fuck outta here with 'thanks.' Take care. Stay in touch." Of course, I knew he wouldn't. Then he turned, descended the steps, and walked to his rent-a-car in the lovely, pre-Solstice, midnight light.
I leaned back against the shut door and closed my eyes. As I slugged down the last of my wine the troubling sotto voce undercurrent from ten years before started in my mind again with 'slut' and 'skank', but I was a much older and more worldly woman by then, so it was able to add variations to the theme like 'floosy', 'slag', 'ho', 'trollop'...Shut up! I used that mental boot again to stamp out the fire. It was funny. I knew that I could stamp it out only because we'd done it here, in my house. I also knew that if Steven had been home, and, if Bradley and I were to do this we'd have had to stop at the Super 8 Motel on the way from the reception, then that undercurrent would have swelled into a deafening Hallelujah Chorus. A weird distinction and, I'm sure, one with no validity whatsoever.
It really would have been okay, even wonderful and a pleasant memory, ten years ago. Now it was just cheap humping.
As I leaned against the door the words came unbidden, murmured, "Holy fucking God."
* * *
Mid-morning Sunday - while Bradley and his sister and her new hubby and the rest of their family were eating quiche, cantaloupe, fruit salad, and blueberry waffles still hot from the Belgian waffle maker that had been unwrapped at the reception the previous evening - Ginny and I sat at my dining table. We meet every Sunday morning, usually here. Ginny has not just a husband but twin toddlers. So it's mellower here. We value that.
I made the coffee. Ginny brought the eats, this time scones with both Devon Cream and Orange Butter to spread on them.
Ginny is my closest friend; she's my girl. I mentioned we'd been in the graduate program in Anchorage together, and we'd graduated at the same time with our Education Masters in '05. I'd missed her terribly after I returned to Juneau and she moved home to Fairbanks. We traveled back and forth from time to time to see each other, and the rest of the time e-mailed incessantly. Ginny's mother is some sort of big cheese in the Alaska Republican Party, and when Sean Parnell took over as governor from Sarah Palin in the summer of '09 Ginny was offered a political appointment in the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development as a Deputy Director. The job is located in Juneau, and she and her hubs talked about it and decided to make the move. I don't know to what degree exchanging forty below winters for forty above winters figured into their decision, but I was happy, she was happy, and we've been nearly inseparable for the last three years.
