I found a furnished two-bed room apartment in Suburban Boston thirty miles from where I had lived for a dozen years. It is no secret that the law is a jackass. However, it is only when you have to deal with it, you come to understand what an unpleasant animal this is. It took the Commonwealth of Massachusetts months to grant our application of no-fault divorce.
My breakup with Margaret had left me shaken and in such a confused state of mind, that for the first month of so, sex wasn't an issue. The beast, however, was only dormant, not dead. When the libido finally awoke, it awoke like a lion. Once the pleasures of sex filled the hours of my life; now its lack occupied me with equal intensity. First time in my life, I was without a woman and without a clue of how to go about getting one. A heroin addict could not have felt stronger cravings for his fix than I did for the company of a woman.
In search for this fix that does not come from a needle but from a woman's body, I tried the nightclub scene but my clueless-ness went with me to every bar or a dance club. Unlike my clueless-ness that stuck with me like a faithful dog, my self-esteem turned fickle and abandoned me every time I needed it most. As they say, if you think you are a looser, you are. It didn't take me long to figure that I couldn't pick up common cold from these places, much less a woman.
A normal man in my place would have used the phone and call himself a call girl. End of story. But I was a prisoner of my scruples. By my merely looking at the Yellow Pages under 'escorts', memories of my long ago misadventures in Las Vegas brothels would become as fresh as if it was only yesterday. I would remember the emptiness of sex without an emotional component, its bitter aftertaste as strong as if I had just let a quinine pill dissolve on my tongue. Even the insights earned then, were still valid. That it degraded the woman as well as my need of her, as soon as I thoughtof her as a comodity, is as true today as it was then. A woman is yours only if she gives herself. A whore can never be more than temporary rented cum dumpster. I stopped looking at the Yellow Pages under escorts.
I love masturbation. It is a singular and pure act of self-love. It asks nothing from anyone or gives anything to anyone. It is a private and personal pleasure possible only in solitude. It is not a substitute or a replacement for a woman. During my high school and college days when there were dozens of co-eds waiting in the wings, I still found time to jack off. Margaret and I were married only about six months when she caught me polishing my rod. We had made love about half an hour earlier and she was heartbroken thinking that she was not sufficiently satisfying me. She rushed to help me when she walked in the room and saw the scene. The greedy man that I am, I placed myself into her hands. It was a great pleasure; but it was no longer masturbation but a variety of lovemaking. From then on, an occasional hand-job from her became a part of our sexual repertoire. I still masturbated, alone. Margaret never understood my need but she came to accept it with good humor.
"You know Jim; I will never have to ask you who you are fucking now." She said one day. We had just finished a passionate session.
"What do you mean, Margaret?
"I was thinking of the jealous wife who asked her husband who was vigorously humping her, 'Who are you fucking now?' She was sure that in his imagination, he was with another woman. I would never need to ask you that question."
"Why would you say that?"
"I already know the answer, Jim. If you are not fucking me, you are fucking your right hand." She laughed with her rich throaty laughter.
"I wouldn't be too sure of that, Margaret. It could be your right hand I may be fucking."
"You pervert, I wouldn't put it past you." She said and grabbed my cock with her hand and began a new round of ministrations. God, how long ago it all seems.
Masturbating was never a substitute for a woman for me. I tried to make it so by introducing fantasy. Unfortunately, the only woman I could conjure up to fuck in my imagination was Margaret. Afterwards, I was always racked by feelings of guilt. I felt that I was violating her in some psychic sphere and breaking my promise to let her go. Margaret's last words to me, "one very last time", kept reverberating in my mind as if it was a curse put on me, or at least, a prediction of lonely pussy-less future.
My fears were for nothing. Just as the downward spiral of my life had begun, it started to turn around. 'Life begins at fifty' may be over the top exaggeration by Viagra salesmen; for me it was becoming true. Of the series of surprises that were to help me out of my doldrums, first one came from Susanna, my ex-wife's friend since high school. On the very day our divorce became legal, there was a message on my answering machine:
"Jim, this is Susanna. Please call me as soon as you get my message. It is very important."
Susanna and Margaret, as I said, were girlhood friends and Susanna was the maid-of-honor during our wedding. She looked so much like Margaret that people often thought them twins. First years of our marriage, Susanna was often at our house and I became smitten by the fantasy of fucking twins. A fantasy about twin sisters is probably the most exquisite of men's fantasies involving two women and seems to be universally shared across cultures. It probably springs from the same greed that makes us want twice as much of everything. It was no accident that the chewing gum jingle 'double your pleasure' was the most successful of its kind. I knew, of course, that she wasn't my wife's twin, just happened to look a lot like her, but that seemed a minor detail at the time. One day I told Margaret about it. This was early in our marriage and we were enthusiastically experimenting with our sexuality. I was almost certain that Margaret would jump at the idea of manage-de-trios with her best friend. I was wrong.
"If you want a threesome, James, I am willing to try it once. I personally don't understand what you would do with two women. It is not as if you aren't getting enough from me. If you really must, I will agree to one-time experiment but it will not be with Susanna. It will have to a woman that I do not know. And James, if you want our marriage to have any meaning, don't mention Susanna to me in this context again."
Only later, I came to realize how right my wife was. Susanna looked like Margaret physically, except, of course the eyes, but she was a cold and conniving woman who used people like cheap toilet paper. She had none of the genuine and wild sensuality of my wife. All three of her husbands whom she discarded when it suited her, used almost identical words to describe her: 'selfish frigid bitch'. Her first marriage lasted two years and I came to know her husband; a descent man, devoted to her. By the time Susanna was done with him, he was a basket case. Since I was somewhat of a witness to this ball-busting process, I had come to quietly dislike and distrust her. Physically, she remained stunningly beautiful but I felt no attraction to her. Although I never brought up the subject of manage de trios again, I felt gratitude to Margaret for sparing us both from a terrible mistake. Knowing what I know now, Susanna would have surely found a way to use my thoughtless lust for her against my wife and me.
Still, I returned her call.
"Oh Jim, I am so glad to hear from you. I have been sitting by the phone all day waiting for your call." Her voice was breathy and urgent.
"I just got home Susanna, and the only reason I am calling is that you said it was important. What is this all about?"
"It is important, Jim. I can't talk about it over the phone. Please come over so I could talk to you personally."
