The night Isabel Hyde told her husband Alex that he had a small penis, which was true, but not the point, was the night she realized her husband had created a small stage for her and had given her the outline of a script from which he wanted her to read.
"You know you really don't have much down there," she whispered to him as he thrusted so weakly she could hardly feel him.
"I know," he said. But he didn't shrivel up as most men would hearing those words. Instead, his small member thickened all it could and he began thrusting into her with an energy that delighted her.
He was sexually submissive. He enjoyed the idea of his wife sexually humiliating him by criticizing the size of his penis and in other ways too.
Just a week before, while sitting at a martinis bar celebrating their 2nd anniversary, he'd told her he had fantasies of her having sex with another man. The ultimate sexual humiliation.
"Really, would you want me to do that?" she asked calmly.
"Yes." He assured her, he would. But only if she wanted to.
Later, at home he showed her a video he'd found online of a woman bent forward, her skirt hiked up, grasping a dumpster in a dark alley while a large, well-tattooed and apparent stranger fucked her from behind. Her boyfriend watched from the shadows of a dark corner where we'd seen her take him by the hand and say "Wait here." She'd then gone back out on the street which was pulsing with the sounds of Latin percussion, found the stranger, led him back to the alleyway, near the silhouette of her boyfriend, unzipped the tattoo man's pants and hiked up her skirt so he could enter her.
Isabel watched the video with a mix of amusement, arousal and repulsion.
The next day, when the erotic spell had vanished, the whole idea felt wrong. How could her husband love her, yet want her to have sex with another man? She felt confused. In her mind those two things did not go together, and she decided to tell him that.
She never did. Her repulsion did not win out. There was something intriguing too, something about the idea made her laugh and loosened her spirit. This could be fun. She might not tell him this, but she admired Alex for telling her that he was a sexual submissive.
When she brought up the subject with Alex, her tone skeptical and hesitant--something she'd learned to do with men when it came to sex. Any hint of a "yes" to most men meant a full "yes." She'd gotten used to building walls where she might have wanted a doorway. "I could never do that. Not for real. But maybe we can have some fun pretending."
"I'd like that," he said. "I'd like it if you would pretend you're seeing another man and then tell me all the details, especially about the sex."
Isabel thought about Alex's fantasy a lot the next few days. And in her mind she grew to like the idea. She felt a strange sense of freedom, as if the castle doors had been opened and she was free to walk the fields and explore the woods, the chance to have her cake and the opportunity to eat it too.
But her excitement also seemed to trigger a strong need, though she couldn't have said why, to tell Alex that she could never do it for real. She could never have sex with another man. That was out.
"We can play. We can pretend but there's no way we can do this for real."
Alex was reassuring. "Okay. I never want you to do anything you don't want to do especially something like this. I'm just glad you don't think I'm crazy and that you're willing to pretend. It can be our little game, our secret."
Isabel liked that idea. They had a secret.
So she began pretending and her imagination soared. She teased him while making love. She mentioned an actor she liked and told her husband she'd used her fingers to make herself cum several times while imagining the actor seducing her in a bar and taking her back to his place.
A month later, out of the blue she announced she had a date with handsome new computer technician who'd been coming by her office. She said he loved martinis and knew how to make a good one. They had a date right after work the next night.
"It's just for an hour. We're meeting at his place to have a martini."
The way she told the story Alex thought she really had a date with a computer tech guy.
The next day, she arrived home late. She took her husband's hand and pulled it down between her legs over the crotch of her panties which she had dampened with warm water in the restroom at work.
"He came so much. Can you feel that. He really, really wanted me."
Alex pulled his wife into bed. He was on fire. Isabel couldn't believe how excited he was. While her husband towered over her, thrusting with all the muscle he could manage she made up a detailed story about her lover and what had happened when she arrived at his place. It was all just a story but she got the feeling that Alex thought it had really happened.
Isabel liked the effect it had on Alex. It even scared her a little how well she conjured stories, as if she actually knew how to be a woman with a lover and a cuckold husband, as if the story she concocted was something she was completely capable of doing herself.
Maybe that was why she needed to tell Alex she'd never do it in real life. How could she make up a story so easily if she truly hated the idea?
"You know I'd never actually have sex with a man at his apartment before coming home to you. You know I just dampened my panties with water in the bathroom at work. It's all make believe."
"I know," Alex said. Then, confronting her in a way that was unusual he asked, "Why do you need to remind me it's make-believe all the time? You've told me ten times you could never actually do it and every time I remind you that I don't want you to actually do it because you don't want to."
And so, over the next several months, the game continued. But, it was all make-believe.
One Fall weekend, Isabel went to a book conference in a city several hours away. She was a writer and had a novel published a year before she'd married Alex. She'd been to this conference numerous times and usually Alex went with her, but this time she went alone.
Attendance was low. The guy in the booth next next to her was someone she didn't recognize. He was tall, broad shouldered and completely bald. A couple of times he made eye contact with her and smiled before he introduced himself.
"I'm Nagle Lear," he said.
Isabel asked him about his name and he said it was the name of the street his parents lived on when he was born.
"Nagle Lear?"
"No 'Lear,' was their last name, too," he said. "We lived on Nagle. Though Nagle Lear would work as a street name. Turn left there at Nagle Lear then go straight for half a mile and you'll be at the foot of the mountain." He laughed.
Isabel felt embarrassed. But she wanted to keep talking to Nagle.
She asked him about his book. He told her his wife had died of breast cancer fours years ago after battling it for several years. The cancer had metastasized into her spine and collapsed two vertebrae, so it had been a painful fight.
Watching her die broke his heart. It changed his life. His book was about grief. Isabel read the first chapter after he handed her a copy. As she read, she felt overcome. She stood quickly facing away from Nagle and grew dizzy so that she had to sit down quickly and wipe the back of her hand across her forehead.
She turned to him and spoke. "Your writing is so raw and vulnerable. I don't know if I'd have the courage to write such an honest, painful book."
Later, he asked her if she wanted to join him at a martini bar not far from the hotel. They could walk.
She laughed, feeling more relaxed having spent the day near him and listening to him talk with the people who stopped by his booth.
When he asked what she was laughing about she was thinking about Alex and how her husband would enjoy knowing she'd just been asked out on a date.
She told Nagle that it was nothing, an inside joke.
"So you'll have a martini with me?"
"I will," she said. As soon as she said yes she wondered if she should text her husband to tell him. She decided not to. Still, she couldn't stop smiling. She had a date at a martini bar. That must be a sign of something more to come.
