Several years ago, David and I had been living together for a few months when he introduced me to Fred, his old UCLA roommate from the Seventies. They'd met as freshmen in the dorm and later shared an apartment for three years, competing with each other in academics, intramural sports, and girls. They each had married their last UCLA girlfriend soon after graduation. Fred had remained in Los Angeles and built a career as an attorney, while David had moved to Northern California to be an engineer in one high-tech company after another.
Fred's marriage survived barely two years, and David's eight. Fred foreswore remarriage or even serious commitments, preferring to dabble his way through an endless supply of vivacious Southern California women. He was a short man, youthfully tight and trim, always sporting an infectious grin and a baby face that made him appear 10 years younger than the calendar said he was. David was taller by three inches and lankier, with intense brown eyes and wispy brown hair that seemed forever in need of a haircut. He was easily the more reserved of the two. I was only his second girlfriend in the three years following his divorce, and we were together for more than five years after that.
Fred and David regularly visited each other, usually several times a year, usually with Fred flying up to San Francisco for a long weekend with his girlfriend-du-jour. When I was living with David, Fred and his lady would stay at our house on the Peninsula for a night. Fred and David would regale the new woman with their tales, most of them true, and we'd stumble off to bed well after midnight, full of food, wine, and good humor. The next morning Fred and his date would continue up to the City for the remainder of the weekend at a swanky hotel.
What I learned years ago was that David and Fred never ended their competition. They compared golf scores and ski runs, their portfolios, and their expensive toys. Less verbally stated, but just as real, was their competition about women. I observed David's envy of Fred's parade of new companions and Fred's almost boastful presentation to us of each new beauty. Invariably, when we would call it a night and fall into our respective beds, David and I would hear Fred and his lover in the next room. And every time they had sex, David and I did also. Listening to the other couple seemed to supercharge our own physical relationship.
I'm sure that David's voyeurism was not accidental. David's house had a guestroom that shared a common wall with the master bedroom, and David had arranged the beds in both rooms to abut the headboards against that wall. I suspect that Fred was as much of an exhibitionist as David -- and I -- were voyeurs. On virtually every visit Fred would fuck them in the guestroom, noisily enough that he just had to know that we could hear them, but not so noisy as to embarrass his partner. For our part in the game, David and I always tried to do it quietly, so as to not make it obvious how well sounds transmitted through the wall.
Two weeks earlier on his latest trip north, Fred brought Amy, a twentysomething Japanese-American cutie who worked as a paralegal in another law firm in his building. She had jet-black hair cut in a simple pageboy, dark sparkling eyes, flawlessly smooth skin, and a small, athletic body that was a good match for Fred's shorter stature and his love for tennis and skiing. Throughout the evening she listened to the old stories and shared our laughter. They sat close to each other on the couch, her hand casually brushing Fred's leg or dawdling on his shoulder, and their eyes would occasionally meet and a private smile would telegraph a silent message.
As the evening wound down, Amy and I found ourselves in the kitchen. I diverted her into making the decaf while I finished loading the last of the dishes into the dishwasher. "How long have you two been seeing each other?" I asked her.
"About a month," she replied, repeatedly tilting the grinder upside down with a practiced wrist flip until the high-pitched whine declared it was finished.
"Those guys are something, aren't they?"
