This is a mere prologue. Sure, it's got some dusty parts, but mostly it's just an explanation of a few things, not actually an all-out dirty story. If you want stories so dirty that you'll need extra time in the bath afterwards, you naughty little perv you, skip ahead! But if you're here to put the "liter" in literotica, read on, my friend, read on. (Later, we'll be putting the "rot" in too. You trust me, right?)
*****
1
Mary was always one of the prettier girls, never the prettiest.
The prettiest girls were taller, blonder, or (especially) had bigger boobs.
But the prettiest girls valued her as a friend because she wasn't jealous, and she wasn't jealous because she was smarter than they were. She was the smartest pretty girl and the prettiest smart girl. So she was fairly popular.
She never had any boyfriends, though, because she didn't trust boys. She barely let them touch her, even during school dances.
Her mother, twice divorced and thrice bitter, had warned her too well. "Men are swine. They're all liars. They only ever want one thing and they'll say anything to get it."
So she grew up sure that any girl who let a boy "play with" her was a fool, unless she had a ring on her finger and a solid prenup.
Still, she did like their attention. She never minded when boys asked her out, and even regretted that she could not accept. Some of the boys seemed so good, it was hard to remember that they were evil; and other boys seemed so bad that she wanted to play with them even more!
After high school, she got a scholarship to USCLA. She'd been hoping to go to an even more prestigious school in New England, and she did get into Cornmouth and UPhil, but USCLA offered her a scholarship so generous that she had no choice, especially since she could live with her "cool aunt" in LA - the one with crystals and incense and chant and lots of pot.
She filled out in college. Her boobs grew until they were almost or maybe even just barely big enough. But she majored in media, with all the girls who wanted to be on TV, so she
still
wasn't one of the prettiest girls.
She was, however, pretty enough for her friend to get her a job as a bartender at a country club even though she didn't know anything about bartending. Her qualifications were a cute smile, a tiny waist, and hips that looked good in a tight skirt.
So she met James, a member of the club. He was older of course, in his late thirties, but already a junior partner at one of the city's largest law firms, and still handsome, with an outdoorsy tan, a confident smile, and classy manners. He wore very expensive designer clothing, but he made them look more tasteful than ostentatious, and thanks to an active lifestyle he was likely to remain in good shape for many more years.
He'd just divorced his first wife, whom he'd married back when he was just a promising young lawyer, still in a lot of debt, not yet able to pull a woman as pretty as Mary. The first wife traded ten years of her best looks for a few million of his best dollars, and the split was relatively amicable. He could only have the kids on summers and non-holiday weekends and so he kept his home and most of his money. She took them down to San Diego, just to make it a little more inconvenient for him, so he slept with her sister, and everything was even.
Anyway, Mary played the virgin with him, although by then it was a bit of an exaggeration...
Because there'd been a soccer player — a dashing Italian, exotic, seductive, a great dancer with an amazing body.
In her mind, Mary'd dumped this soccer player the moment that James had asked her out, so she'd technically never been unfaithful, though of course she hadn't been able to inform the soccer player for several hours. He took it far too well.
"Yeah," he said. "Okay."
"Goddammit," Mary thought, "I gave you my fucking virginity." She concluded that her mother was right. She'd been too easy.
So for James she discovered all sorts of feminine wiles, resources within herself that she hadn't known about until then.
"I don't know," she cooed one night, looking away, then innocently up at him, as if unaware that her blouse had slid slightly more open, revealing another inch of her white breasts. "Are you sure it's okay?"
James, a mere man, ate it up.
But that wasn't the main thing for him. He had a home overlooking the ocean. The sunset, reflected on the water, threw gorgeous light onto the ceilings in his best rooms. He had a 1962 Alfa Romeo Spider. His grateful clients included several celebrities.
He had pretty women and girls if he wanted them.
What set Mary apart, in his mind, was her brains. He saw her as an asset for his social ambition. Gradually — very, very gradually — he introduced her to more and more of his acquaintances, and she knew he was always judging her performances.
So she found herself among increasingly wealthy people, even though she could sense he was still not introducing her to the people whose esteem he valued most.
The smartest pretty girl and the prettiest smart girl was exactly what he was looking for, and if he had to initiate her into the joys of sexuality, all the better.
So one Sunday morning in the spring of her senior year of college, he proposed. It was very romantic, unexpected, walking on the beach in front of his house.
Big purple diamond. The color of the sea just after sunset.
Her friends were thrilled — and deliciously jealous. She had her bridal shower at his house just to show it off to them.
Some of them, she knew, thought about his age, and her mom and even her aunt discussed it with her worriedly. But really, he was only fifteen years older, and still quite handsome, and far more successful (read: wealthier) than any man that any woman in Mary's family had ever had a chance with.
And she had the ring, and she had the prenup.
She knew she was to be no trophy wife. He saw her as a partner in his campaign to belong in the world of patrician elegance. She would fight for him in feminine circles to which he had no access, but which nevertheless held considerable power over his status "in society."
Although Mary saw through some of the pretensions of the rich more clearly than James did, she admired his confidence and ambition, and she tried, usually successfully, to make a favorable impression for him.
They were married the following fall, spent a month-long honeymoon in Europe — London, Paris, Rome — and then she began settling into her new life.
2
So it comes about that she finds herself at a charity fundraiser with her new husband.
It's fun. Dress up in nice clothes, wear expensive jewelry, eat and drink fine things, and try to guess whose accents — not to say faces or boobs — are genuine.
And this being Los Angeles, quite a few of the people here are, or once were, stars. Who would've ever imagined
Mary
among these people? What would the girls back home think?
She stands in a circle of ladies she doesn't really know, holding a glass of wine, smiling sympathetically as they tell each other stories — mostly euphemistic, some transparently dishonest. One of these ladies is rumored to have been Gabe Clark's lover. He must've been very old, and she must've been very young, Mary thinks, but she doesn't remember which particular old lady it is supposed to have been anyway.
She looks around the ballroom, wondering if all the other groups of people are just as boring. There must be some genuine laughter somewhere.
Halfway across the room, she spots her husband. His circle at the moment includes the elderly Harry Celek, who in his much younger days hosted a gameshow her grandmother used to watch.
But she's trapped. These ladies won't let her go. They simply
must
take turns telling her about their sons' darling wives, their grandsons' charming girlfriends. One of them, for example, air-headedly took a prize poodle to the wrong groomer.
Flawlessly polite, they seem to welcome her readily, even
too
eagerly. For some of them, excessive kindness is actually a condescending way of excluding her — they address those who "belong" more frankly — calculated to render any objection unreasonable.
And, to be sure, they're letting her know what the standards are. Most of their stories have an unambiguous moral: this is how women of our class behave and don't behave. If you're going to be one of us, this is what we expect.
It's annoying, but whatever. Her charm and grace have gotten her this far, so she relies on them again.
Easily meeting their fake smiles with a genuine one of her own, she proves that she won't be intimidated, that she is just as clever and just as sophisticated as any of them, and yes, just as qualified to be in their society.
She has her own weapon, too: paying respect to their eminence, she implicitly reminds them that at least she still has her youth. A tiny little extra bit of confidence even hints that she knows that most of them were
never
as beautiful as she is at that moment, in her bespoke Italian dress and her blue pearls.
The subtler her insult, and the more hurtful, the more persuasive her proof that she deserves to be one of them.
It's fun, and maybe a little cruel, but she feels good knowing that with this performance, she is earning her own place here. This is the labor with which she pays for her lovely home with a pool and two lawns and the sunset shimmering on her dining room ceiling. This is why James married her rather than any of the even more beautiful women he could've chosen.
Looking at one of the women in the circle, however, Mary understands the matrons' attitude towards her. With a gaudy leopard-print skirt hugging her tiny waist, and breasts that cannot possibly stand up like that — though they are just small enough to be, perhaps, real — she is the only one whose beauty rivals Mary's, but she has already shown herself shallow, materialistic, and joyfully ditzy.
Of course
her
husband is much older than James, and far richer, while
she
seems to be even younger than Mary. So Mary cannot help smiling at her just as indulgently and condescendingly as any of the old matrons.
Which, Mary thinks, is if anything just another sign that she belongs, that she will flourish among these ridiculous, old-fashioned people.
3
"I heard that Raoul is coming tonight," leopard print skirt says.
