I was newly married, still really under the control of my domineering parents, we had just had our first row, if you can call my bursting into tears and locking myself in the bathroom a row. Mike, my new husband, was sulking at me, he had wanted me to wear stockings to a night out with his friends, the thought of what my father would do to me if he caught me "dressed like a whore" had terrified me, even though we had moved hundreds of miles away.
Things limped along but the harm had been done, I was being largely ignored, I changed my hair, he did not notice, I bought a new dress that actually stopped above the knee, he was indifferent. In bed I was getting used to his back to me.
I began to suspect he was having an affair and like any wife I hunted, and found what seemed to confirm it. Before the internet and sites like this one people used contact magazines to find sexual partners, and I found a stash of them, some of the ads had been circled and there were letters tucked in with them, replies to those Mike had apparently sent them, they were addressed to his work to avoid my finding them in our post.
The mags held a strange fascination for me, I read them all, cover to cover, and not just the ads, the letters boasting of successful meets, fantasy stories and such. At first I was shocked at the blatant language in the ads, but then realised they were totally anonymous, just code numbers that people replied to and were re-addressed. Many of the photographs had blanked eyes or faces. Anyone could write whatever they wanted in safety and keep the replies totally secret. Provided I hid them better than Mike!
I was somewhat mollified that it was apparent he was not trying to arrange meets with anyone, rather he was exchanging fantasies, I thought him foolishly naïve, it was blazingly obvious to me reading the letters he was collecting that these were men replying, pretending to be women, repeatedly asking for pictures of me exposing myself, just a silly sting to get some indiscrete photos, perhaps even leading up to blackmail.
But one letter got my attention, thanking Mike for his interest it was openly from another man, looking to exchange photos of his wife for Mike's - me in other words. Sensibly it suggested they first exchange holiday type snaps, which had apparently already taken place as a second letter gave very nice compliments about me, from the comments it was clear they were some of those taken of me when we had gone sailing on our honeymoon. I had never had a good body image of myself and I found it not only flattering, but a turn on, to read a total stranger describing the swell of my breasts in a bathing suit and my long, shapely legs that he said he was fantasising about having wrapped around him.
I was shaking by then, and much more was to come, a set of pages detailing 36 poses the stranger wanted Mike to take of me. Each pose took about half a page to describe they were in such detail, and were highly specific about what I should be wearing. The first one for instance read:
