When she said she needed a new hobby, I thought she meant she wanted to collect stamps or take up knitting, but when I learned what she wanted to collect were people, male people, sex partners who she could bed without shame or restrictions in as many motels or clandestine places as possible. She wanted to do it even as a married housewife previously committed and faithful in all regards to her husband, me, and she wanted to do it with my blessing and without any interference from me.
"You come to this decision recently?" I asked, stunned to hear her proposal, incredulous that she would simply announce it one night after the dishes were washed and put away.
"No," she said with a relaxed expression, as if she had just proclaimed she was going to wash the windows. "I have been thinking about it for quite some time now," she said casually. "I have decided I am not a one-man woman," she said assertively. "You see, I now understand I need more sex than one person can provide," she added.
"So you want out of the marriage?" I asked, amazed by the sudden change in the woman I knew as my wife.
"Oh no," she said. "I like being married, having a husband to share my life with, to live with and raise a family with, eventually. I just want the freedom to do as I want regarding sex. I want to fuck as I please, so do you think you can handle that? Do you think you can be the husband of an emancipated woman?"
She waited for me to comment, but I couldn't find words. I was dazed by her question. I ran the issue through my mind, processing the idea, wondering if I actually could do as she proposed. Could I wait at home while my wife traveled about fucking her way through the male population of the state? Could I give her the freedom to be sexual with whomever she pleased?
I decided to go to the only friend I had who I thought could be unbiased and who could at least give an enlightened answer regarding the matter. He was a professor of physics at Cal Berkeley and I trusted his judgement on most matters.
I gave him the unoriginal old "a friend of mine" story, saying I know this guy whose wife wants to have sexual freedom to have sex with other men. "How does this 'friend' feel about her fucking other men?" he asked using a term I had never heard from him.
"Well, he's confused," I said. "I don't think he knows what to think." Mike was a widower, he had lost his wife a few years before and I had met her a number of times. She had been a college teacher and I knew they had met in college.
"You tell your friend it is an individual decision, but let him know there are many societies around the world where men routinely share their wives with other men," he said. "Do you remember Julia?" he asked, looking up from his coffee cup. I said I remembered her and she was lovely. I remembered her as an attractive woman I was impressed with, who seemed to be a person in control of her life, a person who didn't suffer fools.