Dispatches From the Front Line

AUTHOR'S NOTE: this semi-fictionalised account of life in the adult Scene features characters as constancies rather than walk-ons. Or even, as hard-ons. This chapter can be a stand-alone but makes more sense in the context defined by Chapter 1. 'S up to you, Reader.

A swingers' event in Vegas, centered in and around The Strip. A trade show for the adult entertainment industry with a particular emphasis on the latest in video, fashion, kink and, even more so, plastics and pneumatics.

Well: that's my husband's take. But then, he is a materials scientist.

At check-in he gazes with professional interest at two platinum blondes crossing the lobby, analysing their superstructures, quietly figuring out the mass times weight over gravity equation. He asks me if I think implant technology really is improving, but we both realise it ain't when that evening we watch a couple of similarly structured girls in a pole dance act.

They're wearing high heels and, quite naturally, nothing else, which means when their bodies mash together everyone is able to see bare breasts spreading and flattening nicely.

Except: they don't. It's like watching two rocks in an avalanche.

Later still, we encounter a fellow guest and his wife. He's a specialist in body image enhancement – ah, so that's what they call it. He doesn't look like Ken and thank God, she doesn't look like Barbie, so it's possible to at least have a chat along the lines of how's business, and what's new.

What's new, it turns out, is that -- according to his wife -- this surgeon is quite a name in labial enhancement – my, my, I wonder: what kind of name might that be? If I'm interested, then Stuart and I should come along to their suite later, there are some other couples who –

Thanks but no thanks, we say, and head out of one bar area into the next. We grab two seats at a table where another couple have also only just settled down. They're our age: he's big and soft and comfortable with it, she's slimmer almost to the point of being sleek. She has big dark eyes in an elfin face framed by cropped auburn hair and the moment we meet, I know.

She and I soon collapse in fits of laughter over the likely name of the surgeon I've just met. He and Stuart are immediately into a debate about a Mustang parked up under the neon marquee, looks like something called a three-ninety as driven by Steve McQueen though of course, a Dodge Magnum would always have been too quick for it. Oh, absolutely.

Hello, Laura. Hello, David.

Men. I don't know. I sometimes think my husband loves the smell of a hot engine as much if not more than the scent of a good woman.

Here we are, having dined quite well and watched an act that was pretty good once the bouncing brick, or non-bouncing brick, stuff had been done with and the girls got on with finishing each other. But now the next high of the evening is a discussion about hemis. Or semis. Demis. It's beyond me.

Turns out, David's in the family Lexus dealership. Maybe even Dealer Principal, which I think is something to do with black jack but Stuart says no, no, and then sighs a lot. Laura once worked in the business too, though I'm guessing she was front of house rather than on her back under a chassis somewhere. Laura says she has been on her back in a service bay but it had nothing to do with any warranty work.

So. Where to head next? Plenty of choices if you know where to look.

We finish up in a seminar suite converted into a kind of play room and the four of us are draped in white towelling that stays on all night and doesn't come off because, well, we don't, either.

Yes, of course there are break-out rooms well worth exploring, in one of which we discover this gorgeous nude black guy, extensively oiled, extensively endowed, demonstrating just how supple a man can be. It's a solo act Laura and I would really, really like to watch through to the guy's completion because we've never seen a performance like this.

But we've got Starsky and Hutch in tow and this isn't their scene. Not only is there not a Mustang in sight, we suspect they're secretly lamenting the size of their hemis.

Another break-out room has two naked girls going at it on a raised glass dais, you can stand underneath and look up at what they're doing to each other. But I've already enjoyed one Sapphic spectacle and another isn't worth a crick in the neck. So I get Stuart to escort me back to the main area, leaving Laura and David to watch the performance because they missed out on the pole dance duo.

When we finally re-group, it's clear the press of the crowd is a bit too great and the noise just a little too much. It's also pretty obvious that it's been a long day of long flights, easier for us than for Laura and David from upper NY, but even so. We're in the same tower, it turns out, though different floors. It's just a quick hug and kiss outside the elevator on their floor before we continue on up to ours.

And very soon, lights out: the only desire I have is for sleep, snuggling up with Stuart and letting thoughts tumble in lazy scatter, about the trip, about the day, about the night. And also, about Laura.

Elvis has left the playground.

It was the next night when I loved her.

When, cringingly, I couldn't help but remark on how good she looked. No excess fat. No stretch marks. A mother-of-two with a body like that? I'd never gone through the pain and pleasure of child-birth yet I sure as hell didn't have, and still don't have, a figure as taut yet as soft as hers. My boobs are bigger, and without artifice, but there could only be one size between us. I don't run to a full Brazilian, either, though Laura's sculpturing was enough to make me wonder if I shouldn't smooth out completely now.

All that, of course, was after a day of sleeping in late and meeting up for lunch and then going our separate ways before re-grouping for dinner. Stuart and I were in Ceasar's mall for so long he wondered if we going to sleep in the fountain. David said he and Laura had spent so much time in that Italian village place, he thought she was looking to trade him in for a gondolier.

Dinner, then. And wine. And for the four of us, talk of many things. Their experiences of the scene. Our experiences. The way those experiences almost uncannily mirrored each other. What had been the best. What had been the worst. And what had never been experienced. Whether atop a glass dais or not.

Laura's gaze held mine. They really had been good, she said. The two girls. You could see how it could be. . . You know. She laughed. Not sure about how comfortable a girl could get on glass though.

Or, Stuart interrupted, even Perspex – ah, what it is to have a partner to whom science is all. Beds are definitely better, David said. Well; so long as they're not too firm. Stuart nodded like the two of them were lab techs discussing formulae. Our bed is OK, he said. Not too hard. Not too soft. He looked at me. It's a nice bed, isn't it Kate?

Ho-hum. Ho-hum.

So all right. It could be argued that what followed for me was at Stuart's hang-dog urging. And where Laura was concerned, at David's. But that makes it appear that women are pliant and submissive to every male desire. Not true.

It's just that men are sometimes --but only sometimes -- able to whisper into your ear that which might already be whispering in your mind.

Eventually then, I looked across at Laura and mouthed a silent "yes", and she did likewise, and though that special moment was forged of longing it was also buoyed by comedy because – yup, you guessed --neither husband was aware of the exchange. And so they continued on exactly as before, a verbal manoeuvering they must've believed to be as subtle as it was adroit, yet which to both Laura and I was more clumsy than the footwork of two dancing elephants.

Laura put at end to it all, turning to David and saying: 'If you dare for one moment say Kate and I would be more comfortable on a bed than a dais. . . I'll hit you.'

So, I thought. Here we go. Out in the open. At last.

Which, of course, was what the guys wanted. Two wives out in the open. Performing for them.

But also: unfortunate for them, because these particular two girls were saying that if they were ever, ever to do anything like that – and the prospect was still taking them into a world of girlish giggling rather than a universe of mature female passion -- then they'd want a private try-out first.

Unfair? Unreasonable? Hardly. Yet to judge from the reaction, we were being unco-operative to the point of irrationality. The disappointment on their faces said everything there is to say about the male manifesto:

Women are naturally bi, so girl-on-girl sex only enhances their femininity.

Men are not naturally bi, so guy-on-guy sex only proves they're gay.

God above though.

How did we ever get to that state of affairs?

Answer: most likely it's because girls grow into women. But guys grow from being kids into being even bigger kids. And like kids, they're afraid of the dark.

So it's about fear. Not sex. It's about how women can be daring enough to venture into the emotional and the physical unknown. And about how guys can't, and so have to insulate themselves against that inability by barricading off their lives with excuses and denials as simplistic as they're juvenile.

Laura smiled at David's none too subtle encouragement, the way his eyes had that look of theatrical pleading, the way his hand reached across the table to caress her's.

I was less indulgent. If Stuart was so absolutely sure that I would get so much pleasure from making out with Laura in front of him, then he'd appreciate how absolutely sure I was of the pleasure he'd get from making out with David in front of me.

Never has a gaze changed so quickly from longing to alarm. Stuart's; and David's. It was enough to send Laura and I into fits of laughter. I couldn't resist pushing further at the men's discomfort: there might right then have been some great hands at the black jack tables but it's the "it's-only-fair" card that really takes all when played by a woman.

I said that if these two kind and considerate men would care to recall, Laura and I had been dragged away from that solo performance last night. So we never did get to see how that gorgeous guy finished himself off. Surely it was only fair that we got a better deal tonight: two males performing, rather than one.

Laura leaned across, lightly patted her husband's cheek. Said: 'Oh, it's all right, darling. I understand. A first date and everything, you don't have to kiss.' Her grin broadened. 'But you do have to suck.'

After that, Laura and I had more wine. David and Stuart switched to iced water. The vision that I suspected had been throbbing before their eyes – sitting with a beer in one hand whilst delving in their pants with the other, following their wives' every move – had evidently deserted them.

And so it was that we girls eventually finished our drinks, and told the guys to go play in the casino. Whilst we went to play upstairs.

We didn't so much as kiss first. Or embrace. Just locked the door on the safety chain then slowly stripped each other with hands that definitely weren't trembling from raging lust.

I'd never done this before. Whether or not Laura had, I didn't know. Didn't ask. Didn't care. I only wanted to find out if what was to happen tonight would still be worth a smile in the morning. Or embarrassed regret.

But no. No regrets. What I did find out on that wide Emperor-sized bed was that which so many have already found: that yes, oh my yes, women really can do things to each other that men never can.

Maybe it's physical. Maybe it's emotional. But whatever: two women can blend together like ingredients of the same fizzing exploding cocktail, sparkles of light before the eyes, heat and softness swelling under the palm, musky wetness upon the face and the taste of dark Paradise on the tongue.

We did it without toys that first time because neither of us had brought any and so when we'd finished we made of each other a kind of cocoon that brought with it the instant sleep of joyous exhaustion -- a sleep so deep the guys disturbed it only by dint of ringing up on the house phone: their persistent door knocking had gone unheard.

Nor was that sleep simply shrugged off. After Sheila had dressed, she returned with her husband to their room. To sleep. Whilst I slipped back under our own covers and did exactly the same.

I think our husbands went back to the casino, though I don't know why: when you're on a losing streak, you really ought to pack it in and grab some sleep yourself.

Next morning marked the start of our last full day. Nothing was scheduled – well, it was, but meeting up with the stars of "Anal Inferno 2" didn't cut it for me.

So we breakfasted with Laura and David and nobody said anything to anybody, though the fact that Laura and I repeatedly failed to suppress a smile whilst repeatedly seeking eye contact was eloquent enough for the men sitting with us.

They weren't talking cars now. Weren't being big boys for the sake of being big boys. We'd got our usual menfolk back, and they were quiet, and gentle, and the smiles they shared with Laura and I were exactly that: not leers, not grins, not the stupid signalling of hot-faced adolescents but the considered and considerate calm of guys mature enough to know just how far their wives had travelled, and to be grateful to have them home.

From what Laura had confided last night, it was clear she liked Stuart, even though I told her to beware of Geeks bearing gifts. (Let's just bare the geek then, she said.) But I wasn't sure if I'd said how comfortable I felt with David: he and Stuart were so alike in so many ways, funny, articulate, neither strutting peacocks nor timid drones. Just a big guy, with a big tummy on him, whose laughter always reached his eyes and who, when we'd been doing the rounds of the scene last night, had always been the one who held open the door.

Small things – all right, the paunch aside – but they count. Sometimes you feel you've known someone a lot longer than the clock might say. Which means that when the time comes to slip out of yourself and into play, the thrill of the unknown does have that underscoring of the reassurance of the familiar.

Play, however, means different things to different players.

When we met in Vegas, Stuart and I had been into the scene for only two years. And I was still, as Stuart liked to say, a virgin by marriage. Which meant that though I enjoyed the sensation of daring, the feeling of risk, and all the sights experienced on an escape from Vanilla, I had never coupled with any man other than my husband. Hadn't done so with a woman, either, though I'd actually been closer to that than just about anything else.

This reticence, then: weird, or what? No. It isn't. Because when I fuck, I possess. When I'm fucked, I am possessed. My body – my soul – is not to be as lightly picked up and consumed as a glass of beer.

That Laura was also a virgin by marriage was happy coincidence. That their total number of play-aways hardly exceeded ours – ten, they reckoned, compared to our eight -- showed something else: that Destiny is indeed a quirky creature.

So. We hit The Strip. A lazy meander in and out of other hotels, grateful for a November morning far different from the blast furnace heat of a Vegas summer. Clothes I've enough of. Shoes, more than a centipede needs. Laura was the same.

What we didn't have were toys.

We didn't even talk of it, before the actual purchase. Instead the four of us had a long lunch at an Italian, and then in the powder room she and I lunged so hard for each other, we almost managed mutual concussion.

As soon as we get back? Laura asked. I nodded. And the boys? She had the kind of grin the Devil must've been born with. I nodded again. But then, for a moment, she grew serious:

'You're all right with this, Kate? In front of David? I mean, I'm all right, you know. Stuart watching. So. .?'

I gave her a quick kiss. 'Maybe,' I said, 'maybe we should advertise. A notice in the lobby, sell some tickets.'

Laura shivered. 'Fuck's sakes, Kate. Don't put ideas in my head.'

Back at the hotel, we got as far as the floor given over to the adult bazaar – bizarre too, when you looked closely – and found what we wanted: a strap-on with soft leather harness belt; a double ender; and enough lube for a major service.

You could see the guys trying not to betray any excitement: it was probably that very exercise of male restraint which gave us the idea of also buying matching cock rings with scrotal double hoops. Everybody wins.

Their room, this time. Going on three o'clock with the sun streaming in off the desert. Laura and I, another big wide bed, and this time, toys to use. And an audience to watch us.

OK, we said. We know how you are. You want to pull up two chairs, sit down with one hand in your pants and a beer in the other. No-oo-oo. We need to be able to see you, while you're seeing us. Strip isn't just the name of a road eight floors below.

A little hesitancy, a few nerves, but they managed it, getting undressed while we remained dressed, watching their clothes coming off until they were naked and standing there side by side. The sunlight filtered in over two quite different physiques: Stuart's lean, almost lanky, David's broader, more like a bear's and with the chest fur to go with it. I realised then his tum actually wasn't as big as I'd thought.

We got them to move two chairs closer to the bed and then they sat there with self conscious grins while we fitted 'em out. Laura and I were grinning too, she kneeling between my husband's thighs while I got between David's. He was big and warm here, too, though anything but furry, and when I looked into his eyes he looked straight back into mine and then slowly closed them as I finally held all his roundness and fullness, my hand lifting and weighing and palming over and upwards onto a thickness, hardening.

Getting the actual rings on wasn't too difficult but the rest took a bit longer, the two of them tensing and twisting as we finally got those balls hooped tight and pushed out. We stood back to admire our handiwork. Yeah. Great.

Two fine stalks of uncut cock rising up almost vertically, two sets of balls quite properly made more prominent, more vulnerable. Laura got out her camera, asked if anyone minded. No faces, she said, as if we still needed to adhere to protocol.

Her high res close-ups captured the way a silver bubble of pre-cum was bobbing on the slit of Stuart's cock and a gossamer thread was unstringing from David's. One of these days I'll get around to melding them in Photoshop, print out a couple of A3s on our Epson. The resulting wall montage should be better than that sunset ocean rolling tediously in above our bed head.

After that, it was time to put away the camera. Time for me to close my eyes and let myself be slowly stripped, and then for me to do the same with Laura. When we finished, we smiled in a way we hadn't done the previous night. But also when we finished, our hands weren't shaking the way they'd done before, either.

The audience applauded. We bowed. And it began.

There are no clocks in Toyland.

I think we were there for half an hour but it could have been less or as long as eternity.

The guys were told to encourage us on because it's not enough to know you're being watched, you have to hear yourself being watched.

That way you can swap out fast from your own perspective. Can in that brief flashing of time's mirror view the performer the way the performer is being viewed, even though what you see is random, and what you remember, even more so:

My husband urging Laura to really work her breasts – harder, harder! – and Laura doing that for him until she's surely hurting; and: