It was Janet's idea.
"What harm can it do to look around?" she said.
Ha!
Janet was an inveterate surfer. And you did not have to surf very much to find all kinds of things out there that would have horrified Janet's mother, for one.
We had both been brought up in the sheltered cocoon of the 'typical American family', Yes, including church on Sunday. We were not into drugs, booze, high-jinks of any sort, hell, we did not even screw until we'd been going out for three years, and even then we used a condom. Model students, we graduated from High School, then from College, and we both held down uninspiring, but solid jobs. Janet was a librarian. She had always loved books. I am an accountant. With prospects, I was given to understand. Hang around and you'll one day be a partner. That kind of thing.
We married young, and we were happy. Well, sort of happy. I guess we both felt we were missing out on something, or had missed out on something. Perhaps this is true of all couples who were High-School sweethearts, who had never strayed from the straight and narrow, never played the field, never experienced the highs and lows of the 'singles game'. What you have, you do not value. What you have not, this you come to yearn for.
It began quite innocuously. Well, relatively innocuously. I arrived home one evening in a foul mood. My boss had 'ripped me a new one' and it was not my fault. It was his mistake, not mine, and he did not have the balls to come clean. So, you will understand, when I put my key in the latch and entered home and hearth, I was looking for a scotch and water, or two, some TLC, and a ball-game to occupy my mind. I was not looking for what I received.
"Look at me," Janet had said, in a playful tone. "D'you see something different?"
In the process of pouring my own scotch and water, I glanced across.
"Different? What do you mean?"
"Well, just different."
I looked then, and I did not see anything different. She stood in the center of our living room dressed in blouse and skirt and, true, her feet were bare, but this was not different. She often walked around bare-footed. I'd warned her about it. You never knew. But she did it anyway. Liked the feel of the pile, she said. Cosy, intimate. I turned back to the cabinet to finish preparing my drink.
"Look now," she said.
Wearily, I turned my head. And, Yes! That was different.
She had raised her skirt above her waist. Beneath she wore nothing. No panties. Janet had been blessed with long legs and a firm torso. The good Lord had also granted her her fair share of pubic hair. Which was now absent. Her pubis was as naked as on the day she was born.
"Notice now?" she said, coquettishly.
"Hell, Janet!" was the best I could manage. What was I supposed to do? Fall on her and fuck her on the spot?
Apparently, Yes!
"God! You're impossible."
She ran upstairs and locked herself in the bathroom.
Later, much later, I wormed it out of her. She had read it on a website. '36 things you can do to please your husband.' Number 5: 'Shave your pubes.' Number 7: 'Try a day without panties.'
She was as horny as a rampant rabbit, and though we did eventually make love, it obviously was not the way she had envisioned it. As usual, I came too soon, and she was too inhibited to allow me to get her off, even if I had known how. Maybe she got herself off, in the bathroom, behind a locked door.
"Let's face it, Ron," she said next day, "Our sex life sucks."
Usually I looked around the paper when Janet spoke to me at the breakfast table, but this time I put it down. I stared. This was not language Janet used. 'Sex life sucks?' Where the hell? Of course, I knew. The web. Where else? 'What to do if your sex life sucks' was probably one of the top entries Google generated if you typed in 'sex+life+improve' and let it loose.
"What do you mean, our sex-life sucks," I said indignantly. "We have a perfectly normal, healthy sex life."
Whereas the 'normal' bit may well have been true, the 'healthy' was a bit of a stretch. In fact, if the truth be told, we did not have much of a sex life at all. Mind you, I say in self defense, not having sex that often is not necessarily unhealthy.
"Well, whether you're right or wrong, Ron," she replied, "it still sucks. There must be more than this."
"Look, Janet," I said, adopting the condescending tone that she detested, that I knew she detested, but that I could not prevent myself from adopting, "if you are mad at me about last night, I understand. I'm sorry at my lack of response. I was in the wrong frame of mind. You just picked a very bad night. I explained that to you."
"All right. I accept that my timing was off. How was I to know? You come home in this mood, you come home in that mood. What is it that I can do that turns you on? Hell, for that matter, what turns you on, period!"
Which left me somewhat at a loss for words. In fact, what Janet had done the previous evening would normally turn me on. Like hell. Well, it would have turned me on if a woman had done it who was not my wife. Somehow, the act had clashed with the image I had of my wife, that had grown over the years, and was not compatible with a raised skirt, no panties and a shaven pubis.
"God, you're so inhibited, it's pathetic," she said, when I did not answer.
"And you?"
"At least I tried. I spent the whole day in that library smoothing down my skirt, terrified that someone would ask for a book on the upper shelves and I would have to go fetch the ladder."
"Let's face it, Ron," she said, over my silence. "We need therapy."
"Therapy!?"
"Yes, that's what I said. Therapy. We need to improve our sex life. There has to be more than this."
Over my humming and ha-ing, she continued,
"What harm can it do to look around?"
I didn't tell Ron. It had anyway become a habit, not telling him things. Probably he did not tell me things either. Maybe he jacked off as often as I did. Which had been not often, but became a daily occurrence when I gave up underwear. I made sure they did not notice at the library, but underneath my prim skirt and blouse was nothing. No panties, no bra. My breasts were small and I could get away with a stiff blouse, and even if my nipples were erect most of the day, anyone noticing would think they was the points of my bra. No-one would dream that Ms Janet Ryder, librarian, went about her day minus underwear, and fantasizing about every man who crossed her path. Well, the presentable ones. And I went up the ladder often, making no attempt to hide anything. Goddam them all! Friggin' gentlemen! Not a single one was man enough to take a peek. Not when I was looking, that is.
I got home so horny, I stripped naked, lay down on the bed and frigged myself to as many orgasms as I could manage before Ron arrived from the office. One, two three -- no matter how many, it was not enough.
It's all very well for Maureen Dowd and her 'Are men necessary?' She's no doubt had her share. Maybe once you've had your share, men are no longer necessary. But I had not had my share. I needed a man. And Ron was not cutting it.
I contemplated an affair, but there were two problems. Researches on the web were universally negative on affairs. Not recommended. Risk too high. Even without kids. Affairs ended badly for all parties, and if for only one party, then the woman. A man could screw around with impunity. Cavalier. In the genes. But when a woman screwed around, she was a whore. This was one problem. The second was availability. To have an affair you needed someone to have the affair with. Negative. The only males obviously available - and they regularly made it clear they were available -- were married to one friend or another. Several had appeal, but I could not imagine having sex with the husband of a friend, no matter what the circumstances.
So there I was, stuck in a stale marriage with a guy who was indisputably nice, but equally indisputably unadventurous, especially in bed. He tried. I'll give him that. After the 'incident' he did his best to 'make it right'. Only, his best was not good enough. Because he did not know enough. 'Fifteen things to do to satisfy your wife.' I read it a dozen times. I even contemplated e-mailing it to him, anonymously of course. But nice girls don't do that. And I was a nice girl, wasn't I. Anyway, he would know.
He'd been as negative about therapy as he was about anything. It was the word. 'Therapy'. It sounded as if something was wrong and needed correction. Well it did, didn't it? Maybe there was another way. A way that did not imply 'correction', rather 'embellishment'.
Inexorably, my search turned to 'Swinger' sites. 'Invigorate your sex life'. Hell, there were millions of them. How many were scams, how many, if any, genuine. That was the trouble with the web. You never knew where you were at. I persevered. And finally I stuck oil. Exploratory mails were exchanged. Every query was answered satisfactorily. There was no hype, no pressure. 'Hotel Amour' was ideally positioned. Neither therapy nor 'swinger group'. The hotel catered to every couple. Perfect.
All I needed was a strategy. To convince Ron. I had an idea. Surely, I was not the only woman in this predicament. Ergo, if the people in this 'Hotel' were who they said they were, they would know. How to bring a reluctant husband around. Hell, if they didn't know, who would?
I knew she was up to something. I decided to take the bull by the horns. Better choose the moment myself that have her catch me again in a bad mood. We were relaxing after a pleasant dinner a deux. Half a bottle of Zinfandel -- well, if you insist, three quarters - had me nice and mellow. The cognac was icing on the cake.
"OK. Let's have it."
"Er..!"
"Come on. Don't be coy. You've been itching to tell me something for days. I can see it written all over you."
"That obvious, eh?"
"Yep!"
"Well, you know we agreed a couple of weeks ago that I would look around, you know.."
"Correction. You agreed. I don't recall agreeing to anything."
"I just said there was no harm in looking around, that's all. I thought you were fine with that."
