When I got home, Don was in the kitchen reading the business section of the newspaper, a contemptuous scowl on his face.
"So? Did you have a good time?" he asked, his voice tinged with sarcasm. When I had told him a few days earlier that I was joining some girlfriends for a bachelorette party at a men's strip club he rolled his eyes, amazed that I would actually partake of what he considered to be an utterly vulgar and disreputable celebration.
"I can't believe you actually went to one of those places," he sneered.
"Why? It was fun," I rejoined. Of course I didn't bother mentioning exactly what
sort
of fun it turned out to be.
"Oh come on, Peggy.
Fun?
" he said, putting down the paper and turning to me. "That sort of thing might be fun for a burger flipper or salesgirl at one of those discount drug stores. But you're my wife, for godsakes. You're part of San Francisco
society
. I'd think that by this time you'd have a different notion of what appropriate ‘fun' might be.
As though Don knew very much about ‘fun' in the first place! For him and his uptight blue blood family, fun almost seemed like pain. They felt guilty if they thought they might actually be enjoying themselves, and awkward if they weren't constantly performing to perfection the social roles expected of them.
"Yes, I would think that by this time you'd be a little bit more selective about your friends and the activities you choose to engage in with them," he said, lecturing me in his usual hectoring and condescending manner.
"Just what is that supposed to mean?" I said, getting quickly steamed over his remarks.
"Never mind, it's useless," he said, returning to his newspaper.
Angrily, I tore the newspaper out of his hands.
"No! Tell me, just what is that supposed to mean?" I insisted.
"It's just that I thought you'd show better judgment. What if someone saw you going there? My wife, in a place like that!"
My husband was a member of one of San Francisco's oldest and most snobbish families. And I was just an ‘ordinary' girl from the sticks when he married me. But a very, very good looking ‘ordinary girl'. And that was my problem, I suppose, and his. Guys will marry beauties despite what they and their families might think makes an ‘appropriate' spouse for them. And very attractive women, having the opportunity, will often wind up marrying rich men from socially well-established families. As we all know from a million scandal sheets and soap operas, those kinds of arrangements can turn out to be disastrous.
And Don hadn't especially liked the idea that I had taken a job teaching aerobics at a health club, although many upper-class women did just that themselves, taught workout classes or aerobics or dance classes. When Don first met me he certainly didn't mind that I was a gymnast with a well-toned body who had just won several titles at a State gymnastics meet he happened to attend. No, he thought that courting a sleek, hard bodied athlete was perfectly fine then. But when I wanted to earn my own income off my skills, he objected. In fact, he actually resisted my having any sort of job in the first place. My husband was so disgustingly old-fashioned. You'd think he was still living in the nineteen-fifties.
isten Don," I said coldly. "Gina is a friend of mine. And so were the other girls. It was their choice to celebrate in that fashion, and I was happy to join them. In fact, I had a wonderful time. Much better than I ever have at one of those dull society soirees you insist on dragging me to."
"I don't drag you to them," he said a tad defensively.
"Bullshit! You make me feel as though I'm not doing my ‘duty' if I don't go with you everywhere you want," I said.
"I'm going to bed," he said dismissively, turning away from me.
"You stay right here!" I shouted, grabbing his shoulder. "I'm getting sick and tired of your judgmental crap."
"I
said
, I'm going to bed," he repeated coldly.
I shoved him, and hard too. I still had my athlete's strength and Don almost lost his balance.
"Go then, go to bed, you
asshole!
But I'm sleeping out here on the couch. I don't want to be anywhere near you tonight," I told him.
"Suit yourself," he said.
"You don't give a shit anyway, do you? You don't
really
care if I share your bed with you anymore. You have so little interest in intimacy, Don, you probably don't even jerk off. You're probably even unable to get intimate with your
own dick!
”
"That's all you care about...
dick, dick, dick,
” he said, as I brought up this sore point.
"Is sex ‘inappropriate' as well? Is that only for burger flippers and salesclerks too?" I sneered.
"Sex has its place," he responded. "It's just that you think its place is here, there, everywhere, and all the time."
"Oh, you're so totally full of shit, Don," I said as he again tried to dismiss me as some sex-crazed floozie.
Suddenly I felt like filling him in on the evening's events. If he was going to throw all this in my face, I might as well give him ammo.
"You know what actually went on down at that club tonight, Don?" I began. "Well, let me tell you. After the show was over, Ruth arranged for two dancers to entertain the five of us privately. They stripped for us, just for us, two gorgeous guys. Don, they were so
fabulously good looking
and they had such
beautiful
cocks too. So beautiful in fact, that Gina, and then Ruth, couldn't keep their hands off them. So they stripped off their clothes, joined those two
studs
up on stage, and sucked and fucked the shit out of them while the rest of us watched and cheered them on."
His jaw hung slack in shocked astonishment.
"What do you think of
that?
” I said triumphantly.
His face was ashen. I can imagine just how ashen it would be if I added the last little detail about how, at the end, I took hold of one of those beautiful cocks and jerked it off.