This is the tale of a middle aged woman who finally came to grips with her sexuality. In the process, she learned even more than she bargained for.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, merchandise, companies, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. All characters are 18 years or older when in sexual situations.
*****
Chapter One
"I don't want to go," I said emphatically into my phone.
One of my friends from high school was asking me once again to go with him to our class reunion. I didn't know why he was being so persistent. I told him" no" about a month ago and here we were plowing the same ground again.
"It'll be good for you to get out," Mark said insistently. Mark was usually right but I was being stubborn.
"No," I repeated. That should have been the end of the discussion, but I knew it wasn't.
"Why not?" he asked.
"Because I'm not ready," which was my standard excuse for avoiding any social occasion I didn't want to go to.
"Beth, it's been two years."
"I know. But I'm not ready."
"Beth, Jonathan passed away two years ago. I know he would have wanted you to go." Mark was right again. But perhaps my personal insecurities were getting the best of me.
"I'll think about it." That should have bought me more time, but apparently this time it didn't.
"That's my girl. I'm booking my tickets tomorrow and I'll expect you to be sitting next to me."
"Jerk." But I really didn't mean it. Mark was and will always be my best friend.
"Whatever Beth. You'll thank me later."
"I don't have anything to wear."
"Nonsense. We'll go shopping tomorrow. You'll look fabulous. You'll be the best looking woman there."
What a sweetheart. Mark always knew what to say to me to make my heart melt.
But Mark did hit on one of my many insecurities. How would I look to my classmates after a 25 year hiatus? My highlighted shoulder length blonde hair looked good, maybe better than in high school given the professional attention to it by my well paid hairdresser. I'd put on ten (maybe fifteen?) pounds since high school. Fortunately some of it went to my boobs, but of course some parked itself on my midsection and butt. But would anyone be carrying their high school weight? And my face? There were a few crow's feet creeping in, but that was to be expected. Otherwise it was quite presentable, if not attractive. In my professional life I've learned to walk comfortably (that's a relative term) in heels, so my legs actually presented better than in high school, even after having two kids. I told myself that I didn't have to be self-conscious about my appearance.
My conversation with Mark transitioned into an update on my identical twin sons, both in college, the oldest (by two minutes) attending Georgetown and the youngest attending the University of Puget Sound. Thank God Jonathan was a successful real estate developer. Tuition, room and board was running about $120K a year, which was a major drain on my investment accounts.
Now I had a decision to make. Mark, one of my best friends from high school, lived in neighboring Livermore, which was about five miles from me. He "came out" in high school, much to the chagrin of his parents (and mine), but the intervening twenty plus years had been good to him. He now was a successful executive with a local tech firm and his husband of ten years was a popular local caterer. He had a heart of gold and I knew he was right. I should be going with him to my high school's 25th reunion, but I wasn't sure I could face my classmates.
I had all my miles with United, so I checked the miles required to fly to Toledo, Ohio. Unfortunately it was only 25,000 for the round trip from San Francisco, so that excuse wasn't available. And the reunion was at a Starwood hotel. I had accumulated at least a zillion Starwood points during my business travels as an investment advisor so there was now little to stand in the way from me and my appearance at our class reunion. I booked the airline and the hotel. It could always be cancelled.
I went to bed that night, as usual, alone. My four bedroom house now resembled a tomb, a relic of a life I no longer had. The two bedrooms occupied by my sons were now just storage for the things they decided not to take to college. The bedrooms were only occupied by them on major holidays and the occasional trip home during the summer. I parked myself on the right side of the bed, the same side I'd slept on for twenty years. Jonathan always slept on the left side, but now it was just the cold side of the bed. Old habits die hard.
I developed a night time ritual before going to sleep. I thought about Jonathan and the good times we shared together. Even though the last two years of our marriage were difficult, we did love each other and did have two amazing kids. We were high school sweethearts and were married for twenty years when lung cancer took my husband. It was ironic, since Jonathan didn't smoke. But those last two years, after the diagnosis, were the two worst years of my life. I won't go into the gory details, but suffice it to say it's something I wouldn't wish upon anyone.
Then I went to that secret place, that secret place that I've never shared with anyone. No one knew that about three years before Jonathan was diagnosed with terminal cancer we had essentially stopped having sex. It wasn't his choice. He loved having sex with me, and if he had had his way, we would have had sex at least once a day rather than the usual once a week. But I developed an ambivalence that evolved into an outright distaste for sex with Jonathan. It wasn't his fault. He was a considerate and I guess good lover. But he was a man. And my undisclosed longings were for a woman.
It was a difficult admission for me to make to myself. I knew that I had never relished sex, but I thought it was just me. But over the years I found myself with wandering eyes, whether it was in the locker room after a workout at the local club or scanning the well dressed women at a party and imagining what lay underneath. I started really noticing other woman, the shapes of their bodies, the curves of their breasts, and their eyes, always their eyes. I found a woman's eyes to be so seductive. For me the phrase "bedroom eyes" wasn't just a saying, it was a religion. I just couldn't resist a woman who had that sparkle - that "come hither" look - that exuded a raw, passionate sexuality.
As my interest in woman increased I started fantasizing about making love with a woman. In the beginning my fantasies revolved around oral sex. Jonathan was a considerate lover but mostly interested in missionary position intercourse without a whole lot of foreplay. He almost never went down on me, and when he did I felt like he was doing it only to please me. I imagined how it would be to have a woman pleasure me with her tongue, looking at me during this most intimate of moments, making it the main course instead of an appetizer, teasing me and inciting me to earth shaking orgasms. In time, my fantasies became more elaborate, sometimes revolving around anilingus, something Jonathan never did, and even milder forms of BDSM such as spanking and orgasm denial, areas that Jonathan and I never even discussed.
Before going to sleep that night I grabbed my iPad and my favorite vibrator. I was addicted to lesbian romance stories. I was just finishing the "Grounded in Toronto" series on Literotica and was empathizing with Camille, the woman who by serendipity discovered she was a lesbian and fell in love with what sounded to me like the ideal woman - a self-assured novelist whose outsized personality was a natural attractant to other women. As I was finishing the story I had a gut wrenching orgasm, and then promptly fell asleep with my vibrator in my hand and my iPad perched on my tummy.
Thank goodness no one else was living with me. I woke up the next morning with the lights on, my vibrator still in my hand and my iPad lying askew on the floor. My phone started buzzing. I was sure it was Mark. It was.
"Good morning sunshine. Ready to go shopping?" He sounded way too chipper for the morning.
"I just got up. Don't you have to go to work or something?" I said in a gravelly voice.
"It's Saturday, Beth."
Asshole. He was always right. "Give me an hour. I have to take a shower and get my morning coffee. Did you want to see me without my shower and my coffee?"
"No thanks. You know I don't like horror movies."
"Ha ha. Mark, why do you always have to be right? And how can you be so chipper at 8 a.m.?"
"I'm brilliant, and it's my naturally sunny disposition." He was even right about that. Mark was first in the class in high school and then went on to Yale, getting a degree in philosophy. God knows how he figured out how to leverage that degree in a C-suite job with a fast growing tech company.
"Pick you up at 9?"
"Sure. You know you've beat me into submission on this reunion thing."
"You'll have the time of your life. I guarantee it."
"Yeah right. The last person to give me a guarantee was the guy who repaved my driveway. And you know how that turned out."
There was a pause. "This will be different. Beth, you know me."
I decided to quit whining. I had lost. I was going. "I do know you and love you. I'll stop my complaining."
"That's my girl."
Mark arrived promptly at 9. He pulled up in a late model Ferrari. That man had style. If he wasn't gay I would have married him instead of Jonathan. He was Asian-American, of course impeccably dressed, maybe a bit too preppy for me with the Topsiders and a cashmere sweater over his shoulders, with nary a black hair out of place.
We kissed. "Where are we going?" I asked.
"Get in. It's going to be a surprise."
Mark lowered the top on his car and handed me a baseball cap with his company's logo on it. I put my hair into a ponytail and threaded it through the hole in the back of the cap. I admired the tan hand stitched leather seat as I scooted my bottom on it. I took off my heels and sunk my feet into the plush carpeting of the floor mats that bore the Ferrari logo. I inhaled deeply. It still had a new car smell.
"Put on your sunglasses and off we go," Mark instructed me. I fumbled through my purse for my sunglass case and donned my prescription sunglasses. Mark fired up the car, and the throaty purr of the engine told me that all was right with the world.
Chapter Two
All was right with the world. The traffic was light and Mark's car gracefully negotiated through the slower cars. When we hit the Bay Bridge I knew we were going to Union Square, the home of power shopping. That excited me. I didn't often get to the City, and shopping around Union Square was always a treat. I never got tired of the view from the upper deck of the Bay Bridge - the Ferry building, the skyscrapers nestled by the water, and Coit Tower. We pulled up to the valet at Neiman Marcus. The valet's face, a kid who looked like he just got his driver's license, lit up at the sight of Mark's red Ferrari. Mark tossed him the keys.
"Kid, I've seen 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off,' so be kind to my car."
The kid nodded. "Yes sir. I'll try not to go airborne." Even the kid had a sense of humor.
