I had recently moved to Denver with my husband after he got a job as a systems manager at the new Denver airport. Matt and I had been married for just over three years and, frankly, I must say that our marriage had lost much of the luster it had at its start. Matt always was, and still is, a very decent guy and he's a good provider. Though I do my share by teaching modern dance and ballet classes at a dance academy. I had hoped to become a professional dancer myself, but that didn't work out.
The problem was that Matt just didn't seem to pay the kind of attention to me I needed. Sometimes I felt as though he hardly had a sense that I was even there, with him, sharing his bed, trying to have a life together. A woman needs to be appreciated. She wants her husband to acknowledge her, to talk to her, to be aware of her presence. All this my husband has been showing less and less inclination and willingness to do.
And where all this was now most striking was, as one might imagine, in the sex department. I can't say that I married Matt because he was the most sexually exciting of men, or the most ardent lover. I had enjoyed many men prior to him and many of those men were rather more sexually responsive and attractive than Matt was, even at the height of our courtship. I had always been a rather sexual, easily aroused woman, and several of my girlfriends told me I was making a mistake marrying Matt. When I had confessed to them that his sexual temperament was much more tepid than my own, they wagged their fingers at me scoldingly, predicting that such a difference, such an incompatibility, would lead to certain trouble in the future.
And by this point in time, three years into my marriage, I had to acknowledge that they were probably correct. One marries a man for much more than sex, of course. But sex is and should be a pivotal part of a marriage, especially in its early years. The fact that Matt wasn't the greatest of lovers was not the issue. He was satisfactory enough, and I am a sensually imaginative enough woman that I was able to fashion a sexually satisfying relationship with Matt at first.
But pretty soon his interest in sex, and in any kind of physical intimacy had waned. Even when I leaned over to give him a wifely kiss he seemed to be reluctant. And in the bedroom there began to be real tension as my needs began to exceed his own, and he and I both were clearly aware of this discrepancy. This made it awkward being with him. Luckily a horny young woman always has her fingers to help her out, so I was able to relieve much of my often overpowering sexual tension. But sex is not just about release. It is about two people, equally aroused by each other, coming together in a deeply felt physical and emotional rapport. For me, with my intensely sexual nature, the lack of physical rapport was particularly irksome.
And then about a year ago things took an even sharper turn for the worse. Matt stopped fucking me altogether. Even when I tried to coax him into arousal by bringing my mouth down to his cock and trying to suck him to hardness I usually failed. Sometimes he would ejaculate limply into my mouth and then turn over and fall asleep. More often he would push me away when I even began to approach him intimately.
Just this morning I tried again. It was Sunday and I knew Matt didn't have to rush to work. Matt had a very demanding job and at first I attributed his flagging interest in sex to the intensity of his job at the airport. This often happens to men when their workload becomes stressful or excessively demanding. But I knew that other men managed to attend to their wives, despite the demands of their jobs or professions.
We had gone to sleep early and I knew he had gotten a full eight hours, something Matt is rarely able to get these days.
And so I leaned over to him as he was waking and kissed him on the lips. Then I slid my hand slowly down his chest and over his stomach to his flaccid cock.
"What are you doing?" he drawled sleepily.
"I'm just touching you," I said.
"Don't," he said, placing his hand on mine and removing it from his cock.
"Why, honey? You used to like it when I played with you down there right after we woke up," I said.
"I just don't feel like it, that's all," he said tensely.
"You never feel like it!" I said, pulling away harshly, unable to hide my frustration and anger.
He turned away from me.
"It's like I'm married to a monk. What's the matter with you anyway? You used to be turned on by me, or so you said?"
As usual when our conversation took this turn, as more and more often it did in recent months, Matt's response was silence and avoidance. And that's what he did now, getting up out of bed and going to the kitchen to find his precious newspaper.
I bolted out of bed after him.
"At least talk to me!" I demanded. "Tell me what's the matter? Maybe we can do something about it."
"Listen, I've told you," he said. "I just don't feel like it today."
"Today! Today! You
never
feel like it. I don't know how long I can go on like this," I pleaded.
"Do what you have to do," he said dismissively.
He didn't even care! I think that's what irked me most of all. At twenty-four I was still a young woman, a young wife, and I didn't feel that this kind of sexual cold shoulder from my husband was acceptable. I had tried to talk to Matt about it but that approach had failed. What was I going to do now? I had vowed that when I got married I would remain faithful to my husband. I had seen, in my family and friends, the path to infidelity lead to many troubles. But I wasn't about to close myself up in a mental convent. I was a red-blooded American woman with a healthy libido and I wasn't about to shut it down just because my husband had shut his down. That was my dilemma. And my burden.
I tried to focus my mind on other things. I took on more classes at the dance school. I cultivated new friendships and new interests. I took some classes at the University and thought about getting an advanced degree. And I renewed my friendship with my old college roommate, who was originally from Denver, and who had moved back to her hometown after graduating from college. I had been delighted to learn she still lived here.
I had seen Tina a few times since I had moved to Denver, but we both had been quite busy and finally we were going to spend a leisurely evening together. She invited me to have dinner at her place with her, and her girlfriend Marge. Now when I say her ‘girlfriend' Marge, I have to explain what I mean.
Tina and I had gone to a women's college back East where I quickly learned that Tina was not like all the other girls I had known until then. And so when I heard she was living with a woman named Marge I immediately thought back to my first introduction to Tina back on campus eight years ago.
The day I moved into my freshman dorm, Tina, assigned to be my roommate, nonchalantly informed me that she was a lesbian. I can't say that I was shocked, or even surprised, to hear her tell me this. When you go to an all-women's college you have to be prepared for that. My girlfriends in high school had kidded me once they found out I'd be going to this well-known women's college that I had better practice up on my muffdiving. It was just teasing in good fun. But I had always viewed myself as a very tolerant person and I was somewhat of a feminist too. So I had no problem at all with having a gay roommate.
Tina never once pressured me or insisted that I, like all women who claimed to be straight, had ‘latent' gay sensibilities. This was the gospel I heard often from more militantly gay women on campus who had difficulty accepting that any woman was straight. They insisted that, deep down,
all
seemingly ‘straight' women harbored a latent and very real homosexuality.
Nor did Tina ever urge me to at least try bi sex, or anything like that. So in spite of our different sexual orientations we became really close as roommates and as friends, freely confiding in each other about all our feelings and concerns and problems.
And even though Tina hung out with a primarily lesbian crowd on our all-female campus I was never excluded. In fact I was often the one straight woman hanging out with a bunch of gays. Some of them would tease me and ask me when I was going to join their ‘club,' and I used to tease them back and vividly describe the cock of the guy who had fucked me the previous night as they turned up their noses in exaggerated disgust. But all of this was in good fun.
Now Tina was living with her lover, Marge. In the few weeks I had been in Denver Tina and I had once again become very close, reigniting the trust and intimacy we had always felt with one another in college. I had met her lover Marge once when the three of us went out, but this would be the first time I'd be visiting them over at their place.
We were just finishing up having dinner and had polished off a bottle of an excellent Burgundy. Tina was in a frisky mood as was I, partly as a result of all the vino we were consuming, and pretty soon Tina and I were gossiping and filling each other in on the sex lives of our old friends from college. Marge listened avidly as Tina and I offered up gossipy tidbits to each other. Marge had grown up on a ranch in Wyoming, and dropped out of high school, so the hi-jinx of New England college students were quite exotic to her.
"It's amazing how many of them are gay, isn't it?" I said, remarking on the girls who lived in our old dorm.
"See what I mean, Becky?" Tina said. "There must be something to it, huh? You were always so adamant about how you had chosen the straight and narrow path. Have you ever strayed from that path?"
"No I haven't," I said truthfully.
"Not even once? Not even just to try it and see what it was like?" Marge asked, evidently finding it hard to believe that another woman could resist at least once tasting of the forbidden fruit of Lesbos.
"Not even once," I reaffirmed. "See, Marge," Tina said, turning to her lover. "I told you."
"Well," Marge persisted. "Once in your life you should at least try it. Who knows? You might like it."
Marge was evidently one of those who believed it was unnatural to fail to address what she felt was a natural and inevitable inclination to have a latent attraction to the same sex.
"Leave her alone, Marge, Becky's a married woman," Tina said, sipping from her wine glass.
"So I heard," Marge said. "Though I understand the marital bed hasn't been exactly thrilling as of late."
