My friend Ashok told me: "Hem said no."
Hem is Hemlatta his wife of twelve years, a beautiful creature. Alabaster skin, dark obsidian eyes, full silky hair, about 5' 3". She has great presence, takes over the whole room the second she walks in. She loves to laugh and people like the sound of her laughter. Very intelligent and very well-read, she can talk just about any subject, but she does it without making anyone feel small. Men love her and respect her. My girlfriends who met her envied her and hated her for her attractiveness, but Hem invariably managed to put them at ease with her familiar, non-judgmental charm.
And if you haven't figured it out already, I was crazy about her.
And what she had said no to was having sex with me.
Ashok had repeatedly shared his fantasy with me that he wanted some one else to fuck his wife. And he was crude about it. I suppose that was the excitement of the fantasy. "I want another guy to balls-up fuck the shit out of her yaar. It makes me cream in pants just thinking about it."
"How can you be so crude? We're talking about Hem. Your wife."
"Well what's wrong with it. I'm not jealous. I would like to share her. It would be wrong of me not to share such a heavenly woman," he winked. "I think she'll like it even though she'll never admit it. Just once, I want see her fucked. It might as well be you, yaar."
"Might as well," I agreed rolling up my eyes. "Have you discussed this with her."
"Many times. At first she was angry. How could I even think of it she said, sharing her like a whore. Did I think she was a whore? That kind of stuff. Then I would bring it up while I was fucking her. Like, what if it was someone else fucking you right now Hem, not your husband. She doesn't say anything but I know she gets wetter and she puts marks on my back. I know she likes it. One of these days maybe it will make her give me a blowjob. She never does that."
"You don't have oral sex?" I asked.
"Plenty of oral sex, me doing her yaar. She thinks its dirty to suck me. I don't even want to bring up fucking her up her arse, she would cut off my cock if I even mention it. Bitch."
I was uncomfortable with the way he talked about his wife. We are talking about a very proper woman here. A woman that I was infatuated with. A woman who made me wish I was a better man. This is a woman who didn't have children because she wanted to focus on her very promising and glamorous career as a writer for a popular feminist magazine, but when her younger sister died in a car crash a few months ago, Hem quit her job the very next day and became a mother to her sister's two toddlers. This was a classy woman.
A few days later Ashok called me. "Come to dinner Sunday. I'm going to Toronto late at night. We can have dinner first."
Hema was as charming as usual. After dinner, we were sitting around talking. Ashok had had too much to drink. "So are you going to fuck my wife after I leave?" he said.
She turned crimson. I thought she was going to slap him. "Just leave Ashok. Go on your damned trip."
"It's a simple ques-"
"ASHOK! Enough."
He got up, grabbed his overnight bag, and left, slamming the door.