Crapshoot,
noun
US informal (also crap shoot, crap-shoot)
Something whose result could be good or bad but is impossible to predict or control, because so much chance is involved
Cambridge Dictionary
Prologue
Let us begin with the ending. Imagine, if you will, a European art-house movie: the kind with long, lingering glances, unorthodox lifestyles, and uncensored skin. The cinematographer opens with an extreme close-up of a foot on white satin sheets, toes pointing upwards. It is a woman's foot, toenails painted cherry red, although not recently: she is not obsessed with her appearance.
The camera travels slowly up past her ankle, and we see a lean calf, a well-structured knee, and then a thigh. Her lightly tanned skin is not flawless, but she seems healthy, still young, only minor marks and blemishes. On the inside of her thigh, we also see some light bruises that look like hickeys, or love-bites, recently formed.
Now the camera pans across her slim hips, and we see that her legs are lewdly spread, her vulva open to the viewer, inner labia visible, the surrounding skin flushed and marked with more hickeys. A dark, loosely shaped patch of pubic hair sits above her hips, and then a narrow waist. The skin around her delicate navel is also recently marked.
Her breasts come into view. They are small but well-formed, nipples standing up proudly in the middle of tan-coloured areolae. More hickeys lead upwards towards her delicate throat, but there they stop, in consideration for the limitations of her wardrobe for covering them over the coming week. Her red lips are slightly parted, and her blue eyes are shining in anticipation, and perhaps a little embarrassment. We see that her arms are stretched out on the bed to each side of her head, and her long, brunette hair fans out across the pillow.
A voice speaks to the side.
"You know the drill."
I know the drill. The woman is my wife, Lily, and this is where we will be at the end of this story.
Chapter 1 -- The Idea
It wasn't my finest moment on the tennis court. There I was, standing in position near the net and innocently watching Robyn's cute backside sashaying back to the service line, when a polite cough from across the net behind me reminded me that my eyes should be facing forwards. Forwards towards Lily, who was already ready to receive Robyn's serve. Lily was partnering Robyn's husband, Steve, my best mate since forever, and luckily not the jealous type.
Unfortunately, the cough had come from Lily, not Steve, and the stink-eye that she was sending my way didn't look entirely feigned. I raised my racket in rueful apology.
"Sorry Lily."
She said nothing, but when Robyn's serve whistled past me to land on the inside service line, Lily's backhand return was fast and straight at my throat, and my volley went directly into the net.
"Apology accepted, Jim," said Lily, deadpan, and Steve cracked up in laughter. My volley had cost us the game, and they were comfortably ahead in the match. When Lily was focused, she was all long-legged grace and fluidity on the court, and this afternoon she had been deadly.
"Jim! Down boy!" said Robyn, with a smile. She knew perfectly well what had been going on behind her back. The four of us had known each other since Lily and Robyn, also old friends with each other, had hooked up with us around ten years ago. We had been in each other's wedding parties and saw each other regularly, playing sport or other games together, or just having dinner with each other or also with other friends. Gentle flirting was part of the mix, but it had never gone any further than that. We were two married couples who just happened to get on well.
Lily and Robyn were quite different people, and it was kind of surprising that they had such an easy relationship. Lily was an academic in sociology, clawing her way up the greasy pole. At age 35 she had been very fortunate to get an ongoing associate professor position. She worked hard and long hours. Up until last year when she got her permanency, she hadn't stopped to consider children, and it had been an issue of rising tension for us, as she was feeling trapped between the pressures of her biological clock and her career. Since then, she'd come off the pill, and was feeling more ready. The only thing was that so far, we'd had no luck, and not for lack of trying. It was a point of pain for both of us, but we were trying to relax about it as much as we could.
The other thing about Lily was that she could be ultra-rational. She always approached things analytically first, furrowing her forehead as she took things apart and reassembled them in that incredible mind of hers, and then she remembered that she had to put the emotional overlays and outward facing translations back in before revealing the results. It was the same whether you asked her what flavour ice cream she wanted or how to achieve world peace: the pause, the wrinkled brow, the sudden clarity in her eyes, and the slight delay while she translated the answer back into human language.
Robyn, by contrast, navigated by instinct. If she was happy, she laughed and smiled: she didn't need to analyse it. If she wanted to get something done, she just went and did it with a can-do attitude. She seemed exceptionally suited to her professional role as a human resources manager, and I suspected that she was one of those rare HR managers who actually made people feel valued and supported.
Robyn was also drop-dead gorgeous. Don't get me wrong: I loved my tall, fit wife for both her mind and her body. But Robyn, a voluptuous strawberry blonde, exuded sex appeal and a love of life. She had magic powers. She didn't abuse them or play up to it much: it was just a natural part of her personality to be happy, vivacious and engaging, and it was that as much as her blue eyes and curves that made her a showstopper.
Steve and I had talked about this openly and had concluded that basically we were both incredibly lucky guys. After years of marriage, we still both thought our wives were stunning, and we also really liked each other's partner while respecting boundaries. Steve was pretty clear in his admiration of Lily's intelligence, insights and determination as well as her svelte figure, and he tolerated my occasional drooling over Robyn with good humour. And we were grateful that the four of us got on so well. That's just how it was, and we knew it was special and didn't want to jeopardise it. The only tension that I knew of in their marriage was that they had also been trying for babies, for a bit longer than we had. Robyn didn't talk about it much when we were all together, but I knew that she'd opened her heart to Lily a couple of times. When Lily and Robyn talked, everything was on the table. I suspected that our respective married sex lives, techniques and ideas had been fully shared between the two women, which explained why every time they'd grabbed a precious night out together, something new happened for me in bed shortly afterwards.
As normal Australian blokes, Steve and I didn't talk babies much. But we did talk. We both liked to think of ourselves as reasonably new-age men, able to make a decent quiche or pavlova without hesitation, doing our share of housework, contributing reasoned but non-dominant insights to the dinner-party discussions, and in general trying not to be arseholes in our relationships. And of course, doing the muscle-work expected of any man in a marriage: opening jars, wielding the chainsaw in the garden, and changing flat tyres. Not that our beautiful wives couldn't do those things, but they knew that we needed to feel special, and honestly we were a lot quicker at some of that stuff. And in return for being allowed to flex our muscles, we felt masculine enough to discuss ovulation and the worries of our wives without fear of being thought weak. Today was one of those days.
"I reckon we'll give it one more year," Steve said to me, as we carried four beers to the table after the tennis match (straight sets win to him and Lily). "Then IVF. Or whatever it takes. We're starting to put money aside."
"Same here," I replied.
"You blokes, always going on about babies," said Robyn, who had caught the tail end of our conversation as we came within earshot. "You just need to try harder."
"Treat it like a competition," suggested Lily. She looked like she was going to say more, but then stopped abruptly, beer half-raised to her lips.
