Far And Away 2

Maybe you've been far and away from your spouse for extended periods. We have. A long distance relationship occasioned by work or family necessities while married isn't that unusual. We've had both, so maybe my story isn't so unusual or difficult to understand.

We're from a big Midwestern land grant public university. One of those where the students number in the tens of thousands but the local jobs upon graduation? The fields of corn don't always match the fields of our degrees. Jobs and projects frequently call from elsewhere and we export our well-educated talent just like our corn is one of our nation's few sources of cash in our nation's trade accounts.

But I went to school in-state not just for the tuition, but for the tradition -- school traditions of our families and our family traditions. My undergraduate school was essentially genetic. My parents went there and exited with doctorates, a veterinarian and a food scientist. My brothers went there to feed the demand for engineers. I didn't even think of going elsewhere. Didn't know I had a choice. If you ask my Dad, maybe I didn't. Well maybe if I'd gone to an Academy, he would have permitted that. One poor school counselor encouraged me to consider her small liberal arts alma mater since I was a National Merit Scholar. She didn't stand a chance in her cause. My feet were on the rails of destiny. Plus, land grant U was only two hours from home and a similar span to the home place, the farm where my grandparents still lived. I was ready to get away to college and career but I wanted

some

space not to leave everything behind.

My wife I met at land grant U. She was a bit different in motivation and destiny. Her generation would be the first off the farm, not the second like I and my brothers. She'd grown-up milking cows and walking bean fields. If you've never done either or lived on a farm it's hard to imagine the long hours dictated by the needs of animals or driven by available sunlight and short days within which certain tasks must be completed. Her high school homework still had to be completed but it was in the dark hours of night after chores came first. She was ready to leave the land and school was her way up and out. The state university was affordable or nearly so if she worked enough part time jobs. And she did. She'd say she was a hard worker and disciplined, more than naturally brilliant or smart. I'd say she was brighter than she gives herself credit for, but disadvantaged by a high school preparation that wasn't as rigorous as my suburban, college prep focused school. In any case, she worked her way through college, with strong grades in a technical field of construction and design. She wanted away from cold, freezing barns and was driven partly by the need to prove wrong a high school counselor that figured she could maybe be a secretary. I swear she later got her MBA just to prove that she could and that that counselor was wrong. But her ties to home and family were stronger than you'd think. A big Catholic farm family, with a multitude of cousins, was a strong anchor with mandatory family events a regular magnet.

We ended up with nice professional degrees that weren't always in demand in-state. We also found we still had strong ties to extended families and the local area. We worked on the farm when home on the weekends. Our first jobs were both in the capital city of a rural state. But the career ladder, especially for Lori lay beyond.

She started traveling for construction projects out-of-state. The building developments went where the money was. Wealthy, high-growth cities of the coasts and Sunbelt were her typical destinations. Some fun places too. Boston, Connecticut, Annapolis, Hilton Head, Wilmington, Miami, Las Vegas and more. She supervised construction on multi-million dollar projects working for a developer based out of the Midwest but which had grown in recent years through both projects and mergers to be national player.

Given her line of work, almost all her peers were men. She was frequently the only woman on the trip and the only woman on the job site. She was and is still a very attractive woman. Lori is model tall at 5' 10' with sleek, slender lines, perfect curves, high breasts, and a Nordic blonde complexion. Her bright blue grey eyes flame from a finely sculpted face. That face always reminded me of a 1940s film star, with high cheek bones, long straight, slender nose and full lips. Her Viking origins are betrayed by the milk pale coloring of skin and hair, but the angles also revealed some interesting family history. Lori's frontier Revolutionary ancestors included two Native American wives. A favorite movie is Michael Mann's masterpiece, "The Last of the Mohicans." It always reminds me of Lori's origins. You can see the Indian features in the curve of her full lips or the high brow and angle of her cheek bones. She's striking, not just pretty. Yes she looks great in jeans, but her face commands attention even given a great body.

I shouldn't be surprised that other men look. And they often express interest in more. She wears a wedding ring. That didn't stop anyone from looking. It didn't stop many from chatting her up and suggesting more.

I suppose it started when she'd come home with the occasional stories of the latest proposition. I think she liked some of the attention but she was also sensitive to having to work in a man's field. There was a fine line for her between the complement of feeling pretty and desirable and the danger of sexual discrimination. But there were also benefits to working in a man's field. Some of the construction workers were muscular and attractive and worked in climes where baring arms or even chests was possible or even desirable under warmer suns. I'd hear about some of them. I work in an office. I'm lean like the runner I was in school. At 6' 1" I'm not short, but office work didn't leave me with chiseled deltoids or bulging guns or gleaming tanned skin. Some of her observational samples were so endowed.

Others came from among the upper level ranks of general contractors and design professionals, whom she supervised as the owner's representative. She had the power of the purse. They didn't get paid until she was satisfied. It meant they had incentive to be nice. And most of them were. The nature of the industry was such that most in these ranks were themselves well-trained and the requirements of command attracted powerful personalities, almost by necessity with a degree of charisma and charm.

I heard about these guys too, whether it was on daily phone calls at night or when she was home from travel on weekends.

Women have much more of a need to talk about their day and who did what to whom and what it all means. I don't know if guys are oblivious or if women take things too personally or if there really is something to the inclinations of both sexes. But our normal routine is Lori talks far more about her day and me not so much. Besides she has less interest in my work than I do in hers. I like construction and architecture. I fear her eyes glaze over at some of the legal and financial stuff with which I contend.

I'd hear about the architect in black, with perfectly coiffed hair and the de rigueur or obligatory designer eyewear. Architects seemed compelled to wear their design credentials on their sleeve. Yes, it makes for some attractive guys, in a metrosexual way. Mostly Lori's comments about architects were more judgmental. In her role, bang for the buck was important. Architects, especially design architects too frequently were impractical purists. Now production architects, the ones that convert the concepts into working construction documents, often had more of the practical bent that attracted Lori. They also spent more time on the job site in boots and hard hats conferring with contractors to assure that shop drawings were done on time and translated to real life. The professionals could still be distinguished from the front line contractors and subs. They might all wear boots, but the higher ups wore slacks, dress shirts or at least company branded polos. Practice varied somewhat by region and clime. But the jeans of a carpenter or electrician mostly gave way to pressed creases on those that directed the endeavor.

I heard about those too. Lori has an eye for the well-dressed man. She'd comment on someone with the well-fitted seat of dress slacks, or fabric with a nice hand or drape. She especially appreciated tropical weight, fine wool. The way she said it always left the impression she wished it was her hand on the wearer or her body draped across his. She was gifted at innuendo and double entendre with all the right words twisted by meaningful inflection.

It was, "You should have seen Dave today. We were late from the airport to the job site. He's standing there waiting for our Town Car chatting up the rental car girl. He's wearing these really gorgeous khakis. You know how tall Dave is. He must be at least 6' 4". And you know he's towering over this girl, waving his big hands in the air to illustrate his joke while she's pulling the paperwork. I think it took her twice as long cause she kept looking at him and not her computer terminal. He's got that deep commanding voice and dark curly hair. I'm sure he was more entertaining than her usual routine. . . "

Dave was part of the developer's standard team, so Dave was on almost all the trips. And because Dave was tall and well built, solid with a deep chest and broad shoulders, he stood out in a crowd. They almost always rented a Lincoln Town Car, perhaps because Dave was so big. Perhaps it was because the big Lincoln could accommodate passengers in the back seat too. Lori's one complaint about Dave was she never got to drive. Probably smart on Dave's part. Lori has zero sense of direction and can repeat the route to getting lost more than once without remembering the solution. I thought Dave was good insurance as a pilot and navigator. I was far more comfortable with having Lori travelling in strange cities with someone like Dave. Women always have to be more security conscious than men. When Lori travelled alone a breakdown or getting lost was a potential threat to personal safety. Alone, she wanted a hotel with an interior hallway and off the ground floor. With Dave, she had backup and credibly imposing backup.

Dave is handsome, in a Daniel Day Lewis sort of way. He's taller than me with narrower hips and proportionally wider shoulders. He looks like the swimmer he was in high school. His dark curls stay in place looking perpetually cute. I always hated that. My hair is fine and straight and far less disciplined. I was jealous of the hair, but not really of Dave.

First, I like Dave. He is a compelling personality. Heck, he's a guy's guy. Who wouldn't like him. At company events he offered easy conversation. Logically so since we had Lori in common and I knew a good amount about his work and travels through those daily phone calls from blondie. We shared a lot of interests, from flying to football. It wasn't hard to find stuff to talk about. And he is funny. He has natural charisma that attracts both men and women. It wasn't hard to see why Lori liked Dave or that Dave dominated many of her stories. It was implicit that there was some sexual tension.

Second, I'm not an especially jealous guy. I hadn't found it a particularly effective tactic or attractive trait. Of course I had to try out jealousy in high school to discover girlfriends really don't like jealous boyfriends. Jealousy almost always seemed to fuel conflict, with the frequently meaningless spark misinterpreted, driving a self-inflicted wedge in a relationship. After a couple of high school girlfriends with bad endings, made worse through jealousy, I'd made the conscious choice to not be jealous. I concluded it was counter-productive.

And I need to clarify, maybe I left the impression I merely tolerate Lori's womanly need to talk about her day. Far from it. I enjoy hearing about her day. I still like hearing her voice. It did not bother me in the least to hear her talk about the men she encountered, or even liked in the course of her days.

She'd share the guy that asked her out to drinks, or when someone asked her to dance in the hotel bar. A round of karaoke could be an icebreaker and fun. Add a margarita or a whisky and Seven, and Lori would be in a high mood. Traveling on expense account meant that meals out were the standard course, so almost the minimum story was conversation over dinner.

Maybe some husbands wouldn't want to hear about it. I did. Maybe it would bother some husbands that these meals and events were with other men. Often the same men, or man. Dave. It didn't bother me. It's not that I was oblivious. No. I'm smart enough about human nature. I could tell Dave was essentially her office spouse in common parlance. In office politics they were necessary partners whose interests were aligned. They travelled together frequently. They were (and are) both very attractive. Face it they made a more striking couple when seen together than Lori and I. I'm not bad looking, but I'm also not 6' 4" and quarterback handsome.

In fact, I had the growing realization that I liked that other men looked at Lori and found her attractive. I took a certain pride in having a beautiful wife.

I encouraged her to dress well, even a bit provocatively. I'd buy her luxurious lace and satin underpinnings and blouses with plunging necklines that emphasized her décolletage. Just as she liked fine dress trousers on guys, I liked well-fitted skirts or dresses or sleek slacks on Lori and made sure her wardrobe was well outfitted with clothes that clung to the womanly curve of her nicely trim waist and perfect heart-shaped hips and bottom. She was typically conservatively dressed and professional but with enough feminine edge that even if attracted to her striking face first, men's eyes moved down for more.

When she told me a local big whig asked her out for a weekend on his sailboat on the Chesapeake, my first response was, "That sounds fun." Not, "You're not going are you?"

In fact, I could see Lori luxuriating in her teal blue bikini atop a mahogany deck under a later summer sun as the yacht slipped through historic waters of wealth and commerce. That was one of those first times where I found myself imagining what she would do on a boat for a weekend with a wealthy, good looking guy. It was easy to imagine her there. It was easy to imagine why he'd want her there. The thought of another man wanting to seduce and undress Lori was not discomforting. It actually seemed quite appropriate. Who wouldn't want to?

I wasn't jealous. Lori didn't go, despite me allowing it if she wanted to or needed to. The invitation was posed as a work courtesy and Lori was torn between, was this a work obligation, or was it a possible conflict of interest? She was all worked up about potentially competing work-related explanations for the invitation. Being a man, I knew work was purely tangential. If Lori was ugly or male, any work-related business could be handled during business hours. An invitation like that was for sex.

I told her so. She didn't believe me. And then she didn't believe that I would let her go if I thought it was even potentially related to sexual attraction.

That wasn't her first or last invitation by strangers or more familiar men. Heck, when angry with me, as spouses inevitably sometimes are, she'd remind me, "Don't think I don't have other options." I knew she did. She was smart, accomplished and pretty. She has other options and a lot of them.

Lori seemed to consciously add to her daily stories the flirting advances, the invitations or suggestions. She seemed to take increasing pleasure from recognizing when other men found her interesting or attractive. And she increasingly understood not only did it not bother me, but that her talking about other men was something I enjoyed, even relished. She could be a tease. And she teased me. She liked getting my imagination going on what she could be doing. Yes she could be having drinks with another man. Another man could see her in that bikini at the hotel pool. Or, I'm wearing that lace thong and lace trimmed silk camisole, do you think the lace will show through this blouse? She developed skill in describing scenes and men in our phone conversations. Increasingly it got me going and seemed to help her too. What was day-to-day reporting of events, edged into steamy phone sex.

I'd ask her what some guy who asked her out wanted to do. Together we'd fill in the details. I could see her splayed on the hotel bed, overlooking Baltimore's Inner Harbor, naked with the curtains open and door to the balcony admitting sea breezes. When her breath came in hurried, urgent squeals, I knew her hand was between her legs, stroking her slickness. It wasn't any effort to picture the male instigator there too, naked between her legs. I'd ask her, "Is he licking your pussy?" She'd extend the phone sex fantasy, "Ghad, yes, he's holding my hips in his hands and pressing his lips to my pussy."

We could both picture her being sexually satisfied by another man and she knew that the thought of it was both sexually stimulating and satisfying to me.

It wasn't just phone sex. When she was home in our bed, she conveyed sexual exploits whispered in my ear as we made love. She did it far more to play to my fantasies and professed no real interest in other men. It was something she did for me. No matter how descriptively passionate the story was, I assumed it was fantasy. Increasingly, I discovered I was disappointed that it was just fantasy.

Even when the fantasy acquired a name it didn't bother me. "I was taking a shower in the hotel room after dinner, when there was a knock at the door. I wrapped a big towel around me before looking through the peephole. It was Dave. He needed my signature. . . ." In the story she related the towel didn't last long. How could it? Dave was a perfectly virile man. And truth be told, not many young men can deny the lure of opportunity no matter how rationale and upstanding. It wasn't the first time I'd pictured or imagined Lori and David together.

In fact, it was increasingly hard not to imagine them locked in a sexual embrace. I'd heard the tone of admiration in Lori's voice when talking about Dave. And like I said, I liked Dave. We'd golfed together among other things. And from the country club locker room I had details that weren't just imagination. Lori had commented on his imposing physique and even that he must be well hung given how his slacks fit. I'd seen confirmation of that. I'm not tiny, possessing a rather conventional seven or eight inches of cock the size of a good bratwurst. I suppose I could have guessed from Dave's large hands and feet. One assumes everything scales up. In Dave's case, he does. He was built more like a pork tenderloin. His cock flaccid is larger in both length and diameter than mine engorged. He has large heavy testicles hanging free in a pendulous scrotum. His circumcised corona was full and large. It would be a mouth filling treat for Lori or any woman. It was easy to imagine him inflamed with passion poised to fulfill Lori's lust.

I suppose it's dangerous to add a real person's name to bedroom pillow talk fantasies. And even more temptation to fill in visual blanks for Lori's benefit. She suspected, but I knew how big he was. I told her. I love bringing Lori to frenetic orgasm and if she arched her back more strongly or breathed more rapidly for Dave's name in the fantasy, I was fine with that. I love it when Lori breaks through her professional reserve into unbridled passion. My objective in sex is to bring out that sexual tigress and leave the tigress gasping and satisfied. I want her to be happy.