Head Games
By HUMBLE
This is the introduction to a multi-part story.
I had heard so many times over the years that truth is stranger than fiction, but I had always thought that was crazy. Surely imagination was far weirder than anything that happened in the real world. That's why dreams seemed so fantastical to us when we awoke, while they seemed perfectly normal in our sleep. I experienced something recently that shook that conviction.
I was hanging out for a few hours after work one Friday, enjoying the Happy Hour prices while killing time before heading home for the weekend. Stacy was working a bit late and would not be home until 7:30, so I had plenty of time in front of me to get a little loose. I only wish she could have been there too, not so much because I was lonely, but because if this was one of those rare weekends where she felt like drinking there was a chance for the evening to be a little more interesting.
Stacy was thirty-five, with long black hair and the same figure she had when I first met her ten years ago. She was what many people would call full-figured, with large breasts and the kind of hips that let you get a nice grip and ride in bed. I don't want to give the impression she was overweight, nothing could be farther from the truth, but she was not one of the skeletal model types that seemed more and more common in her peer group, women who should be proud of their womanly, mature bodies, but chose instead to work out like fiends to try to look like a skinny high school girl. I couldn't understand their motivation, but thanked my stars that Stacy worked full-time so did not have a lot of free hours to become one of the workout bunch.
The truth is, her naked body was far more exciting than anything I could see online, and I would have been a happy camper if she had just allowed more access to it. With her, sex was like a chore you checked off the list on Saturday afternoons, an errand that had to be done every week but which was not all that important. There were no more than two or three weeks a year where we had sex more than once, and probably twice that number where we didn't have it at all for one reason or another. It was really the only flaw in our relationship so while it was annoying, it wasn't a deal-breaker. 95% of our time together was wonderful, of the 5% left over...that was divided between the rare disagreement and the regular frustration I felt at having our prime years pass us by without feeling like we should be tearing each other's clothes off.
It wasn't that she didn't enjoy sex. She had powerful orgasms nearly every time we went to bed, and she was not averse to indulging my penchant for fantasy stories, though it had taken me several years to get her comfortable with that. Now she would entertain me with stories of threesomes, secret assignations, solo vacations to Jamaica where she picked up local guys, etc. There was no chance she would ever do such things in real life, of course, but she was perfectly willing to spin erotic tales to make the lovemaking more intense.
I was just about to start on my third beer when I heard my name and turned to see Bob Esson, one of my old college buddies. I had not seen him in perhaps two years and immediately waved him over to the empty chair on my right. We exchanged the one-armed bro hug men did when they saw an old friend and started catching up. Bob had been a psych major, something I always teased him about. I said he'd never make any real money and would spend his life as a high school Guidance Counselor.
"How's school going?" I asked, our old joke.
"Funny, Bill," he grinned back. "But as a matter of fact, I am sort of at school, just that it's a long-term research project at the University on using the power of suggestion to steer normal behavior without the use of drugs. It's being sponsored by one of the big New York ad agencies and I think they have plans to put it to use online or something."
"Sounds interesting," I commented.
"It pays the bills," Bob laughed. "It's a two year study and I get well over six figures each year so I am not complaining."
We began telling each other our life stories since the last time we met, and I was in the middle of another beer by the time we were finished that conversation. "Still with Stacy, eh?" he laughed.
"Of course," I said a bit sharply. Bob was a confirmed bachelor and he always claimed he'd have the happier life.
"Must be getting a little routine by this time."
"Why do you say that?" I asked.
"One, it's been...what, ten years or so since you got hitched. I can't imagine what that must be like. And second, it's a Friday afternoon, about to be a Friday night and you are sitting alone in a bar drinking."
"Stacy works late tonight," I said defensively.
"Is that so? Happen a lot?"
"A couple of weeks a month, I guess. What's your point?"
Bob took a swallow of his beer and indicated to the bartender he was ready for another one, pointing to me as well for a refill. "My point is that a woman who would rather work on a Friday then meet you here, or be out already having fun, is already deeply in a rut. Which means you are as well. Let me guess, sex once a week, probably Saturday because on Friday she is "too tired"?" It was annoying that he was accurate, and even more annoying that he used air quotes to make his point. But I had to sheepishly admit he had hit the nail on the head.
"Why don't you do something about it?" he asked. "Tell her you want to spice things up, try going to a nude beach, or switching partners with another couple, or watching her in a threesome or something. Hell, anything to get the motor revved up again."
"I've tried that and it went nowhere," I confessed.
"Tell me what you said," Bob ordered.
I had, in fact, tried convincing Stacy of all of the things he had just suggested, telling her that it was just sex, not love, and that it would spice up the relationship. She turned each idea down flat, and after a few heated discussions that made it clear she'd never consider it, I gave up.
