Extramarital sex still requires for most of us 'normal' people silence and deception. In an interesting shift, in our more liberated societies such 'dishonesty' is now more strongly condemned than actually fucking somebody else. While it is a paradox, it is in porn that this 'moral' imperative of being truthful about our deviant behaviour is most strongly endorsed. 'Swinging', 'Swapping', husbands watching and filming their wives being 'blackened' or fucked by friends and 'strippers' is shown to be, whilst naughty and by the majority disapproved, declared acceptable for as long as it is mutually agreed on by the participants and nobody cheats and is deceived.
The reality is, however, that truth can hurt and that truth becomes so often a means to hurt and destroy relationships. In and through sex with others too much is often revealed. I, for one, am certain that many-more relationships are destroyed by truth than are maintained by silence and even lies.
I, therefore, neither regret nor apologise for having left my wife, during the twenty years of our marriage in the dark about my extramarital experiences. Even when it was clear that we would break up and we no longer shared bed and table, I maintained silence. In my everyday behaviour I hid from her the arrangements I had to make. Neither the sexual affinity between us nor our affairs were the reason that our marriage failed. It was personality clashes that drove Birgit and me more and more apart. It made, however, the extramarital relations in which I found myself liked and wanted and appreciated understandably much more attractive than otherwise would have been the case.
Birgit chose to behave differently. While she 'cheated' she chose not to 'deceive'. As all moralists do, truth became, I believed then, her choice of weapon to inflict wounds.
Birgit was a beautiful, sensuous, sexually alive woman that did not keep her physical allure and sex-appeal under a bushel. While she was too much a conformist to be openly promiscuous, she liked men and flirtatiously responded when she sensed their desire. It amused me, for instance, that with older men she liked to combine her freely displayed physical attractions with the sweet manners of an innocent, admiring, little girl. I still believe, however, that her faithfulness, to use the conventional term, lasted as long into our marriage as did mine.
The first breach she still covered by silence. In a term-break we had gone to Sydney to visit and stay with Bruno and Janice. On the second-last day of our stay, Michael, our son, then seven years old, and I went for a day's fishing. Bruno offered to take Birgit into town for some shopping. I assumed, and Janice expected that Bruno would drop Birgit off and go to work. When, however, they came back together in the evening in high spirits, Janice was visibly upset.
And I was almost certain that Bruno had, finally, fucked Birgit in some motel and that she had been willingly complicit.
To me, while shocked and hurt, it came as no surprise. Bruno, we were friends from childhood, had always been rather unduly 'interested' in my female companions. Birgit, he had openly lusted after and surreptitiously groped for years; she had allowed him to do so. Whatever I felt, I said nothing. Janice was seething. When we left the day after for our drive home, she asked to come with us to Melbourne. She had suddenly decided to visit her mother.
We broke our return-trip in Eden, staying overnight in a motel. Janice had a room of her own; she and Birgit had hardly talked all day. Michael, a heavy sleeper, shared ours. I was tired from driving. Birgit, however, wanted to be on this night, what only can be called, TAKEN. So, she was.
It was a frenzied, drawn out, brutal fuck, accompanied by her senseless whispers and suppressed whimpers; finishing, for both of us, in a bone-shaking orgasm with her nails raking and bloodying my back. I never asked. For me, her sexual ardour the day after her 'shopping'-excursion only confirmed what I knew. Was, our orgiastic, frenzied fuck fuelled by my anger, Birgit's guilt, or our joint arousal about her having finally fucked Bruno?
During the rest of the drive home next day her cheerful and chatty mood contrasted with Janice's sullen silence. Birgit evidently thought she had answered my unasked question. She was pleased about my unspoken answer.
It was three years later. We had another child. Michael was now ten, Martin two, Birgit was back at work. It was for the mid-year term-break that Birgit decided on a ten days holiday on Fraser Island. With her claiming that she needed a break, I suspected from the outset that she did not really want to go on a family holiday with the children and me. She knew, that I would not be keen to go to a beach resort as I had no liking for sea, sand and surf and the associated crowds.
So, acting with a show of, partly justified truculence she went to Fraser Island on her own. She returned tanned, glowing, in high spirits and in an aroused, sexually adventurous mood. The holiday had done her good and things were, for a while, much better between us. In chatting about Fraser Island, she mentioned in passing that a chap, Ian, had taken her, and others of the group she was with, sailing.
In January we again went to Sydney. Thinking about what had happened three years ago I was not eager. Birgit, however, insisted and I could find no acceptable reason to object. Bruno and Janice welcomed us as before. On the day after arriving, it became clear what had drawn Birgit to Sydney. It was not Bruno.
Ian, Birgit's Fraser Island acquaintance, turned up on Bruno's and Janice's doorstep. No subterfuge was possible about how he knew that Birgit was in Sydney and where and when to find her. They obviously had been in contact since Fraser Island. They were lovers, wanted to continue their affair, and had decided to confront me with the unadorned truth. Totally taken aback, away from home with the children, as a guest at Bruno and Janice, I was in no position to take a stand, make a scene. Birgit had banked on it that vulnerable and exposed as I was, I would have to accept her affair with Ian as an established fact. Which I shamefacedly decided to do.
For the following Sunday Ian invited all of us to go sailing. Bruno and Janice declined. So, it was Ian, Sue his wife, Birgit, I and Michael. Janice had offered to look after two-year old Martin.
Ian's small boat was not moored but 'parked' on land at a yacht-club in one of Sydney's northern inlets. On helping Ian to manoeuvre it into the water, I split the sole on one of my feet.
After a short sail, we settled down on the beach for a picknick-lunch, prepared by Sue. I, tender-footed and injured, lay in the sand for all of the afternoon like a stranded whale, while Ian sported with Birgit in the water and played ball with Michael. Sue did not join in their merriment and kept me company.
When Ian drove us back to Bruno's place, I learned that Birgit had accepted their invitation for a barbecue-party; with some of their friends, they said, for tonight. Birgit immediately offered to come with them to help preparations for the party. Before leaving she almost hugged me in the presence of all, hummed and hawed, and suggested that I patch-up my insured foot and follow later.
I did not. Janice took one look at my foot and decided that Bruno must take me to the North Shore Hospital. And indeed, the gash needed to be disinfected and required stitches. We returned home from the hospital's Emergency Department at two in the morning. Birgit had not returned. Neither had she rung.
Ian brought her back in the morning. Everybody had had too much to drink to drive Birgit home so she stayed overnight. It was plausible, not to be argued with.
Ian was a pleasant enough guy. He was in about his early forties, of medium height, beginning to get chubby, with thinning hair. He was tanned and probably fit. Sue, during our afternoon of sitting together told me that Ian owned a sheet-metal plant that pre-fabricated casings and ducts. At this stage I had not seen their house, but car and boat and everything Sue said suggested that they were moderately wealthy.
Sue was nice; unaffected, well spoken, with easy, relaxed manners and a good sense of humour. She said she was a working girl; had at nineteen joined Ansett Airlines as a stewardess, had flown all over Australia for twelve years, until "Reggie", Reginald Ansett, the airline's owner, "decided to get rid of the old boilers".
She had met Ian on one of her flights. When she lost her job, Ian took pity on her and they married. Sue was quite attractive, taller than Ian, slim, small-breasted and long legged with a nicely shaped bottom. But, unlike Birgit in her bikini, she appeared ill at ease in her one-piece bathers. She seemed to enjoy talking with me more than joining the frolicking display of Birgit and Ian. Sue and I, as if we agreed on it, did not mention Birgit. She as well as I knew what was going on. So, what role did Sue have in this play staged by our partners? Mine, I knew. I had been, I was certain, been cast the fool!
Midweek, Ian turned up one evening and collected Birgit for an outing, again returning her in the morning. Janice and Bruno were intrigued but I explained nothing. For me Bruno, after last time, was no longer a friend to confide in, especially when it concerned Birgit's faithfulness.
Next day, on an outing with the children to Sydney's zoo, I tried to talk to Birgit. Her face stonily set, she refused to talk about 'it' or offer any excuses. What I took to be her brazen unconcern stopped me, perhaps cowardly, from asking her how she felt about me and how she expected me to react.
On Saturday, Ian and Sue invited us for dinner. I would have, I believe, refused, but Sue had rung me separately to ask me to come. Any pretence was dispensed with. Bruno and Janice were not invited and it was clear that they did not expect Birgit to bring her children. We accepted; Birgit, I was certain, with fore-knowledge of what was planned and I, with a mixture of anger and curiosity.
It was one of Sydney's sticky-warm January nights. All of us were lightly dressed. To avoid the pestering gnats, Ian decided that we should stay inside. Immediately on arriving, he and Birgit paired off. Sue attached herself closely to me as if it was agreed-on in advance. I suppose it was meant as a surprise for me.
Sue had prepared a light cold meal of oysters, prawns and salads. To fit the intimacy of the situation she had dished it up on a round table in their spacious kitchen and not in the dinning-room. On standing around with our pre-dinner drinks, close to our assigned partners, I noticed how Birgit had slipped into her seductive-submissive little-girl-mode. She listened to everything Ian said with wide-eyed attention, giggled in response to his wit, reached-out with her hand to give him an appreciative pat and, inadvertently, of course, in leaning-in pressed her boobs against his arm.
