1. A Night Out on the Town
It was in early January and we'd just been to a concert at the Davies Symphony Hall, where we sat through some modern compositions I hope I never have to listen to again in my whole life. Afterwards we drove over the hill to North Beach to console ourselves in a less pretentious atmosphere.
Since moving to San Francisco and having more leisure time, we've tried to get a lot more "culture." And we've actually enjoyed much of what we've encountered. But the fact is both Nancy and I have a lot of lowbrow in us.
After walking around for a while, we stopped in at a bar on upper Grant Street. It was pretty crowded and a blues duo was playing in the back. Nancy found an empty bar stool, removed her full-length coat, draped it over the stool, and sat on it. I had to stand behind her stool because there weren't any others available. I noticed that several guys, apparently drunk enough not to care that I was with her, openly checked her out.
No wonder. Nancy, overdressed for this place, looked gorgeous. She'd put on a simple black dress that was cut rather low and came down mid-thigh. Under it she'd worn a pair of pantyhose. This was unusual for her, but she said pantyhose made wearing high-heeled shoes more comfortable.
The first thing her ogglers probably noticed when she took off her coat was the (imitation) pearl necklace that reached down into her cleavage. They called attention to the inner orbs of her smaller-than-average breasts. She was braless, of course, and her breasts – their nipples prominent beneath her dress's thin material -- bounced enticingly with every little motion she made.
We got the bartendress's attention and were served a glass of wine (for her) and a beer (for me). Nancy sat with her body turned slightly away from the bar. Holding her drink, she looked toward the back of the bar where the blues duo was playing. Standing next to her, I looked down and noticed that she was showing a lot of leg. Her dress had crept way up her thighs and her knees were spread more than twelve inches apart. For stability, I suppose, she'd hooked her high heels under the rail of her bar stool.
Since nearly everyone in the bar was facing the same way she was, though, I didn't notice anyone trying to look between her legs. Not at first, at least. As the band ended a song and people hooted and applauded, a bearded guy in his forties sitting at a table in front of us looked back, caught sight of my beautiful wife sitting there with her open legs at his eye level, and did an almost comedic double-take. He was only about six feet away from her, so (despite the rather poor light) he must've had a pretty good view up her thighs, probably all the way to her crotch.
I'm not sure his eyes went there immediately, though. At first, I suspect, he was simply surprised to find someone looking like her in the bar. An elegant, beautiful blonde sitting among dressed-down blues aficionados really stood out. The amount of skin she was showing was a bonus, of course.
Her breasts were partially covered (except, hovering over her, I could see all of her left breast except for the nipple), but she was obviously braless. Because of the careless way she was sitting, though, it was her inner thighs and crotch that drew the poor man's attention.
After a few seconds, he turned away and said something to another guy sitting at the table with him. Then he turned his head back around to see if the view he'd just been offered was still available. It was. Holding her position, Nancy was looking up at me and saying something about the duo. I bent down to her and whispered, "There's a guy looking up your dress, my love."
She didn't look around to see who her voyeur was. Instead, she asked me, "Is he good looking?"
"Not especially," I answered.
She held her position and directed her attention back toward the duo, who had started another song. Everyone else sitting near us, except the two guys sitting at the table in direct eye-shot of my wife's crotch, were looking toward the back, too. The bearded guy, who didn't want to seem too obvious, I suppose, had moved his chair slightly so that he didn't have to swivel his head a full 180 degrees to look between the blues duo and my wife's crotch. His friend, a bald guy who seemed drunker and more reckless, leaned forward and blatantly stared up Nancy's dress.
"I see there are two of them," said Nancy soto voce. "Too bad I've got pantyhose on."
She'd managed to check them out while showing apparent interest in the musicians.
"You can always take them off," I suggested.
"Sure, but could we go somewhere else? I'll take them off there. This place is too crowded, anyway. And I'm not that crazy about the music."
I agreed with her and we left a few minutes later, leaving her admirers disappointed. On the way up Grant Street, on the way to a bar I remembered liking on Green Street, we talked about what we might do next.
Her minor exhibitionism in the blues bar had given me an idea. "You really look sexy tonight. Would you like to push it beyond showing off? Are you up for the wronged wife routine?"
Instead of answering me directly, she stopped and frowned at me. Then she exclaimed (not too loudly, though), "You cheating scum! How dare you screw your secretary! And I've given you the best years of my life!" She couldn't keep a straight, or rather an angry face, though, and dissolved into laughter.
"I'll take that as a yes," I said. We resumed walking arm-in-arm up to Green Street.
Nancy tried getting back into the stereotype: "I'm so mad at you (well, not you, Cal, but my 'husband') that I need to do something to restore my battered self-image as a sexual being. Gosh, I wonder what it'll be. How's this? Maybe I'll take off my pantyhose to make myself more interesting to men."
"That's a non sequitur," I said, "but I like it."
She stopped walking and quickly stepped out of her high-heeled shoes. Then, opening her coat and pulling up her dress, she gripped her pantyhose at the top and quickly pulled them down to her feet. Next, bending down as she leaned against me, she freed her feet from the pantyhose, scooped them up, and tucked them in one of her coat pockets.
