My husband and I had just boarded the Seabourn Sojourn in Manaus Brazil for a sixteen-day cruise down the Amazon and up to Ft. Lauderdale. We are sitting in the boarding lounge sipping champagne waiting to be escorted to our cabin.
My name is Sharon Clark and twenty years ago I married my husband Mike in college. Mike was a grad student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and I was working my butt off as a tech at the McArdle to supplement his small salary.
Mike, as he said, "got lucky" in the lab and discovered − I think created would be a better word − an antibody that was useful in treating a rare form of childhood cancer. He had interested a small group of investors in backing a Biotech start-up firm and after ten years of backbreaking work the drug got a favorable review from ODAC and approval by the FDA.
A major pharmaceutical firm that wanted to market the drug purchased his company and now Mike has a good job running one section of that big company and a nice portfolio of stock. That's what allows us to take vacations like this one where our cabin cost thirty thousand dollars for two weeks! When I think of the long hours he worked, I believe he earned it!
Mike taps my shoulder and points at the line of passengers waiting to board.
"I'd swear that's George Payne," he said. "He's got the same beard."
I looked at a couple standing in line and suddenly I recognized that beard and face.
My God, I thought, that's him! That's the guy we called "tomato balls" because he had the biggest testicles we had ever seen on anything other than a bull.
As I looked at him, that whole memory came alive literally exploding in my head. We had been in a swinging group! And the things our group had done! There were six couples. All the guys were grad students or post-docs in the biological sciences at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. And all the gals worked to help them get by on their small salaries.
That was twenty years ago and we had fucked like bonobos. We were swingers but we had a closed group. We did ordinary swinging of course, swapping wives for a night or a weekend and group sex, but the games were very original.
We had one game we called pussy poker. It was played in a well-lit living room that had a chair with a back exactly high enough for a gal to bend over the back and take it doggie. We arranged the chairs in front and then each gal was dealt a face up poker hand of five cards. The gal with the lowest hand had to strip naked and assume the position bent over the back of the chair facing her audience with her boobs hanging down.
Then the guys, except for her husband of course, were dealt similar poker hands. The winner got naked and fucked the gal doggie while the audience watched and applauded.
The husband, with his pants down, had to sit in the front row watching his wife get fucked while the gals and guys in the audience made bets on how long it would be before he got an hard on watching his wife fuck. All the guys got a hard on sooner or later and some had one when they dropped their pants.
If hubby got an erection everybody knew he enjoyed being cuckolded so he had to masturbate with everybody watching him while he watched his wife fuck. When he finally ejaculated the audience cheered and applauded.
One variation of the game was to blindfold the gal and make her guess who the guy fuckin her was by reaching between her legs and feeling his balls. George was the easiest because he had such big balls that the girls called him tomato balls. Poor Mike had such tender testicles that one squeeze and he'd squeal and the gals identified him right away.
It was a fun group for two or three years, but then the guys got serious about their careers. After all, they had wives to support.
My memories were interrupted when George and Cathy entered the lounge. We waved but they didn't see us. They sat down across the room drinking champagne with the other couples waiting to be escorted to their assigned cabins.
Mike pulled out his pocket note pad and scribbled a note. He tore the page out and handed it to me to read. It said, "Hey Lady − you wanna fuck?" I laughed and handed it back to him nodding. He folded up the note and called one of the waiters serving champagne to the passengers. He pointed Cathy out carefully and the waiter delivered the note.
Cathy opened it and read it. Then she handed it to George who looked very angry and grabbed the waiter by the arm, quite obviously asking him who sent the note. The waiter pointed at Mike and George began an angry walk across the room toward us.
When he got closer he did a double take and started to laugh as he ran up to us and shook Mike's hand and kissed me. Then he waved to Cathy to join us. We hadn't seen them since leaving graduate school all those years ago.
We exchanged the usual information and then the talk became more personal. Had we continued as swingers? After I said we hadn't, Cathy said that neither had they. Then she added a comment.
"I've not had any action since we left Madison, but George fucked a red headed post-
doc all summer about ten years ago. That's all the action he's had."
"You KNEW about that little bitch?" George said, completely surprised.
"Of course I knew. But if it makes you feel better George, I figured I should give you a little slack. You were up for tenure and under a lot of pressure that summer. Your career was on the line. I figured a little strange stuff would relieve some of your stress."
"Feel better? Shit! You just now made me feel WORSE. I fucked her once and then I thought about you and figured I'd better not fuck her any more. I didn't want to hurt you. If I'd known it was okay with you I'd a fucked her all summer. She was good pussy!"
"As good as me?"
"Of course not! Nobody is as good as you."
"Then why waste your time on strange stuff?"
Then is a soft, loving voice she said, "But thank you darling for thinking of me. That was a lovely thing to do."
"What cabin are you in," I asked, changing the subject.
George looked at his key card and said, "Number 623."
"That's great," I said. "We're on the same deck just down the hall in 635."
Just about that time our room numbers were called along with another couple from deck six and a team of very courteous people escorted us to our cabins where our luggage had already been delivered.
On the way I was once again impressed by the tact of the Seabourn staff. Mike was carrying his briefcase as he always does and a staff member looked at it.