My wife, Angie, and I (Dave) were sexually very simpatico. Sex 3 times a week was considered almost obligatory, although never treated as a duty that had to be performed. We were just into our 2nd year of marriage and enjoying most of the things in married life. The usual nitpicky complaints, but nothing very bothersome. We both made good enough money, she as manager of a high end cosmetics store and me running my own stamp collector's shop on Market Street...not many of those left in town so I turned a decent profit.
We had never talked about our respective sex lives that we had before meeting each other, but it was just understood they we were both pretty active. We were definitely "liberal" in the morality sense of that word. Especially Angie, I kind of thought.
Anyway, today she came home with a man she had run into downtown. She introduced him to me as having been her roommate at Texas U. His name was Clark Deering, and he appeared to be a nice enough fellow, big chested and rugged complected with dirty blond hair. That is a color shade, not a commentary on his cleanliness.
I never knew anything about my wife having had a male roommate! Nope, never came up once. Oh, she probably mentioned the word roommate a few times, but that is one of those nouns that does not have an obvious gender. I now seemed to recall a certain aura of intimacy when she had mentioned that her 'roommate' and she had done something or another...going to the movies or out to dinner...one time even spending part of her spring break with her roomie's family in Petaluma.
Angie explained to me that, after they had stumbled upon each other, the two of them had a few drinks downtown to talk about the old days. Then she managed to talk him into coming home with her to meet her husband.
Clark and my wife reminisced in front of me, and it rather soon became clear that they had not only been roommates, but bedmates at TU. As I pieced together the drift of their recollections, they had been dating other people but sharing a bed. A couple of details made it quite clear that they had been having sex with each other on a regular basis.
Not wanting to be privy to this bullshit, I chose to excuse myself and went to the kitchen to start preparing the goulash and salad we had decided upon. I know, that doesn't sound like much of a repast for company, but my culinary skills were not anything to boast about. There was a wedge of nice blue cheese and some celery in the fridge to round it out. I had volunteered to do that since my wife was clearly getting a bit tipsy to take on the task.
But I really didn't want to lose out on this window into her past love life so, as I went into the kitchen, I instantly opened up the heater vents from the kitchen through to our living room. I could hear every word they exchanged, so long as I didn't bang the dishware too much.
"How come you never ended up with that Betsy you were so hot and heavy with?" I heard my wife ask him.
"Don't you remember, hon? She broke up with me shortly after I took you home with me that spring."
"Ohhh, I just took that as a lover's spat, not a permanent breakup."
"Oh, God no Ang. She was furious about me choosing to take my roommate home over her. I confess, she pissed me off with her possessive attitude, but I realized then that Betsy had bought our bullshit about you and I being platonic roommates. He, he, pretty much like I guess your parents did. Snicker."
"My folks only had one double bed in their guest room," he said. "When I told them I was bringing my roommate they said 'fine' and when I told them it was a girl, mom said 'holy shit'. I don't think I'd ever heard mom say the S word before. We wrangled it out, mom was not about to give up on having her son home and would have let us fuck on the front couch if that was what I wanted."
"As you will surely recall, Clark, we did fuck almost every night on that trip."
"Oh, God, yes, Hon. But we did do it super quietly, and NEVER on the couch!" he said. "But my parents are simple country folks with no idea of modern attitudes in the city...they bought it when I explained to them that kids at college would often share a bed as an economic necessity, without even thinking about having sex.
"I confessed to them that you and I were already sharing a bed at State and that I thought it might lead to something permanent after graduation. Mother heard wedding bells in the background, I guess, and treated us like engaged boyfriend and girlfriend the whole trip."
I could clearly hear my wife opening another bottle of wine and, presumably, sharing it. From the directional changes in their voices, it seemed like they had moved to the couch together. Nothing that immediately alarmed liberal old me.
