"It's just something you have to do, Irene," my mother had told me many times. "If you're lucky, you'll like it. If you're very lucky, Oscar will go off it after a couple of years. But if you're like most of us, he'll be relentless and you'll just have to put up with it and concentrate on the important things in marriage."
It wasn't the most positive advice on sex that a nervous, twenty-five-year-old virgin could have received in the weeks before her wedding but, I sighed, it had proved horribly accurate.
As I walked the through the waking streets that Saturday morning deep in thought, I hardly noticed the beautiful city of Barcelona opening out before me. The former schoolfriend whose birthday it was and who I had arranged to meet wouldn't be in the café for another hour; plenty of time to take in the air and think before the day became too hot to do either of those things well.
Feeling the small but carefully-considered gift in my shoulder bag, I turned the corner onto the long, famous road of la Rambla and began the slow descent to the waterfront where my friend would soon be. The crush of locals and tourists hadn't yet started; kiosk holders were opening up, café tables were being wiped down and the market stalls were still being assembled so my progress was fast, even though my attention was distracted.
Oscar's obsession had baffled me since he had first confessed it four years ago but now it was beginning to annoy me. Hadn't I made it clear enough that I simply wasn't interested? Why couldn't he accept that sex wasn't as important for women and that his performance in bed, whatever he thought of it, was good enough for me?
We had a nice life, in an apartment in a pleasant, middle-class part of the city only twenty minutes' walk from the beach. We had our two girls and were a happy family so why in the name of all the Saints would a man want his wife and the mother of his children, to jump into bed with someone else?
Of course, having had only my husband as a lover in all my forty-four years, I wasn't in a position to know what sex with other men was like but if it was anything like last night's bog-standard penetration, clumsy thrusting and rapid, messy, missionary position ejaculation, I wasn't interested in finding out.
When we were young and first married, when sex was a new and exciting novelty - at least for me - and when the heat of passion was upon us, we had been more adventurous and had experimented with fantasies and positions. But most of these had either failed to provide more interesting stimulation from my husband's erect cock or had made me feel humiliated and dirty afterwards.
Though Oscar seemed to like it, being penetrated from behind on my hands and knees had felt too crude and animal-like for me. Lying at strange angles or sitting in chairs had felt undignified and well as uncomfortable and as for putting his cock in my mouth... yuk!
No way was that happening again! For the last ten years it had been missionary or nothing.
And of the two; preferably nothing.
I do admit that the few occasions I had felt his mouth and tongue on my vulva had been exciting. Okay, it had been very exciting indeed. Okay, okay, I had reached one of my extremely rare orgasms quickly and intensely when Oscar had licked me down there but when the ecstasy had subsided, it had left me feeling dirty and embarrassed.
And afterwards when we kissed and I had tasted myself on his lips, my stomach had turned.
How in God's name a man could find the acrid, fishy flavour of a woman's vaginal secretions arousing was beyond me, but my husband seemed not only to love the taste himself but apparently wanted other men to experience it as well.
And they say we women are hard to understand!
My reflection in the shop and café windows followed me along the street as I went over my husband's perverted obsession in my mind once again.
Oscar and I had been at school together. We had got on well but had never been boyfriend and girlfriend. It wasn't until we got together again in our mid-twenties that the sparks began to fly. Our wedding had followed soon afterwards.
Now, at the age of forty-four, I was still in reasonably good shape despite having given birth to two girls during our fifteen-year marriage. If I had followed the traditional Spanish Catholic pattern, there would have been at least two more children and the damage to my figure would have been much more severe, but despite it being forbidden by the church, judicious and secret use of condoms had prevented that happening.
Contraception made sense in the modern world, but my more traditional conscience was relieved a few years later when Oscar had his vasectomy and the need to sin was permanently removed.
Comfortably over five feet tall but carrying a few extra pounds, I was now distinctly curvy and could no longer match the stick-thin teenage girls who flaunted their figures on the city's streets.
I used to do aerobics once or twice a week and go to the gym too but with my busy job and a demanding family, I'd let this slip in the last couple of years. Oscar was keen for me to get back into the exercise routine again and I knew I should, but there was always something else that needed my attention.
On a good day, I could still attract the attention of men my own age, but those days were getting fewer and were more often caused by my shoulder length red-brown, wavy hair than my figure. Still, I was grateful for my crowning glory which was striking enough to separate me from the crowd. I was a true redhead too, as my neatly trimmed pubic hair could testify.
At that time only my husband knew this. But that, apparently, was something he wanted to change!
There had been a bit of a row about it last night as we lay in bed after having had what qualified as sex in our marriage those days. Afterwards, I had wanted to go and clean myself up then go to sleep but of course Oscar wanted to talk, so I had to lie there and listen while his semen oozed from me and soiled the sheets.
Another job to do when I got home.
After so many years of a happy marriage, I knew that in his post-coital state my husband would be emotionally fragile. So I just lay there and listened while once again he tried to persuade me to at least try sleeping with another man.
To a girl brought up in a traditional Catholic household, the idea of sex without love was unthinkable and outside marriage, doubly so. I knew my husband had slept with a few women before he and I had married, but until that remarkable night nearly four years ago when he had confessed his long-standing fantasy, I had seen little to suggest such thoughts were brewing inside his head.
Yes, our sex life was dull but then weren't most couples' sex lives dull after years of marriage? Conversations with my many female friends had revealed a wide range of sexual frequencies and appetites ranging from total abstention to near nymphomania. Neither of these extremes seemed healthy to me. Fortunately the vast majority of my friends were definitely towards the infrequent, formulaic end of the scale like me, so I believed myself to be both normal and in good company.
If I had expected anything untoward to happen, I would have expected Oscar to ask me if he could see other women so when, after a particularly unenthusiastic performance on my part one Sunday evening, he first suggested I should find a lover it took me a long time to work out whether I really had understood him correctly.
When I finally realised that not only was he serious, but that it was a fantasy he had apparently nursed most of his life, I was truly stunned. Reeling with shock at what seemed to me an extraordinary perversion, I rejected it out of hand. We went to sleep in tense silence, back to back and barely spoke to each other in the morning.
Troubled by what Oscar had said, the following evening while he was out with his friends watching the football, I found a few precious minutes of privacy and got online. It took only a few minutes' research to find to my astonishment that a man wanting to see his wife with another lover was by no means the strange, uncommon perversion I had imagined, especially in couples like us who had been married a long time.
Fortunately for the future of marriage, it usually remained only a fantasy but in a surprising number of cases it had actually happened. I frowned, shook my head and dismissed my findings as something weird that could only happen in Sweden or America where they did everything differently.
Unfortunately, my husband had been consistent in his incomprehensible fantasy ever since. From my equally consistent, negative reactions, Oscar could be in no doubt where I stood on the matter, but this did not seem to have deterred him from his ultimate goal.
Indeed, as I crossed to the wide walkway in the centre of the road and strode towards my usual flower stall to buy a birthday bouquet for my friend, the previous evening's post coital discussion filled my mind.
"What you need is a sexual awakening," Oscar had said as we lay naked in the darkness, both unsatisfied.
"What I need is to get to sleep!"
I had replied angrily, hoping to curtail any discussion of the very average copulation that had just taken place; one in which there had been an almost complete absence of response from me during the hasty, short-lived penetration and almost immediate ejaculation.
I chose a medium sized bouquet from the shop and the young girl took it inside to wrap for me. It took a long time. While I waited, the anger rose up inside me; not at her but at my increasingly incomprehensible husband.
"If you had a lover who could touch those special places I can't reach, it might help you open up sexually," he had continued.
"What if I don't want to be opened up sexually?" I demanded, to no avail.
"A lover would break down your defences and wake up your sexual appetite," Oscar had insisted. "You might find real excitement and pleasure in a way you've never found with me."
"Am I not good enough in bed for you now?" I growled bitterly. "Am I not up to the standard your fourteen other girlfriends set?"
The imbalance in our sexual histories had always been a sore point. I had been a virgin like all good Catholic brides should be. I knew Oscar had slept with other women before we were married but it had taken a few years for the true number to emerge. That revelation hadn't improved my confidence as a lover and I referred to it more often than was good for either of us.
Unfortunately, the shot backfired this time; from the look on my husband's face I could see the real truth; that our sex life really didn't measure up to his previous experiences and current aspirations. Whatever words came out of his mouth and however much he loved me, even I knew it would not be difficult to improve on my reluctance and lack of imagination in bed.
The girl finally reappeared with the flowers. I took them, paid in cash to save time then resumed my journey along La Rambla's central walkway towards the café where my friend would be waiting.
There were two couples walking ahead of me, both around Oscar and my age, both holding hands. Both women were dressed like me too, in colourful dresses perhaps just a little shorter than was advisable for girls their age, but which showed off legs rather skinnier than mine to what I grudgingly had to admit was good effect.
As I watched from behind, one of the men slipped his hand from her waist to his partner's buttock as they walked along. She seemed to be enjoying the sensation more than a little if her heavily sexual body language and the way she moved closer by his side were anything to go by.
My heart ached. Part of me was affronted at this public display of affection by people old enough to know better; another, larger part of me remembered that it was many years since my husband and I had been so loved-up and sexually close.
Had Oscar been this close with his other girlfriends? Had they done for him in bed some or all of the things I now refused even to contemplate? Did the couples in front of me still have adventurous, satisfying sex lives?
Were other couples in the nice, affluent, middle-class part of the city having perverted conversations like ours every day?
And of course, the big worry; was I really that bad in bed?
"It's not like that Irene," Oscar had lied, not answering the question directly. "Okay I've slept with a few other girls..."
I snorted my unhappiness.
