'tales From the Orient'

This story starts in the late 1960s. In the first part you'll find a snapshot of the 'Swinging Sixties' in the Far East, when Britain still had a military presence there. Here you'll find wives of British servicemen enjoying expatriate married life in the hot tropical atmosphere of Singapore. Then there are US servicemen appearing on a few days R&R on that beautiful island, trying to temporarily forget the madness of the Vietnamese war.

Many of the wives' husbands were often away on exercise or operations so, when some of these open-minded and high-spirited wives are at a loose end and they happen to meet handsome US marines out on the town for a few days and they're both looking for fun and games... well, who knows what might happen...?

It starts off as a bit of a slow burner - but stay with it as the saga follows the adventures the central character, a beautiful young newly married English girl called Dee and the things she gets up to. It goes from her being newly married in Singapore, then over the following years as she goes to live in England, Germany and Northern Ireland. Each chapter is self-contained, and some of the characters in the story appear more than once in more than just one location.

It's written it in what is sometimes called a 'Rashomon style', named after Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film 'Rashomon', in which a murder is described in contradictory ways by its witnesses. There are no murders in this story - but Dee has a few wicked and erotic adventures. In 'Rashomon style' they'll be described from the points of view of the various participants.

All the events in these stories actually happened, although not necessarily to the degree or at the time or place described. I'll leave it up to you, the reader, to decide which of the accounts are the most plausible.

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Rashomon I - Singapore 1969

First, some background. My name is Tony. This is the story of myself and Dee my wife from when we married in 1969 in Singapore up until 2008. Dee and I went to high school together in the early 1960s in England. We were in different classes and years and as is often the case she didn't really know I existed. I thought from the first moment I saw her she was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen, and fell in love with her. All the boys fancied her, but she was in a different social circle to me. As a result, we hardly met or spoke and she didn't really notice me So, nothing happened between us. I left school, joined the British army in 1964 and in 1968 I was serving in Singapore.

In the November of that year I came back to England on a course. After I finished it I was about to return to Singapore when my sister invited me to her birthday party in Yorkshire. Unknown to myself, my sister and Dee had become best friends. Dee was there at the party - and Cupid and fate took over...

Over the following few months we corresponded by airmail - no emails or Skype in those days - and fell in love. I asked her to marry me and not wanting to wait until I'd finished my tour in Singapore she came out to join me there, where we married in July 1969. As you read what follows you should know that she and I had only actually known each other for no more than a couple of weeks - four days in England and the ten days she was in Singapore before the wedding ceremony.

In England we'd hardly even kissed but in Singapore we were able to make love at last - a couple of times before the wedding. The first occasion was on the cramped back seat of a Morris Mini car a few hours after she arrived. She was just as eager for our first attempt as I was - although it was very awkward and didn't last very long. We had another go a few days later when we were babysitting my best man's small son - and this time it was much more comfortable and enjoyable. People said we married in haste and it wouldn't last - but that was only 48 years ago so they might be right.

Anyway, after the wedding ceremony the reception was held at my best man's house and most of the members of my army unit - I'll call it the Company - and their wives and girlfriends were there. At the reception, Dee was still in her wedding dress when she started chatting to a couple of close friends of mine called Rod and 'Scottish' John. Rod and John were real characters. Both had wicked senses of humour and even though this was the first time they'd met Dee obviously impressed them. All three quickly became good friends and Rod and John also both turn up in a couple of future stories, in Singapore and other countries.

As the reception progressed the drink flowed and a party spirit developed. After she changed into her going away dress Dee was soon the centre of attention again, together with another girl who figures prominently in this story. This is Jo. She was already living in Singapore with her husband Pete when Dee and I got married.

When she arrived in Singapore, Dee knew nobody but me and Jo soon took her under her wing. They immediately became very close friends, although like all women there was sometimes a sense of rivalry - usually but not always friendly - between them, as you'll read later on.

When she came out to Singapore Dee was 21 years old and about 5'2' tall. Although slim and petite she still had lovely curves in all the right places. She hadn't really changed since I knew her at school and she still had a striking and beautiful face and smile, large blue grey eyes and gorgeous platinum blond hair. Jo was a bit older. She was a brunette and about the same height with a similar figure, so she and Dee found they could swop clothes quite easily.

Although physically similar they had completely different temperaments and characters. On the surface Dee was sociable but quite unassuming while Jo was more uninhibited and could be quite volatile. Together, they made a formidable pairing. Both were very intelligent, independent and very much 1960s liberated women.

Jo was on her second marriage. Her first husband had died in a traffic accident and she'd inherited quite a lot of money from an insurance policy which she liked spending - for instance, she'd been able to afford to have her Mini car shipped from UK to Singapore. She liked to wear eye catching clothes and the skimpiest bikinis to show off her slim figure. She could be flirtatious so she always had lots of the single lads circling around her. Pete, her second husband, was very easy going and quite relaxed about her behaviour, the reason for which he explained to me when we met the following year in UK.

Dee, on the other hand, seemed to have an unconscious sexuality which attracted male attention without her really trying. The fashion at that time was for very short miniskirts. She enjoyed wearing them and with her lovely slim, tanned legs she looked gorgeous. On the surface she was a bit quieter; although as I found out in due course she also had a hidden, uninhibited and adventurous side to her personality.

So, now another beautiful young English wife had arrived in Singapore. As she and Jo were now close friends the lads in the Company assumed Dee would be just like her. But Dee was not provocatively flirtatious like Jo, although that didn't stop some of the guys trying their luck with her.

The first thing to remember is that at this time Singapore was very much a city where anything seemed to go. In 1969 the Vietnam war was at its height not all that far away and there were always lots of US servicemen in Singapore on R&R and looking for fun and sex. It was also the 'swinging sixties', the birth pill was now widely available and to my delight and surprise I soon found that after I arrived there as a single man that some of the more free-spirited expatriate married ladies were more than willing to embrace the 'free love' ethos of the time. The easy going social atmosphere in the Far East also undoubtedly helped.

All this was usually done discreetly, but I was surprised just how many husbands turned a blind eye to how their wives were enjoying their extra marital flings - either they didn't care or because they were doing the same thing themselves. As I said, in Singapore anything seemed to go and before I asked Dee to marry me I admit to enjoying myself like that on a couple of occasions.

Dee and I had been candid with each other about our previous sexual history before we married and she was fully aware of what I'd got up to when I was single. On Dee's part she said she'd had one or two serious boyfriends, but they hadn't worked out and now being newly married she said she felt secure against unwanted advances from other men. This certainly appeared to be the case for the first couple of months she was in Singapore. As I've said, however, Singapore had a free for all atmosphere that could lead even the most outwardly rational and level-headed people going astray...

Our marriage didn't start off very well as our wedding night was a bit of disaster. Neither I or anybody else knew it at the time but Dee is allergic to alcohol. I didn't know it but our friend Rod, just for a bit of a laugh, decided to spike her orange juice at our wedding reception with some vodka... So, by the time we arrived at our wedding hotel Dee was out for the count and stayed that way all night!

The next morning, however, we carried on with our honeymoon to Penang, where we stayed at a military R&R centre called Golden Sands. It doesn't sound the most romantic of places but the sun was hot, the beach was lovely and it had a very relaxed atmosphere. It was the only place I could afford but we were newly married so we just pulled our two single beds together in our hut and got on with it.

Dee said that after her experiences with her previous boyfriends she thought sex was overrated - but now married, in love and on honeymoon on a beautiful tropical island... Well, she told me she had her first ever orgasm on our improvised double bed in the middle of a torrential rain storm not long after we arrived ... and she's never looked back since.

As we hardly knew each before we married it took a while before we realised just how sexually compatible we were. I soon realised this when, one night in bed in Singapore soon after we came back from honeymoon Dee reached under her pillow and produced a large book. When I asked her what it was she grinned and showed me a Japanese 'pillow book' that Jo, her new friend, had loaned her. Oh boy! It was an illustrated 'Kama sutra' in all but name.

We'd been practising our new love life eagerly on honeymoon but there was stuff in there we'd hardly dreamed of. Dee was as enthusiastic as I was about trying everything in the book and after a while I noticed she seemed especially fond of those positions showing the woman in charge; at the time I put it down to her being a keen horsewoman when she was a teenager and over the years that followed I became aware of this penchant of hers for being a dominant position appearing on more than one occasion.

After the honeymoon and back in Singapore we moved into a small apartment with a view over the sea and Singapore harbour, not far from where Jo and Pete lived. Dee rapidly settled into the social life of Singapore and whenever she and I turned up at the Company Club she was rapidly the centre of attention and surrounded with single lads who wanted to get to know her better.

To give you an idea of how the single lads in the Company regarded the married women in the Company they had a private 'Hot Babes Ladder' describing the attributes of the wives, and scored them for how 'desirable' they were and their 'possible' or 'confirmed' willingness to share their favours. Sometime after Dee and I married I found out to my surprise that Dee was now top of the 'Ladder'. This was not because she was a 'possible' or 'confirmed' but because although she was rated the most 'desirable' none of the single guys seemed to have had any success in seducing her.

Jo, who was down as a 'possible', soon introduced Dee to two older married girls called Pat and Judy. They were already on the 'Ladder' as 'confirmed', although I didn't know it at the time. Dee didn't know about the 'Ladder' and they all became close friends.

Having said all that, I soon realised that almost as soon as they'd met her my friends Rod and 'Scottish' John were vying for her favours, and as we started socialising I often noticed during Saturday dances at the Company Club how they tried to inveigle her into the darker corners of the dance floor during the slower dances. As a single man I'd often done the same with ladies I thought might want to enjoy my company on some future occasion so I knew exactly what they were up to.

I knew Rod and John very well as we'd all joined up in the army together. When I was single I knew they were as shameless as I was in enjoying the favours of some of the wives but now they were hovering around Dee I wasn't so sure about what they'd get up to - their attitude seemed to be 'all's fair in love and war...' But when I mentioned it to Dee she laughed and said she was aware of exactly what they were up to but knew how to control them. All four of us remained close friends long after we'd all left Singapore.

Most of my work was in Singapore and Dee and I had been married for about four months when I was sent on a four-week jungle exercise up on the Malay-Thai border. Going with me was Pete, Jo's husband, while at the same time Pat and Judy's husbands were away in Borneo on detachment.

Dee was not best pleased with me disappearing like that but accepted it as being part of being married to a soldier, and she had Jo, Pat and Judy to keep her company while I was away. Dee said that she and Jo and the other girls would keep themselves occupied with the expatriate wife's life style of shopping in Singapore and playing tennis.

I didn't want Dee to feel she couldn't enjoy herself while I was away so I said that she should go out and socialise on her own just as she wanted. I asked her if she was happy about being on her own with Rod and John hovering around but she just laughed and said they weren't a problem.

She was absolutely right - she had no problem with them while I was away. She hadn't taken into account, however, just what her girlfriends might get up to.

I came back from my jungle exercise in the second week of December, just in time for Dee's birthday. But I'd hardly come through the front door of our apartment and kissed her hello before she said she had to tell me something - and I shouldn't be angry with her. Oh, I thought, what's she done - have John or Rod some other chancers been trying their luck with her? But she rapidly said she felt an idiot and very embarrassed and made me promise again that I wouldn't be angry with her. I promised I wouldn't. She looked at me seriously and said she had been more than just a bit naughty! Oh...and I told her to go on...

(to be continued ...)