The Agreement

Janet and I have an unspoken but inviolate agreement. It helps us as we go about our lives, and raise our kids and go to work and watch TV, and do all the other normal things everyone has to do every day. Our agreement started slowly, took shape, and evolved over time. Now it is part of us and with us wherever we go. We know what it is. We do not have to discuss it.

Janet and I met at college – the University of Florida - when we were both just freshmen. I think I noticed her precisely because she looked like she wasn't trying to be noticed. She wore her light brown hair long and straight, used very little makeup, and usually dressed in blue jeans and T-shirts. She had a cute little nose and a pretty face. She smiled a lot and spoke up in class, and had opinions about everything! There were so many things she wanted to do; so many people in the world to help; so much to see. We started studying together and going out for coffee or pizza, then to the movies. We never really called it dating, but three months after we met Janet lost her virginity to me on a Saturday night in my cramped little dorm room, and I had never felt so happy or complete.

We married that June because we could not stand the thought of being apart for the summer, and she couldn't figure out how to stay in her parent's good graces, and get help with school expenses, and be with me, unless we married. For all her opinions and spunk, she always tried to please her parents. She tried to please me too.

We were very poor while we were in college and in those first few years after graduation, but I don't think we really knew it at the time. I remember days when we would walk on the beach and feel the warm breeze on our skin as the sun went down, casting long shadows across the water as we walked. Then we would go to Mario's Pub and drink beer and eat nachos and talk until 2:00 a.m., and stumble home and melt into each other's arms before drifting off to sleep. Sometimes I would struggle to stay awake so I could watch her and listen to her sleepy noisy breaths just a little longer.

Our sex life was ok. The sex was fine.

It's just that it didn't seem that important, particularly to Janet. Looking back, I know now she was not satisfied… Maybe that's not the best way to describe it. She would lie there and I would move and I would cum and she would kiss me and be pleased that she had pleased me. So she was "satisfied" I think. But I'll come out and say it - she hardly ever had an orgasm. I don't know why it didn't bother me at the time. We were so young and inexperienced and I guess I just didn't think about it. I don't know.

After college, I went to work writing ads for the Miami Herald, and we had two kids pretty quickly who have grown up too fast – it's hard to believe we've got one off at college now and the other soon to be. When the kids started school, Janet got a teaching job, and we've both done well at work. But for years, our lives revolved around the kids. We went to Disney World every year, did the soccer thing with both of them, went to the movies together, took family trips to the beach. Janet had her summers off with the kids, and she was a great mom. Our house was the one where all the neighborhood kids would come to play away the summers. She never seemed to age – she kept her figure and her long brown hair and her pretty face. Maybe a few lines have formed around her eyes; but I don't see them. After 22 years of marriage, she looks the same to me.

About five years ago, we realized the kids were old enough to be left at home alone for the day. They had also reached the age where they were much more interested in their own friends and school cliques and private worlds than they were with their boring parents. I suppose every couple adjusts in their own way to their kids growing up, and it must be bittersweet for us all. One day, for the first time in years, Janet and I went to the beach by ourselves again. We walked by the water, and when the sun went down we found a little bar by the beach, drank some beer and looked into each other's eyes. We did not ask "What now?" out loud, but we both knew that was what we were thinking. What do we do with our lives now?

A few weeks later, I told her I wanted us to go to Haulover Beach. We had never been there before and I guess I was just curious. We had walked at South Beach a couple of times and seen some topless sunbathing, but Haulover was supposed to be a fully nude beach, right here in Miami. Janet thought it was silly and didn't even want to talk about it, but I pouted and bugged her and whined, and after a few days of that she relented and agreed to go.

"If you want to go look at some naked babes, I won't stand in your way," she said. It's funny, but we didn't even discuss beforehand whether we would get nude when we got there. We packed a cooler and our beach bag with towels, put on our bathing suits under our clothes, and followed a map north from the city to the spot. I remember parking and walking along the path from the lot to the Beach, and Janet feeling so sorry for these hungry wild cats that seemed to be everywhere in the bushes. Then suddenly we saw a sign and walked through a clearing and sure enough – there were nude people everywhere. Janet sort of snickered and smiled and looked at me as if to say, "What have you gotten us into now?" But no one at the beach seemed self-conscious. There were lifeguards and music playing and volleyball and people eating snacks and swimming just like at any other beach.

I carried our stuff and walked down closer to the water with Janet right behind me. I found a spot where there was no one else too close nearby, and spread out the towels and looked around, trying to act like I'd been here before and done this before. Janet just looked at me and sort of squinted her eyes like she does, and seemed like she could hardly keep from laughing. I think its sort of like standing by the side of a swimming pool when you know the water is going to be cold but you've come to swim, so you just jump in. I pulled off my shirt and pants, then my bathing suit, and there I was, naked at the beach. I can't really say I was comfortable with the feeling at first, but I did sort of like that it was now Janet who was fully dressed at a nude beach, and out of place and needing to make a decision about what to do next.

"Do you really want me to do this?" she asked.

"It's no big deal – take it all off!" I laughed. I wasn't completely sure about what she'd do, but she squirmed out of her pants and then pulled off her T-shirt and undid her bathing suit top at the back.

Have I mentioned her breasts before? Damn, I think they are perfect. 36Cs, soft and round. At night, when she's wearing a nightgown with no bra underneath, I love their movement and sway when she walks across the room. I love the feel and hardness of her nipples when I suck them in bed. That day at the beach, her breasts and butt were very white, though otherwise she had a pretty good tan. She tossed her bathing suit top onto the towel, and just as she was pulling down the bottoms, a young blond guy, longish hair, well built and maybe 25, walked in from the water toward us. He wasn't really staring or anything, just sort of casually looking at us as my wife slipped off the rest of her suit. Right then, for just a moment, I wanted to cover her up and leave the beach, but I didn't say a word. We just sat down on our towels, and the guy from the water walked past us and sat down on his towel, about 10 feet behind us. I watched Janet put suntan lotion on her legs, face, stomach and breasts. Then she laid down on her back on the towel, glanced at me and smiled, and closed her eyes. I noticed the guy from the water was sitting up and still looking right at her; then he saw me notice him and grinned a very funny grin, sort of raised his eyebrows up a couple of times, and then went right back to staring at my wife again.

There's a commercial I've seen several times on television lately where this guy is talking about having an epiphany; a sudden, eye-opening realization or understanding. I just looked up epiphany in the dictionary, and the slant there is more religious – it talks about seeing a vision of God. I probably can't define epiphany properly or express the emotion adequately, but nothing in my experience had ever been so erotic as watching that guy look at my wife as she lay there nude. I may not be able to define what an epiphany is, but that day on the beach I know I had one. We never spoke to him or even saw him again, but I will never forget the feeling that first time I saw another man look at my wife's breasts and pussy, and knew he wanted her. Later in the day, we swam nude in water and walked on the shore. I could not believe how comfortable Janet seemed to be there. I guess I did like seeing the other "naked babes" as Janet had called them, but what I really liked – what almost knocked me senseless - was any time another guy would look at Janet.

When we were driving home that afternoon, Janet said she thought Haulover was a good beach, and that she had fun, but wasn't sure about going back. She asked me whether I was feeling jealous about other guys seeing her nude. I think I was still too stunned from the day to know what to say, so I told her the truth, or some of the truth anyway. I said I found it exciting and that I actually liked seeing other guys seeing her like that.

That night in bed, while we made love, I told her that the blond guy had stared and stared at her and must have thought she was very sexy. Janet laughed, "Don't say that! He was just a kid." But that night, she was very wet inside, and moved and moaned and actually came like I had not felt her come before, and it was good.

Our unspoken agreement had begun.