Had I seen the advert asking for cuckolds to share their misfortune a year ago I would have thought it inconceivable that I might be telling this to you now. I thought that then I had a good strong marriage. Some might say that it is still a good marriage, some might even claim that it has been enhanced but I cannot write off twenty-five years of fidelity without regret. Mea culpa. What makes it harder to bear is the knowledge that it was my fault. There is a phrase, 'the author of his own misfortunes' which most certainly can be applied to me.
I have been married for almost twenty-six years to Beth who became my wife shortly after her twentieth birthday. Then she was size ten then but now she has expanded to a comfortable fourteen. I am happy with this - 'plenty to get hold of' I tell her and I still do like getting hold of her. Her appearance is very much how a Mum should look which is appropriate because we are the parents of two grown up daughters. Abigail the eldest will soon be twenty-six, (which should tell you something), and her sister Karen is two years younger. Both married and left home although Abigail did come back for a year.
We own a large Victorian house and have never lived anywhere else. We bought it in a very dilapidated condition and such houses were out of favour at the time but it is rather different these days. The mortgage is paid which means that we are sitting on quite a lump of money.
About three years ago, sensing that Abigail's marriage was in trouble, I had the attics, (old servants quarters), converted into a self-contained flat with big dormer windows. I wanted to provide a bolt hole for my daughter, reasoning that while she might hesitate to return as a member of the family, the flat would allow her to maintain independence.
Abigail moved in the week after it was finished having been hanging on for such an opportunity to leave her husband. Just under a year later she left again to move in with some chap who it seems had been on the scene for quite a while. Belatedly I realised that parental love had made me see her marital situation as more one-sided than it really was. That same year I was made redundant. I had been at that firm forever and quickly found that no-one wanted to employ a fifty-two year old man with obsolete specialist skills. Beth had not worked for years apart from unpaid charity work so we were both in the same boat.
Unemployment money was very little but fortunately we had a resource that could be capitalised on - namely the flat. We advertised and as we lived very near to a centre for sporting excellence, it was no surprise when the first applicant to ring the bell was an athlete. He assured us that he did very well at his sport and was able to comfortably afford our rather high rent. The fact that he was black did not bother us but apparently he had been rejected for several other places he had viewed - but always for spurious reasons other than colour. The news that he was a reserve for the Olympic team was a bonus because we were both avid watchers of athletics on television. It turned out that his girlfriend was even better, being considered a real prospect for a medal. Both of them were sprinters.
My wife and I took to Paul immediately because he was a really nice guy. Softly spoken, modest with a keen sense of humour and highly intelligent, he was the kind of young man that anyone would be proud to have as a son. He was not an extrovert but neither could he be described as shy. However I felt that it was his character as well as possible requirements of his sport which kept him in his flat for long periods of time when he was not actually out training. I do know that he gratefully accepted our invitation to either eat with us or spend an evening talking from time to time. Once as reciprocal hospitality, he put on a meal for us in his flat which mainly comprised the more exotic foodstuffs that he preferred. From then we included such dishes whenever he joined us and soon developed a taste for it ourselves.
Paul's girlfriend Serena was an exceptionally attractive girl. Technically black, she had a much paler skin than Paul and wore her head in multicoloured braids, creating the effect with bright beads woven along the strands. Her face had a serene beauty and I thought had some resemblance a disco singer of the eighties call Ami something or other. With what foresight had Serena's parents chosen her name? Her body had that full bursting ripeness without any superfluous flesh that seems peculiar to coloured female sprinters.
If you are becoming jealous of Paul having Serena, I must point out that he wasn't getting any - at least not very much. Serena stayed overnight in the flat with him on only one night per week, occasionally two but more often, not at all. I once said to him tactfully, "You don't see much of your girlfriend in the late evening."
"It's her damn trainers fault," he told me ruefully. "He believes in the philosophy that an athlete should not waste energy on extraneous physical activity."
"I always find that a nice sex session always puts extra spring in my step," I said grinning.
He grinned back. "So do I but sometimes I wonder. I get bloody frustrated occasionally and it is then that I always seem to do my best times."
When I was his age I was climbing all over Beth at every opportunity so I wondered how Paul stood it - especially with such a delectable package as Serena for a girlfriend.
Our house had a large secluded garden and since my redundancy I had been able to devote a lot of time to getting it nice. We were having a particularly good summer with a great number of warm sunny days. My wife and I took these opportunities to sit in the garden and Paul tended to join us - for the pleasure of feeling the sun on his skin rather than any need to get a tan. We saw more of Serena during those afternoons because she too had a liking for lying in the sun and invariably turned up when the weather was nice. When I say 'saw more of her', I mean that I saw virtually everything that there was to see because she wore the briefest of brief bikinis. After the first few visits, realising that the garden was not overlooked from any direction, she started to sunbathe topless. The bottom part of the swim suit which she did retain was hardly worth the bother - a small triangle of material nominally covering the pubic area held in place by thongs no wider than a shoe lace. She made no attempt to lie decorously and many times I was able to see how the string between her legs had worked its way into her slit.
I think that any man would get hot and bothered in my situation. I know that the sweat poured off me - and that had nothing to do with the heat of the day. Afternoon after afternoon I had to sit with my book held firmly on my lap lest everyone should see how much sight of the near naked girl affected me. Beth of course did notice. "You are nothing but a dirty old man," she said scathingly one evening. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself drooling over Serena the way you do."
"I don't know what you are talking about," I blustered. "I just sit and read my book whether she is in the garden or not."
"Don't think I don't know why you hold you book on your lap instead up in front of your eyes as you usually do, "Beth retorted. "I know that you can't read a damn word at that distance.
I was caught out and found guilty so it was time to cop a plea. "Is it any wonder," I said defensively, "any red blooded man would react seeing her almost naked most of the time."
