Thinking back, it all started because our sex life had begun to get kind of routine.
Not that our seven year marriage wasn't a happy one. Kathy is the love of my life, and I know she feels the same about me. But you know how it is. After a while, you just have to work harder to generate that freshness, that novelty. And if you want to know the truth, over the last year or so, our time in bed was really a dim reflection of the excitement we once had.
It wasn't just her, and it wasn't just me. But it seemed more often than not that both of us were just going through the motions. And lately we were having a hard time even summoning up the energy to do that. Pretty much now every day ended with nothing more than a "Goodnight, Babe," "Goodnight, Hon," and a quick peck.
About a year ago, I suggested maybe we could watch porn, you know, to get us in the mood. Kathy was skeptical about that, but at that point was willing to try anything, and so it became a part of our regular Friday night routine to sit in front of the television, watching a rented dvd. I tried to get the ones that claimed that they appealed to women, and Kathy seemed to like them alright, I guess. And they worked, after a fashion -- at least we were having sex a bit more often. But after a while, the novelty of that wore off, and we were back to our pretty much sexless habits.
So, it was about a month ago, I brought up the subject. There was no way to work it in smoothly after discussing the weather, and how things had gone at work, so I just blurted it out.
"So you're tired of the porn videos, hon?"
"What?" she asked, apparently taken by surprise at this turn in the conversation.
"You know, the porn videos. We haven't done that for a few months now."
"That was always your idea, Mark," she replied. "I watched them because you wanted to. It was never a real turn on for me, if you want to know the truth."
"What was wrong with them?" I asked.
"Well, I suppose there was nothing actually wrong with them. It just seemed kind of artificial, somehow. Watching on a screen. I don't know, I just never could imagine that kind of thing as being real, that's all," my wife said
"Real?"
"Maybe that's not the right word," Kathy said. "I think I'm just the kind of person that can't get that excited by something taken with a camera, viewed on a screen. It always struck me as fake, you know, kind of removed?"
After that conversation, it seemed clear that we weren't going to get any assistance for our sex life by watching something on the television or computer. And so, I made up my mind to just, well, just be satisfied with things the way they were.
Coincidentally, a couple of weeks later, I overheard a bunch of younger guys at the office talking in the cafeteria about a bachelor party they had attended over the weekend.
"Wow, watching that Ingrid, what a turn on," one said.
"And that Mario, what an unbelievable stud," said another.
I sat down near them, trying not to seem too obviously interested. And as they continued to rehash the weekend's events, it became clear that the bachelor party had included some kind of live sex show.
I allowed myself to start thinking, "Maybe I could talk Kathy into us seeing something like that. Maybe, just maybe, she'd be curious enough to see if something in person would be more intense, more real, than watching a video."
But I needed to find out some details. Later in the day, I wandered casually into Jerry's office, a cup of coffee in hand.
"Hi Mark," he said, as he looked up from some drawings he was reviewing.
"How do those look?" I said.
"Pretty good, although I think we're going to need some additional detail on the rear elevation," he replied.
"Great," I said. "By the way, I heard you guys talking about Bill's bachelor party earlier. Sounded pretty hot."
"You have no idea," he said. "To tell you the truth, I never saw a man and woman having sex right in front of me before. Boy, it was pretty intense."
"How did you guys find these people?" I asked.
"Mario and Ingrid? Actually, I was the one that lined them up. They came from the circus," he said.
"They came from where?"
"You heard me. The circus. Yes, there are still circuses out there, although they're pretty much dying out now. Yeah. My brother, when he got out of the army and was looking for something to do, he became a clown. Right, literally, a clown in the circus. And he got to know Mario and Ingrid there. They were trapeze performers, or acrobats, something like that," Jerry smiled at my interest in all this.
He continued, "About a year or so ago, the circus was closing down, and Mario and Ingrid decided they would try to use their, um, physical talents in a different way. So when we were looking for someone to do Bill's bachelor party, I talked to my brother, and he recommended that we have a performance by Mario and Ingrid."
"Are they on the internet or something, I mean, how do they advertise for business?" I asked.
Jerry said, "No, they try to stay way under the radar. It's strictly by word of mouth from trusted clients."
"Um, are you a trusted client?" I said. And that was how it began. In the next couple of days, Jerry arranged for me to talk to Mario about what I had in mind. Actually I didn't really know what I had in mind. So Mario had to give me some guidance.
But that was the easy part. I figured the hard part would be when I brought this idea up with Kathy.
Actually, I kind of figured wrong.
