My husband and I didn't have sex very often, and when we did if was brief and business like, not very tender or loving, but when he asked me if I had ever thought of going to a swingers resort, I was shocked. I told him no, of course, and that was true, until, that is, he mentioned it, and then I could think of nothing else. Sex was not an important part of our lives, and it hardly ever happened. It just didn't seem to me like good wives thought of such things: having sex with other people's husbands was for women in novels with virile men without shirts on the covers and heated, sexy stories inside about women who had affairs with masculine gardeners.
I had never even given it one single thought until he brought it up to me and made me think of it constantly after that. I then began reading those kind of novels you find in bookstores that have curtains across one doorway that says you have to be over a certain age to go in. I was astonished that people actually wrote about doing that stuff, and I was even more astonished that some people may actually be doing some of that nonsense, since I thought people only did that in videos you had to rent from back rooms in X-rated bookstores that had private booths you had to rent by the hour.
I asked him why would I want to have sex with someone else, but after he asked me I really wanted sex with someone else. It was a total conundrum. I had not thought about sex with anyone else until he asked me about having sex with someone else. Then it became an obsession.
The first book I read was Lady Chatterly's Lover, then Leaving Cheyanne, about a woman loving two men and giving each a son, and then Unfaithful, about a woman who just can't help it. It seemed like everywhere there were stories about women with lots of men. I barely had the one I was married to, I realized.
I began looking at men differently. All men. Instead of just seeing them as people, individuals who had lives and jobs and families, I began seeing them as possibilities, prospective lovers who had a potential interest in me. I began fantasizing, something I had never done before, and I began to enjoy it. I began actually fingering myself and masturbating to climaxes illustrated with either the images from my books or actual photos from magazines, often men's pictorials that had an endless supply of steamy photographs.
I still couldn't tell my husband that I was suddenly interested in attending a mate-swapping function when I couldn't even tell him I was reading Lady Chatterly's Lover, but the reality was I could not think of anything else. When I looked through a woman's magazine at the dentist's office, I looked for articles about infidelity and wife swapping groups, about desperate housewives and essays about how unnatural monogamy is or whether or not women actually could be faithful to one man. Then I read Fanny Hill, Insatiable, and Fifty Shades of Gray. After the first two, I was convinced I needed a sex life. Then I read Unfaithful, about a woman who had multiple affairs with a great many men.
I wanted to talk to another woman about it, but I was afraid to mention it to most of my friends, but Colleen would know. She was the most worldly of my friends, so I asked her. "Oh heavens yes, darling, I have been fucking other men since Clyde was a cadet," she said with her usual nonchalance. "Are you thinking about taking on a suitor?" she asked casually.
"Oh no," I said. "I was just wondering about it."
"Wondering is the first step, sweetheart. Don't you know that? You got to wonder about it first. We all do that. We wonder, and then we wander," she said with a smile. "You're about to the wandering stage. I can tell. You just need to get fucked. Is there anyone who you are wondering about, specifically?" I told her no, which was true, no one specifically. I just was thinking about being fucked in general terms. I told her about what I had been reading and her smile broadened.
Being fucked. I had never even thought those words before. "When you get specific, let me know," she said. "I just love to hear about a sister getting her cheater's cherry broken," she said casually. "It is a lot larger club than you probably realize," she said.
When I got home I kept thinking about what Colleen had said about the number of women who involve themselves in sexual pleasure with men they're not married to. If Dave was asking me about a swinger event, then he was thinking about expanding his horizons as well. I couldn't see him attracting the sexual interest of a horny young wife and I know that is a terrible comment about myself. Why would I be satisfied with what I thought no none else would want? I am not sure when I decided it, but somewhere between the 'how could you ask me that' and the 'I really might consider it' that I told myself I should go for it. That I should treat myself to a sexual gratuity and actually find myself a boy toy. If other woman, like Colleen, could pleasure themselves with non married human flesh, then I could I thought in an uncharacteristic rush that caught me by surprise.
I began planning my strategy. I started looking in places I never would have even considered just a few days before. I started checking the internet for websites that specialized in 'sexual topics' and reading everything they had to say. Most were full of profiles of men looking for a connection. That is not what I wanted. What I wanted, I guess, was one of those men on the covers of the books to come and take me, to cover my mouth with kisses, and smother me with sex.
When I left the house determined to find my secret love, to put myself into the mix of housewives involved in extramarital sex, I figured I should talk to Colleen. When she saw me she just beamed. "Are you here to tell you've gone specific?" she asked. I just smiled back. "Come tell Collee all about it," she said.
I told her I just needed to understand myself sexually, because I never have. I thought I was one person and found I was totally someone else. I explained how he had asked me something that I could not stop thinking about, about the books I'd read and what went through my mind as I read them. I told about my deep sexual desires, and how I wanted to get to know myself. She told me everyone finds out about themselves when they confront their sexuality. I suspect that was true, but I had no firsthand knowledge.
My husband and I had sex, of course, but in doing so I never learned about myself sexually. We never had sex very often, but I never allowed myself to see the real me, to let myself go enough to find out who I was, what I liked, what I yearned for, and what I just had to have to survive sexually. I guess before I didn't really know who I was or what I missed. I was finding that I am a more sexual person than I ever realized before.
I asked Colleen how I could find myself, what I should do for just me, and she smiled and patted my hand. "You should do what pleases you, what makes you want to get up each morning and look forward to an exciting orgasm in the afternoon. You need to please yourself, my dear, and you don't need a man for that, but they can help a great deal find your special spot, your secret garden. You know what I mean?" she asked. "I do think you need a lover," she said taking my hand. "And you do too, right?" I nodded, and smiled shyly. "Man or woman, you need to find one."
