So there I was - fifty-two years old and planning to commit adultery for the first time in my life. I'd been married to the same woman for thirty years, and never been unfaithful. I'd negotiated my way through the modern world, seemingly made up of human beings obsessed with sex, and managed to avoid that one mortal sin at least. But tonight was going to be different. Tonight I was going to going to cast myself into the pit of lust, treachery, and deceit. I was going to have sex with a woman I hardly knew, and who was twenty years my junior. Why was I doing this? Well I'm a middle-aged man (going through a mid-life crisis) and she's a younger woman who fancies a bit on the side - so the reason is obvious isn't it.
Or is it?
Well no, it wasn't quite like that. In this tale I want to explain to you why I did what I did - and why I'd do it again without a moment's hesitation. My story is based on real people and real events, so anyone looking for quick cheap thrills, better turn away now. What I offer here is mostly true, and, as is often the case, truth can be both less and more than fiction. My tale is in many ways quite ordinary, and yet at the same time I hope it's unusually honest. But however it may seem to you, to me it will always be the most amazing experience of my life.
It was about seven o'clock on a Friday evening in November. I was driving through the countryside in southern England to meet a young lady named Eliza. We were planning to spend a (dirty?) weekend together in a hotel in Sussex. I'd made my excuses to my wife and she'd made hers to her husband. I was expecting to arrive around nine - and I was scared shitless!
Why?
Well that's a long story, and without going too deeply in to my past history, let me just say I am somewhat inhibited (OK, I'll be honest - I'm scared of sex!). In 30 years of marriage I'd never had sexual intercourse with any woman other than my wife. Worse, when I got married I was a virgin! As you will have deduced, by the age of 52 when I first met this lady I'd only ever made love to one woman in the whole of my life!
Alright, I'd had (both before and during my marriage) several relationships with women that whilst not leading to intercourse, were nevertheless sexual in nature. Moreover, many opportunities to have intercourse presented themselves to me. Why it had never actually occurred was a combination of factors. Inexperience leading to performance fears was probably the main one - but guilt at betraying my wife was another. And frankly bad timing (or simply bad luck) was also a significant contributor. All these factors combined together in a way to act like a brake on my actions whenever I came to some critical point. I certainly never consciously decided to be faithful to my wife, it's just when it came to it I was too bloody scared to actually have intercourse with anyone else, and that probably had more to do with the inexperience of my youth than anything else. Although habit too sets in after a while. The older you are, and the less experienced you are, the harder it is to change.
Having said all that, I now realise there was another component. I'd simply never met anyone who tempted me physically. No, that's not quite true - what I mean is, I never met anyone I really cared enough about to make me want to break through my internal barriers. Like everyone else I had my sexual fantasies and masturbated of course, but for me normal heterosexual sex was never all it's cracked up to be. I'd got bored having sex with the same women, and I'd come to believe sex itself was overrated.
At the same time there was always this expectation (hyped up by the media) around the notion of 'performance', and as I clearly wasn't any kind of 'stud', I didn't particularly want to be made to look a fool of in front of someone I was trying to impress. Sex always seemed (to me) to be so much easier for a woman. I mean, if you're female you just got to lie back and 'take' it, whereas the poor guy has to 'get hard', keep going without cumming, and then make sure he knows enough about female anatomy to properly 'satisfy' the girl. If he fails to achieve any of these, there's something wrong with him - he's a 'bad' lover. For a woman, however, if you're not lying back and letting him 'do it', you just got to rub this big hard thing a few times and he cums - and you can safely assume it was 'great for him' and everything's alright (although, of course, it often isn't).
OK, so none of that's exactly true (it just seems that way sometimes), but for whatever reason, in the end the only person I really wanted to have sex with was myself, and I was never concerned to have intercourse outside of a legitimate relationship. At the same time my wife was not particularly sexually active (or interested), and our experimentation was rather limited (to say the least). I suppose I eventually consigned sexual intercourse (like eating and drinking) to that category in my mind reserved for practises overrated in real life. I put 'being in love' in that same category too. Romance and all that went with it was a product of 'Hormones and Hollywood', nothing more.
I don't sound like a very interesting guy, do I? Well I guess I'm not.
So how did I actually manage to do it on this occasion? How did I find the courage to make arrangements to go to a hotel in the country, with a twenty-eight year old woman I hardly knew, knowing full well that for some of the time at least, I'd have to be making love to her?
Well part of it had to do with Eliza herself. This woman was something entirely new to me. She was strong-willed, intelligent and an immensely insightful person. I had already spent one afternoon with her (not having sex) and been surprised at how 'comfortable' I felt both physically and mentally. Unlike me, she was entirely uninhibited and clearly had a great deal of experience. She was also extremely attractive and desirable, and she seemed to understand me in a way my wife never had (where have you heard that before!?).
Don't get me wrong, although Eliza was most definitely a desirable woman, her good looks and obvious sexual experience were not what attracted me. Quite the reverse in fact, they frightened the life out of me! What attracted me was partly her inner strength (in other words she pushed me into it!), partly the fact she seemed to want to be with me (which I found both odd and incredibly flattering), and partly the excitement I felt whenever I was with her. She was the kind of woman other men would admire you for being with, and wish they were in your place. In other words, she was good for my Ego.
But all this was combined with a growing feeling on my part, that it would soon too late for me to do anything 'crazy' in my life. I felt trapped, enclosed by a wall of routine and normality. My life had started to seem empty and pointless, and without ultimate meaning. I had tried to be a 'good' person, and ended up being a 'boring' person, and somewhere deep inside I wanted to change that feeling. I wanted just for once in my life to do something bad or naughty or wrong. I wanted to be 'the villain' just for a little while. That said, I was utterly convinced the coming weekend would be a total disaster.
You see there was no sexual component in my desire to sleep with Eliza. As I have said, sex for me was a non-entity. Indeed rather than being drawn forward by desire or passion, the fear of my inadequate sexual performance was the major obstacle I felt to the whole exercise. I guess I am, like many men, very egotistical, and I had no desire to be seen as inept or inexperienced, and the same thing that stopped me having sex with anyone else was a very strong drag on my desire to go away with this Lady. Indeed I had to make an extreme effort of courage even to consider it. As I said, in practice I was terrified!
In the same way I had no expectations of it being an 'erotic' experience. That thought simply never entered my head. My drives were about freedom, and braking out of the straight-jacket that was my life. It was about self-expression, about no longer seeing myself as weak and incapable. Sure I wanted to be with her, but sex was something I would have to 'fake' as I had faked it all these years with my wife. The reward was ending up with someone young and fresh and different. Physical joy was an illusion, at least for me, and my mental preparation for the experience was about finding ways of 'giving' sexual joy without my partner realising I didn't know what I was doing, and 'being seen' to take sexual joy when really all I wanted was for it to be over. In other words, playing whatever part I had to play in order to keep the woman happy. Much of my life has been like that - I'm afraid to say.
I was particularly scared that once I was in bed with this young woman I wouldn't be able to get hard, so I abstained from any kind of sex in the weeks leading up to the trip. I also read every sex manual I could get my hands on, as I was painfully aware of how much the world had changed in the last twenty years. I believed the normal 'bump and grind' I was used to would never be enough for Eliza. I only wished there was some kind of Night School I could have attended to learn how to satisfy the modern woman. I just knew it would all go wrong, and I had a terrible sinking feeling after this weekend, she be looking at me with utter distain and walking out of my life forever.
II
I arrived about eight forty-five, after a long drive through the darkening countryside of Sussex. I'd spent most of the journey telling myself I could do this - and not believing a word of it. Indeed I couldn't believe I'd actually turned up at the Hotel. It says something for the emptiness of my life that I was willing to risk so much just to tell myself I'd done something crazy at least once.
As I parked the car and wandered into the bar in search of Eliza, my one thought was alcohol. Maybe a couple of very stiff drinks would ease the butterflies currently holding an end-of-year party in my stomach. It's cold in England in November and there was a bright log fire burning in the corner of the bar. Inside the bar was Old-World with big black beams and oak tables and chairs. Sitting to one side of the fire, clutching what seemed like a bottle of Lager, and dressed in jeans and a baggy red sweater, was Eliza.
She was about five one in height, with close-cropped dark auburn hair, cut almost boyishly. It made her look child-like sometimes, and more than once she'd taken my breath away with how young and beautiful she looked. Her bright blue eyes sparkled out from under strong dark eyebrows, her face was long and lean, and her chin ever-so-slightly pointed. Her lips were full and naturally red.
In personality she was entirely self-possessed, not afraid of anything or anyone. As I've said her mind was razor sharp. Often in the past she'd cut through something or other I was rambling about, to challenge some deeply hidden and often unconscious assumption. I'm not a particularly ignorant man and I'd found this sharpness of wit both unusual and alluring. She seemed to see so much more than any woman I'd known before. She'd seen my sorrow and my emptiness, for example, and she wanted to change that - to give me some meaning and purpose in my life. She was a pretty unique character.
Over the few months I'd known her, we'd talked about everything from work to politics to God, and many a time we'd have heated discussions from diametrically opposed viewpoints. I could tell she loved the challenge of an argument just as much as I did. She'd connected to my mind in a way I never knew a woman could. I would love to have been her 'friend', but with men and women it never seems to stay that way. Also, as I said, she was a 'hot' lady, and she clearly wanted to bed me.
As I wandered up to her table, she suddenly saw me and gave me a broad, relieved, and at the same time, conspiratorial smile.
