Honest to God, I never saw it coming. I'm fairly clueless in these matters, or so my husband says, and it just doesn't occur to me that someone, anyone, would plan something like this. And he, my husband I mean, is probably right. I don't walk around thinking about sex all the time, and it takes my husband, or, rarely, some other man, to put the idea of sex into my head. Now, he, my husband I mean, again, says that he thinks about it all the time. He says he'll spend the entire day dreaming about me. I really don't believe that, but he insists it's true. Sometimes I feel sorry for him because he has all these ideas about sex and only me to put them to use on. I enjoy it, I guess, but I think he'd like more quantity and quality, and I'm sometimes tired or cranky or preoccupied, and he has to work at it. Anyway, all that is to say that what happened was not something I expected. I'm just not built that way.
Besides, we're well into our fifties. Almost sixty! If something like this happens in your life, you'd expect it to have happened long before now. I don't know, maybe older couples have a kind of sexual renaissance when their kids are all grown and gone. First of all, you don't have to worry about feeding them and meeting their other needs, which frees up a lot of time and saves a lot of energy that can be put to use doing other things. Second of all, you don't need to worry about whether they can hear you. Sex around here has certainly gotten noisier.
So, on this Sunday evening, I was caught unaware. I want to say "with my pants down", but they weren't down. They were right where they were supposed to be. As was the rest of my clothing. I was totally minding my own business, moving about the house, doing laundry, putting clothes away, and getting ready for the coming week. My husband, Dan, and his best pal, Tim, were in the family room watching what I was hoping would be the last of several football games they'd watched that day. They hadn't wanted to leave the television so we had pizza and beer for supper while they screamed at the TV, which is something I've never quite understood. After two beers, which is enough to make me more than slightly buzzed, I still didn't understand it.
I was busy in our bedroom, doing my best to put clothes away and get organized. I had just closed the bottom drawer of my dresser, stood up and turned around, and there was Tim standing five feet away.
Tim is a nice guy. He's married to Gina, a friend of mine, who would have been there also were she not visiting her mother who was having health problems. I'd promised her that I would feed Tim while she was gone, though she likely had something in mind that was healthier than pizza and beer. But that was what the men wanted, and that's what they got. Tim is also good-looking, like Gina, who turns much younger heads when she walks down the street. He's taller and wider than Dan, and I've often looked at him with a pleased eye. And I don't mean that in a prurient way, it's just that he is a pleasant person to look at. On top of that, he has a pleasant way about him, and I've always enjoyed his company. If I really think about it, I'd have to admit that there has been a time or two when, for one reason or another, we found ourselves alone together, and I had wondered, a time or two, what I would have done if he'd reached out and grabbed me. See? Dan is wrong. I do think about sex sometimes. But I'm not sure I even realize it. Anyway, he never reached out and grabbed me, so I didn't have to make a decision, and it doesn't matter.
In any event, there he was, and there was something on his mind.
"Hi, Sandy. Dan said I should check out your new mattress. We need a new one, too."
Well, it's kind of weird to have your friends check out your mattress, but what was I going to say?
So I said, "Oh. Yeah. Dan really likes it. And it was so inexpensive." It was one of those mattress in a box foam deals that gets delivered to your door and you open it on the bed and it expands slowly to its full size. Fortunately, I'd changed the sheets and made the bed earlier. I think he was planning on actually getting in it.
"Do you mind?" he said.
Well, what was I going to say after Dan had sent him up to "check it out?"
So I said, "No, of course not."
With that he walked over and sat on the edge of the bed, took off his shoes and his socks, stood up, pulled back the covers, and lay on the bed.
Now, why I stood there and watched him, I just don't know. I should have found something to do somewhere else, but my feet wouldn't move. And I couldn't remember the last time I watched a man other than Dan get into bed, and I was, uh, fascinated. No, not fascinated, but interested somehow. I mean, I was glued to the spot while Tim turned back the covers and got into our bed. Was I thinking about getting in with him? No, I wasn't, consciously, but something made me watch, unblinkingly.
"Wow, it's really comfy. But all mattresses are comfy at first. Do you like it?"
I was trying really hard not to say something either suggestive or stupid. I was more than aware that I was talking to a man in bed who was not my husband. It didn't matter that I wasn't in bed with him. It was still weird. But I remained transfixed. Furthermore, one of the very noticeable changes this mattress had engendered was in the arena of sex. Dan and I had liked how it was nice and firm underneath, usually, me. It didn't bounce up and down with us like a typical mattress. But I wasn't about to mention this delightful feature to Tim. I came close to it, though, and said something nearly as stupid.
"Oh, yes. It doesn't transmit motion like an innerspring mattress. One person can move around or get in or out of bed without disturbing the other." Dumb, really dumb.
"Really? We have big problems with that. Show me."
At this point, I still don't think I was consciously thinking of sex. But I was mildly alarmed. Tim was asking me to get in bed with him. Something in my brain warned me against it, even if I hadn't realized that it would be a very sexually-charged thing to do.
"What, you mean get in and out of bed? Right now?"
"Well, get in bed and bounce around so I can see what you are talking about. And if not now, when would you like to do it?"