The young preacher's words burned in my ears: "How can this be? This has to be a set-up, a cruel joke! I do not accept this, this cannot be happening, dear Lord ... Not again." Crashed through my mind.
As my face drained of blood I felt myself go pail and I thought that I may faint, pass out, fall from my chair, but I grabbed the side edge of the table and all that I could manage to get out was: "What?"
I looked over at Richard expecting him to burst out laughing, say: "April fool!" Anything.
But he was enthralled in the young man's words and impressed by his virile youth and stature and I knew from previous unacceptable discussions that Richard attempted to have with me that this young man fit his profile all too well. More of the type he really wanted to have join us while he fucked me.
Richard's voice rang in my ears: "Well all right!" and he turned to look at me.
"Ann, you don't look so good, we need to order, you need to get something in your stomach." He told me.
My first thought was to get up and walk out, but they kind of had me pinned in and I heard myself say: "This isn't happening, I'm not falling for this."
Richard looked right through me in a way I had never seen before in all of our years of marriage and though his expression was angered he quietly and calmly said: "Like with Jim, this young man's dad, this is your idea. You initiated the arrangement, you made the deal and you would have reaped your benefit had I lost this wager, your wager, your terms and you know me and you know I would have paid up. Time to put your pussy where your mouth is. Waitress three menus please."
I couldn't move, I just sat there and I must have had a look of total stupefaction on my face because our young guest, the very one that I insisted join us looked me in the eye and said: "Don't worry Ann, I work with a lot of couples over sexual issues in their marriages. Let's just have a good meal and we'll go to your room and talk after. Let's not share your issues with the locals."
My immediate response to his words was that he was arrogant, cocky and self serving, but somehow I took peace in the fact that though he didn't come right out and say it, there was a lingering tone that I might be able to talk my way out of the hideous wager. The one that I so insisted on trying to cheat the outcome to be in my favor over.
I barely remembered eating my meal and I said very little as my husband and Jim's son made small talk. I was far too busy preparing a defense in my own head to listen to them. I needed a path of retreat and that's when it hit me! "Religion. I'll use sin as my defense! Lust and the Ten Commandments, that'll work." I reasoned in my head.
"Listen, by the way, my name is also Jim, country people in the farmlands where my folks came from were big on naming boy's after their fathers." He said. The he added: "Give me your room number. I want to get a few things out of my truck and it's best if I meet you there rather than us walking to your room together."
My husband handed him the spare key card and said: "One twelve. Just let yourself in."
Other than expressing how disappointed he was in me for trying to back out of my deal, Richard and I spoke very little on the walk over, but he made sure to reiterate that if he had lost, he would have honored his end of our wager. Then he said: "Quit pouting and make the best of it. You brought this deal to me ... Get over yourself."
Two steps later we were in the room and he was closing the blinds and pulling the heavy curtains over the front windows, then he instructed: "Turn all the lights on."
When I got to the second nightstand lamp, the door opened and in walked Jim Jr. with a satchel and a bottle of bourbon under his arm. He said: I've set aside the rest of today and tonight and I don't need to be back at church until around or after noon tomorrow so I arraigned for plenty of time. Let's have a drink, relax and then we'll talk a little."
In hearing that, my inner trembling and fret kind of subsided but I was still very anxious to put closure on both men's sexual expectations of me.
He pulled the corner chair between the foot of the bed and the desk and positioned the smaller desk chair directly in front of it about five feet away. Turning them to face each other he said: "Richard, have a seat and I'll take the desk chair and Ann, please sit yourself in between us on the foot of the bed."
As we complied he poured us a drink and said: "Good, now Ann, before dinner you looked like you were going to pass out. Tell me what's bothering you."
And I confidently unloaded everything, it just came pouring out me. I detailed how long we had been married, how Richard had become dissatisfied and selfish in our sex life for the past several months, how he wanted to use adult toys, how he has insists on me tasting myself, his latest obsession with my anus and his constant badgering and pressuring of me to take an additional lover for him to share me with. I even told him about last night's experiences with Jim, I didn't hold back, I told him everything.
Then to add my form of validity to Richard's recent bizarre actions, I said: "I am pushing sixty, as you can see I'm no fashion model and I am uncomfortable with my body. Perhaps if I was more fit and toned ..."
He interrupted: "Ann, what about this wager?" He questioned.
I answered: "I got to where I couldn't take the constant pressuring anymore, especially when I'm his captive audience on these long road trips back and forth between our properties. So yes, I made the wager. I didn't think anyone that I chose would agree to go through with it," Then in my defense I asked: "Why? What was I supposed to do?"
Anxious and a bit embarrassed and out of fear I might make my case, Richard stated: "Look, we didn't ask him to come here for this ..."
Jim Jr. cut him off: "No, that's a fair question, but I need to ask one first."
When I nodded, he asked: "In the event that my father or I had turned down your proposition, things would have gone the other way. Would you have held Richard to his end of that wager?" Then he shocked me by saying: "You needn't say any more Ann, the answer is written on your face. Just know that a lot of mature wives like you harbor these sexual hang ups."
I blurted out: "Hang ups! Look, what he wants is perverse! ... I'm not an animal!"
He came back: "No, and as men, neither are we. You see I counsel a lot of mature couples around your age and even older. I hear that repetitively from the wives. But what the flustered wife fails to realize is that as humans we are the only living being in all of God's creation that have sex for enjoyment and pure pleasure. All the rest or His creatures mate for the sole purpose of procreation. The scents, the flavors the tastes and aromas are all a gift and they're there to heighten arousal and add more pleasure to the act of sex. If you really reach down and search your heart from within, you will remember the first time that Richard directed you to smell and then taste yourself, added a little more excitement and some heightened arousal, am I right?"
Looking away, I happened to glance in the mirror over the desk and I literally saw my own mouth gaping open and I heard myself try to reason: "But you are a preacher, a man of God!"
"Like my father before me." He responded, then he asked: "Ann, what are your real objections?"
I didn't know what to say, I didn't know how to react. All that I could think to say was: "But I was taught ..."
"Values?" He mocked: "right from wrong?" He mused: "You see Ann, this stigma that you are wrestling with has been keeping both you and your husband from true sexual pleasures that you should have been sharing together for many years. If you have an issue with it, look at your marriage as the fifty/fifty proposition that your vows committed you too and yield to your husband's needs half the time that you have sexual relations. The other half the time that you two enjoy sex can be all you."
I tried to react but all that came out was a shocked and surprised: "Huh?"
He explained: "Old fashioned outdated parental influences have had adverse effects on mature women and married couples over forty five. I see it every day in my line of work. For example, they seem to have a real problem with sharing where the younger wives today don't. Some even refuse their husbands the pure joys of oral. They've been taught by their mother's or older girl friends that if you don't hold some things back they will lose control when in reality, neither partner should have control. Fifty/fifty, remember?"
Then he went on to say: "Animals, like you brought up earlier, never perform anal and other than some sniffing and licking they never perform full oral to either provide or receive pleasure. This supports what I said when I told you that animals only mate to procreate. Humans were given the gift of sex for pleasure. What amazes me is the simple fact that the loving act of anal produces feelings of submissiveness, humility and then passion at the onset, then a much, much more intense orgasm for the female at the conclusion. But because of the human induced stigma surrounding anal, these women will cheat themselves out of the deep seeded pleasures that normal human sex act affords them.
