Missing my chance
I was invited to a sweet sixteen. I was the date of the girl whose birthday it was. She was a brunette, statuesque but tending toward the heavy side. In those days girls had these hair cuts like beehives on their heads, held solid by hairspray.
When I danced with her, her hair stuck to my cheek like candy floss. It had about the same consistency, but a bit stiffer, as if she had coated her hair in viagra or dried semen.
I was polite. I laughed politely. I danced politely and, given the feel of her hair, ended up by dancing with her at arms length. She commented on how classy she thought I was not to try and squeeze her the way “other boys” did. She winked at me and tried to pull me closer but my chest refused to touch those outthrust breasts reinforced by metal struts.
We played charades and for some reason, I was very good. I made everyone laugh with my imitations. As the evening wore on, other girls asked me to dance as well.
We did the twist, a specialty of mine and in those days, I could twist vigorously for hours. The sweat poured off me and my shirt was sopping. My date no longer tried to pull me close but looked at me disdainfully.
Another girl, her smaller breasts bouncing more loosely in her dress, had no qualms about pulling me close. She wanted every slow dance with me and by the third slow dance was glued to me from top to toe.
I reached down and pulled her into me. Too bad the dresses were so frilly and puffy, I could not actually feel her. But her breasts pressed nicely into my chest, well my upper abdomen, she was a bit short. She buried her head in my shoulder and her small arms reached up to hold the back of my head.
During one slow dance when we turned out the lights, she pulled my head down and bit my ear. “Why don’t you come and visit me at my house? It’s summer and I’m not working. We could dance some more like this. You’re a really great slow dancer.”
I got her number and towards the end of the evening, I managed to walk her to the door where I kissed her in the dark outside. She french kissed me and I squeezed her buttocks.
When we parted and I shook her hand, we held on for as long as possible as she turned slowly away to walk to her house in the neighbourhood.
I was on top of the world. I had made a date to see her for Thursday and this was Saturday night.
Back in the house, my date was standing with her arms crossed and her beehive starting to collapse.
“Oh, there you are,” she said. “I was wondering where you had gotten to? You seemed to pay a lot of attention to that little slut!”
“Her? Oh, I just walked her out because she wanted to ask me something,” I said innocently and kissed the sweaty, puffy hand of my date, which seemed to mollify her.
The other boys at the party had not come with dates and it was by chance that one asked me to give him a lift.
I agreed and as we got into the car, he noted, “I saw you dancing with that hot little number tonight. She is really something. Did you get lucky?”
“What do you mean?”
“Didn’t she invite you over to her place? I think she invited every guy there for at least one day. I’m going on Tuesday. What about you?”
“Uh, Thursday,” I said and fell silent. He kept on talking about something or other but I didn’t feel like talking.
You would think that someone who had just been making out with a girl other than his own date, might not have taken this information so seriously. You would be wrong.
It hurt my ego to think she was just as interested in this little twerp as she was in me, funny, smart, athletic and handsome.
But there it was.
I didn’t go to her place on Thursday out of sheer jealousy and ego. Looking back on it from the distance several decades, I am not sure that I didn’t miss out on a fun time just for spite.
Maybe if I close my eyes, she will invite me again and this time, even though she probably enoyed the favours of others, I would go.
How my wife helped me romance other women
First, let me state the obvious. I really love my wife and I would do almost anything to avoid hurting her feelings.
But second, there I was pursuing another woman for her sexual favours while my wife was busy with her work. This sounds bad I know, but you should always know the whole truth before jumping to conclusions.
You see, my wife has a condition which means she cannot have sex with me. She, is in her particular way, an invalid. It’s worse than that. She finds it painful if I hug her. The highlight of my month is when I hug her once or twice on the rare occasion she is feeling less pain.
Does that make me more sympathetic? What else can I tell you to appeal to your sense of decency and fair play? Well over the last 20 years, I have managed to keep myself away from other women. Yes, it’s true. I have kept it in my pants for twenty years. I feel that is an accomplishment for a man. Don’t I deserve a medal or something?
The last few months, I have decided to give myself some kind of reward. No one else will. So I started to flirt with women who find me attractive. I hadn’t done this for so long, I wasn’t sure I knew how.
A few times I have visited women who find me attractive in their homes. Well one thing has led to another. And the other thing has occurred now a few times. It reminded me of how much I still had to learn about lovemaking. And although I am an old dog, I think I can still learn new tricks.
One of the things I have learned is to be more romantic, giving and generous in my lovemaking. This is a good thing to learn, no? Secretly, I would like to show my spouse what I have learned, but I am never able to do so.
This puts me in the odd position of being more romantic with the women I see than with my wife. So I bring them flowers on occasion, flowers that suits the particular person I am seeing.
And whenever I do so, I think, it is too bad my spouse would see this flower bringing as out of character, if I brought her some. She would ask me what I had done wrong!
There is something burdensome about this flower buying though – the cost. Once you have bought several bouquets, you will know what I mean. So, I was somewhat preoccupied with my bills and got a print out from the bank to make sure I still had enough money in my own account to pay for things I did not want my wife to know about.
My wife’s attitude towards my infidelity by the way, is an interesting one. It is like the American Army’s attitude to Gays and Lesbians: Don’t ask and don’t tell. As long as I keep her ignorant of my extracurricular activities and do not let them interfere with my domestic duties, she does not ask; but this is a fine line that I walk.
So, as I mentioned, I have this private account, where I keep small amounts of money – mad money if you will. I can buy condoms and other equipment, and of course flowers.
And as I mentioned I got a printout to go over how much money I had left for that month. The number of women I could buy flowers for was, after all, limited by the sum available in the bank!
So on the one hand, I am very lucky because I have this free time that allows me to see as many women as I can squeeze into my calendar. On the other hand, my resources are finite. And on the third hand, although I always make sure to hide away condoms and other devices, I don’t always pay attention to what I do with my bank account print outs.
So, there I was one afternoon, with a woman whose company I found so enjoyable and who apparently enjoyed mine in return. And we were doing the horizontal cha cha at her place when my cell phone rang.
Without thinking, I picked up the cell phone with my free hand and said, “hello.”
“Hello,” said my wife, “where have I caught you?”
For the briefest second, I thought of saying, “in flagrante delicto,” but I knew she understood Italian and Latin. So, instead, I said, “I was just lying down for a moment. I’m feeling a bit groggy.” I could have said “a little aroused” but I thought “groggy” was better.
“Well, where are you lying down, as I am at home and you’re not here.”
I sat up quickly and the part of me that was standing up, now lay down almost instantly.
“You came home early!” I exclaimed, stating the obvious.
“Yes, I was feeling tired after being at work so late yesterday, so I came home. Where are you?”
“I’m at the Recreation Centre. I used the library and read for a while and got so sleepy, I came here into the lounge. I fell asleep. What time is it, anyway?”
“Almost 4 o’clock. Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to ask you,” she said.
There was an ominous pause.
“I found a print out of your bank account expenditures for the last ten days and there are two items for flowers at the Florists. Why in heaven’s name did you buy flowers?”
“Oh, the flowers.” I said. There are times when my brain works fast. There are other times when it doesn’t. All I could think of to say was – the truth.
“Oh, I was invited over to a friend’s place and that being my first visit, I thought it important to bring flowers as a sort of housewarming.”
“That doesn’t sound like you. Did you do something wrong? This was a friend? Why did you buy flowers twice?”
“Twice?” I said, flubbered. “I don’t remember twice, but I am sure I bought flowers to bring over to my friend’s place.”
“What friend?” she asked and then named some of the women friends I had.
I could have said yes. Instead I said, “no, as I said, I bought them for a friend who invited me over to her place for lunch.”
There was a pause and I really thought I was in for a confrontation, as I stared at the naked woman in front of me.
My wife said, “Oh, I don’t really care.” The tension evaporated.
“But,” she added, “the next time you buy flowers, buy them at the supermarket. They’re a lot cheaper than at the florists.”
“Ok,” I said and cupped the breast of the woman sitting next to me. “I promise.”
“When will you be home?” my wife asked. “Anyway, when you come in don’t make noise because I am going up for a nap.”
“It shouldn’t be long,” I said. “I’ll be quiet.”
I hung up and turned to the woman I was with.
“Where were we?” I asked.
She showed me.
But the great thing is, since I have started buying flowers at the supermarket, I have been even more busy than before. You get more flowers for the same price.
The legend of the four foot prick
There once was a boy
Who wished to be well endowed;
To use his turgid toy
To leave the women wowed.
Before his sleep on every night
He wished for this to be so.
He wished and wished with all his might
To make his penis grow.
A little pixie passing by
Heard his pleading pleas.
She heard him whimper, heard him cry
And answered with a tease.
“My darling dearest boy,
If you want yourself to grow,
Just put your hand on your toy
And massage it just like so.
“Every time it gets inflated
It will ever bigger be.
By all the women you’ll be rated
An ‘A plus’ not a ‘C’.
“But…” The boy did not wait
To hear the end of this gift.
He fell to rubbing straight
Away and watched his penis lift.
He was filled with wonder and with joy,
He did not stop to think.
But as he engorged his toy,
His body began to slightly shrink.
And so it was from practice on his bed
To practice on the neighbour girl
His fame began to spread.
The townswomen were all awhirl
With stories of his size.
Such a large member
On a shrinking boy, no eyes
Could now remember.
Many gave him a try,
“Just to see,” as they said.
Yet they left with a sigh
When they left him on the bed,
Where he continued to lie dripping.
His member was so large, it’s sure
That his balance was terribly poor
And he could not stand without tipping.
He got shorter and shorter
As he got longer than long.
He was like a midget porter
Endowed with a donkey’s shlong.
It got long, it got thick
Until the terrible day
When to see him you would say,
“This guy is nothing but dick.”
And so the pixie had her trick
And on the bed
All turgid and red
There lay a four foot long prick.
Sex with others. Wife pregnant
It was a tumultuous time. My wife was pregnant. I had already had two affairs and a few close encounters. I learned that I missed sex and that I must have been giving off some kind of vibration because so many of the women around me now flirted with me or did not object when I flirted with them.
I was surrounded by women because I was studying to become a nurse. I was the only male in the class. I am surprised how obvious it was which women were open to advances and which ones were not. Of these latter, some were clearly treating me like one of their buddies and others kept a clear emotional barrier between us. With others I myself felt nothing at all, no spark of attraction whatsoever. This had everything to do with their personalities and nothing to do with their appearance.
If they responded to my humour, I would spend more time with them. I was studying to be a psychiatric nurse because I was such a good listener. The women in my class would tell me everything. Who their first lover was, how they related to their fathers, why they wanted to be nurses, the strong and weak points of their husbands or fiances. What they were looking for in sex or love. I don’t know how many of them said to me, “I can’t believe I told you that. I’ve never told it to anyone before. You are such a good listener.”
It was a challenge to keep up appearances with the women who I had had sex with. There we were in class, sitting next to each other or a few desks away and we would carry on as if we had not recently been closely entwined, as if she had not been giving me head just the day before yesterday, as if I had not had one of them in the men’s bathroom in our building because, being the only male, I was the only one who used it besides the odd professor.
I was normally not an assertive lover or pursuer of women. I would simply get close to some of them and then wait for nature to take its course. Since I was already married, I could live with being fucked out of sympathy.
Yet as the year wore on and we came closer and closer to the final exams, I became highly charged and energized as I studied. I could not sleep after memorizing a course. I would get up and pace the floor in my apartment.
In school, I became pushier, almost manic, making jokes as if I were a stand up comedian. My brain seemed to be working at a high efficiency. All my senses were heightened.
One of the women behind me in the course was a red headed beauty. She was short with hair down to her shoulders and a body one could only dream of. Her breasts were magnificent and her hips round and ample, yet her waist as narrow as one of my legs. I know because we compared. She also had a perfectly proportioned face with soft white skin, pink cheeks and wide emerald green eyes.
We were standing in the school library. Everybody was making photocopies of the materials they had missed during the year. The panic was on to get ready for the final exams. For me and my classmates these would our finals, the ones that would allow us to go out and find employment.
The red headed woman was at the photocopy machine and I was waiting.
“Don’t miss anything,” I said, “You’ve a large stack to copy.”
“Ain’t it the truth,” she said, “but you’re lucky you’ve done all this before.”
“That’s true. You’re looking at a man who has all the knowledge from those notes and books now safely stored in his head.”
“What I wouldn’t give to take it from your head and stick it straight into mine.”
In my normal state, I would not have said what I said next. But before I knew it, out of my mouth flew, “I’m sure if I could come over to your place I would find a way to stick it straight it into you. It would be a pleasure.”
I was smiling the whole time these silly words spilled out of my oral cavity.
Her back was to me and I saw her stiffen slightly. But when she half turned toward me, leaning on the copy machine with one elbow, the red hair partially falling over one green eye, she was smiling.
“Are you offering to help me with my homework. Will you help cram it into me?”
I had no way out so I went on, “that was my offer.”
She lifed off the machine, came over to me and stood very close. She signaled for me to bend my head down and when I did she whispered, “I’d love for you to come over and give me the whole assistance package. When?”
The other women were standing not far off but were busy with their own materials and had paid no attention. I had only a moment before they came closer and could hear us. I said, “give me your telephone number and we’ll talk about it more.”
She went back to the machine and finished her copying. When she came away from the machine she handed me a piece of paper. She said loudly, “here’s the paper you wanted copied,” and brushed past me.
I smelled her aroma as I took the paper and closed my eyes. The woman behind me tapped me and said, “are you gonna use the machine? I got lotsa copies to make too.”
My revery was very brief and I went to the machine.
I called that evening from the school, before going home and caught her in. We made a study date for the next evening.
My wife was used to me studying with my class mates so she was not surprised when I told her I was going to study with someone the next evening. But she said, “I have to have the number where you’re going to be because I am very close to my due date.”
She was not as large as a house. She was too short to be a house. But her belly was so distended and tight that it looked like it would burst. So I gave her the number.
But I was not worried. The due date given by the doctor was still two weeks off and I knew my wife tended to be anxious well ahead of anything actually happening.
I was as manic as ever the next day and after school, I drove over to the apartment building of the red headed woman, my books in my hand, just in case we did in fact have to study.
It was a low rise and she rung me in. I walked up to her apartment on the second floor and knocked on her door. She opened the door wearing a loose blouse and very tight jeans.
“Hi,” she said, “come in and make yourself at home on the couch.”
The smell of marijuana hung in the air. There were only one or two lamps for light in an otherwise dark room.
“I was just relaxing,” she said. “Want to have some weed?”
“Sure,” I replied. “I need something to bring me down. I feel almost as high as a kite.”
She came in and sat next to me on the couch and brought out a rolled joint.
“I thought we could share,” she said. “Why so tight?”
“Because I been thinking about tonight. About you and how gorgeous you are.”
She laughed. “You’re pretty cute yourself. I love curly hair and you have those dark brown eyes I can get lost in when I’m talking to you. Here have a toke.”
She said the last after lighting up and taking a drag herself.
I dragged on the joint and took a deep breath. I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly. I did it again. My head was lying against the back of the couch. She took the joint from my relaxed hands and soon I felt her leaning on me, her breasts pressing against me and her hand on my hip.
I half opened my eyes and looked directly into hers. I surged forward and kissed her. My hands were under her loose blouse running over that smooth white skin. She was French kissing me and I could taste the marijuana in her mouth and pulled her even closer.
She was running her own hands over my thighs and crotch as I caressed her breasts under the blouse. I felt very aroused.
“My god, you’re big,” she exclaimed. “Each of your thighs is bigger than my waist. And I can feel all of you. You feel so good.”
She was unzipping my pants and I was lifting the blouse over her head. She had to stop when I lifted the blouse off her outstretched hands but she returned immediately to my pants, undoing them and pulling them down along with the underwear. Suddenly I sprang erect and we were sitting on the couch like two animals about to attack and devour each other, me with my pants down around my ankles, her with her beautiful breasts staring at me like two eyes.
Then the phone rang. There is one habit I have and I don’t know how I acquired it. I am like Pavlov’s dog. When the phone rings, I pick it up and answer it, no matter where I am. It’s like a compulsion. If I ever try to leave a phone ringing my level of anxiety rises and almost goes through the roof. I cannot bear not to answer the phone. So I answered it this time too.
It was my wife.
“You’ve got to come home right away,” she said.
“What’s the matter?” I asked hoarsely.
“I was taking a bath and my water broke,” she said excitedly. “I’ve got to get to the hospital. But why are you so hoarse?”
“It’s nothing,” I said. “I’ve just had to do a lot of talking today and we study by asking each other questions out loud too. You know how nervous I am about my exams. I must just have strained my voice by accident.”
“Fine, fine,” she said. “But come right home. I have the overnight bag packed already but I need to check everything on my list and we need to get there right away. When are you going to get here?”
I briefly paused. Would I tell her I just had to finish up a bit and try to have sex with this ravishing redhead? Would I opt for a bit of sixty nine? The red headed woman was looking at me with inquisitive eyes, her hands wrapped around my penis and her naked breasts pressing on my thighs.
“Please, please get here. You know how anxious I can get. I want to make sure everything goes well and I can’t take chances. It might hurt the baby.”
That tore it. I pushed myself away from the redhead, took back my penis and stood up. “I’ll be home in twenty minutes,” I said.
I did not have much to say and neither did the red head. I just got dressed and after a perfunctory kiss ran down the stairs, jumped into my car and drove home as quickly as possible.
My son was born the next day. And the three other children my wife has had with me since then have all been born two weeks early.
As for the red head, those perfect lips, those wonderful breasts, the taste of that perfect mouth and the fantastic sensation of her hand on me, they tantalize me and float away from me as I reach for them. What I did not know then and what is now a constant is that these images and sensations are lost in the flux of time and send to me a message from a distance, “you will never have us again.”
Sex and love between two beer
Ron gave me a call from near Halifax and asked if he could stay with me for a couple of nights.
I said sure. Ron was always a hoot to talk to. Here was an ex-cowboy turned hippy, now living on the west coast of Newfoundland in the mountains.
“I have to live near mountains,” he says to me over a beer, a Guiness stout. “I can’t exist without skiing.” He had flown in to Ottawa early that morning and I had arranged the usual round of interviews for him.
Ron was an environmentalist and a lobbyist. “That’s one thing we have lots of in Newfoundland,” Ron says, “environment.”
Ron was a tall lanky blonde with hair down to his shoulders and glasses as thick as whiskey glass bottoms and a mouth that was short of a few teeth. That day he was dressed up for T.V. so he wore a corduroy sports jacket over his plaid shirt and jeans. He still wore cowboy boots everywhere.
Every once in a while, Ron would breeze into town and breeze out again, looking for media coverage for his environmental issues, opportunities to speak to politicians and money for his work and his website.
I knew a little about media and government so I helped him out. I could shlep around with him and get my own name mentioned if he happened to say something particularly controversial that I agreed with.
“If I could just get a little more money for my web site, I could set it up to run for quite a while, and feed it with stuff at little cost. You know that guy from B.C. gave me a whack of cash to get it started but now I need to go further. Any body I can talk to?”
I gave him a few names. I was very sympathetic.
We were in a bar on Sussex Drive in Ottawa, just down from the American embassy.
“Shit, I used to work in the States and in Alberta. It was a great life. But once, I latched on to this environmental shit, I couldn’t let go.”
Here he laughed. “I remember having some time off and heading for the library (wink, wink, ‘bar’) in Calgary when a whole crew of reporters and media types spotted me and wanted me to say something right wing about the environment.”
“Assholes. I showed ‘em I was no ignoramus and all of a sudden, I’m famous. Being quoted all over the goddamned place. By coincidence, this B.C. guy sees me on TV and calls me at my room, wanting to know if I would front for him on the environment.
Well, I was forty then and gettin’ a wee bit weary and I think, this is my chance, so I go visit him in B.C. and before I know it, I’m workin’ with this guy in the wilds in B.C., near the mountains of course.
And I start off at his spread and spend a few weeks learning about computers and code and before a year is out I’m running my own UNIX server out of a basement in a small B.C. town.
I was smoking weed like it was outa style. I meet a first nations woman who I like and soon I’m shacking up with her, workin’ like crazy on this web site and buggin’ governments and businesses who keep callin’ to tell me they are either gonna sue me or pay me a bundle to shut up.
Of course, this makes me an even hotter commodity and before I know it, I am famous and the government all of a sudden is NDP and they award me something or other and then not only am I famous but, hey, official.
Soon, I am so famous, my financial backer says I have to fund myself, so I move out of the digs he was paying for and when I move out, I move way out. So here I am living on the west coast of Newfoundland with my woman and with not a whole lot o’ anythin’ else.
Anyways. Here’s why I’m tellin’ you this. You’ve given me some good leads for money and now this woman from Toronto has called and told me she thinks what I’m doing is important but she’s…well she’s rich and she wants me to go visit her and talk to her about my plans. Do you know her? Should I go?”
I recognize her name and say, “how can it hurt? She got a shitload o’ cash from her husband and being a widow, I think she wouldn’t mind finding a good thing to spend it on. Why not?”
Ron hesitated. “Look, you know I don’t like it when these rich people tie all kinds of strings to their money. I know what to do and I know how to do it. All I need is the cash. And… and well, I hate Toronto.”
“But you know,” he went on a brief moment, “I’m gettin’ tired. I started when I was around 40. Now, I’m hittin’ 50 I’m goin’ blind as a bat and I ain’t rich. Maybe,” he said almost wistfully, “maybe she’ll be buy me out and I can give the web site and the job to somebody else…”
The next time I saw Ron was in Toronto, six months later, at a conference on the environment where he was the featured speaker.
Ron walks into the room in navy blue suit, $400 shoes, a white shirt and tie. He’s not wearing any glasses and his teeth look like they came out of a tooth paste commercial.
On his arm, there is this shapely woman of undetermined age with a soft round face and hair that is flowing silver but could be blonde if you closed your eyes and squinted.
When Ron sees me, he smiles broadly showing me all his straightened teeth and introduces me to Glenda, his companion. Ron says he needs to talk to me and we arrange to meet for coffee in the afternoon.
We meet in the coffee shop and at the table, before I can say,”boo,” Ron starts with, “Isn’t she gorgeous? She’s amazing. I fell for her the moment I saw her.
I came into the meeting with her and her business associates and as I shake her hand, I see there are no wrinkles on it. Her hand is soft and white and I look into those blue eyes and they are looking at me like I am god or something.
I tried to focus on what I came for, that is to ask for money for my worthy cause, but my voice is shaking and my hand is trembling as I put on my power point presentation.
She knocked me for a loop. At the end of the meeting, I look at her and she blushes! My god, that blush nearly made me come right there.
Anyways, she invites me to meet her later over drinks to discuss the possible details of a funding arrangement and I get so excited, my heart jumps into my throat and I can only gargle something that sounds like, ’sure.’
In the bar, we don’t talk business at all. She wants to know how long I have been losing my eyesight and how long I have had missing teeth. When I tell her, she puts her hand, that soft white hand, on my arm and tells me how much she admires me for making all those sacrifices for a worthy cause.
And I am like completely helpless, looking into those baby blues and those rosy cheeks, those lips that are not dried with aged but plump and moist.
She tells me she is 63 and I almost fall out of my chair. Before I know what I’m doing, I tell her she is gorgeous and that I thought she was younger than me.
‘I am young for a widow,’ she says. ‘My husband was much older than me and died a few years ago. Because of Arnold, bless him, I have the means to do good and to live a very comfortable life.’
She paused for a moment than put her hand on mine and said, ‘let me help you and share some of that comfort with you.’
I almost put cream into my coffee right then. But I had enough brains to lean over and kiss her lightly.
She invited me back to her place, which, if you haven’t guessed is a mansion. I followed her in, the servants took our coats and she told them she and her guest were going upstairs and were not to be disturbed.
I followed her up the stairs and got to watch that fabulous body from behind. As soon as we rounded the corner, I grabbed her and kissed her but she pushed me away lightly and said, “patience, patience.”
She led me directly to her room. My god, I’ll never forget the smile on her face when I came in and she latched the door behind her.
She turned out the lights but the moon was shining through the open window. She undressed me and massaged me. She had fabulous technique. I lay back on the bed and then she performed a sort of strip tease in front of me. If you had seen me right then you might have thought I had a tent pole growing out o’ the centre of my body.
She put a condom on me and then impaled herself on me, ever so slowly. Her skin was so white, like milk in the moonlight and her body so smooth and soft, it drove me crazy.
She was gasping on top of me and told me she hadn’t had sex since her husband had died.
So what could I do? I been here for the past six months. I got a hair cut. She got my teeth fixed and I wear contact lenses. She’s paid for my lobbying for the next few years. I had to phone my woman in Newfoundland and tell her what happened.
The hardest thing in my life was to listen to her cry when I told her. The second hardest thing is that she did not get angry, just sad.”
Before I could answer or intervene, Glenda came into the coffe shop and, waving her hand signaled for Ron to come to her. Ron and I walked over to her and she placed her arm in Ron’s, showing her proprietary interest.
Although she smiled charmingly at me, she looked up at Ron and said, “Ron, there are some people I want you to meet, some people who are interested in your cause. ”
She looked at me, smiling again, and said, “You don’t mind do you?”
“Of course not.”
And they left the room together.
Within another six months, I saw Ron in Ottawa again.
He was on his way back to Newfoundland, to beg for forgiveness. Glenda had apparently discovered a newfound enthusiasm for peace activism and was involved with a Muslim promoter of peace in the Middle East. Her foundation was now funding him although Ron still had a grant for the coming year.
As we sat, drinking our Guiness stout, Ron said, “I just couldn’t keep on being a trained monkey,” and looked sadly around him.
I could not help but notice that he still had a styled haircut, he was wearing an expensive suit, his teeth were fixed and he was still wearing those expensive contacts Glenda had bought him.
All in all, I did not feel as much sympathy for him this time as the last time we had had a beer.
I am going to tell my wife I’m leaving
When I got married, I thought I would be a one woman man. And I was. Mostly.
The thing is, I could not turn off my attraction to other women. They were all around me. Beautiful, young, intelligent, kind. They just weren’t married to me.
Over time, I had also found it easier to talk to women than to men. They often seemed to respond to this shtick. I call it a shtick, but really it was just me being me. I was full of empathy and a capacity to listen.
Feeling empathy though, is a dangerous kind of skill to have. You can enter into the other person’s way of thinking. You can feel what they feel. If you’re not careful, you can become them.
This was especially the case when I was feeling low. At such times, I could easily be brought to strongly feel what the person next to me was feeling. If I happened to be alone with a female friend and she felt lonely or sad, my insides would attune to that sentiment and I could feel myself vibrating to the same sensation that she was experiencing
Coming to my twenty-seventh birthday, I was feeling blue. I was in the middle of my two year course and had been married for more than four years already. My wife had stuck by me through some very difficult emotional problems both for herself and for me. On one level, our bond could not have been stronger.
On the other hand, I felt like an underachiever. I had switched from course to course, from city to city and she had followed me. Now, it was I who was feeling unworthy. I wanted to tell her I had to leave to let her find someone stronger, more sure of themselves. I would never truly deserve her love.
She had a Masters degree and was working as an administrative/research assistant for relatively low pay just so we had something to live on while finished this course. I was bringing her down, holding her back.
So on the day of my twenty-seventh birth day, I returned home to our basement apartment, thinking how much better off my wife would have been if she had pursued her own career path. I was thinking I would have to talk to her about a possible separation.
I opened the door and everyone yelled “Surprise!”
My wife had arranged a surprise party, with all our old college friends.
To my shock, they were all there. We had an amazing time, many laughs. Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, played in turn in the background. The wine flowed. The food was plentiful and I got to talk to all of them, even the one who had become a Scientologist and was now being whisked away to California.
In many ways, though, I knew this was the last time we would all be together. It was a perfect time to end it all.
I talked with one friend who had broken off her engagement with another in our circle. She had just returned from Mexico. I felt drawn to her longing for love, her need for something. I felt her anger and disappointment with her former fiance.
Later, I talked with him and realized how bitter I could be that she had not stood by him through his breakdown. I could feel the resentment welling up in me.
And so the evening went. Towards the end of it, I was talking to another friend who had just broken up with her boyfriend of the last few years. We had all assumed they would be a couple but it was not meant to be. The rumours circulated that it was her mother who had found him not financially successful enough.
I felt her pain. She was tall and beautiful, with long flowing sandy hair. I found myself thinking that this was unjust that someone so beautiful and so talented should be alone. I put my hand on hers in sympathy. She moved her hand from her lap to my thigh and, looked into my eyes with her piercing glance. The sharpness in her glance, softened and melted into tears that ran slowly down her cheek.
I could feel that pain and reached over and kissed her cheek where the tear was lingering. “You’ll be all right,” I whispered amid the hubub of the party.
She grabbed my hand and said, “I really shouldn’t bring you down. This is my own problem. I’ll get over it.”
I squeezed her hand in return. It was towards the end of the evening and my wife had just said goodbye to someone else at the door.
My wife came back in and got busy talking to others. My friend looked at me and said, “I really have to go. Why don’t you walk me to the car. It’s right outside, parked right in front.”
We got up still holding hands, which was no big deal. My wife and I held hands with many of our friends as a sign of our bond with them.
“I’m just walking her to her car,” I shouted to my wife across the room and we went out on a hot muggy night. She was wearing a thin summer dress and I could see the shape of her body as we walked together up the stairs. I let her go in front of me on the landing so I could see the outline perfectly.
We approached her car and stood talking for another minute, when we both realized it was time for her to go. As was her habit with me, she embraced me fully and started to kiss me on the lips. She had done this every time we met.
There was something different this time. Instead of that firm pucker kiss of friendship, her lips were soft and giving and I pressed my mouth down on her hers more strongly. I could feel her pressing back and I moved my hands around her and gently stroked her back.
I looked at her and could see that her eyes were closed. I reclosed my own and murmured, “I wish I could comfort you more…”
“I would like to talk to you more,” she said, “you are such a good friend. You seem to understand…” Then she added, “I love the way you hug.”
I started to get an erection and was about to ask if I could phone her, if I could come over, if I could see her again, when I heard my wife’s voice behind me.
“You don’t think you’re going to get away without saying good bye to me, do you?”
We both clenched and unrelaxed, left the embrace hanging in the air. We all laughed, two of us out of nervous energy. My wife was used to seeing us kiss both hello and goodbye and so had not reacted to that aspect of the situation.
She went over and kissed my wife goodbye, got into the car and drove off.
I felt completely energized, and not a little bit pent up. My wife and I went back into the apartment to say good bye to the last stragglers.
We were alone, cleaning up after the party. I wanted to thank her for all her work, to tell her how much I appreciated her outstanding intelligence, beauty and thoughtfulness. She had to leave me for her own good.
I reached for her hand and brought her into my arms. She kissed me both tenderly and passionately and then pulling slightly away, smiled up at me and said, ” I have another suprise for you.”
My heart leapt up in my throat. Had she realized I was untrue in my heart? Had she guessed that I was going to tell her I was leaving?
She looked down and her cheeks turned slightly red. I lifted up her chin and she said, “I’m pregnant.”
We have had four children together since then, including the baby she was pregnant with at the time. We have built and lived a life together.
The moment when I tell her I am leaving still lies in the future. Perhaps it will come on my death bed.
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