Chapter 16: A Wrinkle in Time

I guess I was in a mood when I woke up that morning. I quickly got down on myself.

I stood in front of the full-length mirror on our bedroom wall. I was naked and I was crying. My youthful beauty had seriously eroded, I guessed on a daily basis since I hadn’t seemed to notice earlier when I had used the mirror. I was the proverbial boiling frog.

I had bruises on both legs from who knows what. They didn’t seem to be going away as fast as they usually did. Moreover, the texture of the skin, especially on my legs seems to be changing. I used every emollient that I could find to keep my skin pliant and in good shape; they weren’t working as I wanted.

My breasts were sagging! Tears flooded down my ruddy cheeks. Ruddy! They weren’t ruddy before. My breasts always had a little heft to them, but this ... this was a travesty. I threw my shoulders back. I tried to adjust my posture, but nothing seemed to help. That dropped my focus to what others called a ‘pooch’ – my lower belly was also sagging. Oh, no.

I turned my rear to the mirror and looked over my shoulder. “Oh, NO!” I cried aloud. My ass had little bumps of cellulite ... and the back of my thighs. I’m a disaster. I looked at my hands – Fucking age spots! Liver spots my mother had called them. Where’d they come from? I used hand cream.

Closer to the mirror, I could see the increased wrinkles around my eyes and forehead. My upper lip was developing tiny little lines going up towards my nose. Is my nose larger? My ears? My hair seems more brittle; time for that oily rinse again. Oh, dear, I have hair growing on my chin. I need a fucking shave. I had some tiny hairs growing near my nipples.

I broke into wild sobbing, the tears washing away the view of the terrible woman in the mirror. Jim will push me away. He has all these younger women that love him, and he’ll focus there. He even has a new baby by one of them.

Two strong arms from the man I love surrounded me from behind. He forced my head around slightly and kissed me. “You’re beautiful.”

I sobbed, “No I’m not. I’m a fucking disaster. I’m falling apart.”

We looked at each other through the mirror. He said, “No, you’re the most beautiful woman in the world. I love every bit of you.”

He turned me away from the mirror and cuddled me against his freshly showered nude body. I could feel him get slightly inflated against my mons. He led me to the bed and then we lay down and he cuddled and stroked me. He said all the right things. How’d he know how to do that? I calmed and then I fell asleep in his arms as he kept kissing me.

I woke to some subtle sounds of Jim moving around the kitchen. I sighed and put on my sexy heels and then went out to greet him. I was still feeling a little morose about my aging body.

Jim welcomed me with open arms, “Feeling any better?”

I shrugged.

“I have some good news and bad news for you. Which do you want first?”

I looked at him and said, “Bad then good.”

He smiled, “OK. You are going to get old. I talked to God and She said she’s been good to you long enough. She has other people to work on, so her attention will be diverted more and more. She’ll keep you good health, but, well, the body is going to see some issues from time to time, and some of them are cumulative.

“The good news is that Jim – me – and everybody else that loves you will ignore all those changes in your looks and will love you more each day than the day before. No one is going to ditch you because you got another age spot or your breasts sagged another tenth of a millimeter.”

I looked at him as he held me in his arms, “Really?”

“Yep, really. I love you more today than yesterday, but not as much as tomorrow.” He sighed, “Besides, I’m not exactly the spring chicken I was twenty or thirty years ago. None of us in our age group are. Don’t think for a second that you are alone on this journey. You have company all around going through the same thing. You have support and co-conspirators in getting old.

“I can guess that since you were a model of perfection, that the discovery of one or another sign of old age will be harder on you. No one but you will care, but we will all love you and help you cope. You don’t need to worry about any of that physical stuff.” He kissed me and then made me sit while he fried some eggs.

Grandchildren, or the threat of them, turned out to be the greatest salve to Edie’s worries about the aging process ravaging her body.

Penny announced she was pregnant.

Penny was excited. Edie was exuberant. Despite living two miles away, they spent hours on the phone excitedly talking to each other. How Penny was working mystified me. Edie told me that she multitasked; she could do her editing and talk on the phone at the same time.

Carolyn and Amy followed with identical announcements two months behind Penny and each other.

We would have three new grandchildren within a four-month window shortly before the Christmas holidays. Baby Diane would have sisters, brothers, and cousins to play with, when she was less than a year old. The existing grandkids started to undergo the indoctrination to become a big brother and a big sister to a new hoard of baby brothers and sisters.

As the local grandfather-on-scene I didn’t react too much. I was glad for the wanted and planned pregnancies, and helped celebrate the events, but I was a generation removed from the actual events, although the expectant mothers insisted on being in my bed on a recurring basis. I came to believe that their hormone shifts had moved them into a state where they needed constant orgasmic euphoria – at least more than they had.

Atop that state for Carolyn, Amy, and Penny, both Jean and Edie seemed to drink the same Kool-Aid. I became the cock-du-jour, every day, for each of them and even more often for Edie. I thought I’d get chafed, but there was so much natural lubricant there, it didn’t happen. If the motto ‘Use it or lose it’ was operant, I was never going to lose my hard-on.

When I wasn’t plying one of them with my sexual juices, I was studying the huge subject of relationships. In a stroke of what I thought of as pure genius, I went back to many of my old notes and materials from executive courses about human resources and leadership that I’d taken while working at NASA. Those had been about corporate and business relationships, but I found that well over ninety percent of the material also related to romantic and couple relationships.

Alice was over at the house one day, and after we’d made love, I showed her some of the material, including some of the linkages I made to negotiation skills and techniques, just as an example. She liked my ideas and encouraged me to extend them.

Alice and I were back in bed, and I’d been eating out the soft haired redhead when Edie came into the bedroom. She smiled at us in her naked state and nudged me away from Alice’s pussy so she could eat out our friend. Edie and Alice spent an hour giving each other orgasms with my participation only sporadically.

The sapphic interaction of the two women gave me an idea I shared with Alice as she was leaving. “I had an idea while the two of you were being so engaging in our bed. Did you and Carl ever think of a special relationship course designed around relationships that were lesbian or gay? It seems to me there’s a niche there. I bet all your seminar attendees have been heterosexual couples. Maybe there’s one for polyamorous groups, too. You know I’d like to be involved in the last one, and so would Edie.”

Alice studied me for a minute as she digested my ideas. She kissed me again, and said, “Back to you on all that. Great ideas.” She called me in the early evening to tell me that Carl had come alive with the ideas for new courses and was already on his computer seeing if there was any competition in those areas.

I know I was sneaky, but I arranged for the delivery of some new exercise equipment while I knew Jim would be having lunch with the men from our social group.

When Jim got home, I was on my new Stairmaster, trying to work up to sixty beats a minute. I was out of breath, and sure I’d die at any second. This machine was pure torture, and I’d only been on it for five minutes.

“Hi, Honey,” he said, leaning against the door frame of the room we used for exercising and yoga – much less intense than what I was gearing up to do. “I like the new gear.”

I gasped, “Hi.” The most I could muster was that one exasperated syllable.

He chuckled, “I know what you’re trying to do and I applaud your efforts, but it won’t stop the inevitable.”

My ten-minute timer went off and I stopped. After catching my breath, I said, “I am going to kill off every ounce of cellulite in my body.”

He shook his head, “I don’t think you can do that. You can slow down or stop the rate of accretion, at best. Elimination takes surgery. I am not thinking that any part of you is deficient, so don’t go that route.”

I ignored his comment, although I knew he was right. “I’m changing my diet, too; and I bought some new special creams that you can help spread around my backside.”

He grinned, “With delight. May I use my tongue?”

I rolled my eyes, although I liked his idea. I said, “Maybe. I’m not sure about the ingredients or taste. We need to keep you healthy, too.”

He said, “Funny you should mention this, and have some new equipment. The guys and I were talking about staying in shape over lunch. This is good stuff. Am I allowed to use it?”

“Oh, yes.” I wiped the sweat off my face with a towel, and then kissed him.

He asked, “You going to shower or use the pool?”

“I thought I’d skinny-dip.” I looked alluringly at him and then peeled my damp t-shirt over my head.

Five minutes later, we were fucking on one of the chaises beside the pool. We only went in the pool after we consummated our lovemaking.

I never thought that Edie needed to firm up or change her body, but she did. I have to admit after a month of her intense workouts, several things had happened.

First, she became even more delectable. The slight bit of flab under her arms that waved when she did disappeared. She had visible biceps and triceps. Her butt stopped having that extra jiggle when she walked. Her legs displayed distinct muscles in both her calves and her quads. Her pecs solidified and carried her breasts a little higher. Her ab muscles showed slightly, but she was thinner through her gut. The abdominal pooch almost all aged men and women get, all but vanished. Three hundred sit-ups a day were working, along with the Stairmaster. She was still adding reps or time each day to each exercise she did.

Second, she needed an afternoon nap. She’d spend over two hours in the morning working out until she was ready to drop, eat a piece of celery and a lettuce leaf for lunch, and then we’d make love. We’d both fall asleep, but she really needed it.

One day after she’d exercised, she asked, “Do you think I’m sexy?”

I was feeling especially randy, and we hadn’t happened to make love when we got up that morning. At the risk of throwing my back out, I picked up Edie, put her over my shoulder fireman style, and walked into the bedroom with her protesting the entire way, mostly about me throwing my back out of whack.

In the bedroom, I removed every piece of clothing we both had – not many. She was complaining that she needed a shower, had to call Mindy, needed to eat, and so on. I ignored her and plunged my tongue as deep into her sweaty crotch and wet vagina as I could make it go, and then got my fingers to join in the small fuck fest I was planning.

Forty-five minutes later, we’d fucked ourselves into a state of oblivion. I’d told her several dozen times about my love for her, but I had one further message.

“Edie, you asked if you are sexy? You are the hottest woman in existence. How can you even think of asking that? You turn me on every time I see you regardless of what you’re wearing. Just thinking about you, gives me an erection because you’re so sexy. So, to answer the question you asked almost an hour ago, ‘YES, you are sexy to an extreme.’

“I want you to notice a few things when we get together with any of our friends that we have a relationship with. ALL the men want to be with you, especially the younger men. Why? Because you are not only sexy, but you are the best dispositioned of any of the other females. You also fuck like a mink, and can make your pussy do subtle things that leave every one of us breathless and satisfied beyond belief. You can dish out dirty talk like the town pump. We all want to go on again and again with you.

“The women also want you for the same reasons. Yes, you’re sexy even to other females including your daughter and mine. You create calm and a loving atmosphere wherever you roam. Everyone loves you.

“I still worry that you’ll get tired of me, and take up with a hot young bachelor whose got a cock the size of Kentucky, endurance like a race horse, and stamina to constantly please you. You inspire me in so many ways.”

Edie had started to kiss all around my face as I talked, her bare breasts stroking across my chest and shoulder. She said, “I’M.NOT. EVER. LEAVING. YOU. I love you so much. You put up with my insecurities and deal with them in exactly the right way. One of the reasons I’m putting so much effort into reshaping my body is so that you don’t leave ME. I want to be the best I can for you.

“You’re so trim and it doesn’t seem to matter what you eat or drink. You’re handsome to a fault. Look at how you turn on women you’ve never met at the relationship seminars. You end up with a few of them in our bed every time.”