Chapter 2

Next we went to a concert, a string quartet playing Mozart and Schubert, Bea's favorites. The pieces they played were all gentle, and beautiful, and some of them terribly sad. At one moment when the music was especially unhappy, Bea leaned over and kissed me on the cheek, very sweetly. I looked over and saw she had tears in her eyes. I took her hand and held it tightly. "What's that for?" I asked in a small voice. "Nothing," she replied. "You'll see." Then she said, "Oh, I do hope everything works out the way I've planned it. I do hope so!" I couldn't ask her what she meant by that, but I noticed that she held my hand tightly in both her hands through the rest of the concert. I remember how satisfying it was, each time I looked down into my lap, to see our newly manicured red fingernails all tangled and coiled together, looking so elegant.

Afterward we went to a night club, one with hot but also dreamy dancing alternating very loudly in one section, near the bar, and stretching for what must have been a city block, rooms and cubicles one after another for drinking and for noisy or quiet conversation. As we settled down in a booth, and our drinks came, and we started sipping them, I glimpsed someone familiar coming toward us. I got the shock of my life!

It was Kay! I half rose in surprise, but then I remembered I was a lady, and settled back down. She came straight over to our table, and Pearl and Bea moved to make room for her. They both were delighted to see her. Neither looked especially amazed. "Kay!" I said. "I thought you had to be somewhere else tonight! Why are you here? I mean, it's wonderful that you're here, because now you can help us with Bea's birthday. But weren't you supposed to be somewhere else? Isn't that why I'm here?"

"Yes, I was supposed to be elsewhere," she said. "But I changed my mind. I figured I'd be more useful here tonight. Hello, Henry. You are Henry, aren't you?" She peered more closely at me. "My heavens, look at you! It's amazing! Those treatments really did their work, didn't they? You look absolutely ravishing, Henry! I love it! You look good enough to eat!"

"Tonight, Henry is Honey, Kay," Bea said. "The way we discussed it. That's the way it should be, and that's the way Honey wants it to be."

"Of course. Honey! You are a real stunner, Honey! I'd invite you home with me, if I didn't know you have other plans. Sorry, girls, I've been drinking, waiting for you to show up. Well, anyhow, I'm here, and now we're all here, all of the girls, including our newest girl." She smiled at me charmingly. I smiled back. "Let's start the proceedings. Aren't we all supposed to tell Bea something about the first time we had sex with someone we weren't married to? After we were already married, I mean? Those stories are usually the juiciest. Honey, you go first. Tell us your favorite infidelity."

"Honey hasn't had any infidelities yet, Kay," Pearl said. "She's too new. She's still a virgin. And Bea just told me that Henry hasn't had any infidelities either. I don't think he's a virgin, though there's some question whether he's ever done anything memorable. Anyhow, Henry's not here tonight. He isn't one of the girls."

"All right, I'll go first, then Pearl," Kay said. "Order us some more drinks. Bea looks too quiet, and Honey needs another, I'm sure."

"Well, I had sex with quite a few people right after I was married, within a few hours in fact. But I don't think I was unfaithful. Steve and I had been swinging singles for a long time, and one day when I had his dick in my mouth and my finger in some local housewife's ass we decided that we would make a great team. We should get married. We could offer ourselves together, and be more selective. You know what Bernard Shaw said, that marriage is popular because it offers a maximum of temptation and a maximum of opportunity. Well, it's sort of true, but not the way he meant. Any two people can live together without being married, and any two people can fuck. But marriage is a partnership. It's popular because it assures established partners that they can link up with other established partners, and form new his and her couples, or his and his, or hers and his and hers, or whatever other combinations anyone likes, and at least some of the partners will always be compatible. But if you do that, you have to trust each other. You have to tell each other everything. That's keeping faith with each other. That's fidelity. That's why we got married. That's why we're still married. We're still popular, with couples and with individuals. We're both good at what we do, and we enjoy it. Sometimes we even do it together. But we always tell each other everything. We trust each other, that we'll tell each other everything."

"Anyhow, mine is a short story. After the wedding Steve's best man wanted a blow job, and no one was available. The bridesmaids had all gone off with different wedding guests, or with each other. One of the bridesmaids was a transsexual like you, Honey, if that's what you are now, but there weren't any unattached men around for her, or any women either, and she was feeling a little lonely. Weddings do that to people sometimes. So anyhow, I suggested she take care of Steve's best man. But it turned out she was was a lesbian, and didn't like oral sex with men. Lots of men who are women are lesbians, it's the way their mothers make them even before they're born, poor babies, but they usually don't mind once they get used to the idea. So I volunteered to take care of Steve's best man instead -- that wasn't being unfaithful to my new vows, exactly, I thought, unless I were to put his cock into my vagina, and I never wanted to do that. He was a creep, and Steve had invited him only because he owed him money. I still owed a lot of money from Medical School, and we didn't need more debt. So I blew him, and he cancelled whatever Steve owed him.

To keep things even, I asked Steve to take care of the transsexual bridesmaid, to fuck her pussy, if she'd have him. Her vagina was constructed in another State where they recognize that sex change operations change a person's sex, so it was a proper vagina as far as she was concerned. But in this redneck, cracker State where we had just gotten married it took more than that to become a woman. If you weren't born one, then God himself had to come down during the operation, and take over the surgery. So it wasn't a vagina in this State, just a slit, so here she couldn't be a lesbian officially, just a guy who likes girls. So Steve could fuck her vagina good and proper, and still not be unfaithful to me, as long as they didn't cross State lines to do it. So that's what Steve did. My bridesmaid transsexual friend was willing to go along with it. She appreciated the gesture. And we'd been old friends a long time. We'd even slept together in college. You know, I don't remember which sex she was then, or even which gender."

"OK so far. But this creep I had just blown told Steve that I had spread for him, can you imagine it? On my wedding night? And Steve believed him. He couldn't see why I hadn't -- we didn't put any of that "forsaking all others" and "husband and wife are one flesh" stuff into our wedding vows anyhow. I don't say I wouldn't have fucked him if he weren't a creep, but he was, and I didn't, OK? Anyhow, Steve didn't believe me. Now there was a violation, right off. When you get married, you plight your troth, which is old fashioned language for you are true to each other, which is middle fashioned language for you don't lie to each other, which is modern language that means what it says, and is the proper basis for any marriage as I see it. You trust that each one of you is telling the truth, even about the length of the stranger's dick that reamed you silly the previous night. You don't lie. You have to trust each other."

"Well, Steve didn't believe me. So I got mad, and phoned all of Steve's ushers, and told them to get over to the hotel where we were married, we had to do it again because there was a page missing from the marriage manual, or something. And when they came, I pulled a train with them. Told them they could all gang shag me as long as we all held out. Well, whatever they were up to with the bridesmaids and the wedding guests, most of them still had a couple of shots still left in them. So I wore them all out. God! I was squishy for days after that. Anyhow, later on that night, on our nuptual bed, Steve noticed that I was pretty wet down there. In fact, standing, sitting, or lying down, I was pouring cum like a half-open faucet. I told him the truth.

And he forgave me, and apologized for doubting me about the creep. He then told me that my bridesmaid, the one he had screwed, the sexually re-assigned lesbian except in this State, would rather have been with me than him, because she felt like a lesbian even in this State. I felt terrible about that. So I went to her hotel room, and that's where I spent the rest of my wedding night. Steve looked pretty happy the next day, but I thought enough was enough, so I never asked him where he'd spent the rest of that night. He would have told me, I know it. And ever since then, we've tried to tell each other everything. And we believe each other. We never lie, or exaggerate. We trust each other. We are as true to one another as we can be.

But it remains a fact. The first people I screwed after I got married were a majority of the bridal party, even before I screwed my husband. And the first person he screwed, even before he screwed his new wife, was a transsexual girl I then screwed that same night. We all have so many holes and bulges, and they fit so many others, it's no wonder we can't keep track. But a married couple should try. That's what we promise each other. To try."

We were all silent after Kay stopped talking. Then Pearl asked, "Kay, how much of that story is true?"

And Kay answered, "Which parts are giving you trouble?"

Bea said, "I understand what you're telling me, Kay. Thank you. I think we all need more to drink. Call the waiter over."

More drinks came. I was beginning to feel a bottomless place under me, and that I was teetering on the edge of falling into it. So I didn't notice, until Pearl pointed it out, that the next round of drinks came from three interesting looking men sitting together not far away. They were a bit gray in the temples, two of them, and one had a well-shorn black beard. All were nicely dressed, and rather handsome in fact. Probably professional men. It seems Pearl knew one of them, and she went over to thank them and to chat. She came back.

"They were wondering if we cared to dance, any of us. I told them certainly, but that we wanted a little more time to talk together. Just us girls. I've told them our plans for tonight, Bea, and they've offered to help out in any way they can. I told them we'd see."

"Sounds good to me, Pearl," said Kay. "Your turn."

Pearl sat down and thought a moment. "Let's see," she said. "My first fuck out of wedlock, after my marriage. Yes. That was Tim, three years into it. A wonderful man. It was a brief affair, only two weeks, while my ex was away on a business trip. I wish I'd known then that my ex was going to be my ex, or I would have made him my ex a lot sooner. Maybe married Tim then and there. But I was doomed to be married for seventeen more years before that bastard ran off with that slut whore, and I called it quits.

But Tim is another matter. I still love him, very dearly, and we write each other sometimes, even though he's married now himself, and I wouldn't come between him and his wife for the world. But I know he loves me too."

"We went to the same college, and he was dating one of my sorority sisters, who was of course two-timing him. He thought they were sort of engaged. He was one of those kind, decent, gentle guys who write poetry, and edit the literary magazine, and sit up all night listening to girls with shit boyfriends who resent being shit on, girls who come to him to tell him how they feel. While they talk, they feel their own self-respect flow back, because of his sympathy and understanding. Every college has one. My Tim was a wonderful man. Still a boy, then, really."

"Well, his fiancee's other boyfriend got jealous of him, and started spreading the word that he was a faggot. A ponce. A fairy cocksucker. And all of the shit boyfriends on campus picked up the tune, and one day before a big costume dance they all got together to plan their revenge. They didn't know what he had done during those all night sessions with their girlfriends. But some of the girls had mustered enough courage to break off after one or another of those nights, and their boyfriends found this inexplicable and unforgiveable.

Tim's fiancee delivered him into their hands that night. She talked him into going to the ball with her as Romeo and Juliet, with herself as Romeo, and got him a flouncy dress and a blond wig, and dancing slippers, and put makeup on his face, and then told him they'd been invited to a cocktail party at one of the fraternities, they'd just stop there for a drink first on their way to the Gym. Well, you know guys, those kinds of guys. You know what happened next. She led him into a room, pitch black, and then disappeared."

"Two hours later she was still dancing away with her other boyfriend and his friends, in her green tights and little feathered cap, and pretty swirling cape, having a delightful time. By then Tim was lying out on the quad unconscious, his asshole a bloody mess, his face and his dress and his legs soaked with piss and cum and blood. He had been raped maybe thirty times, probably more -- he didn't know. What he told me afterward was, he was standing in the dark. Then the lights went on suddenly, and there he was, Juliet, standing in his dress and his lipstick and his dancing slippers in the middle of a room with a bare floor and one mattress on the floor, and all around him against the wall maybe two dozen muscle men, maybe more, football players, wrestlers, weight lifters, who knows? They were all masked, and naked except for black jock strops, and their bodies were all oiled and gleaming, and they all stood with their legs apart and their arms folded as if in some kind of final judgement. Tim saw what was up quickly enough, and tried to make a break for it. But his fiancee had led him in the dark into an inside room, soundproofed, with no doors, where the fraternity conducts its secret rituals. It turned out she was led in the dark through different passageways by someone who knew the way, and then when she had delivered Tim she was led out, back to the fraternity quad, and given a corsage in thanks. Then she went off to the dance. Tim didn't have a chance."

"The rest is rather vague even in his mind. They read some kind of hokey charges, and two men held him down. A third raped him with a broomstick, then he thinks with a baseball bat. The pain was unbearable, he said, and he's sure he fainted a few times. Then they all lined up and one by one they used his body, his mouth and his ass and his hands, a few at a time, over and over, insisting that he jerk every one of them off until there were no more pricks left to clutch, and that he suck everyone off and swallow all of their cum, until they had no more juice left, and that he receive gratefully every prick they could lunge into his ass and every load of cum they could dump inside him, and say 'Thank you!' every time. If he didn't thank them loud enough, they'd pull his head way back by the hair until he couldn't breath. He says when he finally passed out his skirt was still relatively clean, flung up over his back and his head so the muscle men could have clear access to his anus, but that when he found himself on the lawn a couple of hours later, unable to move for the pain, his skirt was stiff with what seemed to be quarts of cum, and drenched in piss. So he figures that long after he had lost consciousness they kept at it, to "teach the fucker a lesson" as they said."

"I know that's what they said because my ex-husband was one of them. Tim spent a few weeks in the hospital, then left town, and never came back. That was the end of his college career. The whole thing was hushed over and forgotten, except by a few girls Tim had helped once, one of them me, and of course by the rapists. Well, a few years after I was married I was in the mall buying a pair of shoes, and there was this salesman kneeling in front of me trying to fit me with a pair I had insisted would fit. I was vain, and stubborn. They were already pinching. I cried out, "Ouch, you stupid fool!" And he looked up at me with such sorrow in his eyes! There was Tim!

He didn't know me, of course, but his eyes started to brim, and he said, "I don't want to hurt you, ma'am, really I don't. I don't want to hurt anyone! Please forgive me! Please!" And he looked about to come apart. I leaned over, and took his head in both my hands, and held it, and then I leaned way over and looked into his eyes, just looked, our noses almost touching. More powerful feelings welled up in me than I have ever felt in my life before or since. I said, "Tim?" And he was baffled and frightened for just a moment. Then he suddenly said, "Pearl?" And I broke down and started to bawl. I just dissolved. I collapsed into little pieces. I started crying, "Tim! Tim! Tim!" over and over, and I still don't know what I meant by that. Maybe I was mourning for all the decent people I'd ever known that had gotten shit on. Maybe for the decency in me that I buried after I got married, then tried to forget altogether, because what good is it? I don't know. He had to help me into the manager's office, I was sobbing so uncontrollably. And there he sat with me, just as in the old days, waiting quietly until I could get a grip on myself."

"Then we went for coffee, and he told me how things were with him. He said that lying in the hospital, he couldn't handle the rage, and the self-contempt, and the loathing. When they released him he was still taking a dozen showers a day. He went crazy, he said, and he still couldn't sleep without terrible nightmares. Any large man still terrifies him, he said. He thought it was somehow his fault, exactly what he had told any number of girls they should never believe about themselves. He felt polluted, inside and out. He tried to remember, relive the horror of it one person at a time, to exorcize it from his mind. But no use. That only made it worse, he said."

"For a time he went on the streets and sold himself, he felt so worthless. He couldn't concentrate, or hold a job. He tried to kill himself, twice, he said, but he failed even there. Worst of all, he couldn't confide in anyone, or trust anyone. He had this terrible fear of betrayal, after what his fiancee had done to him. When I tried to touch him reassuringly after I got his phone number and gave him mine, he trembled so hard he couldn't get his coat on."

"I was still hopeful about my marriage. In fact it was going to last another seventeen years, though I didn't know it, and I didn't know it was going to cost me a large part of me, my enthusiasm, my trust in other people, any instincts for kindness I might have had. I was already getting arrogant, getting to be the kind of woman who feels free to talk bitchy to any shoe clerk who's only trying to do what he's asked to do. I got worse, as the years went by. You know that now I'm a tough broad, hard to live with, sarcastic, suspicious of any kindness anyone shows me, much too cynical. That's what life with my husband did to me. But you tolerate it because you know there's more to me. We both know when I'm putting on my masks. You know I'm a wiseass mainly for my own amusement, and for self-protection. And you know that when all my acting has played itself out, I do care! I care a lot! I know you know this, or you couldn't stand me for a minute. Neither could I."

"Well, I was more trusting in those days. That night I mentioned to my partner in life that I had met Tim, the fragile young man who had helped me and so many of my friends when we were in college, who had been brutalized by some bastard jocks, and had left school. He only commented, 'Oh, yeah, the pansy who used to talk my brothers' girlfriends into fucking other guys. Well, we fucked him that night, but good. The piece of shit! He really looked like shit when we dumped him on the quad, after we taught him to mind his own business. He hasn't forgotten that lesson yet, I'll bet!'"

"At that time I knew that my partner in life, my very own piece of shit, was already fucking other women. Only three years into our marriage! But I couldn't figure out what to do about it. Should I call him down, and let him know I knew? Should I ignore it, and hope that it would pass? Was it my fault? When he said that about Tim, he made up my mind for me. "

"The next day he was going on a sales trip to the midwest, for two weeks. So the next day I called Tim, and asked him to have dinner with me in a quiet little restaurant after his store closed. We had two cars in the garage, but I told him my husband took our car, so if he didn't mind, I'd like him to take me home afterward. We needed to talk, I said. I needed to talk. He agreed."

"We ate, and we talked. It was just like the old days. I found I was telling him all about my marriage, and what it seemed to be doing to me. He listened. By the way he listened, I could tell when I was striking poses, or pretending, or overdramatizing myself, and I could tell when I was talking to him from my heart. He was that kind of a guy. I heard myself speak truths, and I heard myself kidding myself. I knew he could tell the difference, so I heard myself with his ears, and for the first time since my marriage, maybe even before then, I was absolutely honest with myself. Tim just listened."

"We took a taxi home, and I asked him in for a nightcap, just a quick one. He was uncertain, but I took his elbow, and he was through the door and into the living room before he could say No. Then we talked for another hour. He sat on the sofa, looking at our fire in the fireplace, and I sat on the rug in front of him, also looking into the fire. We both relaxed a little more. We even got cozy. After a while I snuggled between his knees, and leaned my head back onto him, and rested my arms on his thighs, and we both looked at the fire, and I poured a little more wine, and we both felt mild and easy. We talked some more. I told him the worst of my fears about my life with my husband. He wanted to comfort me, I could tell, but his hand wouldn't quite bring itself to stroke my hair. As soon as I dared, when I felt his hand resting on my head, and trembling a little less, I preened myself against it. I was really afraid to move, for fear he would start to shake again, and his ghosts would return, and he would rush out of the house without even letting me call him a taxi."

"But at a particularly magical moment, I knew I had to act. I said, 'Tim?' and he said, 'Pearl?' as if he already knew what I was going to ask him. So I didn't ask him. I twisted around between his knees, and laid my cheek against his crotch where his balls had to be, and I kissed his jeans where his cock had to be. Then I said, 'Please hold me.' Thank God, he put both hands on my head, and gently pressed my face into his crotch. I hugged his thighs, and then sat up a little, and unzipped his pants, and ever so gently took out his cock, and held it in both my hands. What a treasure! But it looked so shy. I kissed it. I kissed it again. I asked him to kiss me, and he touched his lips to me. Then I took his prick firmly in one hand, and I sat up, and settled onto the couch next to him, and snuggled against him, and then worked my hand slowly up and down on his prick. I asked him to kiss me again. He did, on my lips this time. I sighed, without even realizing it."

"Then for the next half-hour we were like high school kids. We kissed each other. I kissed him everywhere I could reach, his face, his mouth, his eyes, his neck, and he kissed me, especially on my neck. Little by little he grew warmer, more sure of himself. And all the while I was moving my hand gently up and down on his tool, being careful never to seem casual or absent-minded. I wanted him to feel pleasure there too, every minute we were also kissing and hugging."

"Then I went down on him. It was exquisite. I bent over, and put my head in his lap, and put the head of his cock in my mouth, and I made love to it. It grew. I licked it, and I kissed it. And it grew larger. He lifted himself to put it deeper into my mouth, and that was the first move he had made toward me without my asking. The very first. I almost began to cry. I slipped my head down on his meat, and he lifted himself up, and then again, and finally there we were. We were making love together, in rhythm, delicately responsive to each other. I think I was the first girl to make him feel desired since his fiancee had abandoned him in the dark."

"So I took a very big chance. All of a sudden I stood up, and said, 'Tim, we are going to make love tonight. Don't say No. Don't. Please don't. If you can't make love to me, then just let me make love to you. I need you. Oh, how I need you. I want you to kiss me. I need you to kiss me. All over. We need to take our clothes off. We need to go to bed. Come to bed, Tim. Please. For me.' And oddly enough, it was for me. It had to be for me. He'd have known if I was faking it. He'd have known if it was only gratitude, or some misplaced charitable instinct, or if I was using him to get even with my husband. It had to be real caring, and he had to care for me too."

"Tim said, 'All right, Pearl. I want to kiss you too. All over. For me. I know what you're doing. You are the most wonderful girl I have ever known.'"

"So we went to bed. The rest is what people do together, men and women, boys and girls. We took off our clothes and lay together side by side upstairs, in the big bed I shared with my husband. And in the warm yellow glow of our night light, we looked at each others' bodies. And we touched each other. We touched each others' faces, and shoulders, and arms -- each touch seemed a miracle. And we caressed each other. He stroked the steep curve over my hip down to my waist, again and again, and told me it was a marvel he couldn't believe was real. Almost right off I found a place on his neck that started him moaning. We found each others' nipples, and when our four hands weren't enough we moved our mouths onto each others' bodies, and began to kiss and lick each other, everywhere. I mean everywhere. The first time I came that night, he came too, his lips gently pulsing on my clit and his tongue sweeping my slit, and my mouth filled with his cock and then with his cum. So very delicious. Then ever so gently I licked him erect again, and I turned around and smiled and sat down on his prick, and he lifted himself into me. Then we moved into each other and we rocked back and forth together, faster and faster, and I held his shoulders, and when he came again so did I. It was so wonderful. It was the only orgasm I have ever had that I would call peaceable, all warmth and serenity and quiet joy, a feeling of love that spread through my entire body, and then seemed to pass through me into him."

"We made love again that night, always attentive to each others' needs, and exploring others. The last time was passionate. Yes, passionate! By morning he had finally lost all of his inhibitions. We trusted each other absolutely, and we owned each other, and we took possession of each other in whatever ways our whims dictated. Over and over. He built up in me the most frenzied delight I have ever known.

"This went on for the whole two weeks my ex was away. Tim came and went at will, never mind what the neighbors might think. His self-confidence came rebounding back. By the end of the first week we were joking with each other while making love, and I discovered that what people do with each other's pricks and breasts and cunts can be enormous fun! Other times it was like religion, beautiful, devoted, rapt, so very spiritual, though always with a perfect communion of his cock and my pussy at the heart of our worship. At the end of the second week he kissed me, and told me he had found a job in California near a college where he intended to complete his degree, and that I had saved his life, and that he loved me dearly. I told him I loved him, too, and always would love him. And it was true. I still do love him. More than anyone I have ever known. There was a perfect truth between us, nothing wishful, no bullshit, no pretense. And perfect caring for each other. I know he knows today how I still feel about him. And I know he feels that way too about me. But we no longer need each other the way we did then, when we were trying to lose ourselves in each other, and instead we found ourselves."

Pearl stopped, and took a hefty swallow at her drink. No one said anything.

"Where are those three guys?" she asked. "Weren't they due around now?"

"You know, Pearl," said Kay, obviously impressed. "That doesn't sound like you at all."

"Thank you, Pearl," my wife said. "I hear you." Her eyes were bright, and I thought she was being sentimental. Later I found out she was thinking about me the whole time.

Things got a little blurry after that, then a lot more blurry. The three guys came over, and we had a few more rounds of drinks. Kay told them what we'd been talking about, and they each of them told their own stories of one night stands on business trips, hot sex with willing partners, with every anatomical detail described. They each referred to their own pricks as heavy, or huge, or frightening to their ladies at first. Pearl questioned this, and they said they were willing to bet her they were all three exceptionally well-endowed, put up or shut up, her choice. Pearl just smiled to herself, and took one of the men by the hand and led him off to the dance floor. I didn't see her again that night.