This one's a little bit different for me. It just spirals down the rabbit hole and gets strangeras you go. Some of you will hate the ending. It's much shorter than last weeks's story too. Before we get into it, I wanted to says thanks to all of you who wrote to me about last week's story "Saving Savannah" and of course as usual I need to thank Mikothebaby for her relentless pursuit of editing perfection. For those of you who don't think having a good editor makes a difference, go back and look at some of my stories before I worked with her. Last week's story was 64 pages long typed out, but there were no complaints at all about editing mistakes, only about my hair-brained story. SS06

SEX, SEX, SEX! It's so strange that most of the problems in my marriage all revolved around something that we spend so little of our lives doing. According to recent studies, the average man or woman who lives to the ripe old age of seventy, spends approximately six months of that lifetime having sex. As much as we wish it was more, that's all the time we spend on sex. The average man spends a whopping total of three and a half years going to the bathroom, 18 months doing household chores, three years driving and ten years watching TV, but only six months having sex

Try as I might, I found no statistics on the numbers of marriages that end over bathroom habits, household chores, or watching TV. But we all know the staggering number of unions that have dissolved or nearly dissolved over sexual incompatibility.

Mine was one of those. But don't feel sorry for me, my life is better and richer for it. My name is Stephen Turner. I'm five foot ten. I have sandy brown hair and green eyes. I'm average in most categories, although I like to think of myself as more logical and a bit smarter than average.

Perhaps what I've always thought of as my greatest strength though, is actually a weakness. My weakness for what seems to be logical allowed me to be manipulated into a situation that I'd have otherwise hated. And over time, I still came to hate it anyway.

How do I put this? My wife Serena and I were swingers. Okay, about now half of you are saying yeah! And the rest of you are saying ugh! The half saying yeah, are imagining me out there on a regular basis screwing lots of available attractive women and enjoying myself immensely. The influx and turnover of some super elite swing club constantly bringing me new partners. You'd imagine that this leads to a very rich and varied sex life and you'd be wrong. Kind of...

The others of you are imagining me having to also watch other men screwing my wife and doing so on a regular basis and how this in effect makes me some kind of cuckold and lead to the breakdown of our love for each other and the end of the marriage. And you'd be wrong too. Kind of...

I really believe that the main reason for the problems I had with Serena was just that we grew apart. People change over time, and we just got to the place where Serena and I couldn't reach each other anymore. As you listen to my story, I'm sure you'll see that I'm telling the truth.

Serena

Stephen, though I love him totally, is full of shit. Our marriage should never have even been in jeopardy. And if I have my way, I'm going to get all of his love back. The reason for our marriage problems didn't have anything to do with sex. It was all about two things. The first thing that broke us up is that men have poor communication skills. Instead of Stephen being honest with me about the situation from the very beginning, he chose to hold his feelings in. Am I supposed to be some kind of mind reader? And the second thing that broke us up is that Stephen was seduced by that awful whore into cheating on me. That awful woman stole my husband right out from under my nose and in a way the bitch paid for it. As you listen to the true story, I'm sure you'll see it my way.

Since I'm the one who's talking right now, I may as well start things out. Both Steve and I are the products of broken marriages. My dad and mom, as was the norm during their younger days, married in their twenties. I guess dad started cheating on mom early on. His job caused him to travel frequently and dad was a pussy hound to begin with. My dad was a salesman. His company manufactured and sold ladies underwear. It was his job to go out and sell their products to stores and large chains of stores.

Dad was an expert on panties and I guess he had some kind of lingerie fetish as well. I remember him telling mom on lots of occasions that panties weren't necessarily the greatest thing on earth, but they were next to it. He'd always laugh after that, though mom didn't. It took me years to realize what he meant.

Anyway, those long trips on the road eventually led to Dad's cheating, whether it was out of loneliness or just the inability to control his lust. Mom put up with it for years until she just couldn't take it anymore. She stood by him until I left for college. I think she did that out of wanting me to have a secure and stable home life more than anything else. The funny part about it is that dad had quit cheating years before she filed for the divorce. He was devastated when she left him and whether or not he deserved it, I only remember that my dad's last few years of life were miserable ones.

Mom didn't fare much better. She remarried a few years after she broke up with dad. My step father was a really nice man. He was older than mom and had been a widower when they met. I guess I expected the two of them to settle down and have a nice life together. Though my heart ached for my dad, a little part of me was glad my mom could find happiness. It didn't last for very long though, because before two years had even passed there were problems in her new marriage. This time my mom was at fault. She'd married a man that she thought she loved, but the problem was that he, being much older, didn't have the need or capacity for sex that my mom needed.

My dad had always been a randy old bastard and that was the problem. Once mom reached her late thirties and hit her sexual peak, her new husband just couldn't keep up with her. And mom also wanted some kind of revenge for the way that dad had cheated on her. Only she was getting her revenge on a man who had nothing to do with it. I felt really bad for him, because as I said, he was a really nice man. Mom engaged in a series of trysts and was caught several times before he just gave her some money and asked her to leave.

Their break up was hard on both families and the divorce was brutal. When mom had divorced my dad, he felt guilty and tried to be so generous with her that he almost put himself in the poor house. The second divorce was far different. My step father had been the one who'd been hurt and the judge sided with him, leaving my mother nearly penniless. Her alimony and support from my father had ended when she remarried.

Of course, there was one person who was actually happy about the divorce. Yep, you guessed it, my dad was ecstatic, at first. He'd been one of the men my mom had sex with. He made no secret of the fact that he still loved her. He had high hopes that they'd get back together again. Unfortunately, it never happened. You see mom loved my dad too, but she simply couldn't get over the number of times that he'd cheated on her. She simply couldn't ever trust him again.

Mom continued sleeping with a lot of men and ended being run down in a car by the wife of one of them. Dad drank himself to death after she passed. I tried to get help for him but it didn't matter, he simply didn't want to live without my mother.

Stephen's parents were different. His dad never once cheated. His mom beat his dad's record by one, though and that was all it took. Steve's dad is probably the nicest man I've ever met. He was one of those typical salt of the earth guys. You know the type, he'd help anyone anyway he could. Steve's mom though, was a looker. Guys were always coming up to her telling her how beautiful she was.

I guess when she got older, she started to wonder if she was still attractive or maybe just hearing it from her husband wasn't enough. Who knows, maybe she just got bored or something, but she ended up having a fling with a younger guy. Somehow, months after it had ended, Steve's dad found out about it. He was destroyed by it. He'd loved that woman with all of his heart and soul for over twenty years, but he still couldn't forgive that one lapse. In his mind, the fling and all of the embarrassment over it, was grounds for a divorce.

Stephen's mom fought the divorce as hard as she could. She tried several different tactics. She tried delaying things with court mandated counseling. She made ridiculous demands and support requirements that the court struck down. She even pretended to be pregnant and swore that the child was her husband's. None of which worked. It took years during which her husband remained resolute. In the end though, he got the divorce he wanted. And they ended up splitting everything up nearly 50/50 anyway.

Stephen's mother was hit on constantly after the divorce. She was, in fact, a beautiful woman. The problem was that most of the men who hit on her, just wanted one thing. They wanted her for that beauty and very few of them wanted her long term. After only a few months, she was depressed and distraught. She'd never wanted the divorce in the first place, but by the end of it, everyone on both sides of the family had been begging her to just let the poor man go. After all, she'd caused it herself. She became obsessed with getting her ex back. And, of course, she made a fool of herself trying it.

Stephen's dad, well the thing about those nice guy types is that they're not alone for too long. The saying goes that opposites attract and they really do, but there's a difference between attraction and longevity. Most of those quick attractions, like Stephen's mother found out, are very short lived.

On the other hand, there's another saying, birds of a feather ... you know the rest. Anyway, Steve's dad met a really nice woman. She wasn't nearly as pretty as Steve's mom. She wasn't a devastating beauty, but she was pretty enough and also younger. They got married and had two more kids together. They're still married and very happy to this day. Steve's mother had to watch helplessly as her ex found happiness with someone else. She has health problems and is confined to a wheelchair now. She burned a lot of bridges with her own family during the divorce, so strangely enough only Steve's dad and his new wife visit her.

I was determined that when I got married, I would never let sex ruin my marriage. When I met Stephen, it was love at first site. We met later in life than our parents did. We were in our late twenties. The funniest thing about it was that I was kind of a partier and Steve wasn't. I often dated several men and also often slept with several men too. Sexually, I was kind of open. As I said before, I had no intention of letting sex ruin my life.

I'd seen the mistakes my parents made. And I'd studied them. I realized that the problem was that although they were sexually compatible, like most couples their peaks were off. The average male reaches his sexual peak early in life. The average female doesn't reach hers until later. So with my mom and dad, both of them had very high sex drives, they just reached them at different times during their marriage and life together.

My solution to this or so I originally thought, was that I'd find someone whose drives and desires matched my own completely and that we'd as much as possible grow together. You know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men...

When I first laid eyes on Stephen, all of that bullshit went out the window. I'd been hearing from one of my girlfriends for weeks about the two guys she was dating. She wasn't like me. She really only wanted to be with one guy. She'd been dating both her boss, and this other guy Steve. She ended up pregnant and she knew her boss was the father because she hadn't slept with Steve yet.

She didn't want to give up the boss since he'd knocked her up and if she could make that work it would probably be the best for her child. But she didn't want to give Steve up either because he was so nice and in her words, not mine, dreamy.

She had a party one weekend and I helped solve her problem. I answered the door and saw Steve standing there with that shy, unassuming smile of his and that was it. We were never apart again. She and I are no longer friends, of course, but who cares. Her boss turned out to be married. His wife divorced him and she was the one with all of the money anyway. My friend ended up a struggling single mother who barely scraped by. Her boss left town after the divorce and was never heard from again.

Steve was different from the guys that I usually dated. My happiness seemed to matter to him more than anything else. It was a real problem for me, because I had intended to sow all of my wild oats and wait until later in life to get married. Another problem was that I was falling in love with Steve so deeply that I couldn't keep him at arm's length like I did most men. Stephen was phenomenal in bed. I guess it went back to that need of his to please me. I was soon so addicted to sex with him that I couldn't deny him anything. So when he asked me to marry him, there wasn't even a second's hesitation before I said yes.

Our first few years were happy ones, we were constantly together and I just felt surrounded by love. It worried me because what really mattered to me was the long haul. I wanted that happily ever after with Steve that my parents never had. I'm not sure whether or not people realize just how rare that idyllic picture of two old fogies sitting on that porch together really is. It takes a lifetime of work to get there. If you look at all of those thousands of eager young couples who are madly in love and get married each year, less than a quarter of them make it to happily ever after. Death, disease and divorce each take their toll on a share of those happy young couples. I truly wanted to be one of the winners with my Stephen.

I think it was probably about five years ago that I had the first talk with him. I'd been slowly preparing him since he seemed resistant at first. Throughout our marriage, I'd pushed the envelope when it came to sex and erotica. On our vacations, we'd gone to nude beaches occasionally and were both comfortable with our bodies so he seemed like he'd be open to going a bit further.

I often read articles about open relationships and the swinging lifestyle and left the magazines or the web pages open where he could see them.

It took a while, but finally Stephen asked if it was something I was interested in. We had a long heart to heart and I explained to him what I wanted in terms of our relationship. I wanted to be with him until one of us or hopefully both of us died. He was my man and I was his woman. I loved him and still do with every breath I take. I explained the examples of our parent's relationships to him and told him that I'd die if that ever happened to us.

I told him that true love wasn't based on or reliant on sex. And that if we truly loved each other we could relegate sex to being simply another physical act that was necessary for health and well-being.

I explained to him that there didn't need to be so many emotional attachments made to it. Why couldn't sex be just like eating? It was simply another biological function. While I was at work I often had lunch or snacks in the cafeteria with my co-workers some of whom were male. It was still far more special to me when I ate with Stephen, but he didn't get angry if I ate with Ralph or Jim during the day.

Stephen told me that it was different, because there simply were emotions attached to sex and different people viewed the same acts through different perspectives. Each and every one of us is an individual and we all see things our own way.

I saw his car as simply a vehicle, as just a machine to take us places, but he saw and treated his Mustang better than some people treat their kids.

That first talk didn't go my way, but it opened the door. It took a lot more talks and a lot of begging and whining before we first joined the club. Our club has a lot of rules. Members have to have regular updates to their medical records to assure that no one can bring any diseases in. There are rules of conduct and no singles are allowed. Most of the members are married and there are no closed or locked doors permitted on the premises. There are separate rooms and areas for those who are interested in multiple partners or fetishes as well. And all members are advised against discussing what goes on inside the club outside of it even with their spouses.

Things went well for the first few years that we were there. We went maybe once in a while at first. After a while it became more of a regular thing. We started going monthly. Then it was twice a month or so. Towards the end we went two or sometimes three times a week. Until the end there was never a problem. I guess I've always been the one who pushed for us to go, but towards the end Stephen had been the one asking. Since he'd been a little reluctant at first and for most of our membership, my mistake was in not noticing the changes in my husband or the ones in myself. I still didn't consider this anything too serious for us to overcome.

Stephen

As usual Serena only sees things the way she wants them to be. She was right in several of her points including the histories of our families, but she was wrong on several points as well.

She also made light of my feelings on several things, which leads me to believe that she either never cared how I felt, or thought that my love for her and wish to make her happy would get her what she wanted.

Serena was correct about it being love at first sight between us. Anyone who saw Serena would fall in love with her. She's tall, thin and beautiful. Her blond hair is cut short so it's easy to style and also to show off her beautiful facial features and high cheekbones. When we first got together, I was always wondering why someone like her, picked me.

After we'd been together for a while, it got worse for me. I just always felt like I was living in some kind of fairy tale. All I've ever wanted growing up was to have a great job in a field that I loved, a nice house, a woman who loved me and a Mustang GT. My needs are very simple and surprisingly I had them all. My life was perfect or so I thought.

Like Serena, I worried about what had happened with our parents. I didn't want it to happen to me either. Like her, I wanted to settle down with someone that I could be with for the rest of my life. I guess our biggest differences were in the way that we saw the problems and their causes and also in the way we chose to handle those problems.

Serena saw my mom and dad completely different from the way I did. Sure my dad was a great guy. I love him. Growing up he was the best father I knew. He was very caring and he allowed me to make my own mistakes and grow from them. He was also a great husband. My mother loved him a lot. My problem with my dad is probably my own. My dad seems to look at things differently as people age. When you're young, he understands that you're learning and that you'll make mistakes. But once you become an adult you have to live with your choices. He never seemed to recognize that adults make mistakes and have faults too. Perhaps that's why he never saw his own.

Let me give you an example. You've all heard about my love for Mustangs. One of the first things I did when I got out of my mom and dad's house was to buy myself an old used Mustang. I saved for a couple of years and budgeted until I could get the car I wanted. Of course I had no idea of how much the insurance would cost, or how much more expensive gas would be. I'd also traded in my existing car and driving a car with that much power and that little weight on winter roads was an experience. The first month that I had the car, the insurance increase left me with very little money. I asked my dad if I could borrow some money to tide me over until I got paid.

He took one look at my car and said, "No." I thought he was joking.

"You should have thought about all of that when you bought that thing," he said.

I guess in a way he was right. But on another level everyone makes mistakes and we all need a helping hand from time to time. My dad could be a real hard ass and very inflexible in his thinking on some matters. I really believe that inflexibility and unwillingness to forgive is what ended my parents' marriage.

I mean I know that what my mom did was wrong. She made a terrible mistake and my dad was right to be angry at her. But she loved him more than anything else in the world and he threw her away like an old pair of shoes for that one mistake.

Sure, dad moved on with his life. I guess if he couldn't forgive her there was nothing else to do. And he does have the right to be happy. But where others still see my dad as being a great guy because he goes by the home once a week and visits my mom, I see it differently. I see him slowly torturing her. He goes by and visits her every fucking week just so he can dangle the thing she wants most in the world in front of her, himself, knowing that she'll never have him again.

In some ways, I think it would be kinder not to go so she'd get over him or maybe even forget. But week after week he goes. Sometimes he even takes his new wife so she can see how happy they are. Dad even had kids with the new wife. They're teenagers now. It's funny, my dad is in his late sixties. He's still a vibrant and active man. My mom, on the other hand, is no longer the beauty she once was and is a broken down hulk of a woman. I often wonder if it was her one slip that caused her life to turn out that way or just my dad's unwillingness to forgive.

It's been said that the best revenge is living well. I truly believe that because my dad never hit my mom or even raised his voice to her, but he destroyed her life far more completely than if he'd done either.

I didn't share Serena's opinion that differences in sex drive destroyed my parents' marriage. I think it was my dad's inability to bend or to put someone else's needs before his. In my opinion, true, real love is so hard to find that you make allowances for the people who really love you.

So yep, as much as I didn't like the idea of us becoming swingers, I agreed to try it. And yes the first few times that we tried it, I participated. Did I enjoy it? Hell yes. There's always something to be said for having sex with a young vibrant woman. It's even better when you can sample different body types and cultures. Serena is tall and thin, I'd often wondered about sex with a shorter chunkier woman, or a woman with large breasts or even a woman with a big fat butt. And through the club, I now know.

The problem, at least for me, is that after a while and a relatively short while, it got boring to me. It became simply a physical act, exactly as Serena had suggested. I hoped that she'd get bored of it as well and that we could quit. The problem was that Serena never got bored of it. As time wore on, she wanted to go to the club more and more. I spoke to her several times about quitting and she always told me that I was probably just bored and needed to try something or someone different. She always told me to give it another week and we'd quit, but we never did.

About that time, I made what was for me, a terrible mistake. Serena and I always separated at the club. Our first few times there we learned that we really didn't like seeing each other with someone else. Anyway, I made the mistake of walking into a room where Serena was ... I guess the only thing I can call it was ... performing.

There were at least four or five guys fucking her or waiting their turns. It was like she was in a feeding frenzy and she couldn't get enough dick. I quickly backed out of the room, but the picture never left my mind. I didn't realize it then but a switch had been turned.

I've always heard that you can't fall out of love with someone overnight. That is probably true, but you can fall out of love with someone given enough time. That first time that I saw her started the process for me. I tried to avoid seeing her in the club after that. The problem was that I couldn't erase the scene from my mind or my memory. I'm sure that was the point I began pulling away from Serena.

When we left the club, we often made love when we got home. I guess it was some sort of thing to prove who we still ended up with no matter what had gone on at the club. That night was the first night that we didn't. It was also the first time I ever lied to Serena.

She showered and couldn't wait to get into bed when she got home. I took a very long time in the shower and even when I got into bed just pulled away from her.

"Don't you want me?" she asked.

"Very much," I lied. "But I guess I'm just drained." She was shocked.

"So some evil bitch has drained all of my stuff huh?" she said. "Well, it's okay. At least you had a good time. Next time remember to save something for your wife though, okay?"

I nodded and she scooted over and draped my arms around her. "You can just hold me, anyway though," she said. As we lay there spooned together she wiggled her ass against me trying to arouse me. I pulled away from her and finally rolled away completely, pretending I was asleep. While holding her, I felt like I was hugging a strange pit bull. It just wasn't something I was comfortable doing.

For the next few weeks, I brought up quitting the club on a regular basis. Maybe I should have been more firm with Serena or simply stopped going, but I didn't want to be like my father. I wanted us to decide together that we didn't need other people. Unfortunately, I ran into Serena in the club again, this time a huge blond guy was pounding her while others waited their turn and cheered. When he got done with her he shot his sperm all over her face and she licked it from around her mouth with her tongue. I had to get out of there before I threw up.

I backed out of the room and tried to sit down in one of the common areas.

"If you're thinking it'll get better, it doesn't," said a voice. I looked up and saw a woman sitting on the sofa I just dumped myself on.

She was short and while not fat, she was voluptuous. She had big boobs and a big butt. But she also had the most beautiful blue eyes I'd ever seen. Her long very dark brown hair was tied into one long braid that started from the top of her head and continued to the small of her back. She was fully dressed unlike a lot of the women in the club. That was one of the things that always amazed me. The women there walked around in nothing or next to nothing, while the men were always dressed.

"You must be new here," she said. She smiled and it made me want to smile too. "Donna," she said, holding out her hand. I shook it and smiled back.

"I guess maybe I should take you around on a tour and show you some of the places to avoid until you're fully acclimated," she said.

"That would be nice," I said. I didn't let on that I'd been a member for longer than she had.

She showed me the back of the club where the deck and the balcony were. I'd seen it but hadn't been there in over a year. We ended up talking for a while about all kinds of things, from cars to games and even movies. Donna, at twenty-nine years old, was six years younger than me. Her smile and her eyes lit up the night for me.

After our tour, we ended up back on the balcony. The moon was high in the sky and it was a warm night. We played scrabble on my iPhone for hours. Just before midnight I won the last game we played. "Okay you won," she said. "I guess we should find a room so you can have your prize."

"Huh?" I asked.

"I appreciate you spending all of your time with me," she said. "Isn't that the reason why people come here? I just assumed that you'd want to have sex as your prize. Is it okay if I just give you a blow job though? My husband will be expecting me soon."

I grabbed her by the sides of her head and gently pulled her to me. I very gently kissed her on her lips, letting my lips linger on hers for a fleeting moment.

"Why ruin it?" I asked. "We had a really good time tonight. I really like you. I thought I'd found a real friend. Please don't turn it into something as cheesy as the rest of what goes on around here."

Then I turned and left. When I got back to the entry hall, Serena was sitting on the couch with her arms folded waiting for me.

"Where were you?" she asked angrily. I looked down at her and smiled.

"I was having fun. Isn't that what we're supposed to do here?" I asked.

"We always leave by ten," she said. "It's after midnight."

"Serena," I snapped. "I usually have to wait for you. Just this once you had to wait for me. What's the problem?"

I didn't wait for an answer. I just grabbed my keys out of my jacket and headed for my car. As we pulled away from the club, I let my thoughts wander. I pushed my head back into my Mustang's Recaro racing seat and smiled as I remembered kissing Donna.