Czytaj książkę: «Too Fast For Love: Opportunist Encounters»

Flaunting It
Rachel Kramer Bussel

When I reveal that my husband Brent and I have been together for half our lives, people are usually surprised, whether they’re middle-aged like us, younger or older. At first, I bristled at their looks, as if there were something wrong with being a long-term couple, but, over the years, I’ve softened, become used to those responses. I understand them, as best I can. We aren’t living in a time when couples tend to stick it out, and certainly not where they’re still as passionate as they were when they first got together, or, in our case, more passionate. Their shock is indicative of what modern marriage has become, something fleeting, something to start with and move on to another arrangement later if things don’t work out. Marriage isn’t seen as a grand commitment but a grand adventure, and I’m living proof that a true sexual and soulful union can be both. Certainly, it hasn’t been as easy as I’d thought it would be the day I walked down our makeshift aisle in the backyard of my friend Caroline’s house, the Northern California sun glinting down on us, me in my mother’s worn but beautiful dress, Brent in a tux that somehow looked too big on him, his stubbled face as handsome as I’ve ever seen it.

But our marriage is not intact simply because we took those vows way back in the mid-80s. It’s intact because we’ve worked to keep it that way, to infuse even the darkest times with the fire that made us sleep together that very first night we met at a bar not too far off campus in Berkeley. My friends were delighted that I’d finally lost my virginity at twenty-three, and so was I, but, whereas they thought Brent was but a stepping stone to a college career of campus hookups, somehow I knew he was the real thing.

I wasn’t his first – we’re less than a year apart, but he was an early bloomer – but he’s told me since that he feels in many ways like I was. I know I was the first woman he wanted to spend the night with, truly sleeping next to me, often worn out from our very vigorous sessions, in bed, on the floor, anywhere and everywhere, rather than keeping one eye on the clock until it was time to go. I was the first woman he fucked with the lights on, taking the time to look at every inch of me, even when I winced in half-delight, half-fear, urging him to enjoy the comforts of the dark. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other, but that doesn’t mean we spent all day in bed; we were both active in campus groups, and we’d go hiking, do touristy things like walk across the Golden Gate Bridge, and argue our way back to his apartment after taking in the latest show at Berkeley Rep.

He became a professor, while I stuck around after getting a not-so-useful master’s degree in sociology and went to school to become a therapist, consulting out of our home while raising our two kids. We were, and are, devoted parents, but we’ve always made sure to carve out time for us, where our undivided attention is on each other. Well, make that our almost undivided attention, because our real secret for staying together for over twenty years is that, when jealousy strikes, we don’t ignore it, we address it directly, head-on. We examine it, celebrate it, flaunt it, and we’ve managed to turn it into a form of foreplay. Whereas some women get their claws out when another woman hits on their man, I curve my lips into a smile. Brent takes it one step further: he actively enjoys watching men hit on me, so much so that, if we’re out with a group of friends and he notices a man checking me out, he’ll comment on it, taking pride in my ability to attract barely legal freshmen all the way up to men with white hair. ‘You can be a MILF or a sugar baby. I love that,’ he told me once.

It took me a bit longer to get used to the girls who fawned over him, who would gladly have given new meaning to ‘office hours’, and not just for extra credit. I was proud that he still looked as sexy as he had in our student days, with an added gloss of maturity. He’d always been big, stocky, the kind of man who, feminist sensibilities be damned, I knew would protect me, so he didn’t have to worry as much as some of his formerly thin friends about packing on the pounds. We tend to eat a healthy diet, marked with the occasional indulgence. The sweet young things didn’t bother as much when I was closer to their age; now that they’re younger than our kids, who’ve by now graduated college and settled on the East Coast, it can unnerve me a bit, but Brent makes sure I know he’s always more amused than aroused.

‘What would I even do with one of them, Nadine? I bet she barely knows what her G-spot is,’ he’ll whisper to me. ‘Unless you wanted to help her find it.’ And then we’ll be off on a filthy fantasy in which we tag-team some innocent girl who we know deep down desperately wants it. That fantasy has come true a few times, once they’ve moved on to other professors for their formal classes, but what works best for us is the other way around; Bill is far more the voyeur than I am, and we’ve done everything from making our own sex tapes to screwing in front of windows where the chances of being seen are high.

Recently, though, while celebrating our twenty-seventh anniversary in Las Vegas (we celebrate every year, rather than simply waiting for the ‘big’ anniversaries), we took our predilection for perversity to a new level. Aside from those women we’d bedded together, and a few steamy kisses at parties, I’d never been with anyone other than Brent, and definitely not another man. Oh, I’d looked plenty, online and off, and had my share of fantasies, but, up until then, simply telling Brent about my naughtiest daydreams had been enough. That was my way of flaunting it, and whenever my friends would tell me in hushed tones about lusting after their co-worker, lawn guy, painter or plumber, I’d wow them with stories of brazenly flirting right in front of my husband, and how hard it made him. The logical extension of these flirtations was something I’d been nervous about, always balking at actually taking things to the next level, but something about turning fifty had made me just a little bit bolder. I knew I looked good for my age, could pass for ten years younger if I wanted to, even though I’d let the grey overtake the brown.

Maybe it took that milestone to make me want to see what it was actually like to take another man to bed. The mere thought of it made me giddy with a kind of desire I hadn’t felt since my earliest dates with Brent. We decided that we’d try it out and, if I met a man who tickled my fancy, I could go as far as I desired, as long as Brent could watch. I donned a black silk dress that was in stark contrast to the jeans and T-shirts on the crowd in the casino at The Flamingo, where we were staying. We’d chosen the Mandarin Oriental, since it didn’t have a casino, as the debut of the new me, and booked a room there in hopes of using it as a home away from home, as it were. Taking another man back to the bed where I’d been intimate with Brent would be a bit much, even for me. I wanted a clean slate for what felt like losing a different kind of virginity. It took us a while to get out the door after our room-service meal, though, because Brent was so obviously, achingly hard, I had trouble keeping my hands, not to mention my mouth, off of him. By the time I’d given him an extremely agile blowjob, followed by him returning the favour as I sat on his face, my hair was mussed enough to require another brushing.

Finally, we were out the door. We held hands on our way down the strip, pausing to admire the Bellagio fountain, oohing and aahing as it erupted in front of a crowd of eager viewers, reminding me of Brent’s cock when I jerked him off with my hand and I got to watch it spurt. Now that was a sight to behold. Then I stayed behind for ten additional minutes while Brent made his way to the bar and set himself up in a seat where he could easily watch the band – and the bar, which I sidled up to, making sure the slit in my dress was draped dramatically. I could feel men – and women – watching me, but the eyes that burned the brightest, the ones that made me blush, were Brent’s. I just know when he’s looking at me, whether from near or far, and, while I couldn’t look back at him, I hoped he could feel me reacting to his gaze.

I smiled seductively at the bartender; there’s nothing like making a man young enough to be my child blush, and really all it takes is slightly raised eyebrows, my favourite deep-red lipstick and my lips turned upwards into a smile that hints at all the magical things I can do with my mouth. ‘What can I get you?’ the man asked, his voice a little hesitant. I hoped I looked like I could eat him for lunch – or dessert, as it were.

‘Veuve Clicquot,’ I murmured, and no sooner had I turned around than another equally charming young man was asking if the seat next to me was taken. It was the seat closest to Brent, though, and I didn’t want his view blocked.

‘Not yet,’ I said, giving him that same grin, one I’d had to practise when Brent and I first started flirting with others. I’d fallen into a married-lady smile, a benevolent ‘look but don’t touch’ curve of my lips with other men and a ‘you know I’m a sure thing’ smile with Brent, but not the smile that promised a frisson of back-and-forth flirtation, a smile that said we could end up in Paris or naked on a rooftop. That was the smile I gave the stranger as I shifted casually, claiming the seat as if it had already been mine, making sure Brent had a perfect view of my back – my dress had a plunge in front and behind – and the young yummy stranger had a view of my cleavage.

‘Are you even old enough to drink?’ I teased him, running a sharp red nail, one I’d perfected over the last few weeks in lieu of my usual understated short pale-pink ones, along his arm.

‘I’m twenty-three,’ he said, thankfully holding off on adding ‘ma’am’, which would’ve added a little too much verisimilitude, then waited patiently, as if to see if he passed muster. When the bartender smiled at me, I said, ‘And one for the gentleman,’ not letting him order lest his preferred drink be something vile that would prevent me from lusting after him. I was here on a mission to bring home a memory that Brent and I could feast on for years to come, and I wasn’t going to leave Vegas without completing it. But more than that, once I stopped playing the role of MILF ready to pounce on her prey and simply sat back and observed the young man, whose name was Andre, I felt confident, assured, grateful for every experience that had led me to this moment. When I was Andre’s age, I’d never had the guts or even the desire to bed a stranger. Now, with my beloved husband watching, I knew I could do anything.

Once I realised I was completely in control of what might happen, that Andre was taking his cues from me – and so, for that matter, was Brent – I let go of any ideas of who I was or who I should be. I was me, of course, but a heightened, special, vacation-vixen version of me, and I was also someone whom Andre didn’t know at all. He didn’t need to know all of me – I was saving that, had always saved that, for Brent – but Andre could know this brand of me very, very intimately.

We sat and sipped our champagne, chatting lightly, each of us clearly plotting how to get the other one alone. Every time his arm brushed against me, or his eyes met mine, I willed myself not to blush like a schoolgirl. It was instinctual, after so long finding myself under Brent’s steady, gorgeous gaze. I may be brazen in my fantasies, but in real life my pale skin reveals my giddiness, my nervousness, my excitement, and this moment had the added thrill of being watched twice, up close and from afar, by Andre and Brent. Every time I even thought about Brent seeing me with this young stud, I got wet and warm.

‘I’m glad you have the night off,’ I murmured, putting my empty glass down and leaning close enough so my breasts brushed against him. Not that it mattered since I’d already decided I wanted him, but Andre was a pianist, working parties and a few regular bar gigs. He’d dropped by to see a friend’s band and stuck around. He’d bought my story about being in town for a conference.

Just as he put his glass down and reached for my hip, Brent got up and angled his way towards the bar. ‘Excuse me,’ he said as he jostled us. I thought I might come right there on the spot, with my boy-toy on my left, my husband on my right. Brent managed to convey all that he needed to in one lightning-quick, red-hot glance. I wanted to kiss him, then turn and kiss Andre, and, if I’d thought Andre would’ve gone for a little triple-play action, at that moment I’d have gone for it. Our little naughty experiment had turned me into a wild woman!

Instead, I let Brent order his scotch while Andre’s hand roamed. When we took a break, I headed towards the bathroom, where I found a text from Brent. ‘Go for it, baby,’ it said. ‘Take him back to the room and let me know when you’re done. I wish I could be there to watch, but I’ll be more than happy to hear about it.’ Just reading the words made me wet, my mind racing with possibilities as the hairs on my arms stood on end.

Oh my God. I wanted to ask if he was sure, I wanted to pause and analyse whether this was a positive step in our relationship. OK, that’s not exactly true; the rational, logical, organised side of me wanted to do that; the rest of me shivered in excitement, knowing I was about to taste and feel and touch a new man. That Brent wasn’t just OK with what I was doing but seemed as eager as I was made me have even deeper respect for him.

I hurried back to Andre and settled myself flush against him. ‘Well, well, well,’ he said, smiling at me with those beautiful lips before using them to kiss the side of my neck, tenderly at first, then with a bit of tongue, followed by a light nipping of his teeth. I moaned softly, aware that we were probably the only people engaging in a public display of affection at the bar. ‘Nadine,’ he said, his voice husky and sweet. ‘You are so beautiful.’ I didn’t hear a hint of ‘so beautiful for your age’ or ‘so beautiful because I want to fuck you’ in his voice. All I heard were those four words, and they in turn were beautiful to me.

This man, who could likely go home with any number of women in the room, taken or not, wanted me. ‘I want you,’ I heard him whisper, and I raised his face up to meet mine, staring into it a moment more, before reaching into my purse, pulling out enough for the bill plus a twenty-dollar tip, dropping it on the bar and pulling Andre towards the door.

‘You’ve got me,’ I said, leading him to the elevator. I didn’t tell him I was married, not wanting to ruin a hint of the magic I could sense sparkling between us. That would be too real, and he didn’t need to know; my marriage was mine and Brent’s, and so was this encounter, in its way. I didn’t want to explain what an older woman like me was doing waiting to be picked up at an elegant Las Vegas hotel, I just wanted to feel him next to me, on top of me, inside me. We slipped into the pristine hotel room, and I shuddered when I thought about the fact that Brent had the other key card and, if he wanted, could interrupt us at any time. He wouldn’t, of course, but the possibility made me wet.

No sooner had we entered the room than Andre had pinned me to the door, his body pressed against me, young and hard and firm. He reached under my dress and felt me through my thin, now wet panties. An image flashed into my mind of him doing this in a back alley, to a girl less than half my age, and that thought made me shudder. I wouldn’t want to think about Brent with a girl half our age, but with Andre it was safe – and hot. ‘You like that?’ he asked, even though it was clear that I more than liked it. ‘Turn around,’ he said, easing up enough to let me mash myself against the door. ‘Hold this up,’ he said, lifting my long dress and pressing its hem into my hands. We had a huge suite at our disposal, yet he wanted me like this, pressed against the door, open and ready and wet as could be. Women my age didn’t act like this – well, maybe they did, but I didn’t, not really.