www.RayGregory.com

 

 

 

 

 

Convenient Neighbors

 

by Ray Gregory

 

 

 

Mike and Elaine — he was forty-eight, she forty-four — had just moved to Wesphoria, an upscale old neighborhood near downtown. With both their daughters off to college now, there was no longer a reason to commute from the suburbs. They’d already met their new neighbors on either side and across the street, so Elaine decided they should saunter over after dinner to introduce themselves to the couple beyond their backyard. He was said to be a writer of some repute, as well as an editor at the newspaper. His wife was some sort of artist.

     Mike stared out the kitchen window as he finished up the dishes — their deal was Elaine filled them, and he washed them and put them away. All he could see through the dense tangle of trees and shrubs in the abutting backyards were scattered bits and pieces of the rear neighbors’ three-story, brownstone house, one of the oldest and largest in the neighborhood. They couldn’t be any more boring than the other neighbors, he figured. When he finally slung the wet dish towel over the bar, Elaine walked in giving the waistband of her skirt a final tug.

 

#

 

They sat in the neighbors’ living room, side by side on “the great sofa” — what the man of the house had called it. The ornate brass clock on the mantle of the fluted-column fireplace before them read 2:30 — a slovenly lack of winding, Mike figured, though a sprung spring was just as likely. He dealt in antiques, and he’d recognized the brand and model of the clock immediately, a lackluster reproduction he would never carry in his tony store.

     Red-faced, white-haired, sixty-something Charles — he of "great sofa" fame — was enthroned to the left of the fireplace on a stuffed Victorian easy chair upholstered in maroon damask. His wide, red suspenders and shirt-straining belly fit his newspaper profession and the Southern Gothic novels he wrote perfectly. He was pontificating about literary matters as Elaine listened with rapt reverence. Funny, Mike thought, staring back at the crippled clock. Now Charles was bragging about how he'd restored the old house to its “halcyon prime” after Jill had inherited it from her grandmother.

     Jill, his artist wife, who was in her late thirties, sprawled on a rose satin Louis XVI loveseat to the right of the fireplace. Her brief camisole and tight, low jeans revealed an unrepentant swatch of lean, healthy belly that seemed out of place in the staid, old house. As Charles talked, Jill settled deeper into the loveseat. She extended her naked arms wide across its carved-walnut crest, with her legs and bare, crossed feet stretched before her. Mike couldn’t help but notice her shapeliness.

     As Charles yakked on — something about “the new journalism” now, and how readily his fiction and nonfiction dovetailed — Jill reached skyward and yawned. She rested her wrists on her head as her fingertips caressed the pristine roots of her waist-length, blond tresses. Her toned arms and shoulders and the lateral ridges of her pectoral muscles glowed with sculpted drama in the amber lamplight. Their exquisite contours mesmerized Mike.

     Jill seemed dreamy eyed too when she gazed back at him. The woman had fuck me with my arms pinned over my head written all over her, he thought. But incredibly, no one else noticed. Elaine, the newest partner in her downtown law firm, actually leaned into what fat, old Charles was saying. She peppered him with fawning questions he was only too happy to answer in numbing detail. Neither she nor Charles seemed remotely aware of Jill’s flamboyant body language, or Mike’s approving stares.

     On the way home when Elaine mentioned Charles’ “vapid trophy wife,” Mike shrugged. “Nice furniture,” he said, “but did you notice that clock?”

 

#

 

The next morning, after Elaine and Charles left for work, Mike and Jill met again, this time alone in the abandoned, old greenhouse in Jill’s backyard. That was where it all started, with Mike pinning Jill’s wrists to the weed-choked dirt floor. Afterward, as she retied her house robe and raked her wet, matted hair from her brow, she claimed she hadn’t been aware of the sultry body language that had led Mike to be so assertive with her — “so masterful,” she corrected herself as she gently removed the condom from him, then lifted it to marvel at its gleaming contents. But she had to confess that her artist’s eye had been taken with what she’d seen last night, maybe to the point of being lost in her thoughts. She gushed that the lines of Mike’s jaw and his chiseled forearms were superb, that his trim, athletic body more befit the owner of a gym than an antique dealer.

     Mike had just learned a lot about Jill ¾ the potting soil and grass stains on both their backs were the proof of it. Shy or coy she was not. Maybe her restless body had indeed lured him with an end run around her bored conscious mind. But whatever it’d been, Mike figured Jill indeed knew what she wanted now, and where to get it.

 

#

 

Three weeks later, Mike and Jill had settled into a routine: her husband and his wife always left for work by eight a.m. Mike’s downtown antique emporium, Age & Excellence, didn’t open its doors till ten. Since he could trust his manager and employees to open up, he didn’t go in till noon on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Those were the days he traipsed across the backyards, under the spreading magnolia and oak trees, behind his garage, over the waist-high, rotting-wood fence, then past the old greenhouse to Jill’s back door. Everything was casual, with him in a pullover, slacks, and boat loafers and her in only her robe. Their libidos were remarkably well synched too. Every other day was just right: A day to do, a day to recharge and savor. Jill said morning, after a good night’s sleep, was when her mind was most supple, when her creative juices flowed unimpeded. Mike’s sap, mental and physical, rose then too.

     They’d done it practically everywhere now in Jill’s old house, everywhere it seemed but the beds. They’d even done it in all the bathrooms, since they both liked mirrors. Even Charles’ cushy Victorian throne in the living room had afforded a place for Mike to take Jill from behind, with her flushed face pressed into the same cushion pompous Charles’ fat ass luxuriated on as the jesters on TV entertained him. It had been then, in fact, that Jill had got the idea — Charles’ throne! — to have Mike do her in the master bath again, only this time with her head in the toilet bowl! — but not before she’d set up her video camera and tripod.

 

#

 

Jill called her new series The Humiliated Sex. She envisioned collages of photos, drawings, paintings, videos, with everything frank and gritty. She was bursting with ideas and impatient to express them. She even had some poetry in mind, “real gut-grabbing stuff.”

     To put Mike at ease about the cameras, she explained that faces were never recognizable in her work. It was never about personality. Things were always blurred or darkened or grainy when needed. By the time she’d done her editing and worked her digital magic on the photography, nothing identifiable of her face or his would remain, “just primal bodies, male and female, relating essentially.” And if she needed to flirt with the personal, maybe by focusing on her terrified or pained or downtrodden eyes, her long hair flailed and tangled over her face made the perfect veil. Mike was the first to admit he was no art expert — he was certainly not up on the contemporary art scene — but he was fully into “relating essentially” with Jill now.

     Jill’s enthusiasm for her art even inspired Mike to get creative with his own expertise. Why not prove he was more than just a “primal body”? He may not have known that much about art — except for reproductions of famous old standbys that worked well with the antique furniture he sold — but he could certainly contribute his antiques know-how to Jill’s theme. His first coup came the morning he showed up at her backdoor with a pair of Civil War era slave shackles. As soon as he dangled them before Jill’s eyes, she got excited. She raced upstairs, then back down with a camera and a pair of lofty-heeled, black stilettos, then she led Mike down to the ancient dungeon of a basement that served as her pottery studio. The walls were rough brick with crude, oozing mortar. Rusty iron bars spanned the squat, arched windows. Jill’s big kiln and its ventilation hood occupied one corner, her potter’s wheel another. Some old rattan furniture — a couple of chairs and a glider — rested against a wall. Right in the middle of everything stood a big, old molasses barrel. It’d been there, Jill said, since before she’d inherited the old house.

     Jill grabbed a couple of photographic light stands resting in a corner and positioned them around the barrel. Then she turned the glaring lights on. As soon as Mike had fastened the shackles around her ankles, she slung off her robe and climbed into the precipitous stilettos. She was literally quivering to start as she studied the old molasses barrel. She said she’d known it would come in handy one day. She had Mike tip it on its side, then bend her over the bowing slats till her feet dangled over the floor. She wished she had shackles for her wrists too, she said, but no matter, she could add them digitally later.

     She had Mike move around her with the camera, snapping from every angle. “Move and shoot, move and shoot. Get into the flow of it. Feel it. Don’t think about framing things, just move and shoot.” Mike was all over her with that camera. What a turn-on, every inch of her, knowing she was his to plunder and savor. Her hair dangled over her face like a hood, and the anonymity only added to Mike’s titillation. He’d figured fantasy bondage turned him on as much as the next guy — maybe no more, but certainly no less. He’d never actually done anything like this with his wife though. He couldn’t imagine even suggesting it to Elaine. But to actually have the chance now, with a real beauty, one who was into it no holds barred…? Jill, here and now, bound and positioned! What red-blooded guy wouldn’t rise to the occasion?

     Jill seemed more aroused with every urgent click. When she finally told him to ditch the camera — when she begged him to! — he barely got the condom on before he was in her. Her quivering wetness overwhelmed him as he gripped her hips. The barrel rocked. He grunted, she screamed.

     Spent and panting, Mike lumbered to one of the rattan chairs and collapsed. Then Jill shimmied off the barrel and grabbed the camera herself. She took scores of feet shots, posing and arranging the shackles every which way, tipping and rocking the gleaming black stilettos.

     “Unlike you, I do my best work after a good fuck,” she said and winked.

     As Mike sat watching her camerawork, the way she moved, composed the shots, twisted for every perfect angle, he decided it had to be the most erotic dance he’d ever seen.

     When she was done, she knelt and slid the spent condom off him again, then held it approvingly to the light. As usual, she’d keep it.

     Mike had been bothered the first time she’d asked him to leave the condom, till she’d explained why she’d wanted it, and even demonstrated. She’d emptied its contents into her palm, then rubbed the milky semen on her breasts, then taken a long, deep breath and sighed. “Essence of Mike. Your scent will keep me in the spirit while I’m working on the images at my computer.”

     The thought of her still savoring him after he’d left flattered Mike more than he let on. He’d be glad to keep her in as much of that scent as he could manage. When he’d worried about Charles catching a whiff of it, she’d sniggered. “Charles isn’t into earthy,” she’d said. “He couldn’t smell the house on fire.” Besides, she’d added, she always took a long, hot shower after doing her art. “I mean, look at my work,” and she’d laughed.

 

#

 

One Tuesday morning at Age & Excellence, Mike sat before the computer screen in his office. He mused about the previous morning, when Jill had opened her double-door, stainless-steel refrigerator and had him tie her spread-eagle to the door hinges. There she’d stood in the glow of the refrigerator light, splayed like a plucked chicken before the packed shelves and bins of vegetables, fruit, yogurt, milk, orange juice…. Then she’d had him turn on the video camera and pelt her naked body with mushy, blood-red, over-ripe tomatoes as she’d hung her head and thrashed her long hair from side to side. After that, her shivering ass had been his as chilled air had wafted down their bare legs — literally his coolest fuck ever.

     The things she came up with! Mike chuckled to himself in his office. As he turned back to his research, checking the provenance of some jewelry he’d acquired at a recent estate sale, he got an idea. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He googled Jill’s name, curious to see what, if anything, would come up. He was surprised, amazed actually, to find page after page. She was a real artist, all right, serious work too according to the critics. She’d had shows in galleries in various cities, all with glowing reviews. Wow! Her stuff went for big bucks too. Mike decided never to mention any of this to his name-dropping wife.

     Jill even had a following, people talking about her in online forums and such. Mike checked out the art world gossip. Curiously, incredibly, there was talk of agoraphobia. Jill, a phobic recluse?! It seemed she never attended her openings in person. She always sent a video of herself, always apologizing for her “shyness,” thanking the people for coming anyway. Jill? Shy? Mike almost laughed out loud. That wasn’t the Jill he knew, the world-class sexual adventuress — not to mention exhibitionist — the Jill who couldn’t wait to strip and have him take humiliating pictures of her, then fuck her every which way he and she together could imagine. Mike’s curiosity got the best of him. He picked up the phone and called Jill.

     “Hey, it’s Mike — fine — you? — good. Look, I googled your name. Amazing stuff! I’m impressed. But — what’s with this shyness thing?” He fully expected her to laugh along with him, then explain the joke. It had to be a gimmick, some funny-as-hell publicity shtick, maybe her art world version of Garbo’s “beautiful woman who just wants to be left alone.”

     But Jill sighed — heavily. “Why are you looking at me online?” Her voice was low now, dark, suspicious.

     Mike sighed himself, tense. “Uh — I was just — curious. I mean, I just wanted to see your work. I didn’t mean….”

     “You can see my work here. I’ll show you anything, everything. Just don’t do that, okay?” Her voice was higher now, tinged with desperation. After a brief pause she said, “I can’t talk about it. Just don’t!” Then she hung up.

     That last don’t had been crystal clear: Don’t go there, don’t talk about it, just don’t! Jesus! Mike thought. What had he done now?

 

#

 

The next morning, Mike waited at Jill’s back door. He had another surprise, something really special this time. He was sure she’d like it, at least he was hoping so after what had happened. He felt weird, and bad, about that phone conversation, so what he’d brought was a kind of peace offering, a make-up gift, though he wouldn’t call it anything like that. He wouldn’t even mention that phone call.

     His surprise was a rough-hewn old pillory, circa the late 1600s. He was already sweaty from lugging it on his shoulders across both backyards. Jill’s eyes were all over it too, as soon as she came to the door. But she remained quiet, holding her breath as she glanced at Mike. But Mike was his usual self, regaling her with information about pillories and stocks and the difference between the two and how they’d been used. Slowly, as Mike talked, Jill became herself again, the Jill he knew and loved. She dropped to her knees and caressed the worn, old pillory that Mike had rested against the doorjamb.

     “Yes, humiliation as spectacle, sanctioned, authorized, institutionalized,” she said. She pressed her cheek to the coarse wood. “It’s wonderful. No, it’s perfect!”

     She went upstairs to “dress for the occasion.” Meanwhile, she sent Mike, lugging the old pillory, down to the basement, where he righted the old molasses barrel and placed the pillory on it. When Jill walked down the steps to the basement and doffed her robe, she was wearing only a black garter belt, fishnet stockings, and her favorite stilettos. She looked snared and trussed already. Mike hinged open the top plank of the pillory for her head and hands. As soon as he’d closed it on her, she moaned. Her breathing got heavy.

     “I wonder how many have gone before me, how many whores have been locked in it?” she said, quivering.

     That’s my Jill, Mike thought. Then, flash, flash, flash. He moved around her, clicking the camera till the battery ran out. When he finally rolled the condom on, Jill said, “Butter, that’s it! Quick, the top shelf in the fridge. Get the butter.” She wanted him to do her “Brando style,” she said, “like in Last Tango.”

     Mike was back in a jiffy. He hadn’t run like that — with a full erection in a condom — since he’d been a teenager. He applied the butter, kneading it in till Jill was more than ready.

     “I’m a whore, Mike, a caught whore. Fuck me. Punish me,” she shouted.

     But Mike wasn’t used to anal — with his wife? — and Jill was exquisitely snug. He came in seconds when he was in her, like a first-time teenager, even with the condom. She told him, desperately, to grab a dildo, no, make that two. They were in a tupperware box near her potter’s wheel — “throwing pots is stimulating,” she said with a shrug. By the time she came, screaming, Mike was so turned on himself again, he rolled on a new condom. He lasted longer this time, his first doubleheader, he figured, since maybe his twenties. When it was over, Jill rubbed the semen from both condoms on her breasts, then inhaled luxuriously. Mike wished he had it in him to go a third time.

 

#

 

All the next day Mike wondered about the Jill enigma. He looked up agoraphobia online. It wasn’t just an irrational fear of crowds or public places as he’d thought. It had more to do with insecurity or loss of control. Embarrassment seemed to be the real bugaboo, fear of panicking in embarrassing situations — like in crowds or public places, of course. But embarrassment? That sounded like just the opposite of Jill. She seemed totally in control of her embarrassment, if she had any at all. Humiliation seemed to be her favorite turn-on. But maybe that was  what it was all about: controlled humiliation. Humiliation without embarrassment.

     Maybe Jill really was afraid of the world, Mike thought. He’d seen the maids enter her house on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. He’d seen them bring in whole trunk loads of groceries. Come to think of it, he’d never seen Jill outside her own house, except for that time in the greenhouse. Maybe, like a dog with a shock collar, she got a jolt of the heebie-jeebies every time she tried to leave her yard. Despite all her fuck-me-every-which-way bravado, maybe she really was afraid to face the world. Was that even what her art was about? Art therapy, trying to desensitize herself to her anxieties? After all, everything he did with her  was controlled and private, and of course well documented. And later didn’t she pour over the pictures: manipulating, editing, cropping, analyzing every one of them?

     But after yesterday with Jill in her dungeon, that weird phone call seemed more and more like a bad daydream to Mike. Jill had been in fine form, locked in that pillory, naked and buttered up. The way she’d arched and strained and screamed! She’d loved every second of it. He’d been in fine form too. Master of the dildos!

     Mike even wondered if Jill was the only nutcase. But with more online research, he was relieved to learn that three-quarters of men were turned on by bondage fantasies. He was well on the normal side of that curve. The way he figured it, Jill got off on it — no, she loved it! He’d only cross the line into sickness himself if he got off on her not liking it.

     As for Jill’s alleged phobia, maybe if he ever actually saw any tangible evidence of it, anything that upset the molasses barrel, so to speak, he’d look into it more. But for now he had better things to think about, and do, when he was with her. Whatever her problem, it didn’t seem to crimp her style — as long as he never mentioned it anyway.

 

#

 

Friday morning, and Mike was at Jill’s back door again. He held a nineteenth-century barber’s strop before her eyes this time. Jill grabbed the thick strip of auburn leather and snapped it dramatically, then squealed with delight. Immediately she mused about a poem she’d write: prized family heirloom… symbol of paternal hierarchy… reverentially handed down by a boney-fingered old father to a “strapping” young husband… and ultimately, and less reverently, to his tender young wife’s backside.

     Jill decided Charles’ staid, wood-paneled office was the perfect spot for this photo op. She sat up the lights and video camera, positioned them so her buttocks would be centered. Then she bent face-down across Charles’ walnut desk and gripped its carved rim. She told Mike to let her have it with the strop. So Mike started in, but his strokes were gentle. He was timid about leaving marks, about hurting her deliberately.

     “Lash me, dammit, hard,” she shouted, “I want welts.” She scowled over her shoulder. “If you want it, you better whip it!”

     Well, if that was what she really wanted, if that was what it took…. The more he lashed her, and the harder and faster — “Yes! Yes!” she screamed — the more titillating it got. Then Mike’s hand froze in mid stroke. What was he doing? he realized. Even Charles would notice his wife’s rump glowing redder than a baboon’s ass.

     “Don’t worry about Charles,” Jill said suddenly, as if reading Mike’s mind. “He’s never in a position to notice anyway,” and she snorted. “C’mon, Mike, lay it on.” She gripped the desk desperately, jutted her backside even higher.

     Mike flailed with abandon now, inspired by her moans and begging. Then he let up to reach into his briefs to unbunch his burgeoning erection. Then he unbuckled his belt.

     “Wait, wait,” Jill said, popping up, twisting to get a look at her buttocks. They were red-hot, glowing. “Beautiful! I’ve got it. Come on,” and she grabbed Mike’s wrist.

     On the third floor now, in Jill’s large painting and photography studio with its north-facing skylights, she lay out a black velvet backdrop on the floor. She hustled some light stands around it and turned everything on. Then she lay on her belly in the middle and told Mike to hog-tie her hands and feet behind her back. She pointed to some rope lying conveniently in a corner.

     “Oh, wait!” she said, as soon as Mike had tied her. “Ketchup! Perfect!” She sent him all the way down to the kitchen for the multi-purpose condiment.

     Mike felt like an errand boy now, an errand boy running downstairs with a gangling hard-on. He held his balls all the way to keep from crunching them between his cranking thighs as he hurried down the stairs. No, he felt like a fool! He should have fucked her right then and there, he thought. He’d tied her up, for Christ’s sake! His annoyance, he realized, was making him even hotter. Damn, he was pissed!

     When he got back, Jill had him splatter her with ketchup. “Sling it,” she shouted. “Get pissed.”

     Pissed? He was already thinking he should have grabbed that strop again too. He noticed her glowing butt cheeks, the fierce welts he’d left on them. He stood over her and pounded the end of the ketchup bottle. Great splats plopped and splattered on her back and ass.

     “Grab the camera. It’s over there.” She nodded desperately. “Shoot. Shoot.” Mike found the camera, then raced around her, catching her from every angle, every click arousing him even more.

     When he was done with the camera, he stared at his ketchup-stained handiwork. God, he wanted to do her! The welts on her ass, not to mention the way she strained against that rope! But that ketchup really did look like blood too, and blood was over the line, even fantasy blood. Besides, he wondered, how could he screw someone who was hog-tied? He’d have to get her on her side and wedge her legs open with his and — and in the process writhe in all that ketchup himself. He did like ketchup, all right, but only on his fries and burgers.

     “Yip, time for a shower,” Jill said, as if reading his mind again.

     When Mike untied her, Jill immediately ran to the corner the rope had come from and grabbed a shiny pair of chrome handcuffs. She told Mike to grab the camera, since she’d only clog it with ketchup.

     They hurried down to the big, tiled shower in the master bathroom, big enough, Mike figured, for fat-ass Charles to pirouette in it like one of those tutu-wearing hippos in Fantasia. Jill immediately cuffed her wrists to the showerhead for more photos. She got Mike to snap some before he turned the water on, when she was still all “bloody,” then more as the water doused her and rivulets of ketchup spread all over her body.

     When the last of the ketchup spun around the drain, Mike stripped too. He grabbed a bar of soap and slathered her with suds, his groping hands paying particular attention to her breasts and belly and hips and buttocks. She was clean now, all right. As he reached for a condom, Jill clasped the showerhead and rose to her toes. She strained into his thigh, begging him to take her.

     Mike was hard as a rock, but he took his time rolling on the condom, savoring her moans and pleas before he did her under the steaming cascade, did her front and rear. Afterward, even after the maddening — and tantalizing — delays, Mike figured it had been the most exquisitely sensual fun he’d ever had in his life.

 

#

 

Always afterward, with Mike dressed and Jill in her robe again, she’d offered him coffee and a pastry to nibble on in the kitchen. But even as she’d serve him, Mike would be thinking about the parting creak of the screen door. Their sex was wild and exciting and pure, untainted by personal entanglement or social convention, or anything else phony or contrived. It was their only commitment. Mike didn’t need to justify or confess or lament a thing. They were both practical people who know what they wanted: he, the shrewd businessman; she, the eclectic artist.

     Mike wondered if things could possibly have been more convenient: neighbors; their shady, abutting backyards; their clueless spouses. Yet their genteel parting ritual had to be observed: the coffee; their banal, minimal conversation; that lonely little peck he always gave her on the cheek on the way out. Maybe it was just their mannerly way to decompress, to drift back to mundane reality, become mere casual acquaintances again — or even their quaint way of overriding their even quainter guilt. Whatever, Mike never let on he yearned to flee as soon as the fireworks were over, to leave Jill, still smelling of his semen, to clip and crop and edit the new, erotic goodies in her camera, even as he headed off to his own workaday world.

     But the simple truth was, now that he was doing it with Jill regularly, freely, no holds barred, Mike was feeling more alive and vigorous than ever. With Jill ready and willing every other weekday, he no longer had to deal with Elaine sexually, or rather with Elaine’s humiliating disinterest.

     Mike wondered what it was about sleeping in the same bed that made two adults, a businessman and a lawyer, revert to such childishness: his thwarted-hands petulance, trying to coax her pajama bottoms down clenched thighs; her forever tired or sleepy or fretting about some deadline or meeting the next day. It was always eggshell sex with Elaine anyway, nothing rowdy or exciting or even mildly adventurous. She was the consummate corporate lawyer, even in bed. They might as well have slept in separate bedrooms with all her rules: spots he could and couldn’t touch, where and when they could do it. Sleeping in separate rooms would have certainly been less frustrating.

     Since meeting Jill though, he hardly had to bother with Elaine in bed anymore. A perfunctory goodnight kiss was plenty for both of them now. He hadn’t had to get up even once in the middle of the night to creep downstairs and jerk off in the guest bath.

     He figured maybe Elaine thought he was finally grown up, finally resigned to reality — her sexless reality, of course. Or maybe she thought both their daughters off to college now made him finally feel his age. Or maybe that he got his rocks off tooling around in that vintage, midlife-crisis sports car he’d bought himself six months ago, like revving that engine was all it took. The simple fact was, he felt more in touch now with his primal manhood than ever. Just knowing Jill, with her anything-goes mind and body, awaited him beyond the backyards, awaited him like clockwork, no questions asked, made him sleep like a baby.

     The Humiliated Sex? Jill’s series? Mike had to laugh. The way she got off on her willing humiliation — and how he did too now! If only Jill knew. What was more humiliating than a disinterested wife? Was there anything more demeaning than a husband aroused and a wife waiting for it to end? How pathetic it was to beg for sexual crumbs, then have to listen to the whining, put-out recriminations. And for what, the precious opportunity to relieve himself on a motionless, annoyed body? If Jill only knew how exciting she’d made his life, how liberating her degradation had become to him. He practically lived for his mornings with her now.

     Elaine would be hell on earth though if she ever found out his secret. She might phone it in sexually herself, but she’d be no-nonsense pissed to find out some other woman had taken over for her in bed. Good thing she wasn’t a prosecutor, Mike thought with his usual smirk. For all Elaine’s earnest, complex corporate legal cunning, she obviously didn’t have a nose for domestic crime, not in her own home.

     Fortunately Elaine had no interest in befriending Jill, or any other “stay-at-home wife.” She liked Charles just because he was some literary big shot, and an editor at the newspaper. Charles?! Mike wondered if the pompous fool had the slightest idea what he was missing with Jill. But with his hypertension and lumbago and diabetes and whatever else, he probably hadn’t been up to servicing her for years. Imagine Charles and Elaine in the same bed, Mike thought. Now there was an ideal match!

     Charles! It was the fifth or sixth time Mike had visited Jill that she’d put him at ease once and for all about Charles. Mike had bent her over the coffee table in her living room. She’d spread open a glossy, decadent gourmet cooking magazine for him to do her on. She’d even donned a frilly apron for the occasion, then had Mike take the usual pre-coital stills, then punch on the video camera for the main event. But right in the middle of things, Mike had heard someone at the front door. Charles back to fetch some papers he’d forgot to take to work?! Mike had leapt off her in a flash, scrambling for his clothes. It’d turned out to be only a pesky neighbor’s dog nosing around on the front porch.

     “Don’t worry,” Jill had said, “Charles would only be fascinated. He’s always on the lookout for interesting things to write about. He’s very discreet too about disguising his characters. If a coffee table scene showed up in his next book, no one would ever guess.” Jill had been so unconcerned, she hadn’t even slide off the coffee table, or even closed her legs.

     When she’d played the video later, of her on the coffee table with Mike, startled by the dog on the porch, yanking out of her and scrambling away, it’d been hilarious. It’d been even funnier backwards: Mike making a crazed beeline to nail her. She’d decided to use it that way in her series, “for some dark-comic relief,” she’d said. Of course, she’d cropped the action tight, “to the pelvic contours,” to preserve everyone’s anonymity — and dignity.

     But Mike had to wonder what he’d do if he caught someone porking his wife on the coffee table? Of course, he’d want to thrash the guy, for territorial reasons if nothing else. Surely it would hurt to know Elaine preferred to share her precious, scant interest in sex with someone else. But he wondered though if he’d really even care that much now that he had his regular thing with Jill. It might have even been a relief now if Elaine cheated.

 

#

 

It was a bright, new Friday morning. The warmth of late spring and the scent of honeysuckle wafted through the bathroom window. Mike had new ideas, things he’d thought up and fantasized about since Wednesday. He was itching to run them past Jill — and try them out on her. He was getting hard just thinking about it.

     Then he heard voices out back. Jill’s screen door creaked open, then slammed shut, sounds Mike knew only too well. He puts down his razor and gazed out the bathroom window. It sounded like Jill was yelling something now. She wasn’t scared or pissed. It was more like she was — encouraging someone? Then she said “thanks,” a definite “thanks.”

     Mike craned out the window. He spotted a guy in his early twenties: tall, blond, tanned — a yard maintenance type. He was walking from Jill’s back door, with his bunched shirt in his hand, chiseled pecs and sinewy shoulders glistening with sweat. He was even fiddling with his belt — with his fly! Mike dropped his razor in the sink. He headed out, letting his own screen door slam behind him.

     When he reached Jill’s house, he slung her screen door open and barged in. “What’s going on?” he said when Jill walked into the kitchen from the dining room.

     “You’re — early,” she said, her eyes wide.

     Mike instantly sized things up: she was in the flimsy Japanese robe she wore when the mornings were already hot. It was so sheer her areolas peeked through among the print flowers! She looked furtive too, guilty. He even thought he smelled sex! “You didn’t!” he blurted.

     “Didn’t what?” she huffed. She gave him that look, Mike thought, the same what-the-fuck-are-you-looking-at? look hot chicks always gave losers in bars.

     “I saw that —  that —  that kid,” Mike said, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder. “He hardly had his dick back in his pants. What the hell’s going on here, Jill? Was he even legal?”

     “Look — Mike,” she said, her voice softening now, “it’s just a matter of — symmetry. Easy come, easy go. Things end as suddenly as they start. Nothing lasts forever.”

     “What the…?” But Mike took a breath, softened his voice too. “What are you doing, Jill? I thought we had something here. I thought it worked, for both of us. I mean….”

     “It’s just time, time to move on.” She threw up her hands. “Look, it’s just me, okay, my fault. I can’t stand still. It’s my nature. It’s what my art’s all about. I need newness, new ideas, new experiences — new people.”

     Mike couldn’t believe it. “But — what we do, it’s always — different. You said so yourself. You like my ‘edge,’ my ‘take on things.’ I mean, what the….”

      “It’s over, Mike. Okay? Just accept it.”

     “You? You can’t just — just decide that. We need to talk about this.”

     “What are you talking about? I have decided. It’s over. Over!” She hammered the point with both fists.

     “No!” He shook his head. “Why? Tell me why. And none of that artsy-fartsy creativity crap either. Tell me the truth. Just say it. What’s going on?”

     She hesitated, pursed her lips. “Why? Because there’s always something better, Mike, and who wants to settle for less?”

     Mike’s jaw clenched. “That — that kid?”

     “That ‘kid’ is twenty-one, and still unsure enough about himself to wanna bust his balls to please. Plus he’s hung like a mule. I’ve got the pictures to prove it.” She slid a hand down her robe, her fingers inching toward her groin. She pursed her lips seductively. “You should see the load he left — Mike.”

     Mike exhaled, long and hard. He wanted to hit her, smash her face, especially her vile mouth. Why was she doing this? If she’d just come to her senses, just give him an opening, a second chance. She obviously wanted to force his hand, insult him, make him storm out the door. But he didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to give up, to end it.

     “Well — how ‘bout one for the road then?” he said — heard himself say. Jesus! he thought. It was his brainless dick talking? But he was desperate. He just wanted to buy time, to decide what to do, how to handle her. “You know, like a goodbye fuck,” he said next, even more mortified by his own voice. He was like some attention-craving teenager with nothing clever to say, just blurting out something vulgar or stupid to shock.

     Jill glared. Her hands flew to her hips. She set her jaw. “A ‘goodbye’ fuck? I just had the best ‘hello’ fuck of my life. Just go.” She pointed at the door, scowling. “Get the fuck out of my house — Mike!”

     Mike was used to taking her at will. He was used to bending her over whatever was convenient, tying her down or up, screwing her royally. She was his. He did what he wanted with her, and every time she loved it too. He couldn’t believe that was all over now. She’d decided? She had decided? When he thought of all the times she’d been in his complete control, at his mercy…. When he thought of how she’d trusted him, and how he could always…. And now, what? She was cutting him loose, just like that, for good? The humiliation was his thing too. It belonged to him. It was part of him. He realized it fully now: he was every bit as much a part of it as she was. But not this. Not rejection, not utter, abject rejection!

     He knew on some level, maybe some effete, intellectual level, what they had was all a game. But it wasn’t just a game! And over? He couldn’t accept that, not in his gut. What they had, together, meant something. It was alive, real. She knew it too. It was what they were. She knew it — or she’d remember it. She was Jill! — his Jill! Trussed-up, hard-fucked, cum-smeared Jill, for Christ’s sake! There was a whole gallery of pictures of her — her and him — of memories, feelings, reeling in his head. She was still his!

     Mike walked calmly to the door, then quietly closed it. When he twisted the deadbolt, his fingers, his hand, the tendons in his forearm strained. He flashed on twisting Jill’s nipples, tight, the way she always liked it. He exhaled audibly, violently, then turned.

     Jill’s eyes flashed fire now. “You think I’m the freak here? Look at you, what you’ve been doing. I’m the artist. What’s your excuse, you sick prick? You’re the one who’s really into this.” She curled her lip and huffed. “You disgust me, you know that? You and your silly toys, that antique crap you sell to the lace-doily set. Open that fucking door and leave now, you sick, little fetish wanker.”

     “Who the fuck…?” Mike clenched his fists.  He lurched across the kitchen and pinned her against the refrigerator.

     “Stop it,” she screamed.

     “You fucking bitch!” he screamed back.

     He forced her to the floor, face down, then dropped to his knees, straddling her. Then he ripped off his belt and caught her flailing wrists. When he forced her arms up behind her to her shoulder blades, she gasped from the pain. Her screaming stopped. With her wrists tied fast now with his belt, he yanked her robe up to expose her rear. He snatched two cushions off the nearby kitchen chairs — fat-ass Charles couldn’t sit anywhere without luxurious cushioning — then lifted her brusquely about the waist, forcing the cushions under her belly for better access.

     Then he snatched a steak knife from the table. He gripped the handle tight, staring at her straining rump. He slid the blade under her panties, then sawed and ripped before yanking them from her trembling body. Finally, he dug into his pocket, then tore open the condom wrapper with his teeth. Maybe he should wear two of them after that lowlife kid, he thought.

     “Spread ‘em,” he demanded, then with another threatening jerk to her snared arms, she unclenched her thighs. He shoved his hand into her crotch now, clawing to feel her. Wet? he thought — still wet! The bitch always wanted it — from anyone.

     It was like a movie now, like one of Jill’s grainy, flashing videos. But the pounding was real, the punishing, insistent pounding. He thrust, harder and deeper, again and again and again. The pounding was everything. He was just along for the ride now, for the pounding, deeper, faster, till finally he strained forward, as far as he could, into her, through her.

     “Aah! Aaah!” His whole body shuddered. Then everything shut down, silent, free. Then, after an interminable second, just as suddenly his eyes fluttered open, his sight returned. The shabby, depressing truth bled in everywhere. Before him, on the cold-tile kitchen floor, lay Jill, quivering, sobbing.

     He loosened the belt as gently as his trembling fingers could, slid it from her wrists, pulled her robe back over her. He could hardly lift himself as he backed off her, then collapsed against a nearby table leg. She rolled off the cushions, moaning, then backed like a terrified crab into the corner of the kitchen cabinets. There she pulled her knees to her chin, hugging her legs, her face a mass of tears. She stared at him, her lower lip trembling. She was barely recognizable from the horror and hurt in her eyes.

     Mike’s hands lurched to his forehead. He began to weep.

     “I’m — sorry, Mike, I — I’m so — sorry.” Her broken, sputtered words made him feel even worse. They both sobbed now, he into his hands, she scrunched into the corner, her forehead pressed to her knees.

     After a minute or two, she said, “Listen, Mike — please. That kid, he works on the presses at the newspaper. Charles popped a spring in his easy chair. He got the kid to bring it back from the shop. I took some pictures of him, just torso shots. They know I’m an artist around here. They all want their fifteen minutes. I just asked him to strut out to his pickup like that, slow without his shirt. He’s got the arrogant male thing down pat. I was shooting from the dining room window.”

     “You ¾ what? You said…. What?” Mike could barely see through his tears. Her words weren’t making any sense to him.

     Jill shook her head. Her eyes looked even more pained. “I led you, Mike. I….” Her hands grasped at the air now, trying to mold her thoughts. “It’s — it’s where we had to go.” She gulped and hung her head. “My art, it’s — the only way. You know that, don’t you? You know me, Mike.”

     Mike stared now, speechless. Time stood still, as if her voice was all there was, but what she was saying…?

     “That’s why I lied, why I goaded you like that. I know it was vicious, horrible. I know that now. But… you see it, don’t you? Please. I had — we had to….” She stopped to pant, to catch her breath. “It had to be — real, Mike. Rape is the crux, the ultimate humiliation. You just — you owned it, Mike. We did. It was — us.” She extended her cupped hands, coaxing him, pleading for him to understand. “We’re at a new level now, Mike.”

     “You — you’re sick,” Mike screamed. He scrambled to his feet, snatching up his unzipped pants, nearly falling. When h saw the condom still on him, dangling, laden, he yanked it off, then dropped it with a gasp, as if it were white hot. It splattered on the kitchen floor. “You’re — you’re sick!” he screamed.

     Jill gasped. Her hand slapped to her mouth. “I am, I am, I am,” she muttered like a numbing chant. She sobbed uncontrollably now, rolling on her side, scrunching like a quivering, clawing fetus.

     “How could you?” Mike yelled, his eyes clouding with tears. “You evil…! What’s wrong with you?” His clenched right fist lurched upward, but his fingers splayed instantly when he realized what he was thinking. “Oh, God!” he moaned, then tore out the back door.

 

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Mike was quiet all weekend, staring mindlessly at the TV or into empty space. When Elaine made a half-hearted inquiry, he snapped it was nothing. Something with his business, she probably figured, another disgruntled customer or undependable supplier. She was used to his moods. Besides, she didn’t have the time. The papers for the Philips/Simons merger had to be ready by Tuesday, and she had to go back over everything. She loved her work, and she was a partner now.

 

#

 

Monday morning, at the usual time, Mike crossed the adjoining backyards to Jill’s house. His hands were empty, nothing to surprise her with now.

     “We need to talk,” he said.

     Jill nodded. “We do, Mike. We do.” When she swung open the screen door, his coffee was already brewing. They were at a new level.

 

 

Copyright 2009 Ray Gregory

 

www.RayGregory.com