What puzzled me most was his silence. How could he not ask why?
What could I say if he did?
He had to have noticed.
Well, maybe not the first night. We hadn’t had a moment’s
privacy in almost three weeks, and we’d both been plied with
alcohol, and we did finally have a room to ourselves, even if the
walls were thin. He can’t have been too surprised that I fucked
him that night.
But a week later I must have raised his eyebrows, fucking him on
the floor of his parent’s loft, with them (hopefully) asleep
above us, and, worse, with our son snoring at our feet.
And then the very next night, when we were finally in our own bed
at last, and his goodnight kiss was met by my wet, insistent
tongue when I pushed his head down between my legs when I
grabbed his hand and silently begged him to finger my pussy while
he ate me to a soaking, crashing cum when we fucked and fucked
afterwards when I didn’t twist his nipples to make him cum
fast, but instead encouraged him to love me forever when it was
oh, so very, very good.
I thought he’d say something then.
But surely, when we did it the following week, and the one after
that, and twice the week after that, surely he must at least make
a comment about the change. For in the space of five weeks, we’d
fucked more than in the first six months of the year. More times
than in many whole years of our marriage, infinitely more that in
the two or three years where we never fucked at all.
Not that I was counting, but I’m sure he was.
Still he never said a word. Oh, his eyes said a lot. They
glowed. They smoldered. All day long, all evening long, he’d
come up and nuzzle my neck, give me a hug, tell me how beautiful
he found me. He’d take my hand in his and squeeze it lovingly.
And I found myself doing the same things to him.
Every night we’d linger over a wet kiss, and we’d cuddle
together, making me feel loved. His hands teased me. My hands
teased back. But if I rolled over to go to sleep, he didn’t
insist, he didn’t beg. He wrapped me in his arms, tucked his
hard cock comfortably against my ass, put his hand close under my
breast, squeezed me, kissed my back, and told me he loved me.
And there would be a few more caresses, a couple more kisses, and
we’d fall asleep, content.
Only sometimes, one last caress would turn into one last kiss,
and one last kiss would turn into another last kiss. And our
tongues would touch so softly, and they’d linger together playing
with each. And the heat would build inside me, and I’d roll back
over to face him, and my hands would seek out his back, his hair,
his butt. And his hands would tease my thighs, my belly, my
arms, my breasts. And we’d make love once more.
And still he said nothing.
***
And then there was the whole other part. As soon as we got home,
I had scrounged up an old notebook that still had plenty of blank
pages, and I began to write. I hadn’t written in 25 years, not
since high school, long before I met him. I was totally
obsessed, skipping my household chores, ignoring the kitchen,
coming to bed late, sneaking off from the kids to a quiet room in
the basement, sometimes leaving him to take care of everything.
He had to say something about the writing, and he did. “What are
you writing?” he asked. “A story, a kind of a fantasy…” I
replied. Nothing more. “Good,” he said simply. He smiled at me
and left me to write. And I wrapped myself back up in my story,
confused but grateful.
For weeks this continued me writing, him indulging me with a
smile, us cuddling and loving our way through. I started to
copy-edit the story on to the computer, asking for his help with
formatting and sections. After I had typed the first two or
three chapters, I told him he could read it, somewhat eager to
let him into the world I was immersed in, maybe hoping he’d fall
in too.
But he didn’t rush over the way I expected him too; he just said,
“in a little,” and I began to feel like he had just been humoring
me, that he wasn’t really being supportive of my writing at all.
Later, though, after he had washed the dinner dishes, he did sit
down and read what I had typed. I came up to him afterwards,
scared but curious as to his reaction. He was strangely terse,
saying only that he liked it, and to “keep writing.” And it made
me feel weird.
For here was the man who loved me, who was probably the most
supportive person ever in my life, my partner for nearly two
decades, my husband of 17 years a man who verbalizes emotions
almost too much and he was all but silent about my story. And
about our rejuvenated love life. Zip. Zilch. No feedback, at
least not in words. But I didn’t dwell upon it couldn’t
since I was stuck in my story which needed to be written.
And there was so much that I wanted to share with my man, but I
was there and he was here.
***
Because he never asked, I never told him. Never. He eventually
heard only because he happened to be standing next to us when I
told my girlfriend. “Oh,” she had asked, “what are you writing?”
and I explained that I was writing a sort of fantasy story that
had come to me in a dream that I had had while we were on
vacation.
That dream had been the start of it all the story, and yes, I
suppose, the sex too. It had been such an incredible dream,
unique in my experience because I was not one of the characters,
but was watching apart from the scene, like I was an insect
flying around, or a mouse on her shoulders. For there was a
character there that was not me, but was a girl or a woman,
younger than me now, and different though the same, as if we
could have been two different paths taken by the same soul in two
different worlds. And in the dream she met a man, rescued him
really, a man who should have had nothing to do with a girl like
her, but who did. And in the dream they came to love each other.
And to be lovers.
And the emotions in the dream, the heat, the feelings of the
girl, they mixed up with my emotions and feelings and spilled
over into my life, spilled into my core, spilled into our bed.
***
I strain to keep myself in both worlds. I feel pulled into the
other world so strongly that at times it is only the pain in my
butt from sitting too long in one position, or the need to pee,
that keeps me aware there is a world with me in it here.
And there is so much that I want to share with my husband about
the goings on in the other world, but he is not there with me.
He barely seems willing to read what I’ve written, yet he
encourages me to write. He’s vague about where he’s read up to,
and about what he thought about it, but then in the middle of a
conversation he’ll allude to a passage in the story.
His silence bothers me, but I’ve concluded that he’s just afraid.
I think he’s afraid that talking will break the silence, will
break the spell that has simultaneously placed us in separate
universes much of the time while also uniting us and rekindling
our love. It’s our secret, a connection through a dream of
another pair of lovers, reminding us of the pleasure of not
simply loving one another, but of being in love.