Chapter 3
The October morn was crisp as a bite into a cold green apple. Polly Atkins sat at her kitchen table, nursing a cup of black coffee. One trembling hand held close the gaping neck of her chenille robe, her bare heels hooked on the rungs of the chair. She stared unblinking at a bird chirping from the elm tree next to the clothesline. Orange leaves flitted in butterfly swirls to the frozen, brown grass hardened with the morning's frozen dew.
A pang of misery rippled through her body. The acrid, unsweetened coffee puddling masochistically in her belly. The coffee cup rattled as it settled on the saucer; she clutched the lapels of her robe tighter, shivering against the cold knowledge that Ted had not come home until the Friday morning sky had turned pink.
A night out with the boys . .. that she could understand. He'd been concerned about the outcome of the board meeting, anxious for his promotion to come through. But to not show up until five o'clock in the morning... with ... with the smell of a woman on his genitals!
Polly buried her face in her trembling, sweaty palms and gave in to emotion, her body wracking like so much flotsam in the open sea. For the nth time she scrutinized the details of her assumption, and for the hundredth time came up with the same conclusion: Ted was cheating on her!
Anxious to re-create their lovemaking of the night before, Polly had dressed for dinner and set the table with their wedding china and crystal. The previous night-their anniversary, she recalled with a tremor, had been so precious-she'd wanted it to last forever, wanted to freeze time into an eternity of marital bliss. She waited, watched the evening news with Walter Cronkite, sipped at a glass of wine while she tucked her stockinged feet under her... and waited. A peek at the steaming pot roast and she splashed in a half cup of wine to retain the juices. Ted never liked his meat dry, she sniffed, the unsettling feeling that would last the night descending upon her.
By nine o'clock, she'd slipped out of her lounging robe and into a nightgown, guessing Ted had gone out for an after-work drink with his friends. But why hadn't he telephoned? Another glass of wine, and Polly carefully covered the night's dinner in Tupperware bowls and padded barefoot and dejected to bed.
She lay staring at the ceiling, punching the bed pillow and counting sheep until she heard the car motor die in the drive. The digital clock never lied and it was precisely four fifty-two when she heard him take off his shoes in the kitchen (he had a habit of letting them thump to the floor), and pad in his stocking feet into the hall and to the bathroom.
Polly feigned sleep, lost in a troubled, agonized hell of depression and suspicion. She shivered under the covers, waiting for him to crawl in bed beside her and cradle her in his arms reassuringly. It was Ted's habit to awaken her when he came home after a night of drinking with the boys, giving his wife that kind of affirmation of affection that separates bad marriages from good ones.
Clumsily he'd opened the bedroom door and thrown himself into bed. No kisses, no hugs tonight... just snoring and neglect. As Polly rolled over onto her side to cuddle against his back, the smell of femininity stung her nostrils-that unmistakable sweetness of perfume, mingled with the piquant scent of sex!
No! Her mind raged. Not Ted! We made love so beautifully last night... he's never-Polly rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling, splashed now with pink strands of an awakening morn. Five o'clock and smelling of perfume. The evidence declared the case closed.
His snores were deep and troubled. Now Polly's curious hand stole around her husband's heaving body to the warm vee of his loins. Her tiny hand trembled as it delicately touched the withered tube of his penis- sticky and warm! A woman has a way of knowing things, and Polly Atkins knew her husband had been with another woman!
Why? The question lingered. Why? Hadn't last night's lovemaking been extraordinarily intimate? Oh, sure, he'd wanted her to use her mouth on his thing- but that was nothing new. If anything, it had become a joke between them. Now Polly's chin trembled and the tears spilled. Was that what their relationship had become after three years of marriage? A joke?
She must get hold of herself and be realistic. Polly sniffed and gulped down her coffee, squared her chin and stomped off for the bathroom. Determinedly, she stripped off her robe, telling herself she was a beautiful woman who did not deserve to be hurt, and stepped under the needle spray of the shower.
Two avenues lay open to her at the crossroads of indecision: One, succumb to hurt and harbor bitterness, leading, inevitably, to divorce; or two, get to the bottom of the issue and salve the wound before it became infectious.
It was around one o'clock that afternoon when Polly drove her Volkswagen Rabbit into Myra's circular drive. The maple leaves were rich in oranges and reds, swirling in whispering circles at Polly's feet as she made her way toward Myra's front door.
Myra, she mused, stilling her nervousness, had put her psychology degree from Northwestern to good use. The two story brick house with sun porch and quarter acre back yard hadn't fallen into her hands out of luck. Five times married, she managed to put the alimony to good use in terms of investments. Her motto was "... it's as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor one...
She was attired in a brightly colored day dress of rustling silk when she answered Polly's timid knock. Her greeting was ebullient as ever, lusty and honest.
"Good to see you, Polly." She cupped her college mate's shivering shoulders and stood back for a scrutinizing look. Tiny crows feet around dull eyes refused to be compensated for no matter how artfully applied the makeup. The cold, trembling hands clutched her warm ones in testimony of unspoken despair. Myra cocked her head, haloed in Titian curls the color of falling maple eaves. "You don't look so good, hon. What's the matter? You and Teddie boy split up?" Myra was one for hitting the nail on the head, no matter whose thumbs got in the way.
Polly clutched her purse to her chest nervously; her chin trembled dangerously. She sniffed, raising dampening eyes to Myra's critical ones.
"Nobody ever comes to see me unless they're about to split with their husband," she bemoaned in a husky voice that hinted at late nights and cigarettes. "Can't imagine why," she snickered, leading her guest into the sunken living room and indicating with a curt gesture for Polly to have a seat on the white velour sofa next to the fireplace now roaring warmly on the chill afternoon.
"Care for a drink?" Myra was at the bar, splashing gin and tonic into two tumblers and dumping in ice cubes. A twirl of the swivel stick and the cool drink was thrust into Polly's hand.
Polly first looked at the glass, beaded with cold dew. She didn't care for alcohol, but she knew that refusing would offend Myra who always enjoyed a drinking partner. Then she looked into the orange leaping flames of the stone fireplace and thought how warm and secure it was. Not at all like the ache permeating her being. She shivered, wanting to die. A warm hand on her arm brought her back to reality abruptly.
Polly bolted, hearing the other's voice coming as from out of a void: "Tell me about it, that's why you came."
Polly sniffed and raised her head. "I'm sorry, Myra. I'm just not myself today."
"Then who are you? Some lovelorn virgin pining over Sir Galahad?" she tutted. "Come on, I know you better than that. Out with it!"
"I... I can't talk about it," she choked, touching her hand to her forehead.
"Of course you can. Take a sip of that drink and loosen up a bit. Nothing and I mean nothing, can be that bad!" she said proudly, settling back on the sofa beside her guest and slipping one elegant arm along the back of the sofa while the other hand clutched her drink. "Take it from the horse's mouth, you can get through it, if you'll face it, and you can't face it if you don't get it off your chest where you can look at the problem objectively." Her gold bangles jiggled as she spoke, her throaty voice convincing and meaningful. "Anyway, there's nothing you could say about men that would surprise or amuse me," she put in with a snicker. ".. .and it's Ted you've come to discuss, who else?"
Polly's eyes pried loose from a burning log about to flake into hot ashes, and flashed a questioning look at Myra. She noted the little age lines around the eyes, the slight pucker of the upper lip, relenting to premature aging, and wondered that if men could do that to a woman ... was Ted worth the trouble?
"How did you know ... that... that I was having marital problems?" Her voice was tight. The dam broke, and from her anguished soul came the loathsome details of Ted's infidelity. She left out the more embarrassing details of her search for evidence, and wept hot salty tears.
When her eyes lifted to Myra's, she noted a little smirk. Polly blinked, baffled, eyes questioning silently.
"Oh, my dear girl!" boomed Myra, taking a hefty swallow of her drink. "This happened once and you're ready for the nunnery?" she guffawed. 'Take a look at my gallery of husbands, sweetheart!" She pointed to the curving stairway where hung the framed portraits of her five husbands, ascending the staircase in order of succession.
In a rustle of silk, Myra leapt from the sofa, threw back her head and assuming the theatrical pose that was Myra Belfry, flung herself at the bottom stair and jabbed a finger at the first portrait.
"Meet husband number one ... oil tycoon, Houston born, first mistress discovered after two months of marriage, divorced two months later. Took my diamonds before the court settled the estate." On to the next.
"Meet Lloyd, Polly." Polly stared into the bland face of a Nordic looking man with a square jaw and squinty eyes. "Found Lloyd on the chopping block with the maid ... lovely, huh? Had her skirt wadded up to her waist, eating his dinner!"
Myra threw back her head and ascended two steps: "Husband number three, Charles Osgood III. Cute huh?" she squinted, curling her upper lip. 'Turned gay the first year of marriage, but left me a house in Pugent Sound ... which compensated nicely, so my lawyer thought." Myra dragged heavily on her drink. "Number four. This one left me no settlement. In fact, he owes me money. I don't know what happened to him ... think he's running a disco somewhere in Greece. And the latest, I'm awaiting the papers from my lawyer now. Handsome, don't you think? Twenty-five years old and poor as a church mouse."
Polly blinked and squinted at the drawn face of a new wave rock and roll star. The photograph, judging from the red lights, had been taken in a rock club.
"Or shall I say was poor until I poured my money into promotion for his group ... and I'm getting fifty-two percent of the profits while he's out fucking groupies and snorting cocaine." A tone of bitterness sang in her voice. "Nice group of men, wouldn't you say, Polly?"
Polly was aghast. She nodded dumbly, wondering if a woman could possibly have loved that many men in so short a time.
"I can see the question in your eyes, honey," smirked Myra knowingly. "You're wondering if I ever loved any of them, right?" without waiting for the predictably nod of Polly's blonde head, the other woman headed for the bar and splashed a heavy handed dose of gin into her empty glass. A quick swirl of the swizzle stick and she glanced at Polly's bewildered expression. "Truth of the matter is, it's that chumpy rock star I was most stuck on. That boy knew how to love ... oh, the long nights of torrid lovemaking!" she quipped whimsically, staring out the plate glass window with a far away glint in her eye.
Embarrassed by these admissions of intimacy, Polly stared down into her drink. Compared to Myra's unhappiness, Ted's one night of infidelity could hardly be considered tragic.
"So..." Myra, swung around in a rustle of silk. "What's the problem between you and Ted. Sex? Another woman?"
"H-how could you tell?" Polly's voice was small and tight.
"It's written all over your face! Look at you..." she gesticulated, "you're all humped over and withdrawn, feeling sorry for yourself when you should be getting at the meat of the problem..."
Polly choked and sipped eagerly at her drink, appreciating the numbing affect on her raw emotional state. 'That's the problem," she conceded, cheeks burning. "I don't understand why he would be with another woman after ... after we had such a wonderful anniversary together! I mean, we love each other, physically. " The word stuck in her throat.
"Sex ... ah, do you give him what he wants?" Polly's eyes burned into Myra's. "Wh-what do you mean?"
Myra shooed a hand in the air. "Oh, come now. How old are we now, Polly? Twenty-eight? Do you ever initiate lovemaking? Do you go down on him ... lavish him with kisses between his legs, make him feel like the dominant being men crave to be?"
She watched the rouged cheeks burn to crimson. Polly stared down at her drink and with a desperate movement, threw back her head and emptied it.
"So that's it, the old you-won't-love-me-if-I'm lewd theme, huh?" Myra chuckled lewdly. "Ah, how well I know that game! Why do you think Charlie boy turned gay?" A pause, then: "Well, maybe that didn't have much to do with it. But I'll tell you one thing, Polly. It took that rock n' roller to open my legs." Myra took a seat beside Polly on the sofa and thrust one bare leg over the other, studying her ex-college mate intently.
Polly sat staring off into space, rehashing mentally the confessions of a woman who'd known five husbands. Certainly Myra had the edge over her when it came to understanding men.
"What it comes down to, sweetheart, is that you've got to learn to be open about your sexuality if you're going to please Ted. I remember Ted from college ... the football hero, the macho type, right? Always anxious for a little peek of leg..."
Polly winced. "Please, Myra, not now." She touched her hand to her fevered forehead, every truthful word hammering away at her female ego.
"If s true and you know it! So he's been a good hus- band for three years, but if you don't give him a bit of variety in bed-get kinky now and then, he's going to get bored."
"You make it sound so-so animalistic, Myra!" charged Polly, the nerves in the back of her neck tightening painfully.
"We are animalistic..: half our bodies are tied up in sex and giving birth! Every cell of our bodies are connected to the inevitability of spreading our legs for a man."
"But I'm a wife, not just his lover!" charged the other.
"Bullshit," poo-hooed Myra. "That's a social discipline, not an instinctive function. For godsakes, you majored in sociology, you should know."
"But what am I going to do?" wailed Polly.
"Tell me..." Myra's voice was conspiratorial. "Does he have oral sex with you?"
Polly's blonde head swung around, defiantly. "Of course not!" she snapped, her teeth showing under a curled lip.
"That's the problem... you've got to let him express himself with you-totally. I mean," and here she gesticulated with her elegant fingers tipped in cherry red, the gold bangles tinkling on her arms, ".. .if he wants to kiss your pussy, you've got to let him... if he wants to tie you to the bedpost and whip you with a belt, give it a try. What have you got to lose? Believe me, honey," she urged, reading the incredulity of her friend's wide-eyed expression, "if that's what he wants now and then he'll go out of the house to find it."
That was too much for Polly! She cupped her trembling hands over her ears and shook her blonde curls, clenching her teeth. Anything to shut out the filth spewing frjom Myra's mouth. When at last she released them she wished she hadn't.
"What about masturbation, do you feel comfortable enough with yourself to make yourself orgasm?"
"Oh, come now, Myra!" Anger percolated in Polly's veins. "I'm not a sex crazed slut who can't wait for her husband to make love to her!"
Myra leaned back comfortably on the sofa. "I suggest you try it. You can't make Ted feel like a man if you can't make! yourself feel like a woman!" The ice cubes rattled in her glass as she clinked it down on the glass topped end table and shot up from the sofa, returning moments later with an armful of magazines which she plunked down on the end table in front of her guest. "I got these at the institute. Dr. Dearborn gave them to me for lesson number one on becoming a woman. You've I got to learn to feel free with yourself and masturbation. Take these home and peruse them ... they will cure you. It did me."
Polly rolled her wide blue eyes at the ceiling, the tears now dried and where pain once stung, disbelief and a strangely growing curiosity took place. Out of the corner of one eye, she felt Myra's studying her expression, waiting for her, to-open the first glossy magazine whose front cover was written in big white letters: Sexology Institute of America.
When the distressed wife refused to flip open the cover, Myra grew impatient. She plucked the heavy glossy magazines from the table and thrust them into Polly's arms. "Here, take these home with you... and give me a call tomorrow."
Ungracious, wouldn't it be to refuse after Myra had opened herself to help out a depressed school chum? "I am sorry if I'm been poor company, Myra... it's been really sweet of you to help me out." With the magazines weighting her arms, she followed Myra to the door.
By the time she nosed into 2895 Elmworth Street, the heavy weight of her depression had lifted considerably. Yes, she thought dizzily, the affects of alcohol in the afternoon dulling her senses, I was right in going to visit Myra. She's experienced with men and she certainly has a good attitude about herself... something I need. Maybe I have grown too dependent on Ted. Still the idea of masturbation and letting Ted tie her to the bedpost seemed impossibly out of reach for a woman of her moral stature. Maybe that moral stature, she thought, plunking the unopened magazines down on the sofa, is building a wall between Ted and me. Oh, God, life is so complicated!
Without a second thought, she headed for the refrigerator and poured a glass of chilled Chablis. The first sip made her shiver and, instinctively, she turned up the thermostat and shed her sweater. The morning dishes sat in the sink, but that bothered her little as she curled up on the sofa and sipped her wine, watching through the living room plate glass window her industrious neighbor Harry raking leaves against the October breezes in a battle of man against nature.
Institute of Sexology, she muttered aloud, heading for the refrigerator for a refill of Chablis. Leave it to Myra! She sipped of her wine, her eyes stealing curiously down at the magazines. She began to wonder, disinterestedly at first and then with growing curiosity, what the magazines were about. Probably one of those cheap advertising gimmicks-mail in a matchbook cover and ten dollars.
The wine was beginning to affect her now, in several different ways. The depression of Ted's negligence had waned to a dull throb of irritation, and she felt a resurgence of independence that follows disappointment in a love mate. An irrational desire to see what panacea Myra had predicted for her marital problems, overwhelmed her. , Impulsively, stifling a drunken giggle, Polly reached out and flipped open the unrevealing cover to the Sexology Institute Manual of Female Development, as it read on the spine.
Her first reaction was one of shocked horror. She blinked and squinted, her eyes fixed on the full-color glossy plates of blatant carnality which lay in the warm bowl of her belly. Polly's brain began to spin with the combination of startlement and alcohol.
Dear God, she thought . . . this is common pornography, filthy stuff Ted is always peeking at in the book stores!
The first glossy page she'd a sweet-looking brunette straddling a dark haired man; both of them were naked as jay birds, with their genitals openly exposed to the camera's eye, and his penis ... his thing was pushed halfway up into her vagina!
Polly wanted to rip the magazine to shreds, but a curious perversity caused her to grip it more tightly while her eyes remained fixed on every lewd detail.
How could any woman consent to pose before a photographer in that compromising posture? A heaviness gathered in her belly then, recalling the titillating embarrassment of having posed for Ted. Polly swallowed hard, studying the sheer ecstasy on the young girl's face. Lids drooped, mouth parted and moist, tip of her tongue showing, caught up in the sexual frenzy of the moment, of the feeling of a man's hardened shaft boring deep into her cuntal hole!
Polly's wide blue eyes lifted from the page. It was this lewdness, this oneness of sexuality Ted had been aiming for their anniversary night! If she hadn't stopped him, it might have come to this. Which meant, she reasoned breathlessly, that Ted wanted his wife to act precisely like this tramp in the photograph!
Staring into the pretty girl's lust contorted face, Polly felt a shortness of breath, a fluttering in her lower belly. The inside of her mouth went dry, and she licked her lips several times.
Her trembling fingers flipped the page and the second two-page spread sprang to view. She sucked in her breath, a spiral of unwanted warmth spearing its way upward through her warmly secreting loins, into her empty belly toward the ruby crests of her melon-like breasts. A man, a faceless man in his shameless posture, was kneeling nakedly on his haunches while he crouched between the widespread thighs of a buxom blonde. His long, lizard-like tongue curled out to flick at the swollen naked genitals and the oily nub of the girl's clitoris!
"Oh, oh, Gawd!" wailed Polly, physically stricken by the turpitude of such animalistic behavior. The more terrifying the sight, the more transfixed our response ... and so it happened with Polly Atkins. Her periwinkle eyes were glued to the photograph, at the man, at his tongue licking the swollen pink flanges of her vagina. Perverted ! Sick! That's what Ted's been wanting to do to me for three years! The photos had a natural progression and it seemed obvious the next would be the reversal.
Polly gulped. A wave of shame flowed through her quivering body, rouging her cheeks to crimson. These disgustingly behaved people were drawing her into their lasciviousness, infecting her soul with perversity. The lusty smirks on their faces, the contortion of ecstasy, was beginning to affect her. A froth began to dampen the crotchband of her panties ... Now she wished Ted were here to cool her arousal flamed by the wine and the thought of lovemaking.
She moaned aloud, working up the courage to thrust the magazine to the floor and be rid of the evil demons jumping out from the pages to stab tiny pitchforks of lust into her loins!
A flip of the page. "Oh, no!" she groaned. Just as she'd feared-a woman (what difference did the color of hair make now?) with her parted lips ovaled around the blood fed length of a man's penis! Oh, and the girl was loving it, reveling in her filth like a child licking an ice cream cone! The girl had her head buried in the naked man's loins, just as Ted had for so long wanted her to do to him! A low moan of despair tore from Polly's throat. She pushed the magazine off her lap and sat slumped on the sofa's cushions. She trembled, opening and closing her legs in a futile effort to end the tingling, flowing excitement the lewd photographs had fanned between her silken thighs.
Oh, Ted, why aren't you here now! I want you, Teddie, I want you deep inside me, honey! Sooo baddd!
Her breathing became shallow, her nipples puckered into diamond chips. In a wail of very real despair, the incited young wife leapt from the sofa and tore down the hall to the bedroom where she slammed the door and threw herself onto the bed in a frenzy of hysteria. The burning ache in her belly would not stop, even though she'd left the wicked photographs face down on the living room carpet.
"What about masturbation..." came Myra's voice from the deep recesses of her libido. "Do you feel comfortable enough with yourself to make yourself orgasm?"
And her rebuttal (weak in retrospect) had been: "Come now, Myra .. . I'm not a sex crazed slut who can't wait for her husband to make love to her!"
Strange how time doth change things....
In one swift motion, the beautiful young housewife kicked off her shoes, and tore at the zipper of her dress. She peeled off her lacey brassiere, marveling at the firmness of her breasts in the full length mirror, and stripped off her stockings, leaving her garter belt to make a lacey crisscross over the soft bowl of her belly. A low, deep moan tore from her throat as she tore at her flimsy bikini panties.
Her liquor-fogged, passion-drenched mind refused to admit to the evil she had been led to believe came from masturbation. A red hot urgency replaced reason, blotting out everything but the intense desire and need for release.
Cooing, throwing back her head in slow, rotating circles, she massaged with polished fingertips the smooth flat whiteness of her stomach, around and around, raising up to pass over her swollen breasts with their strawberry tipped nipples. She sensed the love juices gathering in her womb. With a will of its own, her hand moved lower and she arched her back, raising her hips high off the bed, her fingers passing through the downy fleece of her blonde pubic curls and intensifying to a damning crescendo the sexual frenzy within her.
A groan of desire bubbled from her laxly parted lips, as the young housewife moved her hand warm downward between her now widespread thighs, wet with the secretions of her passion. She wormed her finger into the moist flesh experimentally, marveling at the feel of the soft, warm lips of her pussy. Funny, she had never touched herself before down there, at least in an appreciative manner. The feeling sparked by her own fevered fingers was so very, damnably good!
Gently, she manipulated the soft hair-lined inner lips until she could feel them swelling with warm, rushing blood, and her clitoris became rigid and tingling. Her index finger touched the trembling nub of flesh, making her gasp with the delight as she felt her release cumming. Her hips thrashed the bed and the air, her eyes fluttered open and shut. She licked her lips and cooed back into the pillow where just last night Ted had rested his head.
Faster, faster, faster her quickly learning fingers rubbed across the sensitive, swollen nub, blanking her mind of all thoughts, all reasoning, nothing existing for Polly Atkins at that moment but the delirious need to come.
And magically, she was there!
Oh, God, she was making herself cum!
Her hips flailed frantically, boring down into the mattress as wave after wave of unbearable passion rippled through her loins. The pleasure was so acute it was electrifying. It was not the dull, throbbing bittersweet pain of feeling Ted boring into her womb, but a sharp current of sensation that centered in the oily nub of her clitoris.
Then, as her orgasm slowly and predictably ebbed, her buttocks sank back down into the spread and her hand stilled. She couldn't bear to lift it from her seeping cunt. Her eyes squeezed shut and her swollen breasts rose and fell spasmodically.
Slowly sanity returned to her brain. A feeling of abject mortification overcame her, backed by the unreality of having been her own lover. She lay staring up at the ceiling, wondering what evil had overcome her that she might resort to the use of her own hand for relief. She moaned aloud in despair, sitting up, brushing the hair from her eyes. In a rush of movement, she flung herself face down on the bed and cried. She cried for women like Myra, she cried for herself and she cried for her marriage that was falling apart because she was unable to give what did not come naturally to her.
She felt sick, in need of cleansing, impure ... as if her body were diseased with an incurable illness that lay dormant in her soul. She needed to sleep; she couldn't be this upset when Ted came home for dinner. The fear set in that he might not come home tonight, and she cried harder. He must never know what she'd done tonight.
After a long moment, she pulled herself from the bed, showered and put on fresh pants and sweater. Later, in the kitchen she was slapping sliced roast into the Dutch oven when, with a wail of despair, she remembered, the Sexology Institute Manual lying face down on the beige living room carpet. Dear God help her if Ted lay eyes on that!
Frantically, she shoved the glossy magazines with their innocuous covers into the top shelf in the hallway closet next to Ted's handball equipment, keeping a wary eye on the clock, and making a mental note that it would be wise to. return the odious ministers of evil to Myra the next day.