Introduction
"I know a lot of people would consider me crazy. You latch onto a sexy little number like Bertie-and then tell her to go out and fuck with anybody she feels like. To many people this wouldn't make sense. But, in my opinion, each couple has to make its own rules when it comes to marriage and sex and constancy, and all that. We usually see marriage as being a point where two people who have been playing the field suddenly have to give it all up and settle down to a dull, routine life. Well, if that's what you want, fine. I don't knock it. But different rules for different people. Sometime, maybe not right away, but sometime, Bertie would begin to feel the need for some excitement, for something different. I was just trying to let her know that I understood this, and that I was not going to get all upset and jealous and try to tie her down all the tighter because she strayed a little here and there.
"The important thing was that I loved her and that she loved me. And I didn't really see anything she did would change that. It didn't mean that she loved me any the less just because she felt like having a strange prick in her cunt once in a while....
"...I managed to get it across to her that she was free to play around if she wanted to.
"She protested violently, and she swore that she hadn't the slightest inclination. 'Okay,' I said, 'I understand. But I'm just saying that if you do feel any inclination, play it by ear. Don't feel that getting ahold of a young, strange guy and doing what you want with each other is going to make any difference in our relationship. You know what I mean?'
"She insisted that that was the farthest thing from her mind, but I could tell that the thought had crossed her mind before, and now she was beginning to think about it. Anyway, it was only a couple of weeks later that she told me she was going out for a night with her girl friend. She and Carol went out together every so often, or just stayed home and yakked about things. There was something about her tone of voice-a little too intense or something-that kind of clued me in that this wasn't at all what she was going to do. And, after all my talk, I found that I was just a little bit jealous. But I quickly talked myself out of that. It meant no more, actually, than if she had been going out with Carol, except that it would probably be a lot more exciting and more fun.
"She came home around eleven and kissed me. I was sitting watching TV, and I was careful not to ask any leading questions. I appeared to be unconcerned. But, if I think I can read Bertie like a book, it works the other way around, too. Maybe there was a little edge to my voice or something. But she caught it right away.
" 'Is anything the matter?' she asked.
" 'Oh, no. Nothing at all.'
" 'You sure?' she insisted.
"Then we started talking, and she broke down and started crying and confessed that she had been out with the guy she had mentioned. Names don't matter. I held her in my arms, and I kissed her and told her how much I loved her, and she sobbed out how much she loved me, and that it didn't mean a thing, and so on. I knew that, of course, and I reassured her and told her that she shouldn't cry. Was it fun ? She then began to tell me the whole story.
"She had met him at a place they'd agreed
on, and he took her to his apartment. Soft lights, soft music, cocktails. All the right touches. He had sat next to her, and his hand had brushed her skirt. In a little while, he kissed her, and they began to get more passionate. He was fairly young, but he was an accomplished lover. He took it fairly slow and easy, working his hand slowly up her thigh. He worked his finger in under her panties and finger-fucked her for a while, and then he suddenly unzipped his pants and thrust his prick into her hand. It wasn't as big as mine-and I couldn't help but get a secret charge from that. But it was nice and hard, and she got turned on playing with it while he finger-fucked her. Then, they undressed quickly. He didn't help her, and she didn't help him. They just got out of their own clothes as quickly as possible.
" I'll bet he came as soon as he saw your naked body,' I threw in.
" 'How did you know?' She smiled. 'Yes, that's exactly what he did. He shot all over my thighs. He couldn't help himself.'
"We both laughed, and then we both relaxed as if she were telling me some story about an exciting episode of the day-just something that happened that was kind of interesting. He was awfully embarrassed when he came all over her, but she told him it was all right. And in only a few minutes, he was raring to go again. He didn't go for sucking cunt, and Bertie seemed disappointed. She also wanted to suck his prick, but since he hadn't done it to her, she was a little embarrassed and thought he might think she was terrible or something. But he did suck her nipples and squeeze her breasts, and then he put his prick in her cunt and started fucking almost right away. She managed to come just as he did, but he seemed unable to hold himself back long enough to let her get in a good orgasm.
"All of this, of course, made me feel superior. It's not that she didn't enjoy it. She certainly did; she loved every minute of it. And the idea that she was doing something 'forbidden' added a tang to it. And he did have a way of moving his prick which is hard to describe; he would sort of rock back and forth from side to side while he was plunging in and out. She found that very stimulating, so I insisted that next time we got in bed, she'd have to teach me how to do it.
" 'Oh, it's nothing special,' she insisted.
"But I insisted more strongly that anything we could do together that would enhance our pleasure was worth a try. Anyway, she went on describing her affair, and by this time we
were both relaxed and unembarrassed and having a drink and thoroughly enjoying the whole thing. After he came the second time, he pulled out almost right away and got a towel and they wiped themselves off. Then they started again. He would let her play with his prick, but she had the feeling he would have been horrified if she'd tried to kiss it.-She fondled his balls, too. He had huge balls, she said. She doubted that she could have gotten them in her mouth-but it would have been fun trying. And when they kissed some more, he put his prick in again and fucked like crazy. They both came again, and the wiping-off procedure was repeated, followed by another and another session. Altogether, he fucked her six times, which is pretty good, I'd say. That's besides his first climax before he got in her.
" 'It was fun,' she admitted, 'but I'm glad to be home.'
"She snuggled in my arms, and added, 'And I'll never do anything like that again.'
" 'Why not?'
" 'Oh, Frank. You're awful,' she said, not really meaning it. 'You'd make a good pimp. I'll bet you'd send me out to pick up guys on the street.'
" 'Well,' I said, pretending to be serious, 'I'll bet we could make a lot of money that
way.' You certainly have the talent for it."
"She slapped my face lightly, and I buried my mouth on hers. I didn't want to get too passionate, because I was sure she was in no mood for lovemaking that night. She had had more than enough. But I was wrong. That little episode had only served to turn her on, and after she showered, we jumped into bed and had one of the greatest sessions we'd had in a long time. I spent a lot of time sucking her cunt, since that was what she had missed earlier; and she lavished her full attention on sucking and licking my prick and my balls. And finally, after her fourth orgasm-good, full, wild climaxes-and my second, I turned around and worked my prick into that sweet crevice of hers, and she reluctantly taught me the little rocking trick that had turned her on. I turned her on again, and she had three orgasms before I finally couldn't hold' back any longer. Then we fell asleep in each other's arms. I doubt that any two people could have felt closer to each other than we two did that night...."
Marriages between older men and younger girls or between older women and younger men
are not uncommon in our generation. People are beginning openly to accept the fact that there is no immunity to love, there is no vaccination against sexual attraction between men and women-regardless of their ages. This, of course, does not mean that all age-mismatched marriages are pure affairs of the heart, or even of the gonads, as the case might be. Every now and then ulterior motives naturally play a part in the matrimonial coupling of a man in his sixties and a girl in her late teens or early twenties, or of a middle-aged woman and a young man; but then, ulterior motives are sometimes behind some of the "conventional" marriages, in which there is no appreciable age difference between man and wife.
The narratives included in this work are limited to the area where there is no known extra-psychological ulterior motive. Extra psychological? To give a concrete example of what is meant by extra-psychological, in the narrative from which the preceding segment was extracted, the narrator-Franklin-at the age of fifty-eight fell in love with Bertie, who was at the time eighteen years old. He found reciprocation for his love in the love of the young woman. Pure and simple. Bertie did not marry Franklin for his money (financial ulterior motive) ; she did not marry him because of his status (he had none to speak of, being a school counselor); she did not marry him because she was in love with one of Franklin's sons-he had three but they do not at any time enter into the picture Franklin narrates. Bertie married Franklin because she liked him, because he loved her, and because she loved him.
And it is on that level of love, sexual attraction, lust-call it what you will-that "psychological ulterior motives" enter the picture. And they do in each of the five cases presented within the pages of this book. These P.U.M.s are in most instances sublimated, and are commonly called drives, fears, anxieties. They are not consciously recognized by either partner, though they are manifested in any number of ways: thought patterns, forms of speech, personality traits, and are of course all based on the individuals' earlier life experiences.
The basic P.U.M. in Franklin's case, for example, is unquestionably fear or anxiety of being alone, and, by extension, of losing Bertie. His marriage to Bertie is his third marriage. His first two were terminated, as far as can be gathered from his narrative, through no fault of his own: the first ending in a divorce, the second leaving him a widower after twenty years of marriage. His attraction to Bertie under the circumstances is not in the least unnatural; his work required him to be in constant touch with people considerably younger than he was, his work was his life, young people were his interest.
It is difficult to establish Bertie's P.U.M. in her ready response to Franklin's manifestations of love sin-the narrative is not presented from her point of view. It would not be unreasonable to assume, however, that part of her ready response was due to her recognition of Franklin's maturity and stability and her attraction toward the same.
The meeting, the attraction, and the marriage, then, of Franklin and Bertie appear to present nothing out of the extraordinary. It is only their subsequent "arrangement"-in which Bertie is almost coaxed by Franklin to engage in extramarital affairs at first-that brings shadows (or light?) into the conventionality of their love life. It is, indeed, a strange pattern that their married life begins to follow after Bertie's first affair with a younger man. After a brief flash of jealousy, Franklin becomes aroused by Bertie's descriptions of her sexual encounters. These sensuousness-filled tˆte-...-tˆtes affect young Bertie in exactly the same manner, for afterwards they engage in lovemaking that carries in it an intensity that is absent, or at least gradually decreases, in their subsequent sessions of intercourse and variations thereupon, until Bertie has another tale to tell.
Have Franklin and Bertie developed a calculated counter-measure to the discrepancy in their ages? Is Franklin's almost blas‚ attitude toward his young wife's technical "infidelities" the saving feature of their marriage? Is their final involvement in group sex with the couple Bertie brings home a progressive step into what might be termed "hedonistic life-style" or is it, indeed, a move on Bertie's part to show Franklin that he, too, can be free and still have her whenever he wants her? Finally, would such an "arrangement" work for a couple whose ages did not show the difference Franklin's and Bertie's ages show? And ultimately, is their marriage heading for the inevitable situation in which Bertie becomes emotionally involved with a man her own age and decides to leave Franklin?
However the above questions are answered, one point cannot be ignored: An age difference, such as exists between Franklin and Bertie as well as the other subject couples of narratives included in this study, is an obstacle that only selfless love can overcome. And love, more often than not in such situations is a function of psychological ulterior motives-some of which, as the following cases will show, cross the boundary between love and psychotic dysfunction.