Girls like boys.
Plural.
∞∞∞
“Hi, honey!” Susan’s voice arrived from our living room as I entered our foyer. “I’m in here!”
“Hi!” I tossed my keys onto the tray sitting on our entry credenza for that exact purpose. They slid across the tray and fell noisily to the floor behind it. I made a mental note on where to find them the following morning, went into the kitchen to grab a bottle of mineral water, and joined Susan in the living room.
“Good day?” she asked, as I removed my suit jacket and loosened my tie. “Ew, I like that look, a man in a suit undressing. Yum.” She smiled in a coyish, seductive way.
“Are you objectifying me? I quite like when you do that.” I sat next to her.
“No. Just appreciating my good luck.” She gave me a kiss. “I thought you were going to see your dad tonight.”
“That’s tomorrow night. His operation is tomorrow morning.”
“Poor guy.”
“Hip replacement is routine now, and it’s not even that, really. They’re fine-tuning the one they put in two summers ago. He told me it was nothing. How was your day?”
“Good. I had lunch with Marci.”
“You two hang out so much you should live together.”
“I know. What can I say? Your former lover is my bestie.”
“Right.”
“Anyway, she kept going on about what we talked about.”
“Well, I don’t know what you talked about, so…”
“I mean the other morning. You know. In our kitchen? Sunbathing nude on our deck? Greg?”
So, that plan was still on. I wasn’t sure as Susan, aside from our recent dirty talk during lovemaking, hadn’t brought it up again. It pleased me to think the two of them were planning to follow through though it almost felt unnecessary now. We were still getting mileage out of Susan’s underwear incident.
“Okay. I’m up to speed. What did Marci go on about about it?”
“She wanted to know if I was still game.”
“Are you?”
“I think so. Are you sure you won’t mind?”
“No. I mean, I’m sure I don’t mind.” She snuggled next to me like a happy child. Thinking of them sunbathing nude in the backyard gave me a surge of tropical warmth and early signs that my pumps were preparing to engage standby.
“Good,” she said.
“I had an interesting lunch.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, with Harold. He told me a story about he and Meg I found interesting. There were some parallels to your recent incident.”
Susan sat up straight to listen.
“I told him about your underwear escapade…”
“YOU DIDN’T!” Her interruption included a smack to my chest.
“Oh, don’t worry! I told him it was an accident.”
“Okay, but really. I don’t want you telling people about it. Don’t tell anyone else. Promise?”
“I promise… Anyway, he said he and Meg once visited a coed sauna in Austria. Initially, they kept their suits on, though everyone else was naked.”
“Meg never told me anything about that. I thought she told me everything.”
“So the next time they went, they removed their suits.”
“Meg went naked?”
“Yup.”
“And there were other people around? Other men?”
“Men and boys even. It was a community spa of some kind. Harold said it had saunas, pools, steam rooms, and everyone walked around nude like the whole village did it.”
I let Susan digest this information before bringing in the really interesting bit.
“I can see it. I mean, if everyone else is naked, why not?”
“That was their thinking. But there’s more.” I paused to sip my mineral water.
“What? You know you don’t need to tease me. Just tell me the whole story.”
“Harold said the idea of Meg being naked around other men got him excited. He didn’t use that word. He said invigorated.”
“You mean turned on?”
“Yes. It worked for Meg too.”
“Wait, are you saying he got an erection in the sauna?”
“No! Well, maybe he did, but he didn’t mention it… I’m saying it turned things around for them, you know, in the bedroom.”
Susan thought for a moment, churning the facts over in her head. I could almost see the wheels turning as her face brightened.
“Meg likes exposing herself too,” she said, summarizing.
What? I felt the “too” was significant. I hadn’t put Meg’s intentions in those terms, nor Susan’s, but of course, being “exposed” was the gist of it, if broken down to the essentials. Susan had just admitted she liked “exposing” herself. I thought of Harold’s proposition that a woman’s job, or least part of it, was to be attractive to potential mates. I could see how this fit, but it would take much more thought before mixing the mortar.
“That’s interesting,” I said.
“What?”
“You just said you liked exposing yourself.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You said ‘Meg likes exposing herself too’.”
“Oh, right... Well, you know what I meant. I didn’t mind it, and it kind of excited me, you know—after.”
“I know. Me too.”
“So it’s kinda like Harold and Meg’s situation.”
“That’s about right.”
“Would you like me to do that, get naked in a sauna with other people?”
I didn’t have to speculate. I’d been thinking about it ever since lunch.
“Sure. But I’d be with you naked too, you know.”
“What if you weren’t?”
That was a twist. The idea of her enjoying a nude sauna with strangers, including men? It took a nanosecond to decide this prospect was also very “invigorating”.
Or maybe, we would go into the sauna separately like we didn’t know each other. I could watch how the other men responded to her. Just the idea of men staring at her naked body was turning the screws. Was I slipping into some grim alley of sleazy kinks thinking this way? As I was prone to judge myself harshly, it almost felt like it. Despite these feelings, I soldiered on.
“We could go in separately like we didn’t know each other.”
“And you’d watch me being there naked with the other people…” She gave it some thought. “Are we losing our minds? Do you think that’s what Meg and Harold were doing?”
“Good question, but I don’t think so.”
“You know, when they came back from Europe a couple years ago, Meg did say they’d met a nice couple, and that they would be getting together with them
