“How do you mean?” My voice was now visiting its higher, girl-like registers.
“You could have asked if I would have made love to Greg, or did I want to make love Greg—those are two different questions. Also...”
“Susan!” I interrupted. “You’re making no sense. Just answer a single question then. Do you want to fuck Greg?”
She frowned at my language. “No! And especially not if it would hurt you. I love you, Ryan. I wouldn’t do that in a thousand years.”
Jesus, I thought. What did “Not if it would hurt you” mean? Didn’t it just mean yes, I want to fuck him, but won’t? Sometimes language was of no use in married life. There were too many places to hide behind the words. I didn’t really want to drill any deeper, but a bout of masochism descended from some unknown corner of the universe and forced my hand.
“Susan, that means you could see yourself sleeping with Greg if you knew it wouldn’t hurt me.”
“I’m sorry, Ryan. It doesn’t mean anything, really. I’m with you.”
“It’s okay,” I said. I felt the need to demonstrate a tone of empathy. “Look, it would be a lie if I said I didn’t occasionally see other women and feel attraction or desire. That’s all we’re really saying here, right? Greg’s an attractive guy. I get that. We never act on those desires.”
I expected an immediate “That’s right, honey” but instead Susan was silent. Her body English was indecipherable. She looked beautiful with her breasts exposed in that beautiful bra. I felt bad for putting her on the spot but knew we had to dig to the exact bottom of this situation before either of us could climb out.
Finally, she said, “Are we okay?”
Not really. I needed her to say exactly what she meant. Only then could I fully process what was going on here. We were a young married couple. Was the nature of our marriage changing? Were we breaking up? Would we be eating dinner together that night? I knew my thinking was becoming a little dramatic, but the only way to know the answers would be to ask the questions that needed to be asked.
“Susan, just let me summarize. You said you wouldn’t sleep with Greg if it would hurt me, correct?”
“Correct. It wasn’t even on my mind, really, until you brought it up.”
“But what about the arousal you mentioned? You said it got you excited for him to see you that way.”
“Being seen like that, you know, accidentally or generically speaking. That’s what excited me. It just happened to be Greg.”
That made it much clearer.
“Susan, do you think you’re an exhibitionist? Is that what this is about?”
“No, Ryan. It was accidental. I think exhibitionists do that sort of thing on purpose, don’t they?”
Chapter 2: Digging Deeper
SHOW AND TELL
I had to think about that. I didn’t know exactly. The strange thing was how much it excited me for her to be seen in her boudoir undergarments. The evidence was in my now attention hogging erection. Anyway, we didn’t need to label what happened. We just needed to understand our feelings about what happened.
“I’ll tell you the truth, Susan. After you told me about your underwear incident I got aroused, I mean, at the idea of you being exposed. It excited me too. It seems a bit strange.”
Susan’s face brightened. “That’s what Marci said. I mean, about what I experienced. It made me hot, like I’d been really naughty or something and got caught with my knickers down, except they weren’t down in this case.”
Marci would know, I guessed. On all things sexual she was extremely knowledgeable, this due to the large body of work comprising her sexual history. I would know as we used to date before I met Susan. I was sure there was nothing that Marci hadn’t tried in that area short of livestock.
“But what about sleeping with Greg? You more or less said you wouldn’t do it if it hurt me. You didn’t say you didn’t want to.”
“That’s really hypothetical, isn’t it?” she said. “You just said you see other women that attract you. It’s the same difference.”
“Okay.”
“Tell me this, Ryan. Does the idea of me being with another man make you angry or excite you, hypothetically I mean?”
I thought about it. It was too complicated to answer simply or with any conviction either way. Frankly, I could see Susan sleeping with Greg, and the idea excited me. But would it if it really happened? And what would it mean for our marriage?
“I can imagine you with Greg, and it doesn’t send shock waves through my body, not in the hypothetical, of course. But if I came home and discovered you’d been having a secret affair with Greg, I’d go insanely mad. I’d hate it.”
“I know. I’d feel that way too if the situation was reversed.”
“So what are we talking about, then?”
“I don’t know,” said Susan. “But there’s no harm in talking. I mean, in a hypothetical sense, right?”
“Agreed.” Staring at her boobs, which continued their dazzling animation as she shifted in her chair or reached for her wine, was working its magic. I kept imagining Greg having the same show.
“Susan, do something for me. I want you to strip to your underwear and reenact whatever you were doing in the yard this morning. What I mean is, just show me how you were walking around and stuff.”
“Okay.” Her eyes indicated she liked this idea. She stood and removed her shoes, skirt, and top. “What are you going to do? Just watch me?”
“That’s the idea.” My arousal approached fever.
Susan smiled, possibly assuming I was going to be Greg in this experiment peeping over the fence. That she liked this possibility was evident in her hasty movements.
While sitting on our deck I noticed we were completely visible to Greg’s raised deck and realized we could both see into each other’s back yards from our upstairs windows.
I watched Susan roam the lawn. Via miming, she pointed
