Married Sex (7 page)

Chapter 16

A massive photo in the lobby. Not Jean's. She'd never shoot such sentimental chlorophyll: Central Park, three miles and several cultures north, in full summer.

The elevator. Holding hands with Blair. Nervous smiles.

Jean's building, for all its pin lighting and polished brick, was venerable in one respect. One loft per floor, so when the elevator opens, you step right into the living space.

We did.

And found ourselves alone.

The living area was vast, big enough for an energetic game of floor hockey. And almost empty. By the elevator, a simple white table with a concise collection of refreshment opportunities. Hardly any furniture: a couch, two Eames chairs, a low table, and a dark Persian rug. Near the kitchen area, a pine table and a few cane chairs. A bookcase on a distant wall. Large, framed photographs everywhere, none of them by Jean. Gauze curtains over the massive windows. No overhead lights, and the few lamps had dimmers set low.

From faraway speakers, a Southern woman was listing her troubles, her voice rough and ageless and bearing the terrible history of Alabama or Mississippi. The song was blues—
Why do I worry, why do I have to cry? Why do I have to carry this heavy load?
—delivered slowly, accompanied by a slide guitar. It registered as a sexy, smoldering strut.

I called out: “Jean?”

No response.

“Feels like the start of
Law and Order
,” I whispered.

“Let's find the body.”

Jean emerged from the back of the apartment, so far away we had plenty of time to adjust, to gawk, to think of some clever greeting. And, most of all, to appreciate Jean's sense of drama. In her own home, she was making an entrance.

“
Y Tu Mamá También
,” Blair murmured.

Do you know this movie? Made in Mexico, it's the story of two teenage boys and a lovely woman in her thirties who go on a road trip together, and on their last night at a secluded beach, they go to a dive bar and get sloppy drunk. The woman puts coins in the jukebox. Music starts, slow, loose-hipped, rapturous. She shimmies her way back to the table and takes the boys in hand. They start to dance. Only it's not really dancing. With the woman in the middle, they grind in a way that makes it absolutely clear they'll only need one bed tonight.

Jean wasn't quite dancing, but she was definitely feeling the music. She was in uniform—white shirt and jeans—but with her shirt half-unbuttoned, which surely had something to do with whatever she was sipping.

“David.”

A brief kiss on the mouth. She stepped back, set the glass on the table.

“Blair.”

Another brief kiss on the mouth.

Jean stepped back, her focus still on Blair.

“May I?”

The question was a formality. Blair wasn't really being asked anything.

Jean placed her right hand on Blair's hip. She made no move to pull Blair closer—it looked as if they were doing some formal eighteenth-century dance.

Then Jean slipped her hand under Blair's skirt.

Surprise for me.

Surprise for Jean.

Blair was naked underneath.

“Oh,” Jean murmured. “Delicious.”

I thought Jean would start to stroke Blair, but she didn't—she was cupping Blair between her legs, concentrating the warmth of her hand.

Blair looked stricken, stunned. This was so fast, so unexpected, so direct.

“Just for a minute,” Jean whispered.

Jean's hand was doing nothing; it was just a statement of fact. Of a deep understanding. Of a kind of possession. Energy from one woman flowing to the other. And back.

Eyes closed, Blair looked drugged, far away. She couldn't resist this. She opened her legs. Tensed. Shuddered. Gasped. Shuddered again. Sighed.

Jean withdrew her hand.

Blair opened her eyes. She looked disoriented, as if she'd suddenly been awakened from a nap.

“That was … something.”

Jean gently put her hand against Blair's cheek. “That was breaking the ice,” Jean said.

“Melting the ice,” I said.

Jean smiled. “Can you stand it, David?”

“I could have watched that for hours.”

“Really?” Blair laughed. “Just standing there?”

“Drink?” Jean said.

She poured tequila.

Jean carried the bottle and kept our glasses filled as she gave us the photo tour, with terse commentary that explained why she chose the Cartier-Bresson of Muslim women praying in Pakistan in 1949, the reason for the Meyerowitz of Cape Cod Bay at dusk, and the importance of the huge Gursky landscape. There was a theme: the horizon. Not just as the dividing line between earth and sky but what the idea of the horizon means to pilots and photographers: Don't get distracted; look straight ahead. And what it means in relationships: Be completely present, look a person in the eye.

By then, we'd reached the far end of the living room. We'd had two or three shots of tequila and had smoked an astonishingly potent joint. The music had changed to something African, sung by women in French, with guitars that snaked around a slow, hypnotic beat.

Blair looked relaxed, like whatever came next would prove to be more like a pleasant party than a watershed event.

Jean led us around a corner and into her bedroom. It could not have been simpler. King-size bed, with a thick white duvet that suggested a four-figure thread count. Candles, carafes, and water glasses on side tables. Speakers bolted to the walls.

Blair smiled at Jean, who giggled. They had the same thought, and I was it. Blair unbuttoned my shirt. Jean loosened my belt. I kicked off my moccasins. In seconds, I was naked.

Blair watched as Jean reached for me.

Her hand was like a mouth.

“Unfair,” I murmured, but not as a complaint.

Jean kneeled and took me between her lips. Blair kneeled. Jean knew why and, with a slow final lick, released me. Blair took over. Then they switched. And again. Then with one variation: Like a woman with two mouths, they licked me together.

And that was just sport. Soon enough, they got serious, taking turns with me in their mouths. I closed my eyes. I couldn't tell who was doing what.

The pleasure was intense beyond anything I had ever experienced. I felt I could come, and I knew I didn't want to.

“Please … no,” I whispered, and they stopped. “Get up.”

They stood. Jean and I stripped Blair. Blair and I stripped Jean. I don't know why it seemed important that we stay standing up, that we not tumble onto the bed, but it was a good idea—Jean and I sucked Blair's nipples. Blair and I sucked Jean's. We shared a three-way kiss. I stood behind Blair and rested my hand between her legs, as Jean pressed her nipples against Blair's. And then Blair and I did that to Jean.

“Want to give David a show?”

Blair stiffened. “Can it be … darker?”

Jean blew out one of the candles and led Blair to the bed. “Lie down. On your back, like you were going to sleep. Head on the pillow … and open your legs.”

Blair did. Jean did the same but lying in the opposite direction, her head at the foot of the bed. They looked like matching snow angels—until Jean positioned herself so she and Blair were scissored together, legs locked, sex pressed tight against sex.

This was Jean's show, and soon I could see why. She had brought Blair to a quick orgasm; now it was her turn. And, in bed with a woman, this was clearly how she liked to get off.

Jean looked joyous, fantasy realized, release on the way.

Blair's eyes were shut tight. She wasn't enjoying this. She'd signed up for the beginners' course, only to be bumped up to an advanced class. It was in her nature to want to do well, and she wasn't, by her standard, succeeding.

Blair whispered, “Jean?”

Jean was too deep into it to answer.

I heard Blair's distress but didn't feel I should intervene. Yet.

“Jean, I need to …”

Now Jean heard. And understood. On the cusp of orgasm, she stopped short. She sat, took Blair by the wrists, and pulled her up.

“I am so sorry,” Jean said.

“It's just …”

“Too much for a first time. And David must be feeling left out.” Jean turned to me. “Though he doesn't seem to be pouting.”

“Are you okay?” Blair asked me.

“I could have watched that for hours.”

“Enough with the watching,” Jean said. “Shall we make David very, very happy?”

In a sentence, Jean had recast the triangle as a twosome: adultery with a witness and occasional co-conspirator. Now I was in charge. No pressure on Blair. Deft.

A man and his wish list. Early Christmas.

Before they started working me over, I sensed that Jean liked to have an orgasm before she fucked, so I put my face between her legs and gave her one.

Blair's eyes glittered.

“Want some?” I asked.

She nodded.

I turned to Jean. I didn't have to say anything. The two of us, giving Blair the night of her life—no question, we had the same fantasy.

Jean and I stood over Blair. Eyes slowly scanning, taking one another in. Anticipation was physical: pounding heart, slow breathing. A buzz in the air, desire crackling, and powerful forces at work.

I felt a kind of awe at what we might create together. Then Jean and I plunged.

There were places we didn't go. I didn't ask Blair to go down on Jean. I didn't suggest that Jean—or Blair—use the strap-on that had to be in the drawer of the table by the side of the bed. Or that Blair do much of anything while I was with Jean.

We'd arrived at some unspoken ground rules, making sure everyone was included and no one got hurt.

Blair, Jean—at any moment, did it make a difference who I was loving? There was enough to go around. More than enough; we were in a zone of abundance. Four breasts. Six hands. Many of each and yet not too much. A thought: If you can have this, who would choose less?

We paused for more tequila for Jean and me, water for Blair. We held one another and kissed. There was so much more to do, and yet … and yet I felt almost ready to come and go. But why? Why did I feel so … drained?

Because every touch was searing. Because as I lost myself in these women, I felt I was losing myself in myself—swirling, spinning, corkscrewing my way into unknown emotional territory. In all my scenarios, developed over years, I'd failed to realize that sex with two people was fundamentally the same as sex with one person but twice as intense. As a physical event, it was a riot of sensation, an electrical connection with multiple plugs and sockets. And very much an emotional connection. Even more emotional than physical.

“Jean, would you mind if I … finish with Blair?”

She didn't. Jean Coin, the consummate hostess.

“My darling,” Blair said as I entered her.

I whispered in her ear, “Dear God, how I love you.”

We moved together, the way we do. Blair didn't come, but it didn't matter—in a room not our own, we were together. Unshakably together.

When we were finished, I lay in Jean's bed and thought that what we'd done had opened me up to a new way of feeling. Everything seemed different. Clearer. Life seemed more … spacious. I'm not saying this exactly right, but what started with sex—what I thought was only about sex—seemed to have ended up very far from it.

Chapter 17

We lay in bed, silent, recovering, just breathing.

The music was on a loop. The blues song we'd heard when we arrived began again.

“Seems like a year ago,” Blair said. “Who is that?”

“Big Mama Thornton.”

I sensed that Jean knew a great deal about Big Mama and could have launched into the particulars of her career, but I didn't want to be educated, just to nap. Blair sat up. I reached for a glass of water.

And just like that the party was over.

Blair and I started to assemble our clothes.

Jean, wrapped in the sheets, seemed surprised. “David … you're
leavin
g
?”

“I'm not one of those guys who can do this all night.”

“You're kidding,” Jean said.

Blair giggled as she slipped on her sweater. “If David and I have a really intense encounter, he not only doesn't want to do it again, he says he'll
never
want to do it again.”

“No!”

“It's true,” I said. “I tell Blair, ‘Well, that's
that
. Take the rest of your life off.'”

“But you know better,” Jean said.

“At that moment, it's the truth. I gave Blair everything I had. And I can't imagine ever wanting more.”

“How many nights before he's hot for you again?” Jean asked.

“One,” Blair said, and both women laughed. “But after tonight … two … maybe three.”

“What about you, Blair?” Jean asked. “You're really done?”

“I was once with a guy who said, ‘I can go all night.' I told him, ‘Please, don't.' So I'm with David a hundred and ten percent on this one.” She paused. “On pretty much everything, actually.”

“Got it,” Jean said, and kissed me.

But she couldn't resist provoking. As Blair and I finished dressing, Jean untangled herself from the top sheet and stood. Naked.

Now that we were on the far side of sex, even a bare breast was unsettling to Blair. Jean read the moment and found a T-shirt.

Count on Blair, the college dean, to know how to end an evening on good terms. She hugged Jean. “This was special. Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” Jean said.

“And mine,” I said. “In a very big way, mine.”

“I'm glad,” Jean said.

“Really,” I said. “That was so good, it's a miracle it's legal.”

We kissed—on the cheeks—at the door.

“Safe travels,” Jean said, as if we weren't taking the elevator and a cab uptown but were going on an ocean voyage.

“You too,” Blair said.

“Send postcards,” I added, a line so silly that we all laughed, and then the elevator opened.

“You okay?”

“Yes,” Blair said.

“Fun?”

“Interesting.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yes, fun.” Blair punched me lightly. “Can you hold off on the recap for a
minute
?”

The elevator released us. We stepped into the night, the air cooler, the party music now softer. As one, we took a breath.

“It's early. Want a drink?”

“So much,” Blair said. “But let's walk a bit.”

“We did that just right,” I said.

“What is ‘right'?”

“You spend the night, you're in a relationship. You leave, you've made no commitment.”

“That's a little … pat, don't you think?”

Another sentence I never thought would come out of my mouth in this lifetime: “I read that in an etiquette piece about threesomes on the web.”

Blair was amused. “You
studied
threesomes?”

“I started to read some pieces.”

“What stopped you?”

“The first piece I read answered every question.”

“Like?”

“What to do and say after the final orgasm.”

“Let me guess.” Blair looked into the distance, as if she might find the answer etched on the sky. “
Thanks, great time, let's get together again sometime.
”

“Wow. Exactly. How did—”

“Maybe I read the same piece,” Blair said, and hers was the very model of a wicked smile.

“What other homework did you do?”

“I watched some videos on tribbing,” she said.

“Tribbing?”

“That scissoring thing we did when Jean and I were on the bed, facing away from each other.”

“That thing you stopped doing.”

“Your favorite moment, no doubt.”

“Well, it was new.”

“And?”

“Scorching hot. Two beautiful women …”

“One in better shape than the other,” Blair said. I was still returning to Earth. Blair was back in New York, measuring, comparing, judging. “Jean made me feel like I should go to the gym more.”

“Don't do it for me. In fact …”

I slid my hand under Blair's skirt and cupped her ass. It turned out she wasn't quite finished for the night. I wasn't either. We walked to the Village, had two drinks each, and took a cab home, where, to my surprise, I was eager for another round with Blair.