It was 1988 and Laura and I had been married for almost two years. I was deputy head in Storton Middle School, while she led Home Economics in the Brandley High School, and doubtlessly, one of the reasons I married her was because of her cooking skills.
We met at a conference and my first sight of her, that exquisite figure and delicate nobility of her face framed in the shoulder-length tawny hair had me trapped immediately.
From the outset, she had let me know that she had little interest in the physical side of marriage. One bad experience too many, she told me. But her looks and her gentle demeanour had me prepared to accept any problems in that direction. Having proved to at least three disgruntled young ladies that I was no Lothario. Quick to rise, but always leading to swift expulsion.
So, our married life quickly fell into a matter of timing. Laura admitted, “to appease your male needs.” If it happened fortnightly, I was lucky. A cool, swift union. I tried to reassure her when, on occasion, she admitted something was missing. Other women friends would talk, and she’d heard how it might be.
But I was to discover how a series of seemingly unconnected circumstances can combine to create a life-changing situation.
The first significant event occurred on the Tuesday as I left school on my way to the car park. Where car park met public footpath, I spotted a small black box lying near the fence.
Picking it up I found it was a VHS tape inside the usual cardboard casing, but all black, which was strange. Clearly someone had dropped it and could come looking for it. I stuck it in my briefcase, handy if anyone enquired about it.
The week went on, and, tape forgotten, I looked forward to what had become my traditional Friday night drinks session. A three-pint evening of chat and laughter with Pete and Frank, old friends from college days, both now also in education. Laura often joked about the dubious fun of talking education when I’d lived it all week.
All washed, shaved and dressed, I had some minutes before my taxi was due, so with notebooks and my briefcase on the table, I set about an early preparation for Monday. I became so involved that I was surprised when the taxi arrived.
Hastily I began grabbing at the various tests to shove into my briefcase. Shaking her head, Laura put down the newspaper, and with a sweet smile, she said, “Leave it. I’ll clear your mess.”
I went and gave her a gentle kiss on the cheek, before dashing off for my taxi, unwittingly setting up another contributing event.
We always met at the ‘Jolly Stag’ pub and invariably we would exchange the woes of the week. Pete, tall, disgustingly handsome, with wavy fair hair, but unmarried always had a tale of how some female parent or other was lusting after his body. On this night it was a mid-thirties blond mother who had put her hand on his knee.
“I think I could be in there,” he crowed, when we were into our second pint.
Frank, of medium build, with premature thinning hair, shook his head with an applied sense of pity, “You, my friend, are going to wank yourself to death.”
Pete just laughed and shook his head. Late in the evening, Frank disclosed that his wife Pam was expecting their first child. After much bawdy laughter and cheering, Frank insisted on buying a celebratory whisky, and to that we each added a congratulatory shot. By the time I climbed into my taxi I knew I had had a touch above my alcohol threshold.
So, there was yet another contributory factor. Plus, sitting drearily in the back of the cab I was troubled by the way that evening’s conversation had seemed to centre around sex. Jokes, exploits, in which I did more listening.
Paying off the taxi driver, I saw that the living room curtains of our bungalow were as usual, dimly lit. Laura always had herself a glass of white wine before dimming the lights and going to bed. So, I was always quiet when opening the front door.
But as I stood in the porch, having turned the latch on the connection to the main hall I heard the sounds.
Something jumped inside me, and my breath caught up in my throat. That sound, the grunting of a male followed by the gasping, squeals of a female. On this night, spirit inflamed, there was only one explanation on my mind. Sex. Passionate sex at that. No room for error. Unthinking, our bedroom was the obvious destination for my troubled mind.
An empty unrumpled bed. No Laura. Into the second bedroom, and again, nothing. As my befuddled senses kicked in, I realised that whatever was happening, had to be in the living room.
Holding my breath, I slowly, silently pushed open the door. The grunts, gasps and squeals were here. And were there two women?
The bottle of white wine on the table, was one Laura and I had drunk one glass each from the previous evening. Now, I guessed there was scarcely a glassful left in the bottle, and no glass was visible. The sounds of mutual pleasuring intensified as I stepped into the room.
That brought me close to the high back of the sofa, wondering about Laura, yet immediately I caught the shocking scene on the TV screen. There, a naked man was parting the thighs of a young blond woman, to reveal her pink, tender parts, as he leaned to slide his tongue along the wide-open slit.
Laura? Where was she? How was I hearing two female groans? One more step, as my eyes remained on the sexual activity on the screen.
Then from beyond the sofa a pair of bare knees jutted up from the floor, and flexed, wide apart accompanied by a low moan, the source of which I had no doubt. I felt my cock twitch as the man’s tongue tickled at the sprouted female clit, before slithering through her petals to her wide entry.
I staggered to one end of the sofa, to slump into a chair as I looked down on Laura’s near-naked form, lying flat on her back, her head turned so that the action on screen was her sole intent. That was the moment my eyes noticed the empty black box on the coffee table.
The significance of that only slowly became clear as my whole attention moved to looking into Laura’s pink folds, where her own fingers played with some desperation, blocking my view of an aspect of her anatomy which had, rarely, if ever, been in my line of vision. But as of that moment, it became the most thrilling experience in my life.
Drunkenly, I unzipped my pants, eased up to lower them, and took my quickly hardened shaft in my fist, while Laura had two fingers lost inside her delicate entry. Seeing the fluid on her upper thighs was a puzzle to me. I had never seen that on her, but then, I had rarely had the opportunity.
A glance at the screen showed, close-up, the supine blonde having her breasts fondled by hands appearing from off-shot. An image that had my hand jerking on my hardness more keenly, while, at the same time, Laura, emitting another low moan, was running her free hand over her own breast, with her thin robe almost off her, and an empty wine glass near her head. Had I ever seen her in such an abandoned state? I hadn’t.