Providence.
“Jesus, I can’t believe the shit I tell you sometimes,” Stef said.
“My ears are the round holes for your square thoughts,” Jav said.
“Dude, don’t make me like you.”
“Sorry.”
“And don’t make my dinner go cold this time. I’ll eat and you can tell me if you ever got hired for a threesome.”
“I got hired by married couples twice,” Jav said. “First time weirded me out because the husband didn’t do anything but sit in the corner and watch. Fully dressed, not touching himself, not directing. Just sitting there glaring. I hated it. Second time was more enjoyable, until the husband started touching me. Then I had an issues attack, freaked out and fled. Never worked with couples again.”
“Ever get hired by two women?” Stef asked around a mouthful.
“Yes.”
“What was that like?”
“Exhausting.”
Stef laughed in the middle of a swallow. It took five minutes to recover from the coughing fit.
“You okay?” Jav said.
“Yeah. Jesus, that was funny.”
“Tell me about the couple you and your wife swung with. Swung? Swang?”
“You’re the writer.”
“I’m off duty.”
“I don’t really like talking about that,” Stef said
“Why?”
“It seems cheap now. Embarrassing to look back on.”
“Forget it then, no worries.”
Stef regarded this opened door. It was all well and good sharing your funny stories, telling tales that presented you in a positive light. It was something else to recount one of your more despicable moments.
He could dislike talking about it and talk about it anyway.
He kind of wanted to.
“When it started, we made rules,” he said. “The four of us were so hip. We sat down and everyone discussed their boundaries and their triggers and their issues. Nothing was signed but we definitely made a contract.”
“What kind of boundaries?”
“Things like no outside dates, no pictures or video, no same-sex interaction. Everyone uses birth control, everyone gets screened for STDs. Blah blah.”
“No same-sex contact?”
“Yeah, I was odd man out on that front. Well, no, actually, let me rephrase. Court and Wendy were clear about no same-sex contact. Dan made a whatever-Wendy-wants gesture but didn’t put a clear preference on the table. And I didn’t realize the significance until much later.”
“So it was basically wife swapping?”
“Yes. Always together. No extracurricular dates, no private rendezvous. It shall be the four and always the four, at one place and at one time.”
Jav was quiet a moment. “I’m not sure why, but this sounds kind of boring.”
“It was.”
They laughed together.
“Okay, not boring,” Stef said, going to the fridge for another beer. “I mean, sex is sex, it’s never boring. But a lot of times it felt ever so slightly forced. Like we were trying too hard. Posing for an invisible cameraman. By group fuck number three, I was losing interest. I needed something to focus on. So I looked over at Dan. Locked eyes, kind of throwing down a dare, see what his game was.”
“And?”
“He stared right back. Man, it was hot. Intense and silent but powerful. Because I’m fucking his wife, you know? He’s all up in mine and we’re just staring each other down.”
“Then what happened?”
“He called me. Asked if I wanted to get a beer. We went out but by mutual agreement, we didn’t tell our wives.”
“First rule broken.”
“Yep, which makes it so exciting. One beer turns into a second beer. It got flirtatious super fast and super easy. He was tortured and confused. I can’t do this, I can’t, I can’t, but sending me eight emails a day.”
“Oh my God, this was before texting.”
“I know.”
“You had to write letters.”
“Such a quaint time in history. So, the next time the four of us are going at it, it is charged. Dan and I are clearly doing each other through the medium of our wives. At one point he reached out and put his hand on my face. I sucked on his finger and watched it make him come and it was fucking wild.”
“Did you feel guilty?”
“Well. Yeah. In a delicious kind of way. And say what you will about why Court and I split, but I could always talk to her about anything. I told her Dan was pushing limits and it was breaking the rules of the arrangement. Court said I should end it. Or at least cool it until Dan could talk to Wendy.” Stef rolled his eyes with a sigh. “Or not.”
“Did he?”
“He told me he did. To add sucky insult to injury, he lied to me. Said he and Wendy talked it over and he had permission to explore the dark side. In hindsight, I should’ve called bullshit. It was too easily resolved for a woman with her kind of control issues. But I was hot. You do dumb things when you’re hot. Long, hot story short, Wendy came home.”
“You were at his place?”
“Another thing that should’ve tipped me off.”
“Sounds like he wanted to get caught.”
“My thought exactly.”
“How long after did you and Courtney separate?”
“Less than a year. I came out of that swing experience swung. I felt really ashamed about the way I regarded marriage. I lost all perspective. I didn’t want to be married anymore, but I didn’t feel this overwhelming sense of, Next time I’ll do better. I couldn’t picture a next time. I was down on love, down on myself. For months, maybe years, I didn’t even know what I wanted or who I was.”
Until now, he thought.
He sat at his shrine that night, a low table in one corner of his bedroom. A string of prayer flags above him, a pantheon of small god and goddess figurines in a semi-circle. He lit his candle and drew Guan Yin, bodhisattva of compassion, into the center of the altar. Her Chinese name was Guanshiyin, meaning She Who Perceives the Sounds of the World.
“I am so close to something,” he whispered to her, his voice making the flame flicker. “And I want it.”
He reached for the brass bell in one corner of the table and rang it once. One single sound of the world holding all his desire.
I want this feeling I have with him.
When I’m around him I feel honest. I feel authentic. I feel myself and I see so clearly who I want to be and the life I want to lead. And the kind of person I want to have with me on the ride. A curator and sailor.
A person who makes me feel like this.