Black Tie Optional; Cleavage Required.

"How are the contacts?" I asked Amy as we drove to the birthday party last Saturday night. She doesn't wear them very often -- they're often more bother to her eyes than they're worth.

"Fine. Of course, I can't see very well at night...."

"Then, you're not driving tonight," I ordered. "Which means you get to drink all you want tonight. Go for it."

Though she was looking out her window, I could tell she was smiling when she commented, "You just want me to get loose."

"The thought hadn't even crossed my mind," I insisted in mock shock.

Many impure thoughts had been crossing my mind for much of that afternoon. We had gone dress shopping for this event. Specifically, it was a friend's fortieth birthday, and the invitation said, very prominently: "Black Tie Optional." While it's rare that we go to grown-ups-only parties at all at this point in our lives, it's unheard of that we find ourselves at a party this formal. So Amy and I had spent a few hours at an upscale department store. We had narrowed it down to two dresses, both of which showed off her cleavage beautifully. It had been so long since she'd worn something like this, I had to keep checking in and making sure she was really comfortable with appearing in public looking this ... well, sexy.

"Well," I said, talking to Amy but raising my eyebrows at the saleswoman who had been helping us all afternoon, "you can bet I have no problem with it." The sales associate laughed, only slightly embarrassed. I'm sure she'd heard worse.

She decided on a flashy teal-and-brown number, with some sharkskin-like shimmery material highlighting in places, and some colorful beading. Her final touch, added just before we left for the party, was a necklace I had given her a couple of Christmases ago: a silver chain, with a second silver strand attached, and a black pearl dangling from the end. It worked beautifully, though Amy pointed out that the necklace essentially pointed to "the obvious" below. I noted that it wasn't likely that people were going to miss that cleavage, necklace or not. She didn't dispute me. I'm sure she also knew that I was going to enjoy the view all night. She had even assigned me the responsibility of letting me know if the dress had shifted, showing the strapless bra during the night.

"We should have a code phrase," I suggested.

"Just tell me, if it's alright, that you just checked in and 'the girls are fine.'" Perfect!

I dropped Amy off at the party and went to park the car. The first person to greet her was the birthday boy's wife, who instantly said: "Wow, you've got great cleavage. I'm so envious. I could never pull that off." When Amy told me this upon my arrival, I mentioned: "You have to figure, if the women are commenting on it...." She just smiled, but with an underlying boldness. She was gonna be fine.

As it turned out, cleavage was in no short supply at the party. One woman had been so daring as to wear a very nice navy pant suit with the coat buttoned up to only partially hide a red push-up bra. It sounds more slutty than it actually was ... she pulled it off nicely. Another woman, most definitely falling under the category of BBW, was working her benefits to the best of her advantage as well. But -- and this is a completely unbiased opinion here -- no one had pulled off the "revelation of the bosom" with as much class and flair as my wife.

The party was a low-key affair, held in a space inspired by 1920s France, with wall-to-wall red velvet, period fixtures, and Folies Bergere posters galore. It felt opulent, decadent. Though we knew hardly anyone there, Amy's outgoing personality attracted a couple, Adam and Maria, to our table, and we spent most of the night getting to know each other. They were about four years our junior, and really quite the gorgeous couple.

An astrologer had been hired as part of the entertainment, and Amy and I signed up for readings, as did our new friends. Amy got her reading first while I looked on. She was accurate on all the insanely general things ("You're feeling some stress in your life right now") and pretty wrong every time she tried to narrow in on more specific information. But at least she had a lovely British accent.

She asked Amy if she had any specific questions, which caught us by surprise. ("I didn't know we had to study for this test," I commented.) That gave me time to figure out my questions, and when it was my turn, I was prepared. My question about the health of a family member flustered the astrologer a little bit. (She wisely disclaimed everything she said by saying, "Of course, I'm not a medical doctor.") But then I really did a number on her when I looked over at Amy and said, "What I really want to know about is how my sex life is going to be in the future." Everyone at the table laughed, the astrologer most nervously.

"I want to know that too!" exclaimed Amy.

This emboldened me. "Okay! That's what I want to know!"

The astrologer, with a silly grin, couldn't stop giggling. All she could do was shake her head. She wasn't gonna go there. What a wuss! I asked some vague question about my job, and of course I was assured that everything was going swimmingly but that "there would be some change" coming. (Ya think?) We wrapped things up.

Later, as songs from the celebrated gentleman's birth year played over the P.A., we compared notes with Adam and Maria about our silly astrology readings. Conversation moved on to culture, work life, parenting. It was hard for my mind (helped along by two glasses of wine, a Tom Collins, and probably too little food) not to wander away to thoughts of us with this couple. Maria had these girl-next-door good looks, a natural beauty that looked slightly uncomfortable in this more formal setting. (I surmised she would have been happy to get out of her dress, and I was betting that Adam and I would be only too happy to oblige.) Adam had those chiseled features that reminded me of someone, and at some point during the night, I figured it out, bent to Amy's ear and whispered: "Sting!" She nodded agreement without breaking her conversation. I wondered if Adam's thoughts had wandered at all, courtesy Amy's, um, necklace.

In the car on the way home, Amy was feeling hungry. "Cheese fries sound decadent and amazing," she suggested. "Don't they?"

I slowed down -- we were just about to pass the exit we would need to take to get the best cheese fries in town. "That's a possibility," I said. "Another option would be a big bowl of buttered pasta after I'm done having my way with you tonight."

Amy half-smirked; she knew that overture was coming sometime in the evening. "That sounds good too. I can't decide. It all sounds good. Fries, pasta ... Either is fine. Regardless of your having your way with me." My zooming past the exit made the decision for us: Pasta it would be.

We arrived home after midnight, and I ran the babysitter back to her place. By the time I returned, I passed through the kitchen and saw a pot of water already heating on the stove. Amy was on the couch, still wearing her dress. "I thought we shouldn't delay getting the water going." I turned the burner down to simmer and proceeded to the living room, kneeling next to her. "I left my dress on. I figured you wanted to remove it."

"How astute."

She stood up and I turned her hips so that she faced away from me. Zipper down. Straps off shoulders. Dress sliding past the waist. Legs stepping out. I pressed my cheek against the small of her back as I reached up and cupped her tits, still clad in her strapless. I felt this internal release. Almost as if it was a relief to be here again. A hunger about to be sated ... finally. How long had it been? Days? Weeks? Years?

And what the hell was that bra doing still on? Away it went.

Amy was feeling tired from the long day and asked to lie back down on the couch. We continued kissing as I rubbed her nylon-clad legs. Her neck was deliciously warm, and tucking my face in there, I felt like it was a favorite secret place. I noticed that as we kissed, Amy was doing something she doesn't normally do at this stage in the evening.

"You're really playing with your tits a lot tonight," I whispered. She was kneading them with both hands, rubbing them with flat palms. "What are you thinking about?"

"I'm thinking about these tits rubbing against you...." she moaned. "Your chest ... Your cock...."

"Show me."

She sat up. "Lie down."

Once I was on my back, my wife kissed quickly down my chest while undoing my belt. Soon the pants were history, and she rubbed her face against my cock and balls. Somewhere in there, as if by magic, my cock was deep in her mouth -- and then, just as suddenly, feeling the air again. And then quickly enveloped by her tits. It wasn't a tit-fuck so much as it was a breast attack ... rubbing all over, with intermittent cock-sucking to keep things lubricated. When she didn't have her mouth full of cock, it was full of words.

"I'm thinking about another man fucking me," she hissed, "while I suck this cock."

"God, yes," I encouraged. "I'd love to see him drilling you back there."

"He's filling me with his hard dick," she moaned.

I had to hand it to her, she was giving it her all. Maybe too much for her, in fact: She seemed almost restless, rushed. She stopped after only a short while, insisting: "I need to really get fucked." She stood up long enough to inside-out the pantyhose, and then she was straddling me. Without further "ado," she shoved my cock into her cunt. No lube, no other prep.

I'm losing count of how many times recently she has become the aggressor. And for the first time -- just for a moment -- I was a little bothered by it. In my version of how things would go tonight, I had imagined that I would be the one in control. Yet, here we were again, with her fucking me. Not that it was difficult to adjust my expectations! But just for a moment, I wondered if she was using the control as a way of keeping something else from happening, something she didn't want. For the life of me, I can't imagine what that would be.

Was this a case of getting what I had asked for? I had wanted her to be a little more aggressive in bed, to tell me what she wanted, to take it rather than always waiting for it to be handed to her. On the grand scheme of things, this is an extremely minor issue, not even rising to the level of "complaint." More an observation, something to be aware of.

Meanwhile, the fucking continued, hard and fast, but again, not for long: She popped off of my dick and moved up the couch until her pussy was pressing against my face. I caught her oh-so-subtle hint and went to town on her with my tongue and teeth. Her pussy was delightfully soft, tenderized by the frantic fucking. She ground hard against my mouth as I worked her pussy to an orgasm that temporarily tensed every muscle in her body. The tension was followed by a sigh, a balloon slowly, soundlessly releasing all of its air.

Aware that I hadn't gotten mine yet, Amy laid down in the opposite direction on the couch, sort of curling herself around my dick and beginning some serious oral with intent. I encouraged her: "That's right ... nice and sloppy. Let me hear you sucking my cock. Suck your husband's cock 'til he shoots his come all over." I tried playing with her pussy a bit as she blew me, but she nudged my hand away.

When I got close, I told her I wanted to come on her tits, and her approval came in the form of a moan that moved me quickly to the goal. Soon she was pushing my cock between her breasts as I squeezed out a few shudder-accompanied spurts. "Sorry the angle wasn't better for getting it all over my tits," she said.

"No need to apologize." I pressed her against me, feeling my cum on her chest, now on mine as well. "It's not like I was going to take the time to reposition us just for a money shot." At least not this time.

She snuggled up against me. "So how about that pasta?" she asked.

"I'm on it," I said. But I didn't move, and shortly we had both fallen into a light slumber.

Some time later, we roused, and Amy asked, "Do you still want the pasta?"

"Not really," I said. "I'm feeling pretty fulfilled at the moment." She still wanted something, so we settled on a grilled cheese sandwich, which I prepared in the nude. It's not the safest thing in the world, but if I'm not, say, cooking bacon, I love cooking in the nude. And it's not something I get to do too often anymore.

Amy was sore the next day -- not using lube turned out to be a slight mistake. But it did lead to her making a comment as we drove to work Monday morning: "I'm sorry we're not having sex more often ... But you have to admit that it's pretty amazing when we do."

Yes, I guess I do have to admit that. And hardly begrudgingly.

Cop a Feel, Show Me the Love.

Amy and I are pretty good at "the communication thing." We talk things out pretty well. But like all couples with a long history, we make our fair share of assumptions without clearly communicating, and we end up in relationship minefields on occasion.

We resort to a lot of "shorthand" typical of marriage ... which is just a different way of making assumptions, I suppose. There is verbal shorthand -- language or phrases familiar only to us. (We refer to our favored way of lying together in bed as "position one.") And there is an emotional shorthand that develops. (Amy calls to me from down the hall, and I can tell from a tone in her voice that she's upset, so I move quickly down the hallway.)

Here's a less obvious example: On Saturday night, I suggested a shower together. Amy paused before answering. A fly on the wall might have assumed she was considering my proposal, but in fact it was being dismissed. To be honest, I knew before I asked -- she had been cleaning up crap around the house all night, obsessing about our home's disorder. Her speech was coming in short, purposeful bursts ("What do you want to do with these magazines?" "I'm getting rid of these socks, they bug me"). She wasn't angry, but neither was her demeanor light. In other words, she probably couldn't have been feeling less like having sex without being in an emergency room waiting area. Still, I had to ask, just in case she was willing to try and shift gears.

When she waffled, I took the burden off of her. What I wanted to do required her full emotional participation. If I didn't have that, I was no longer interested myself. There will be other nights.

Last night, I decided quite spontaneously to break down one of the "shorthands" Amy has built around us. I had propositioned her with oral (of the non-reciprocating variety), and she was semi-interested until she discovered how late it had was. "Sorry to ruin your fun," she said, officially taking sex off the table as she buttoned her pajamas. Already naked in bed, I told her that was fine, that I understood.

After she turned off the lights and climbed into bed, we were having a conversation about something unrelated, and I took her hand and put it on my cock. She didn't move it for a moment or two and we kept talking.

At a break in the conversation, I said: "Play with me for awhile."

"Well ... okay." Her hand moved around a little. The tone in her voice wasn't lost on me.

"Are you reluctant," I asked, "because you think you're going to get me going? That you'll leave me all teased and turned on and frustrated?"

"Well ... yeah," Amy said.

"You know, sometimes I just like being touched. Teased. It doesn't have to mean I want all-out sex."

"Okay," she said, and her hand moved with a little more assurance.

"It's nice to know occasionally that you know it's there, even when it's not gonna get used."

She got it. We talked about something else while she manipulated. My cock was hard. I was happy where I was, just enjoying the feel. This wasn't going anywhere, and that was just fine.

After a few minutes, Amy turned away from me. One might have taken that as shorthand for her being upset with me, but this was not the case. She's just more comfortable sleeping on the side of her body that faces away from me. Every night she does this, and every night I spoon against her after the flip. On this occasion I also thrust my newly aroused shaft against her pajama-covered butt.

"Thank you," I kissed into her ear. "It's nice to have just that once in awhile." Amy sleepily acknowledged.

Not a day goes by that I don't find opportunities to touch Amy in an "adult" way. Usually it involves caressing or grabbing her ass. Sometimes, if the "coast is clear," I'll come up behind her and gently palm a breast. Sometimes the touch is accompanied by a comment, eliciting one of her self-conscious laughs. I'm stealing a chance to fondle my lover -- on the sly, without my wife finding out. The fact that my lover and my wife are one and the same seems immaterial.

Some people would find this touchy habit annoying. Apparently Amy doesn't. In fact, this morning, after dragging a hand across her butt for the third time in less than five minutes as I moved around the kitchen, I apologized: "I'm sorry," I said. "I'll stop touching you."

"You do not have to stop touching me!" she assured.

Well, good, then. I won't!

(Except perhaps I do have to be more careful when I cup her breasts with cold hands. No need to see if she can put a hole in our bedroom ceiling with her head.)

So I have this shorthand with her body as we move through our day together ... but she doesn't return the favor much. She doesn't cop feels. Why is that? Maybe it's just not her thing. She enjoys receiving gropes, but maybe she's not comfortable giving them. Or perhaps it just doesn't occur to her. I'm trying to let her know that it's okay to tease me.

I was thinking about this in the shower this morning. When I got out, I returned to the bedroom where Amy was still snoozing. I woke her with a kiss and then I rubbed her back, which melted her. I reached under the pajama top and caressed a breast. She seemed to be enjoying it, not hurrying to get up. Then she said: "I suddenly need to pee." When she arose, she saw me in my turgid state. "I'm sorry that I'm leaving you with that," she said as she reached down and gave it a couple tugs. She sounded genuinely disappointed.

Off to the bathroom she went ... and off to the bathroom I followed. When she sat down and when she looked up, she was staring directly at my cock. She let out a low chuckle and took the head in her mouth. She sat there for less than a minute, sleepily licking the shaft while my fingers rubbed her head. When she was done peeing, I asked her what she wanted for breakfast, walked out, pulled on my underwear, and started the rest of my day.

Just play. Just fun. A little tease, and another suggestion to her that it doesn't have to go somewhere every time, that we can fool around for a few moments and then return to business as usual. It's hard to find the playful side of our days with the internal and external stresses. And as we go through our days as spouses and parents, it's nice to remember that we are also lovers.

BlogMeBlogYou

Don't get me wrong: I think blogging is, on the whole, a good thing. But for me, something's missing, and I think it's the sense of conversation. A true give-and-take, a back-and-forth, an exchange of ideas.

(There are, of course, other inherent faults and weaknesses to blogging, but for now I'll leave that discussion to critics who wax eloquent on why they embrace/despise the blogosphere.)

The "comments" section of a blog entry attempts to create dialogue, but too often that section ends up being no more than (mostly) lauds or (rarely) condemnations of the entry and its author. Which is fine -- God knows I love praise and criticism, as most of us do.

Some bloggers are really delving, exploring, questioning, pushing your envelopes. And sometimes that strikes a chord with readers, including myself. I'm finding I want to do more than just comment on someone's blog ... I want to "riff off" of that entry on my own blog. I know there are bloggers doing this, but it seems rare. I want to see more of it.

This may become a regular feature of The Concupiscent Husband ... I don't know yet. But at least this week, a couple of items moved me.


Married Exploits: The "Artemis" two-parter (Part 1 | Part 2)

Funnily enough, my first entry of this sort cites a blog entry that does exactly what I'm wishing there was more of! The Married Exploits blog is already a conversation of sorts between a husband and wife, "Odysseus" and "Penelope." And specifically in these two entries, Odysseus was reacting, at least in part, to an entry on the blog The Dark Side of Me. In that entry, Lena briefly bemoans the fact that men must repress one of their most beautiful (in her opinion) qualities: That they think about sex almost constantly. Odysseus "responds" in his own blog:

That's a big reason why I wanted to start this blog. Because there are lots of things that I think about that I feel compelled to repress.... It's kind of backwards to what you might usually think about society and sex. But it's true: men have a lot more thoughts than they are 'allowed' to admit.

Penelope later follows up:

I guess I've always seen it as society and media always bombarding us with sexual images and portraying impossible ideals for women and that in turns creates more lust and sexual thoughts in men. Could it really be the other way around and men are trying to conform to the expectation that they should view women less sexually and it is going against natural urges or instincts? Maybe it is both influences and expectations clashing in male minds.

I think Penelope's on the money here. It's almost as if society itself is operating under its own Madonna-whore complex: Our media and fashion cultures (which, it should be noted, is probably still pretty male-dominated) foists sex upon us at every turn -- because "sex sells" -- and then gets all uppity and pissy when a man is checking out his female co-worker's tits when she's wearing the á la mode low-cut number. There is a built-in expectation of repression.

(And while we're at it: To a lesser extent, doesn't this "syndrome" work its negativity in the other direction? If repressive community mores indicate that a woman is not to be viewed as a sex object, what does this do to the psyche of the woman who sometimes wants to be viewed that way? Is she automatically branded a slut?)

Reading these entries, I realized that Odysseus' motivation to blog is a big part of why I started my blog too. Many of you are led to believe from my entries (so far) that Amy's and my communication is pretty open; perhaps it is, relative to the average relationship. But I feel like I repress a lot of my sexual thoughts.

There are a number of reasons for this, and chief among them is that I don't want to annoy Amy with the already obvious fact that her husband has that stereotypical one-track mind. I worry that an increased discussion of sex in our everyday life would indicate a subtext of wanting more sex from her, heaping more stress on the sizable compost heap she already wields on her shoulders. And while it's true that I do want more sex, just because I'm talking about it doesn't mean I want to jump her bones right then. It's not like I don't feel I can tell her these things; I'm just (over?)sensitive to, you know, when enough's enough already.

I like Odysseus and Penelope's entries because the couple are talking around the fringes of the idea of inviting someone else into their bed. Will it ever really happen? Perhaps. But the outcome doesn't matter much, because the very fact that they're having these discussions is giving a positive sexual charge to their relationship.

+ + +

La fille Mariée: "Beautiful Cock"

Two things occur to me when I read this post.

First, how powerful the word "cock" can be. Almost as powerful, I think sometimes, as "fuck," a word that has been discussed to death by pundit-style eroticists for years. What makes this such a fun read is that you just begin to lose yourself in the poetry of LFM's writing, the sensuous experience she is sharing ... and then you run smack-dab into that word.

Look at "cock." No, not mine, you goof; look at the word. Hard on the outside, and just a little softer in the middle. It's onomatopoeic. It's less exclamation (like "fuck") than punctuation. There's no sweet-talking the word. You can't start to say it and then veer off in another direction, like you can with "fff ... udge." Cock is cock. Right there, in your face, demading to be dealt with.

So to juxtapose "cock" with LFM's prose -- even to juxtapose it with the word "beautiful" -- is a joyous thing. It makes my blood surge, no matter how many times I play the words back over in my head.

The second thing I wanted to say was this: These are the words of (and for) a new lover, on the level of some of the beauty of Song of Solomon. I remember my wife feeling this sort of passion for my body. Maybe she still does, but I'm betting it's not that often. I still feel an incredible depth of passion for hers, but I remember finding more ways to tell her -- ways similar to Mariée's deft post.

This is a new love, I believe, because there are so few loves of many years that can still express this "passion of discovery." That may sound like a forlorn observation, but I think of it more as a melancholy observation -- not melancholy as sadness, but rather as "pensive reflection or contemplation." The early weeks of a new love are frighteningly potent and stimulating. There's no way to maintain that level of energy over years -- embers are bound to cool and will need stoking. Yes, it would be nice if the mercury could be permanently suspended at that higher temperature, but if that were the case we wouldn't appreciate it nearly as much. That's why this kind of "youthful exuberance" should be, I believe, reserved for relationships in their youth.