Читать книгу An Indecent Obsession - Mudrooroo - Страница 5

Being an academic had its perks, one of which, unfortunately, included my mistress, if I may use that term, then later wife, Darlene. She was an M.A. student of mine and had returned to the university from a short stint as a journalist in London to do her degree in Communication Studies. She was thus older than most and caught my eye and even my hands when we were having one of those private interviews which she increasingly sought and to which I foolishly responded to until I was smitten or at least looked forward to her visits. She was quite attractive in a thin way, tall and angular unlike my wife, Elaine. Perhaps I wanted some variety, perhaps it was that change of life men are supposed to go through, anyway Darlene underneath the usual student garb of baggy shorts and tee-shirt or jeans and a top of some description had a nice body, though her hips were on the largish side and her breasts, well, I had to wait until I could judge them, but not for long. Her tops became skimpier and there was one that she began to favour. It was a low cut thing, perhaps a bustier, no, it wasn’t for later I found that it covered her body and had studs to do up or undo between her legs. What was its name? I should know. I hate it when I forget a word. I’ve been an academic, almost a professor, and if it had not been for her I would have achieved that ultimate goal. What was it? I’ll remember. My memory, in spite of their pills and injections, is still a capable instrument. It only needs jogging.

Well, she wore this bodice, I’ll find the word later, and used to heave her breasts, which I found smallish, but well-shaped, at me when she took a deep breath, or when frustrated about her work essayed a tantrum and flung her papers across the room. Thank God, that wasn’t often. I hated and still do violent women, though she did have a temper on her, but it usually operated in different and more subtle ways, like, like depriving me of sex and then there were her cutting remarks. It was a miracle that I did not attempt to kill her before I fell. I gladly would do it now, and will when I am free. .

Well, there she was pumped up in front of me often and even leaning across my desk so that I noticed those breasts, although hardly her hips or her legs, which were thin, but well-shaped. I saw these later when our affair deepened. Perhaps she sat at my desk most of the time and thus they were hidden. Well, no matter. What I do remember is her first blow job. It was late afternoon when many students and staff had gone home. I had a paper to prepare and there was a knock on the door and she came in, wearing that, that, what is the name of that garment? Christ! Are, yes, a camisole, how could I have forgotten it. Well, she was wearing that camisole which had a leopard skin with a wire frame about the top that pressed into the top of her breasts. I got up and went around the desk for some reason. My room was small and I bumped into her and my arms automatically went around her. That was all. I didn’t kiss or fondle her. She really wasn’t into those sorts of intimacies, but she felt my penis harden, and that was enough for her. She unzipped me. I forgot to add that I had never liked underpants. I had read somewhere that they constricted the privates and rendered one sterile as well as impotent. The testicles had to hang as freely as possible. In fact, the article had declared that skirts should be worn by men as this would give them that free hang. Well, there was my penis sticking out of my pants and without hesitation, she knelt and took it into her mouth. I stood there, letting her work at me. It was pleasurable, but in an abstract sort of way. Only later, did I begin to enjoy it until it became a sort of addiction. But that first time she had all the action. I was surprised more than anything else, staring down at the thick mop of her reddish hair, dyed of course, bobbing at my groin. I felt myself begin to cum and so did she. She withdrew her mouth and I spurted into her hand, thankfully and not onto the floor, but she had been a fraction too late and a slight drop of sperm hung from her lower lip. She made a face at her hand then rushed off to the bathroom down the corridor, with that little drop of cum still on her lip. When I had noticed it, I also saw that her mouth was quite small and her lips thin, unlike those of my wife, Elaine, whose mouth was beautiful and so luscious that she seemed constantly pouting.

And I remember my last blow job with her, my Elaine. She was not really into oral sex, though she knew that I enjoyed it, especially when I forced my prick deeper and deepest when I spurted far down her throat. She let me do this, and made no complaint, for as I said she loved me. This last one occurred on our final night together. We still were sharing the marital bed though by then racked by a coldness we both suffered. She lay there angrily and suddenly her hand jerked out and squeezed down on my penis. Then she ducked down and gulped me down. She flung herself into the act in frenzy as if it would save our marriage. It wouldn’t or did it didn’t matter, for by that time I was getting my regular mouth jobs from Darlene. Once as she knelt before me, she said that it was like going to confession. I smiled at this, like a kindly, but perverted priest. It was one of the few jokes she made and she wasn’t one to talk about sex either. She just visited my office almost daily, served me with her mouth and then left to clean up at the bathroom. This state of affairs might have continued forever, except that I decided to have a social evening at my house in Chapel Hill which was a newish suburb where academics lived. There was a direct bus to the university and I did not have to take in my car, a dark SAAB 9-3 AERO, I liked a bit of style.

The party was a disaster. Darlene White, my girlfriend, lover or paramour, put on a show for my wife. They ended up sitting together at the kitchen table. I sat across from them. There was my paramour with her mat of thick red curls, her narrow chin and thin lipped mouth, her long body slumped in her seat and beside her sat upright my wife, Elaine, petite and dark and self contained. Except for her lips there was nothing excessive about her. She was compact. Now, Darlene began harping on about her working class background as if it mattered from what class she had originated. Australia, in class, was extremely fluid and well there was the example of Alan Bond, poor yesterday, rich today and in prison on the morrow. Being working class had instilled in Darlene not only an inferiority complex, but the urge to put down others as being middle-class, though she herself aspired to that supposed status. Such notions she had were strengthened by some absurd Marxism from a lecturer other than me. I would never teach out of date 19th century rubbish about class warfare and the eventual victory of the proletariat. Now, she sprouted this garbage into the face of my spouse, every now and again glancing across at me to see my reaction. I carefully kept a blank face.

Elaine, playing the role of sophisticated Academic wife to the hilt, replied that she too was working class. This elicited a hoot from my girlfriend. Elaine, in that patient way that raising two children had given her and knowing that students were often ill-mannered, smiled. She saw her as a girl, not knowing that she was a thirty year old woman. Perhaps, this was because Darlene dressed young. For the occasion she wore wide red pants and a white silk blouse and bottomed it off with dirty white sneakers. My wife was forty to my forty three and merely smiled at this odd creature, though as the tirade continued, her mouth tightened as much as it was able. She did have a luscious mouth, like strawberries. In looking at it, I thought that she could never match the thinness of Darlene’s lips even when she wanted to show her displeasure, though lips were not everything as I had found out. Darlene had some sort of mouth distortion or defect that gave her a high arched roof into which my penis felt naturally at home.

‘You’re not working class,’ Darlene sneered.

The best thing for my wife to have done was admit she was not and leave it at that, but she didn’t and fell into her trap.

In fact, although she and her family were no longer of that class, they had long ago risen from it by dint of hard labor. They had been a Welsh coalmining family and had migrated to Australia to better their lives. When she tried to explain this, Darlene shrugged and glanced towards me in disdain as if I agreed with her.

Elaine noticed her expression and also looked at me. She stared at the girl, then at me again. She couldn’t believe that there could be anything between us, and so she shrugged, and sought to change the subject, but Darlene kept niggling at her until she was happy to see her to the door.

‘What was that all about,’ she asked, after the social evening was over.

‘Oh, you know students,’ I replied, shrugging.

And that merely signaled the beginning of Darlene’s campaign to replace my wife whom I thought I loved dearly. She after all was the mother of my boy and girl, Jake and Amelia, both of whom were still in primary school; but, no, all thought of family was replaced by those trysts in my office. The blow jobs continued even more regularly so that I avoided going to my wife except for a bit of the other, which I missed. Elaine enjoyed her sex and was a vagina woman rather than a mouth one. She began to complain as I became colder and less able to fulfill her needs. It was then that Darlene decided that she wanted me for a whole night. I hemmed and hawed, for I was quite prepared for the office, but not to continue the liaison outside it. She after all she was a student and thus forbidden to me as a lover. Our relationship had to remain unobtrusive, but how secret it was I could not know, for some of the staff had begun treating me differently as if I was out of line. Well, I was, wasn’t I, but they had no need to be so judgmental. It can happen to any man.

When you entered our university campus a large sign proclaimed, Sexual Harassment will not be tolerated. This meant that liaisons between faculty and students were forbidden as being from a position of dominant to subordinate. If such a liaison came to the attention of the university or a student complained, it was investigated and the faculty member would have a notation made on his personnel file to this effect. Not only this, but the Dean would take the so-called guilty party, always the faculty member, into his office and lecture him about it. Everyone knew this and the Women’s Collective went out of their way to advise students to be very careful in their relationships with their teachers and tutors. Doors of offices were to be left open and the student was never supposed to allow herself, male students were usually left out of this equation, though there were several active homosexuals among our colleagues, to be in the position of being alone with a faculty member.

Darlene took advantage of this official position on teacher-student affairs. Even with her mouth smelling of my cum, she labored the point excessively. If I had been wise, I would have ended the relationship then and there, but I was in too deeply and that is not a joke. In this stage of our affair, instead of rushing off to the bathroom to relieve herself of my sperm, she had brought along a box of large tissues which she left on my desk and even carried a bottle of mineral water for a quick rinse out after-wards. A rinse out of what, for although I entered her mouth, I did not stay the whole course there, and withdrew, or rather her head withdrew at the crucial moment, though there was that time when I gripped her thick curls of red hair and pressed her face tightly against my groin and finished off directly into her mouth. She made such a fuss about it that I desisted, for a while until there came another day when I was feeling hassled by a student who had submitted a late assignment. I confessed that I did like it a bit rough.

She was playing the confessee’s role down on her knees, though she had long given up the joke. Now, we were serious and she had me where she wanted me and that did not mean only in her mouth. She hesitated before doing so to say, ‘I’m not satisfied with just this. It’s not enough. I want you to myself and all night. Elaine has you each and every night, why can’t I have just one?’

She sucked a bit while I bent down and got through to her breasts squeezing them and fumbling at her nipples. I was gasping when she took her mouth away and said: ‘What about it? When can we go away, just the two of us?’

As you may imagine my mind was on other things and I merely grunted, then her mouth came away completely and she began whining about her being deprived of me by that middle-class bitch of a wife. To stop her and continue my pleasure, I grabbed her head and forced her back on me. I pounded into her mouth, hitting the back of her throat and she was almost choking when I came. She gagged then went quiet though still remaining in that kneeling position, that supposedly subordinate position. ‘Does she want absolution,’ I thought to myself. She looked up at me with her mouth dribbling, though I had ejaculated so far down that she would have had to swallow it, then at my wilting cock with those slightly cockeyed eyes of hers. She had said that she had had to wear glasses as a child to correct some defect or other. Now she gazed up at me with that lopsided look and said: ‘You know you hurt me!’

‘I’m sorry,’ I answered, though I had enjoyed it more than I usually did, just as now I was enjoying seeing her get to her feet and gargle out with mineral water, then go to the window and spit it out. With this done, she turned to me, while I was zipping up and beginning to think about that infernal student who had complained about my not accepting his explanation for his late assignment and failing him. I supposed I should pass him then she broke my train of thought with, ‘I used to go with this boy, Ben. He started mistreating me. I went and reported him to the Sexual Harassment Office and he was almost expelled. Now, he won’t even stay in the same room with me.’ She smiled at this, and I scowled. This was what I had begun fearing. My career was on the line and even then I knew that she wasn’t the type to remain true and loyal. After all, I had taught her in my class and had to listen to her feminist views, which, it seemed, did not go as far as not to poach on another woman’ man. Whatever, I was well and truly trapped. I put a brave face on things and instantly made up my mind.

‘What about a weekend in Surfers Paradise’, I said. She was working class and although I loathed the place, she would love it.

She quickly agreed and it was to be that weekend. I hummed and hawed a little about how I was in the midst of marking assignments, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer or postpone the trip either. I had to agree, even though it would be hard to explain my absence to Elaine who was already suspicious.

After some thought, I sought to allay my wife’s suspicions, by inventing a professor at Bond University who wanted me to look over a difficult thesis. She looked glum at this. I had planned to take her and the kids to Lone Pine to see the animals, but I stressed the urgency of the call and then put up with her coldness for the rest of the evening and succeeding days to Friday when the grand event was to take place, but there was a faculty meeting and Darlene had to wait until Saturday. I told her that I would pick her up, bright and early.

Next day, she was sitting in my car and quite content with herself. We stopped at Strawberry Farm for some of their overpriced ice-cream and continued on down the Pacific Highway to the turnoff at Reedy Creek Road and went along it to Burleigh Heads which had a nice beach.

We got into our bathers and it was our first time together almost naked. I worked out at the university gym twice a week and kept in good shape. My belly was almost flat and my pectoral muscles firm. She at thirty was still firm. At least what I could see of her. She wore a one piece blue bathing suit which covered her midriff and front up to her neck. I liked a woman in a bikini myself. It left less to the imagination. But her costume was cut to show her legs to me. They were two of her best features, long and shapely.

Of course, while I was eyeing her, she was doing the same to me. ‘Look, we have the same sort of legs,’ she observed, then spoilt it by saying that now she knew that men could have cellulose too.

In reply, I ran into the water. I led a sedentary lifestyle, desk bound and could I help it if I had gotten a little overweight? Darlene dashed past me splashing me with water and dived into a wave. I followed and came next to her. Her hair was plastered to her head and I noticed how sharp her chin was, how large her eyes and how small her mouth. ‘A rosebud,’ I thought romantically as I kissed her. She had been chewing some sort of gum and there was a fresh taste to her saliva. For a brief moment, I wondered what my mouth tasted of, breakfast probably then dismissed it as we pranced about in the surf. Every now and again, I held her lithe wet body and planted a kiss on her mouth. She received my tongue passively.

When we had finished playing in the surf, we got dressed and it was time for lunch. She combed her hair back and again I noticed the severity of her face. Not a trace of the plumpish erotic attractiveness of my wife. Her nose was too big for her face, but at least for now, her vivacity and sense of well being made up for her lack of beauty. At times, especially in photographs she could even appear beautiful, that thick mob of hair removing the imperfections and creating symmetry of features.

There was a beachside seafood restaurant along the beach and we stopped there for lunch. I had grilled red fin and surprisingly Darlene ordered a steak, smilingly telling me that it most likely was from Rockhampton, where her family originally hailed from. It was then that I learnt that her father had worked in the abattoirs. Still there was something odd about ordering a steak, no matter what nostalgia it invoked, in a seafood restaurant, and I continued to look askance at her. She went on to inform me that at Tweed Heads on the New South Wales’ border there was a takeaway fish shop which had the very best fish on the coast and she would wait until then. In that she was right, for my fish proved dry with brown lines indicating its age. It came with the traditional chips, which remembering her comment about my cellulose I pushed aside. She had no qualms and helped herself to them, though she had ignored most of her meat. A typical student, I thought.

It was after as we sat over coffee, though she had tea that I learnt more about her. Our affair had commenced and continued without me being much aware or interested in her past life. Now, I learnt that she knew quite a bit about Surfers’ and at the age of sixteen, that was when her class of people went to work, had gotten a job at the Gold Coast Bulletin. I nodded to this. I had seen that publication. It was difficult to call it a newspaper as it was filled with advertising.

We got back into my Saab which really impressed her. It was an expensive car, but I did like the best. Something that made me stick out a bit from the hoi polloi, though there was one sitting in my car. She fiddled around with the sound system and got Triple J and what I called student pop. This type of music was far beneath me, but she enjoyed it and after a time I barely heard the noise just as I barely saw the many motels that edged the Gold Coast Highway. I should have for I had forgotten to book us into one.

We reached Tweed Heads with the tall tower of the Twin City Hotel. ‘Care for a drink,’ I asked her, and not waiting for an answer pulled into the parking lot. We went inside and into a balcony restaurant bar where I ordered a Bloody Mary and she wanted, well, a diet coke. The drink of choice for female students and I asked her facetiously, ‘If she wanted it straight or with ice?’ She didn’t reply, but gazed at me from those huge slightly cockeyed blue eyes of hers. The pulled-back hair emphasized the size and the lighting must have emphasized their depth. Overcome, I reached out and took her hand. She gave it a squeeze and then extricated her fingers when the waiter arrived to take our order.

To get to that balcony cafe bar, we had had to pass through a huge cavernous smoky space filled with winking and beeping poker machines. These were the Twin Towers’ main attraction. There must have been over five hundred of the buggers and after we had relaxed awhile I had gazed through the glass door at the shiny comeons, and decided to try my luck. Darlene with her background most likely would get so rapt in them, that I would have to pull her away. ‘You wanna play d’slots,’ I asked, faking a Humphrey Bogart accent. I expected it to elicit a smile, but it didn’t. I supposed that she hadn’t even heard of him and would have liked me to impersonate Brad Pitt, whom I had seen in Kalifornia, quite an interesting movie and one which I would like to see again.

‘No, but you go ahead. I’ll watch and take a turn every now and then,’ she replied with a marked lack of interest.

I settled down on a stool with my cup of 20c pieces and fed them into a machine. I had no luck and tried another, then had to get another twenty dollars worth of coins. Darlene watched on, and when I offered her a coin and told her to put it in for luck, she did so slowly, and didn’t even pay attention as the fruit and numbers flickered, stopped, then beeped on five. I lost these and switched to the next machine and fed the rest of my coins in. I wasn’t hitting anything big, but I was getting 2s and 5s, and so I decided to stay with this machine and told her to mind it, while I went to the cashier for another twenty dollars worth of coins. The small amounts kept on popping up, but the biggies eluded me. I continued shoving the coins in. It was like being hypnotized by the winking lights, the cheeping noises as the machine returned my twenty cents, and then took it in again without a murmur. Others, many who looked like pensioners were all around me. A few won and many lost. I was one of the losers. Well, lucky in love unlucky in gambling, but I kept on.

‘Let me have a go,’ Darlene finally said, not hiding a yawn. I let her press the button and the machine chirped and 25 came up. She hit the button again and 200 flashed up. I pressed and lost. She hit it again and our score was five hundred.

‘Let’s cash it in,’ she said. ‘It’s getting late. Where did you book us in?’

‘O.K,’ I replied, though I was enjoying myself. I pressed the buzzer and a man came and paid me off. It was then that I told her that I had forgotten to get a room, but doubtless we would find somewhere along the highway. She made a face at this, but said nothing.

The sun was sinking when we got out of the hotel. Time passed inside that place at a quicker rate than outside. Now, as we were both hungry, we drove to her fish shop and ordered a feed of fish and chips. There was a park opposite and we dodged traffic and went there, sat at a picnic table and devoured our food. Both the fish and the chips were as she had said, ‘excellent’. By the time, I had rolled up the paper and tossed it at the bin, getting it in first shot, the daylight was gone. Now, off to find our love nest for the night. I was feeling in good spirits after our tucker and having got my money back from the pokies. As we walked to our car, she took my arm casually as if we had been together for years. I responded by slipping an arm about her and she reciprocated. We moved as a couple then separated to get into the vehicle.

We united in the car in a kiss. Her lips were dry and tight, slightly salty and fishy from our meal. I enjoyed them, but when I separated, started the engine and pulled out onto the highway and drove along, I couldn’t help making the comparison with Elaine. Her full lips were always moist and kissing her was a little like entering her vagina. There was lushness there and she returned kiss for kiss, sucking my tongue deep within her mouth. Darlene on the other hand, seemed an amateur at the kissing game. Of course, I inserted my tongue into her mouth, but she never sucked up my tongue or did she push in her own, which I had noticed was long and pointed. This time when I had done it, my tongue had felt uncomfortable there as if it was an intruder. Instead of repelling me, this urged me on to elicit a response. One that wasn’t forthcoming and this was the usual routine as I soon found out. What I received in return was a timid brushing that felt like the kiss of a girl rather than a mature woman. Still, there was a sense of violation about kissing her and often that weak little return kiss was more of a turn on than my wife’s full mouthed response.

It was one of those times on the Gold Coast when it appeared that everyone had had the same idea of heading there for the weekend. This was excluding the scores of tour groups and individual travelers. They filled the motels and hotels. I was going for the middle price range and went right down to Surfers to where the loathsome Pink Poodle sat in tacky Gold Coast glitz. I would try that as a last resort, though it was popular, but it too had a no accommodation sign flashing. I reversed and drove back. At last I saw a red vacancy sign. I swung into the lot and stopped in front of the office.

The motel was called The Red Dragon and had a neon sign of this mythical beast in red and green. It was not what you would call your middle price range motel, but I was tired and it should do. The overweight Italian looking man behind the counter nodded when I asked if they had a room, but then added, ‘Only the bridal suite, mate.’ I thought that this was an example of one of those dead pan Queensland jokes, but he was serious and I replied that I would take a look at it. I went to the door and called to Darlene to come and check the room out. She got out of the car with a scowl, but what was she expecting, The Mirage? I wasn’t made of money and I had to keep up the payments on my SAAB.

We ascended bare concrete stairs and went along a veranda with iron pipe railings. The owner manager stopped outside a plywood door, inserted a key and pushed it open with a flourish. It might have been his pride of room, but it was worse than I ever thought a passion pit could be. Bridal suite did imply some sort of luxury to go with the sensuality which that night usually brought out. I should know for I have been married twice, once with passion and once without. This room was such as a prostitute, and a cheap one at that, who would bring her equally bottom level customers who when their wives walked out on them employed her to relive marital fantasies of the most plebeian kind. To differentiate this room from others, there was red velvet about the tops of the windows and a red velvet cover on the double bed. That was all there. I hadn’t expected a free bottle of champagne, but something a little above this. I looked at the man and he said ‘This is fifty dollars, ten dollars more than our other rooms.’ I nodded at this and looked at Darlene, expecting her to protest.

But this time as at other times, she surprised me. ‘Let’s take it,’ she said. ‘It’s late and it is the bridal suite.’

And so we booked into that motel and brought up our overnight bags. Darlene went into the bathroom to freshen up and I waited for her. When she came out fully dressed, I had a shower and put on my clothes again. One never knew what to do on first nighters, though then I had had only two and neither in such a room. At least the double bed looked comfortable and sturdy enough for athletic displays of love making.

I shoved any misgivings away, deciding that tackiness was awfully quaint and something which was new in my life. I came out of the bathroom smiling and said: ‘So you’re the blushing bride and this is our honeymoon.’

‘I would pick a better place than this,’ she answered tartly, as if it was my fault.

‘But we are together,’ I murmured.

‘Yes, and look at those curtains. That velvet,’ and suddenly she giggled and it was all right. ‘We’re in the bridal suite and this is our first night together,’ she said in a soft voice, which I later found out was the one she adopted for romance or wheedling something out of me, and then she was in my arms. She even went so far as to kiss me first and poke her tongue into my mouth. It lay there like a piece of liver. There was inertia about that piece of meat in my mouth which I found disconcerting. There should have been some activity. Elaine would have been moving that tongue around and touching my back teeth and then sucking my own tongue back into her mouth. Darlene didn’t do any of this and so I thrust my tongue out and into her mouth, but it too seemed to have lost its versatility. I withdraw it back into its rightful place.

The student didn’t find any of this disconcerting or amateurish, but merely, this is in hindsight, she was performing what she thought was done during foreplay and as for deep kissing, well, that was all there was to it. I, the man took the initiative and she went along with it. At least she was in my arms and murmuring again, as if it meant something and obviously it did to her, ‘The bridal suite.’ I leaned back in her arms and laughed. ‘What’s wrong,’ she demanded angrily. ‘Well, there’s bridal suites and there’s this,’ I replied, facetiously. ‘Well, when we get married, this won’t be it,’ she snapped.

Her remark made me nervous about the whole thing and to get my mind away from what she had just said, I remembered that I loved my wife and this female was merely an illicit fling, though weirdly I was becoming quite entranced by her in a perverted way. It was that I always expected the stars to fall when I engaged in sex with her, and though they never did, the promise remained. There was always the next time or the one after that and so I hung in waiting for the earth to move. It never did and eventually only hatred and contempt came to me from her. But that was a few years in the future and now on this first time, I was as eager to have her as she seemed to want me.

I started to undo her pants, but she stepped away and took them off herself. It was then that I noticed that her leopard skin top was a camisole and went down between her legs. I hadn’t seen one of these before except in ads and thought that only prostitutes wore them, along with high stockings and garter straps. But no, there was Darlene in one of these garments and striking a pose as if it was sexy. Well, I suppose it was in a way with her long body, except for the middle, bare and long white legs with slightly mottled pink thighs from the shower. I stepped forward and felt beneath her legs and popped the studs, one, two and my fingers sank into her cunt. It was firm and wet. She obviously was aroused, but again, the comparison came. Elaine’s vagina was a lush garden compared to this slightly thin, slightly retarded pudendum.

We kissed again and I had her on the bed, on her back and I was between her legs, ready to engage in oral foreplay. The lips of her cunt were indeed thin and slightly misshapen with a swirl of pink at the centre. I knelt between her legs and put my tongue into her, found her small clitoris and tongued it. She moaned, but did not move. I pushed her legs further apart and stuck my tongue as far as it could go into her, but she wriggled and got me back to her clitoris. While I tongued it my mind again returned to Elaine and how by now she would be moaning and threshing about and grabbing my head and forcing my face right against her, but not Darlene. Instead of moving to another position, say a sixty nine, for simplicities sake, she pulled me up and my penis into her. We moved together and she kept the pace, increasing it so that I came too early. I was used to varying the rhythm for longevity. I had read the Taoist books on sexual activity and so had Elaine. In fact we each had our own, one for females and one for males. When we loved, we helped each other to maintain how long we wished to endure. When we became lovers and then new weds, we even had had contests, about how long we could fuck. Often we took hours, but this took minutes and left me feeling quite unsatisfied. I waited for something more, but she turned her back on me and went to sleep. I stared into the night, hearing the traffic roaring along the highway and wondered what I had gotten myself into. I longed for the comforting body of my wife beside me. She used to snuggle up and talk a bit then kiss before wandering off into sleep; but Darlene was different. She was promise unfulfilled.

When she awoke, I tried again, but she said that she didn’t like sex in the morning. Even her use of the term sex was somewhat downgrading our supposed relationship. Sex is when you fuck without love lovemaking is when you fuck with love. With Darlene I never knew if it was love or not. She hardly ever said she loved me in our two years together, but elicited the word from me countless times. I had to repeat it to her satisfaction, though strangely not in bed. She was not one for words there and not one to prolong the act into the early hours of the morning, or to smell of lovemaking all through the day in a challenge to those who were not lovers. No, she showered and preened herself as she did this morning and then put on a long dress which looked like and was from Indonesia. It was the sort of thing that students wore. She must have seen my look of disapproval for she pulled it off to replace it with jeans and blouse. The cami was packed away to be washed, for she believed in cleanliness.

Ten o’clock on the dot, we checked out and drove along the highway towards Surfers’ itself. There was all Sunday day and night to get through before we headed back to Brisbane. We sat in the car with a distance between us. This was possibly because of our seat belts, but I felt no sense of intimacy. There should have been. After all, we were supposed to be lovers, but she did exude a feeling of possession, as if I had been a trophy to be collected. Well, she had and then along the highway I saw a sign advertising The Golden Globe Lodge with rooms with spas. On an impulse I pulled in front of it and got out to enquire about a room with a spa. The rooms at the time were being serviced, but one would be available after twelve. I registered and went back to the car where Darlene sat much like a wife.

‘Well, we’re in luck. I’m getting a room with a spa. It’ll be something after that place last night.’

‘The bridal suite’ and she laughed a kind of romantic giggle that caused her to clutch my hand and even plant a kiss on my lips.

‘Now for some breakfast, I’m ravenous,’ I replied. It was then that I found that Darlene was a finicky and poor eater. Food was not something to be indulged in and enjoyed. With Elaine after a night of lovemaking we would eat a hearty breakfast or lunch with jokes about how we could sweat it off that night.

In Surfer’s, I found a place and she had coffee and I, not wanting to gorge myself in front of her, contented myself with a tomato and cheese sandwich. After eating, while paying on the way out, I remembered our kiss and how while her mouth had tasted of peppermint, I had wondered what mine had tasted of, and so I bought some chewing gum, popped a stick into my mouth and offered her one. She took it and demurely began masticating, her thin lips moving like, like, well, just moving. Similes didn’t come naturally to make her larger than life. Thin and elongated, she was, with that hair of hers, like a mop.

Now, I decided to have a drink, though it was early. The Birdwatchers’ Bar was a famous Surfers’ attraction for men. Unseen, they could sit at the wide one way windows and perve on the women walking past. It wasn’t the feminist Darlene’s sort of place, but she agreed to come with me where she had an infernal coke while I settled on a manly beer. Not much was happening this time of day. A few blokes at the bar, obviously tourists for they did ogle the women walking past. I watched them for awhile, then Darlene got upset, or rather her feminism did. She found it disgusting that men could indulge in such antics and we had to leave. She made a loud remark about limp dicks as we exited.

It was getting towards twelve and I said: ‘What about a spot of lunch?’

‘Well, all right, I’m about ready for a snack, where shall we go?’

‘I know, let’s check out that Mirage Resort. I haven’t stayed there, but I know that they have a beach where we can swim,’ I said, untruthfully, for I had been there before -- with Elaine.

‘Yeah, let’s do that. I wish we could have stayed there. it would have been heaps better than that bridal suite,’ and she did that giggle again as her hand touched my shoulder as if we had a secret between us.

Perhaps, we did, but then I had one from her. The Mirage was expensive, but affordable. Still, I was sure that she would have felt out of place in such luxurious surroundings. When it had first opened, Elaine and I had splurged and spent a night there. It wasn’t that marvelous, the room that is, but the beach was placid and quiet and the foyer and gardens quite spectacular.

Although Darlene was not quite dressed for the Mirage and did seem ill at ease, she oohed and aahed over the decor and the gardens which came right into the foyer. There were wide shallow pools with ducks and water lilies and meandering streams. We went into the coffee shop where I ordered a club sandwich and then waited for her to make up her mind which was an order for a green salad with a side order of chips. It was a light lunch as we wanted to get into the water as the day was hot and muggy.

After eating, we walked along a path which was memory lane to me. Elaine and I ran along it hand in hand. She was in a tropical bikini with big flowers over it. Her full breasts bobbed and jiggled and her hip brushed mine every now and again. It was then that I had decided that I loved this type of woman: small and dark, plumpish, but with all the curves in the right places. Just thinking of her and me and that day aroused me and when we got to the beach and I got into my togs, my half erection showed. Darlene must have noticed it, but said nothing. She splashed into the water and I followed slowly. Elaine and I had made love here in the water. I stood upright and she leapt onto me and wrapped her legs about me. The water bore some of her weight and she jiggled about and it was fun. I tried to do the same with Darlene, going to her and pressing myself against her. She could feel my erection, but ignored it, continuing to play. I persisted and she said: ‘Not here, people can see us.’ And that was that. We went on with our bathing.

It was past twelve by then and our room would be ready, but she came out of the water, spread her towel and lay back on it. I mentioned that the beach was almost private property, but she pooh-poohed this and replied that now she was here, she was going to make the most of it. She began rubbing sunscreen on her legs, upper back and front, but did not request me to do this. I did myself and lay back watching the sea rising and falling. I began to feel that I was at the beck of forces beyond me, the kismet of Omar Khayyam, and they would whirl me away to where I did not want to go.

This depressed me and when we left, I was thinking that my being with Darlene was stupid. I needed cheering up, but there wasn’t that intimacy that came with love. She merely commented that I must be feeling tired and that perhaps a drink would pick me up.

I replied that I wanted to go back to check into our room and maybe have a spa.

She agreed to this. I stopped at a bottle shop and picked up a six pack of Corona and then got a couple of lemons. This Mexican beer I rather liked especially with a slice of lemon. We checked into our room without any problems and Darlene oohed and aahed over the spa and immediately got the water running. There were lots of big fluffy white towels and two dressing gowns.

She came out of the spa room and I went to her and undid her jeans, pulling them down and putting my hands around her bottom, then not content with that my fingers went under her panties, through her public hair and into her cunt. She gave a sort of moan, then pushed me away and stepped out of her pants, then dropped her knickers to show the pink peeping through her brownish bush, which must have been her natural hair color. She then undid her bra and stood there naked. I thought that we would have a quickie, but she exclaimed, ‘The spa’s beautiful and filled with suds. There are mirrors all about too. Hurry up and get undressed and while you’re at it I’ll have one of those beers too.’

I got into the spa with her. The suds almost covered us, but her breasts were just above the water. I handed her a beer and laid back, letting my body relax, for a moment, though my toes were out seeking her. I poked between her legs then left my foot there. She didn’t complain. We settled back contentedly sipping our beers. Finally, she turned around and leant against me, between my legs and her hand came around to my cock which was half erect. She massaged it a few strokes, then slipped it into her. She moved about and wriggled until I came. I got out for another beer. When I came back, I had her from the front. The water seemed to turn her on and at the end of our third time I felt her cunt contracting about my penis. This had not happened before, but after some more times with her, I found out that it was one of her few tricks. She consciously tensed her vaginal muscles. With Elaine this had been spontaneous and not just towards the end. Anyway in the spa was the first time that I had been satisfied with Darlene.

When we got out I continued to pursue her. I wanted it a little rough and threw her onto the bed. She protested, then lay down on her front and let me penetrate her from behind.

I was replete and completely limp and parroted: ‘A long necked bottle and a long legged woman and this room is paradise e now?’

‘E now?’ she queried.

‘Poetic license for now, most likely to keep the meter,’ I replied, somewhat put out that she had not read Fitzgerald’s translation of the Rubaiyat. I played with her nipples for a while, but she did not play with my cock, then it was sleepy time and we woke up next morning and went back to Brisbane a couple. She had reached her goal, but this meant more hassles for me.

I had graduated from her mouth to her vagina and now wanted both. I began to sneak about and find excuses to be in hotel rooms so that I could sample them. The office trysts ceased. She protested that they were tawdry and did not satisfy her, this after she had been the one that had initiated them.

Well, things could not go on this way as my wife would soon find out that I was having an affair and with whom. Darlene on her part wanted everything out in the open. She was to graduate soon. I hoped that things would hold up until then but Elaine ordered me out of the house. I left, spending the night alone in a hotel. Next morning, she came to my office and wrecked it.

This caused a scandal. The Dean then was Dr. Dan Wallis and he called me into his office and said that things could not go on as they were. I listened to him and said that they were being resolved. ‘Let them be resolved to the Department’s satisfaction,’ he replied, and that was that. Academics were given to prevaricating as much as possible while hoping that any discomfort would fade away without them having to do anything, but there was another aspect. He would make a report which would become attached to my personal file. I told Darlene this and she retorted: ‘Well, give me up. that’ll fix everything.’ then instantly changed her mind: ‘You can’t dump me just like that. No, we’re in too deep to pull out now.’ She went on like this, angrily and without tears. She seemed to take it personally and it was as if she had been called before the Dean and not me. The upshot was that I too prevaricated and let things go on as they were. She after all was fifteen years younger than I. I supposed that I was at that stage where I saw my life slipping away and reached out for what was available, but the professorship which I richly deserved, was now in jeopardy. I came to feel that it was kismet, fate and I could do nothing about it.

And so Darlene and I began living together. We found a brand new townhouse in Auchenflower which she liked, but I found sterile. I began filling it with Fifties bric-a-brac, which she went along with, even when I found a second hand clothing store with Fifties dresses and got her to wear them. She acquiesced to that too and was considerate enough until after we were married on the 13 January 2006, after she had been awarded her M.A. and was contemplating doing her Ph.D. She had her application in and thought that with an academic husband it was only a formality. She had forgotten about that addendum to my personal file. She was not awarded a place and blamed me for not backing her. ‘You’re ashamed of me and don’t want me with you in the Department,’ she whined. I tried to explain, but she wouldn’t listen. That black mark on my record would endure all through my academic career. I had not realized that from that first blow job my career would slow and seek closure. As I’ve said I’m not good at endings and so things dragged on until one day things happened, an event that set me on the track to this place.

I came home one Monday expecting her to be home and she was not there. The house had an empty feeling different from when she was merely delayed or out with her sister. I wondered from room to room, looking for evidence that she had come back and gone out again. Nothing! I became upset.

That weekend I had had a seminar to attend and she curtly told me that she wasn’t hanging around the house all by herself and was going to Stradbroke Island with her brother, Johnny, and would see me on Monday. I waited until eight o’clock and still no Darlene.

I was worried. She could have had an accident on that island or in the sea. It had some bad rips at some of the beaches and great white sharks. Unable to do nothing, although we weren’t getting on so well anymore, especially after her second and third application to enrol for a Ph.D. had been knocked back and naturally I was to blame because I was so weak and needed to be more assertive and go and see the proper people and what was the use of me and what was she doing with me and so on and so forth until I was glad to be out of the house, but this was different. It was she who was absent. I rang the police on Stradbroke Island. There had been no accidents that weekend. I thought about her parents or that sister of hers, but they didn’t like me and wouldn’t have given me any information at all. In fact, they would exult believing that at last their daughter had had the guts to ditch that public school lay about. They always thought the worst and were smug in their dreary public housing suburb. Well, I had worked harder than any of her trashy family, a number of whom bludged on the state and ate up my taxes. I then thought she had decided to stay another day. The weather had been fine. She had not told me at what camping ground, she would be roughing it in, but there wasn’t that many on the island.

I checked the kitchen to see if there was an address there. She hung about in there a lot and in the sitting room, in front of the television no doubt watching the day soapies, like hundreds of other women without jobs and on Prozac that calmed them down and made them receptive to trash. I had gotten her the prescription; but it hadn’t settled her and I supposed that what might have done the trick was a baby. That usually worked. After we were married she had high hopes that she would soon conceive, though from the first we had not taken precautions. Stupid of me of course, but why we continued to do so she didn’t say. Perhaps she wanted to get pregnant for she was jealous of Elaine and wanted to have all that she had, including kids. Well, thankfully she had failed at that.

I remember the time I was dragged with her to the Mater Hospital. As I had proved my fertility, she had had to check hers out. We waited and waited, while nurses came and went. Finally, they made her dress in a hospital gown and took her into another room to do whatever they did. They gave her an anaesthetic and did the needful. The results came after a few hours. Unfortunately they were a blow to her. Her fallopian tubes had suffered damage and were completely blocked up. No chance at all. This was another imperfection to add to her cockeyes and high roofed mouth. She was sterile and this relieved me somewhat, for I already had my quota of children and I did not want more, especially when our relationship was proceeding downhill even then. She mentioned adoption and even artificial insemination and I told her to wait. Once when she was sucking me, she took her mouth away, to tell me to save up my sperm. Why, as far as I could see, there was no chance that even if she was filled with sperm conception could occur, even if she had a major operation to open her up.

It was after this that her back pains began and continued. She went to doctors and chiropractors and masseurs in search of a cure. She could not do any heavy lifting or even housework and I had to do everything. Even sex became a chore, though it seemed that she had always found it that, for after our marriage it rapidly diminished and I suffered and had no relief from my suffering. This drove me to talk to her doctors about her back problems. A Dr. Arclay informed me that she told him that she had a long history of neck pain. He added that my wife was angry and frustrated over not being able to get her application approved to study for her Ph.D. and he added, staring up at me though those half lens reading glasses he affected, ‘there are also personal problems.’ I replied: ‘Well, what is wrong with her exactly.’ And he answered as doctors do to lay people: ‘I presume there is an aggravation of her cervical Spondylosis due to muscular contractions secondary to her distress and posture.’ ‘Is that all,’ I cried. ‘Well, there are problems, she obviously is an unhappy woman and needs more attention.’

I tried to give it to her and when I mentioned what the doctor had said, she retorted that yes, she did have neck pains which brought on terrific headaches and if I really loved her, I wouldn’t bother her so much. I did not retort that I helped around the house which meant doing practically everything, including the cooking. Her problems worsened after our little talk. Often I came home to find her lying in the darkened bedroom with a hot compress on her neck.

Not content with Dr. Arclay’s professional opinion, I went to another of her doctor’s. Dr. Kettle. He too was given to jargon, but to the suffering husband he translated that she had come to him suffering from chronic lower back pain and that x-rays taken of her cervical spine indicated some muscular tension.’ ‘So there is basically nothing wrong with her,’ I replied. ‘Well, you can’t say that,’ he replied with a smile. ‘You know, women?’ And it was he that prescribed the Prozac.

She had always complained of back problems and this meant that I did not try to get her to adopt difficult positions in the bedroom, or even simpler ones such as bending over while I fucked her from behind. She claimed that this was what she liked best of all which, in practice, meant while lying outstretched on the bed. I rapidly grew bored with this and to give myself variety I got her to assume the top position, which would not aggravate her supposed back injuries. The Kama Sutra described this position as the most enjoyable for men. I did find it more satisfying than sprawling on my hands and knees and banging away at her passive cunt. With her in the dominate role, I could also reach up to grab her breasts and even watch my penis entering and leaving as she raised and lowered her body. She became quite adept at this position, sometimes facing me and at other times turning towards my feet. In it she could manipulate her vagina as much as she wished to ensure the maximum pleasure, still she complained about my not being on top, though when I did assume the missionary position, she soon returned to the reverse. I couldn’t understand it, but then her back pain aggravated and with her headaches any positions were few and far between.

It wasn’t long before she suggested that I sleep apart from her as she was too restless in bed with the pain and kept me awake. I protested, but she spoke in that little girl voice of hers she affected when she wanted a favor granted and I gave in, though being upset at being denied the marital bed. Elaine had never ever forced me from our bed. In fact, it would have been a sign that we were drifting apart, and after that last blow job, when I did sleep on the sofa, it was then that she told me to go. And now with Darlene , to please her I slept on the futon which I kept in my home office to have a rest when I needed to relax from my work. Now came an increasing lack of affection. Once, in the kitchen I caressed her behind in passing and she said that I had no respect for her. I even used to wander naked about the house and once, she told me to put some clothes on.

Of course, all this did not mean that we gave up sex entirely. A few times, she led me to her bed and when I say led I mean it, taking my hand much like a prostitute takes the hand of her client. I found it somewhat distressing, but well, it was something. I tried to talk about our problems once or twice, but she had taken to eating her meals in front of the television, watching inane American sitcoms and there was no space for serious conversation.

So this was the background to my marriage when I came home from work that Monday afternoon to find her gone. Our relationship was not of best, but still I became distraught and prowled the house like a caged beast. I imagined all sorts of things, mainly bloody. I rang the hospitals in case she had had an accident. I visualized her lying there inert and passive with drips entering her veins. No Darlene Davis and no one answering her description. I went back into the kitchen to make a sandwich, but couldn’t. How could I eat when my wife might be lying injured?

Then on the kitchen counter, I saw the list she had made of the things to take on her camping weekend. I took it into the sitting room, sat on the sofa and studied it. There were listed: tent, sleeping bag, Rid (by which she meant insect repellent, a brand name), togs, shorts, sarong, mozzie coils, sunscreen and lastly hat. This certainly indicated that she had gone on the camping trip with her brother, or perhaps someone else. I couldn’t prevent the thought from arising. I examined the sheet further and saw a series of parallel lines around the list which might be the coast of the island, but below that was another doodle. A series of concentric circles around a raised centre which as I stared resolved into the head of a penis and the whole doodle resolved itself into a vagina about a penis. I studied it for what seemed hours. No doubt, but why? The way Darlene acted with me I had concluded that she was frigid as well as sterile. I pushed thoughts of infidelity away and rang the Stradbroke Island police again. No one had drowned and no vehicle accidents. This settled, I checked the yellow pages for camping grounds. Under Stradbroke Island, I found three: Myora, Dunwich and then two at Point Lookout.

Everyone in Brisbane travelled to Stradbroke Island. It was where we went if we wanted a quiet weekend by the seaside. I had thought nothing of it, when Darlene had said that she wanted to go camping with her brother. It had been rather hot and humid in Brisbane and since I was to attend that weekend seminar, I had agreed as it would get her out of the house and hopefully into a better mood. Now the upshot of this was no wife. I got the street directory from my SAAB, stopping to give the deco a rub with a soft chamoiscloth, then although I knew where the camping grounds were, checked to be doubly sure. Myora was too far from the beach. Still, I rang Myora first. I’m an academic and do my research thoroughly. I gave the woman that answered her names, her married and single one then a brief description. No luck. I tried one of the others, staring at that damnable sketch at the bottom of her list. No one by either of her names had been there. I mentioned her brother, Johnny White. Still, no dice!.

Well, three times lucky and I phoned the last one, which was the best bet, North Stradbroke Island Redland Shire Camping Grounds. As the phone rang out, I noticed that my hands were slightly shaking. Would she be there and make my agitation all for nothing? Would I be listening to her voice with that contrite girlish tone as she apologized? Pay dirt of sorts! They remembered Johnny White because he had come with a whole Rugby team, but they could not remember a woman, my wife, being with them. In growing desperation, I went back through the yellow pages and found the Stradbroke Tourist Park. Again nothing! Frantic with a growing anger and despair (how could she do this to me?), I made up my mind to go to Stradbroke Island on the morrow to find out if she had been there for sure. But I had classes… what to do? With my marriage falling apart, I had been slack at my work lately and if I didn’t pull up my socks I would find myself before the Dean again. Then I thought of Rhonda Smythe-Jones, who had a different tone of reddish hair to that of my wife as she got her hair dyed professionally, who might take them. Even though it was rather late, I rang her and said that I was coming down with something and would she look after my students. For some reason, she always manifested a friendliness to me that I thought meant that she was keen on me. Well, no matter. She would take my classes. I slammed down the phone, strangely in elation, and for a moment thought about Rhonda and how perhaps I should have cultivated her more, even to having an affair. Darlene had been so cold and frigid with me that I would be justified in seeking relief elsewhere, but then I had been so absorbed in my wife that I had allowed myself to be overwhelmed by her misery until I too was suffering. God, I wished that nothing had happened to her. I stared at that thing she had sketched on the paper. The circles about a roundish raised object, a cock within a cunt, made me perspire. If she had been unfaithful to me, I would pay her back. Yes, I would hurt her in a way that would make her back pain feel like a tickle.