Down & Up The Road Ch. 04

We spoke for a few minutes and then I left. I returned a week later and asked her out on a date, she accepted and our courtship had begun. By our fifth date, I knew I was really falling in love, but now for some reason, I was no longer anxious to lay it all out in words and action. A new ingredient had entered into my thinking. Now I was cautious, and held back fom declaring my feelings as soon as I felt them, instead I wanted to hold back until I was sure she was ready and needed to hear the words.

In w way, the old game of playing hard to get that I had always been opposed to had finally become the natural way to behave and not an artificial game any longer. I didn't have to be mean to get her to appreciate me, just reserved, aloof, and distant while I waited for her readiness. I think we were both the same in that, and our relationship was propelled along by natural energy forces that simply drug us along with them.

I never knew anyone in my life that could light me up the way she did. When I was low or burdened she picked me up just by her being, and I could never stay down or discouraged. We dated for nine months before we were married and never had sex until our wedding night. We were both members of the same church, even though we had attended different congregations, and we both felt comfortable with the emphasis that was placed of chastity and fidelity. Elena was still a virgin on our wedding night (I referred to her using either or both her names all the time, I loved the sound of them both). She was terrified deep down by the thought of my penetration even though she knew and understood it was such a right and beautiful thing between a man and a woman.

It took patience, and more than a single forceful assertion to get her relaxed until the tearing of her hymen was no longer a painful prospect. When the jitters of the honeymoon were finally over and we had learned to enjoy the sweetness of each others bodies and making love, it didn't take long to settle into a full and complete relationship.

We were like most newly wed couples I thought, except that we already had two young children, so the one on one time that most couples get to enjoy at the beginning of their relationship only lasted the week and a half of our honeymoon. We had sex often, about every night and just seemed to want to devour each other up.

Since we already had a little family, there was no need to hold off having the kids we wanted and Maria was pregnant within two months. Although the pregnancy went well and she delivered a healthy daughter we named Bethany after my mother, the delivery was hard and painful.

Maria had bounced back after a couple of months and we were well on our way to family bliss. Maria loved Beth, but no more than she loved Tyler and Jess. Things went well with work and advancement and we kept our life modest and reserved so we saw no impediment to having as many children as Maria wanted.

We were blessed with two other children over the next four years, but each delivery was more difficult than the one before. After Aaron was born, the doctors advised us to hold off, since the delivery had been so difficult it didn't take much to get Maria to agree, and we settled into the process of living and enjoying life with the five we had.

Some people would scold us for having that many, but we loved them all too much to ever second guess our commitment to them. I don't think it was possible to find a happier, more perfect and loving family...except.

The only negative in our life, was far outweighed by all of the incredible positives. Elena's interest in sex was growing more and more, "less". Although sex was regular in the beginning of our marriage, it trailed off dramatically during the latter part of the pregnancy with Beth. I was committed to avoid some of the problems that interfered in my relations with Sandy and be less provincial in my attitude towards sex.

I had always felt the responsibility to take a high moral and principled approach to sex and keep it almost spiritual, pure and romantic. This had almost seemed like an overdose on sugar with Sandy, so I was ready to be more down to earth, and prove that sex could be nasty and exciting even between a man and his own wife.

In the beginning, everything is almost naturally that way in a marriage. The newness of sex and each other alone seems a little forbidden and naughty, and trying to hide it from two young children helped keep it that way, but when Maria's interest started to trail off I was still raring to learn and explore. When I bought her sexy lingerie, she would only wear it when we were "going to have sex" and then it was with reluctance.

"Being sexy" seemed almost unnatural and uncomfortable for her, so it lost a lot of effect. I didn't want her to pretend to be exciting; I hoped she would be excited and that it would bring a little animalistic passion into play. It didn't. The only thing she would remember was that she was embarrassed and that she had sensed a disappointment on my part in her effort that had made her actually feel less desired.

Even though what she thought I felt was far from the truth, she never could let herself get comfortable with letting loose. She still had sexual needs and required love and affection. To Elena, there was a strong connection between love, romance and sex. Sex was the ultimate expression of love and she needed an adequate portion of it often enough to keep her happy and feeling loved.

At times I would add a little adventure by playing with her while we drove. The possibility of being seen drove her wild with arousal and she had incredible orgasms as we raced down the road, but she could not sustain the desire to repeat and always recessed back into a "comfort zone".

One time we were on an ATV outing with friends in one of the many beautiful high desert areas in Utah. Our friends had gone on down the trail to camp after Elena had told me to tell them we would be back later. As soon as we were alone she threw her arms around me and kissed me hard on the lips as she worked her hot tongue into my mouth. "Fuck me Ted!" She demanded as she fumbled for my belt and then stepped back and started to strip off all of her clothing. She was naked before me and I raced to catch up. By the time she was lying back on the soft padding of the Polaris seat with her legs spread wide in invitation I could barely see.

When my pants were down my hard cock sprang forward and as I leaned to her she wrapped her urgent legs around me and drew my cock deeply into her soaked but tight vagina. Neither of us lasted long before she screamed out in climax as I filled her pussy with my hot sperm. When we recovered, we scrambled back into our clothing as we looked around nervously to see if anyone had witnessed our exhibition.

There were times like this, times that she did something daring and spontaneous. Times that made me think she was ready and anxious to cross a threshold, and then just as quickly she would slip back into her comfortable conservative norm.

For the most part it seemed very difficult for her to learn or try or even think about special things that might excite or arouse me, unless I clearly and carefully taught her what felt good to me. Even then it was hard to find her do something special more than once or twice before falling back into a more familiar routine.

Early on in our marriage, she liked to hold my penis and stroke it as she felt it grow, but didn't seem to understand there were things she could actually do to help it along. Eventually she lost interest in the fascination of its hardness and preferred to have her orgasm at my finger tips.

When she did show interest in having my hard cock buried deep inside, it seemed more to fulfill her duty to me feel than because of her need. You may think I'm complaining, well I might be just a little I guess; not complaining as much as going on record that there was an element of disappointment in regards to sex, but like I said, it was far outweighed by all of the positives in our relationship.

In reality, sex is not the most important thing in a marriage; it's not even the biggest cause for divorce. Sex is important, it's full of expression for all of the things we feel in life, but it's not the only means of expression. If all of the other means are chugging along on a full tank of gas, sex just captures the highlights, and makes life even more fun and enjoyable. There was easily enough fullness in all other aspects that the moderate diet of sex was still a nice light desert. Not the towering double fudge cake with raspberry syrup and a scoop of ice cream kind of desert, just a nice light sweet snack.

We enjoyed a full and active life and all felt supported and loved by everyone around us. All five kids turned out great. After they were all in school, Maria wanted to go back to work and got an administrative job in the High School that all of the kids attended. It was great having a mother who was well liked by everyone, it almost gave each of the kids a little bit of a celebrity status, and in addition, their mom went home when they did, and had the same days off for the most part.

Maria had always been well liked wherever she worked; often picked as employee of the year, etc. Her success in the working environment provided much in the way of fullness and satisfaction to her life.

It was while Beth and Aaron were still in school that we learned of some of Elena's health problems. Although she has never been overweight since the day we were married she has always battled high measurements of cholesterol. The doctors warned us this could cause problems with her heart or lead to a stroke, so we've worked with exercise and diet to do everything we could, but when she collapsed one day at work we feared the clock had run out. She was rushed to the hospital, and initially the doctors thought she had acute appendicitis and that her appendix may have already burst.

We learned that a large cyst had formed on an ovary that was the size of a small melon and before they could get in to remove and clean it out, it ruptured. They had to open her up and spent hours cleaning and scraping the thick layer of blood that resembled chocolate syrup from her internal organs. She was in pain for weeks during recovery and never quite returned all the way to her normal self and the person we all loved.

After Beth was married, the Doctor said she needed to have a full hysterectomy, and that she would feel much stronger after that. Maria was quite relieved although still a little nervous, but still optimistic that the procedure would restore some of the spark and zest for life she had missed. The routine surgery was scheduled and we prepared for her to even spend a few days in the hospital to make sure everything was OK.

The surgery lasted for about an hour and then we were allowed to visit her in the recovery room. Beth Aaron and Jessica were all there with me. Maria was tired and groggy but full of hope that she would be able to do so much more than she had been up to for years. When the kids left that night I stayed by her side as she slept. They had a comfortable chair in her room that reclined almost flat out so someone could get reasonably comfortable rest. The next day she was feeling much better and we made preparations to return home.

Maria seemed even more comfortable at home in her own bed, and all of the kids and spouses came by to visit. By that time we had three grand children and Maria was ecstatic about seeing them all. The little ones were told how sore grandma was and that they needed to be very careful. It was beautiful seeing how quiet and delicate they each tried to be as they had to love and be held by Grandma Maria.

Even though it must have been physically challenging on Maria, her spirits were up and she was radiant with love as she finally slipped off to sleep that night. Maria never woke again. She had been given the wrong medication in the hospital before she was discharged and it reacted badly with the one she took before going to sleep. She died painlessly and we were all comforted in knowing we had shared a special evening before she had slipped away.

I was devastated. There was no way to have prepared for the sudden and dramatic emptiness I felt in my life Aaron was in college but he came home to visit often. Tyler and his little family still lived close and so did Jessica, and they all stopped by often, but the emptiness almost seemed to suffocate me at times during the first few weeks after Elena's funeral.

I certainly had a hoard of well wishers and interested friends, even Sandy took time to fly in from Portland to offer her condolence and support to me and the kids; she knew how much Maria meant to us all.

There was still a lot of work to be done at the office and a lot of work to be done in general to fill the new empty hole in our lives.

I was visited with a deluge of interested attorneys who wanted to represent me if I sued the hospital for malpractice. In the end though, I settled with the insurance company for a reasonable amount; I could have gotten millions but I got enough, David Jennings, my attorney friend, advised me and agreed that the settlement, although conservative, was reasonable and fair.

I didn't really need to work if I didn't have to so I guess I became the target of a number of lonely women. I thought it would take even longer to get interested in someone else again than it did after Sandy, but I guess when you have your life so filled up with someone else, the sudden departure makes you almost urgent to find something to feel the incredible void that's left behind.

When Sandy was gone, Tyler and Jessica were still with me there every day and what I didn't need immediately then and after Maria's death was sexual intimacy. My diet of sex with Elena had been on the light side for some time so it wasn't like I was a heavy eater that got cut off hungry. I could afford to be picky.

With nothing but time on my hands, I found myself spending more time at the computer each evening and into the night than in front of the TV. I found there were chat rooms where you could get to meet and know people without having to make the effort to physically "go out". You could also meet people from much further away; out of state, even out of the country.

I've always had a cerebral side to me and liked to read, so I enjoyed it when I got into a discussion thread that became involved and deep. I learned there were also sites that had just had stories; most of them seemed to cater to adult themes that were somewhat pornographic in nature. I had never had much time for pornography although when my sex life with Maria started to tail I was more easily drawn to racy stories, magazines and movies, that seemed available everywhere, than I was before.

I was exposed enough to thoughts and imagination that I became much more liberal in my views toward sexual expression. I wasn't jaded; I was simply less judgmental about what others did than I was before even.

I had never been one to condomn someone else for anything so it didn't bother me that some people had strange ideas about what was sexy and what was not. I'll admit that I am still uncomfortable with sex between unmarried members in afamily, incest. And that homosexuality is way outside my interest range, although it's somehow curious that I find the idea of two women enjoying sex much less troubling than two men. In fact my penis has risen sharply at times when I've seen photos or pictured two women going at it.

It's not easy to picture having sex with two women at the same time in my imagination, but it's actually very easy to imagine being being excited by watching a man and a woman having sex together in real life. Somehow that possibility holds much more attraction for me than seeing any hot sex scene in a movie. Maybe there is a lot of voyeur in me.

I've read quite a few stories now, and I find it curious that there are people who seem almost masochistic in their approach to stories of sex, and life itself. They read a story that in all probability will end up in a predictable manner they strongly oppose, and then they launch into a tirade because the author thought wrote it or thought the way he did or because of the way the story turned out.

Some readers, almost vehement in opinion say they want to kill or destroy any woman who cheats on her husband or any man who is willing and excited about witnessing another man fuck his wife. As my views developed, I had a hard time imagining how I could have ever been excited watching Darren fuck Sandy, even though I remembered all too well the erection I had when I examined her soiled panties, or listened to Sarah's account of uninhibited sexual display in her driveway.

I even remember the arousal mixed with anger I felt as I surveyed the scene of what I was sure were many sexual couplings in the construction area, and the vivid picture of lust and passion that was painted on my mind when I watched Sandy masturbate still haunts me.

Emotions are strange; love and hate are both intense and sometimes compete upon the same stage simultaneously. I don't question or bemoan the method anyone resorts to in order to feel aroused and excited, unless it denies someone else's basic rights and liberties in life in the process. One might say Sandy's choice of how she got aroused and expressed herself denied my rights and liberties, but I don't think that's true.

I didn't own Sandy, she wasn't my possession, she had the individual right to act as her own self and respond to whatever life presented her. When that took her in a different direction from me, she didn't take anything of mine away with her when she left. I was still there; I had all my body parts and ownership of my own mind and heart.

I rebounded and yoked efforts with a new companion that I loved deeply. Did I love Maria Elena more that Sandy? Not really, I loved her with me for longer and I loved her differently and not in the same way as I loved Sandy. Do I love both of them still? Sure I do, I'm not putting either package of love back on a shelf to collect dust. I still love every wonderful woman or girl I have ever loved, and I wish them all the very best in life.

I wanted someone else in my life again, I needed to be part of a relationship. I wanted someone who could experience passion and lust like Sandy and I needed someone who would love me without reservation and with deep affection like Maria.

Just a few weeks ago, I needed to go to Vancouver, Washington to look into a business investment I was considering, and I decided to stop in and visit with Sandy while I was there.

In her beautiful West Hills home we both became very relaxed and talked. It surprised me how easily I could bring up Darren's name, and how shocked Sandy was to find me so at ease. She had always felt deep pain for the pain she thought she had caused in me. When I gave he the "awe shucks" routine and told her it was no big deal she couldn't believe it.

"Sandy," I said. "My life with you was absolutely necessary and right, it prepared me perfectly for Maria." A little frown played at her lips as she considered the left handed compliment.

"Our life together blessed us all with two incredible children. Sandy, you can't imagine how many times I drew from good experiences and bad to find the answer to a pressing question with one of the kids. You are still playing an important role in all our lives."

Thick heavy tears welled up in Sandy's eyes and then spilled freely down her beautiful cheeks. Her shoulders shook softly as she tried to quiet her sobbing and I moved to pull her into my arms. I just held her there tight against me for a while as she drew her harms around my waist and held me tight. When calmness and reason reclaimed the high ground, we separated and both sat down facing each other.