The List Pt. 01

"Braless?"

She put her hand over mine. "What true bohemian isn't?"

"It's going to be fun, Jude."

"Are you going to use the stash for school?"

'The stash' was the $484,000 I scored from a huge marijuana deal I made with a bad crowd when I was 18. She knew about it then, that was one of the things that held us together — and thanks mainly to her sage investment decisions, it was now worth over $4 million, and fully laundered. "Or our savings."

"She would have been in our room two minutes after we left, you know ... checking out the sheets. Guaranteed. She's like that. I left the butt plug in the bed and a pair of my sexiest panties under it. Deal with it."

"You're proud of yourself, aren't you?"

She took my hand and brought it down to her crotch and squeezed it. "I've never been proud of myself, Mike, never, not once, not for anything. But ya, I am now, I'm really proud of myself: I'm important to you now — do you know how excited that makes me? I've finally become important to you and I'm just amazed by it. Am I proud of myself? Oh, fuck, Mike, I can see me pulling this off, I have no problem at all being slutty, I'm a natural, I can see me making you happy — I've never thought that would ever be possible." She turned around on me and hugged me till it hurt. "Do you want to sell your company? Really?"

"Ya, and the house. I want a condo, a cottage on a lake like this, I want to study my brains out, work to help mankind and I want my arms around you the entire way." I dropped my hands down and squeezed her cheeks. "And I want this as often as I can get it. That was un-fucking believable, remind me to thank Tanya."

She laughed. "It's fun, isn't it, amazing fun and no end in sight."

"Except your rear end," my chuckle came out as a near giggle. "I'm going to take pictures of it, maybe put it online."

She got very quiet, I could physically feel her quiet on me. "I wanted to talk to you about that. I want to be online, Mike. I want to be seen. As we watched that porn, that's all I could think about: I want to be seen like those women while I still have a body."

One of the reasons we have lived such an uninteresting life together was that Judy and I are very much emotionally alike. We're probably both introverts in the sense that we're both decidedly non-gregarious and seek peace and strength in the quiet of our own skin. We're also both social liberals but quite conservative in our outward approach, both of us always careful to stay within ourselves, never reaching beyond our grasp, except in business. This has worked well for us because we're both hard-working (thanks to her) and we both have talents; it has worked well for us individually, not so much as a couple.

I thought of this all afternoon as we worked hard in our 'garden', something neither of us cared about — but thought we'd better at least weed given the place was going to be appraised on Monday.

Things started to change for us the moment I walked into that lingerie store. Since then I haven't been able to escape the feeling that I am acting out of character, beyond my natural containment — that I am, in a way, playing with fire and I would have been very surprised if Judy wasn't feeling the same way. But she isn't, she clearly isn't. Judy used to smile maybe six - eight times a week, seldom more. She's just isn't a smiler, not a naturally happy person, more a brooder about things I never ask about. But since all this started she's had a constant grin as if she's in on an inside joke that no one else gets. Brighton mentioned it to me a few times during our visit, always wondering what was going on, especially given the awful news about her inability to conceive. I pleaded ignorance, genuinely because I really didn't know for sure. Yes, our sexual liberation has been soul enriching, it has lifted a giant weight from my shoulders and, obviously, from her's, but is that it? Some of it, sure, but not all of it, unless she has been starved for sex and now is feeling fully nourished.

But whatever her feelings, did it ever look good on her. When solemn, her default emotion, Judy isn't a very good looking woman. But put a grin on her face and she comes alive, she visually blossoms, she becomes an entirely different looking and acting person: she's radiant. As well as Brighton, Tanya noticed and commented on it, so did the friends at the BBQ — she's so obviously changed, so obviously enjoying herself. And it was clearly driving Brighton to distraction.

Me? Our recent liberation, while wonderfully welcomed, came with its own issues. As I've said, I don't like to get outside myself and I was the moment I walked into that underwear store, and I have been more or less ever since. My new-found exuberance doesn't feel natural, doesn't feel right, doesn't feel like me. It's troubling. Especially the panty thing. I guess all fetishes are a bit troubling because, almost by definition, they move you out from within your inhibitions, your self-containment and that can be awkward, and it can give a hit to your self respect. What kind of a guy gets off just seeing a pair of panties? That's plain weird and not a little disturbing. But it seems I do or Judy is convinced I do and I don't like it, don't like that I seem to love the damn things, love what they do to me.

But how can I take my own guilt seriously when my wife doesn't, when she seems to love my fetish and feeds it every chance she gets? Hell, not just Judy feeds it, when Tanya was getting dressed on Friday morning she threw her panties on the bed and giggled ... the way you might feed an animal in a zoo. I don't let myself get too far out of myself, I had to do something about this.

We talked, really talked that night at dinner and then we went to bed and I held her tight, the miseries of our life together slipping away; the possibilities just starting to dawn on us.

She soon drifted off but I was awake most of the night. I was thinking of the girl I knew as a kid and the woman I married. They were only faintly lodged in my memory. This woman, before her metamorphosis, was so busy focussing on accomplishments she was entirely uninteresting. Until we got out of college I was one of those accomplishments. In return, I gave her social stability, a constancy that allowed her to concentrate on her work, her real passion.

What did I get out of it? As a student her unrelenting presence and unflinching support squeaked me through my studies while it allowed me to play with my avocations, which, basically, were anything that would take me away from the books.

So we both had our reasons for being together through high school and college, but those reasons vanished when we started our careers; that's when we became conspicuously ill-suited to each other, emotionally, intellectually and physically. But we got married anyway, we just didn't have the time or energy not too — our careers were sucking out of us everything we had.

And yet, strangely, I never did grow to dislike her, she liked me too much for that, liked me enough to give me whatever emotional and physical support she thought I needed, which, frankly, wasn't much. I loved my work and was good at it, I didn't need her for that. And, physically, I didn't have the time to think about sex so I didn't much need her for that, either.

I can remember looking at her a few times as you might look at a stranger, not really recognizing her, not seeing anything interesting enough to want to connect. She was never sexual, nothing about her was sexual, not her looks, not her movements, not her expression, not the way she dressed, nothing about her even hinted at sex ... it says something that I didn't see the ass. And I didn't care that we were strangers, no, actually, I was relieved because I seldom had to pretend an intimacy that simply wasn't there. The few and fleeting times I did have to grind out a limp orgasm on her was no more an event than sitting down to breakfast or sorting out the bills ... for both of us.

I know every inch on the woman now, every wrinkle, every blemish, every crevasse. And I know intimately what parts of her body moves when she stretches, how she smells, how she tastes, how she feels against my skin.

And for the first time ever, I was starting to know how she thinks. I didn't before because she was just so accepting of me, she just did things for me as the quid pro quo for me sticking around. Sure she tried to motivate, to encourage, to inspire me, but subtly, it only started to happen overtly when she learned that I had a pulse; when she had it explained to her that when your husband is masturbating in your panties something was going on in his head, something that she might do well to pay attention to — more, something she may do well to exploit.

I've never asked her about that conversation with Alice but if the moment I got a libido was the moment I envisioned my wife's theretofore sexless body slipping into a pair of sexy panties, her acquisition of a libido was at the foot of Saint Alice who pointed out that those panties were a proxy that she had better start attending to.

This was what I was losing sleep over. How does a sexually inept, sexually unaware, sexually incapable woman become a sexual libertine as a result of a few well intentioned words? That shouldn't happen. But it did. And a skinny, lifeless body metamorphosed into a sex-obsessed dynamo in the time it now takes for me to get an erection, which is to say moments.

And that changed everything. If she was a new woman, I was a new man. If once our marriage was a virtual wasteland, now it is a physical, intellectual and emotional entanglement that isn't just intriguing, it is, like it's own unique universe, expanding ever outward, not pushing out all before it, but pulling everything in, feeding on it. Where is it going? That's what I was wondering as I lay in that bed teasing my cock.

I had called the three senior people at my company on Sunday, telling them that I was seriously contemplating selling my business. I had assured them in the past that if there were to be any major changes I would let them know first, let them plan for it. They were in my office first thing Monday morning assuring me that they were the future of the company. I didn't doubt it and made my final decision there and then: I would be moving on in a matter of months.

But, in fact, I could feel that I had been moving on for a few weeks now, moving on from my life as I knew it. I was thinking more and more of where I wanted to live, what I wanted to do, what I wanted to become. It is hard to think that much about the future and remain firmly in the present. I talked about this at dinner on Monday night; she agreed, she was going through her own form of emotional displacement, not just from work but from her old life. But the consequences of her detachment from her old self didn't bleed from her in consternation as it did with me, it bubbled in joyful anticipation. If she hasn't always been happy, she has always been positive, but now she has become positively ebullient.

We went for a long walk after dinner then, after a quick shower, I did some office work while she had a long bath, something I've never been able to do. She came and got me by putting a plastic bottle on the desk in front of me. The bottle's elegant script read 'message oil.' She was grinning. "Me or you, your choice."

"You," I said, getting up. She was wrapped in a thick white towel. "Looks like you're ready."

She grinned. "I am indeed."

I followed her into the bedroom where she pulled back the covers and crawled onto the sheet, lying perfectly still her arms along her sides. I've never actually had a massage before, never mind given one so I was tentative at best. I applied a drizzle of the oil along her spine from her neck to the small of her back then I started in at her shoulders, a bit awkwardly because I had to do it from the side.

I had spread the oil across her shoulders and was working it into her lats, like I'd want it worked into mine when she said, not, 'Wow, that feels wonderful,' but "Take off your clothes."

I did, pleased to see I didn't have much of an erection even thought the swell of her fabulous ass was in full view.

Why she wanted me naked I don't know because she didn't move, she remained in place waiting for more laying on of hands. I spent a good half hour on her back, learning that she liked it best when I really laid into her. By the time I got to her ass I was so comfortable with the process squeezing her cheeks did nothing for me ... until I let my fingers go inside a little and she moaned audibly and encouragingly. But I didn't go in, instead I went around the bed and worked on her legs, worked hard on them from the feet up until I was back at the ass again and after working it over again I let my thumbs go in with the same encouragement I'd had before only this time she opened her legs a little.

I thought of teasing her, that was my first instinct but I acted on my second. I squirted a good dollop of the oil at the crack then sat down beside her and started to slowly but deliberately work it in.

I didn't get very far when she said, "Look in the night table drawer."

My fingers were greasy with oil but I went to get what she wanted, having no idea what it was. There were a pair of light orange-y coloured panties. I pulled them out and held them up, they were cute and I loved the colour.

"They're Robyn's — you weren't going to do anything about it so I thought I would ... to check it off the list; it was due. I called her this morning, dropped in to see her right after work, just to catch up. I went upstairs to the washroom and crept into her bedroom. I loved taking them; I loved standing there in her bedroom with my hand in her underwear drawer; it gave me a huge buzz: I loved the feeling of terror."

I let them fall to the bed and I let what she had done and said sink in. "Robyn? Are you kidding?'

She chuckled, she hadn't moved a muscle, her voice was half muffled by the sheet. "I know she's scary, I think that's why I took her's."

"Why take anybody's? It's nuts."

"You like them; I put it on the list as a fun challenge ... you wouldn't do it so I did ... and it was fun ... no harm, no foul."

No harm except she thought of me as a panty-wanking-perv. I was speechless ... for too long.

"Oh for Pete's sake, they're panties ... it was fun; I'm going to do it again with somebody else — get you a collection."

I got up and went to the end of the bed and back at her legs again, this time harder, trying to get my angst out. I would never have figured her for any of this. It amazed me what must have been simmering inside her for all these years. She seemed to have no guilt; I was riddled with it, especially over panties. When I was a kid I had taken my mother's a few times and hated myself for it, for the sneaking part of it mainly, that really bothered me. I tried to confess to her a few times, once getting very close before I back out. I've always wished I'd had the courage; I always thought that a confession would have put an end to it. Sneaking my mother's panties still really bothered me: I felt like it was a huge debt unpaid.

When I got to her ass I really squeezed her cheeks now, probably to be as audacious as she had been, I sat down and worked my fingers between her cheeks, tentatively at first, gauging her reaction which, more than anything, was insistence for more. So when my finger pressed at her anus she let out a long mournful moan followed immediately by, "God, yes, Mike."

I got the oil and dripped a little more in then I threw caution to the wind and worked it in, at first along her crease then at her anus until I broke through.

Immediately she pushed back.

I went harder, deeper, feeling her sphincter tighten, feel it run up and down my finger. She brought a hand down under her; she was obviously fingering her pussy so I got rougher, I pulled at her anus, trying to pull it open and when I edged another finger in her moans got louder and she rose up on her knees and I knew there would be The View. I took my fingers out of her ass and went to the end of the bed. Her legs were spread apart, her pussy was gaping.

"You've never seen this, Jude, but it's the most erotic sight in the world."

She looked back at me confused. "What?"

"Your pussy ... from the back, it's just fucking amazing."

"Let me see it ... get a mirror."

"I'll get the camera."

It was in the office; she hadn't moved when I got back, turning on the overhead light and the lamp on the table behind me. I took a few, pulled her legs apart a little further and took a few more before I got between her legs and placed my prick just a little into her, trying to take a shot of this, too.

"Really?" Her face was screwed up like she was kind of disgusted. "You think that's erotic?"

"Totally." A picture of her gaping pussy filled the computer screen.

She laughed. "OK, looks pretty gross to me" and the moment was lost. She kissed me, went off to take a bath and I sat there looking at her image on the screen but wondered about the light orange panties that were still lying on the bed.

We were in bed an hour later, her table light was still on.

"I'm going to take those panties back to Robyn, tell her I made you ... filch them for me; confess my fetish to her ... apologize."

She looked more than just a little confused. "Why? Why would you do that?"

"Because I want her to make me feel pathetic, she will — you sure don't."

She looked at me like I was an idiot. "Why would I want to make you feel pathetic? So you've got a panty fetish, so what? I wish I could find a fetish or two, I haven't yet but when I do you're going to know all about them."

I had no answer.

"Jeez, enjoy it, Mike, have fun with it, why be stupid about it?"

"Because I have to. I knew this day was coming ever since I was a kid: I wanted to tell my mum that I took her's a few times ... but I didn't ... I could never do it, I could never find the guts and I've always hated myself for being a coward. I know it's weird but I'm into weird these days."

Judy got out of bed, went to the hamper and was back in a moment throwing a pair of green panties at me. "Maybe you should take these back to Tanya ... and apologize to her, too."

"Why?" This wasn't the same thing at all. "She threw them at me."

She got into bed. "And here are mine ... ones you bought me. I love that they turn you on ... Tanya thought it was pretty neat, too." She rubbed them in my face. "Are you going to apologize to me that you take my panties out and play with them? How about my drooping bras? My see-through shirts? The tight pants you make me wear?" She handed me the green cotton panties. "Put them on, Mike ... I'm not going to be able to sleep. Let's watch some porn."

"I'll rip them," I said, feeling a rush.

She laughed. "And she'll care? Are you kidding? She'd get off knowing you're wearing her panties." She held them down at my feet so I could slide into them.

"I'm still going to do it ... I've always wanted someone to make me fess up to this ... she's the perfect person."

"Fine, and I'll find someone to beat me up for eating Tanya's pussy and for wanting you to stick your prick in my ass ... and for whatever else I'm thinking of doing." She had my feet through the panties when she stopped and looked down at me. "You want to be caught, don't you? That's part of the fetish, isn't it?"

I didn't say anything but I didn't have to. She knew.

I knew I'd never do it if I didn't do it as soon as I could. So I did. I knocked on Robyn's door the next day immediately after work. No advanced call. No prepared script. Just cold-call balls. She answered the door so surprised to see me she didn't ask me in, not at first, but after an exchange of greeting she did. As soon as I got inside I shook hands with Charles, a complication I hadn't anticipated.