The Merry Widow Ch. 01A

Marie's Notes

I was flattered when David contacted me and asked me to review this, well, this "project" I guess you'd call it. I live in an "assisted living facility" now, never mind where. At 85 my mind hasn't left me, but my body has started to give up. I had a stroke a couple of years ago and while the physical and speech therapy have worked reasonably well, I'm articulate and mobile again anyway, I still need assistance. But my days with the Vets Corps are, I'm afraid, behind me.

What David has written here is accurate, as far as it goes. But he wasn't in my head, as we used to say. So I welcome this chance to, well, fill in the blanks.

I was the prototypical country girl, born and reared on a farm outside of a tiny town in eastern Colorado. It wasn't quite the "Butcher Holler" of the Loretta Lynn song, but it wasn't far off.

When I first heard the song, Ode to Billy Joe, with its line, "that nice young preacher brother Taylor stopped by today, said he'd be pleased to have dinner on Sunday..." I laughed. That was pretty much how Chester and I were brought together.

What I had wasn't exactly an arranged marriage, but it wasn't far from it. Chester's dad and mine started, well, "putting us together" is a good way to put it. Things like Sunday dinner after church involved our two families and we were of similar ages. When Chester asked me to marry him it was almost as simple as agreeing to borrow a bull or a stallion.

I said "Yes" of course, and went to my 17-year-old marriage bed a virgin.

It was a different time. There was no such thing as sex education in school and between my parents heaping shame on the one girl who wasn't coming to church anymore because she was in trouble, and the preaching about abstinence I was ignorant about what was expected.

Oh, don't get me wrong. I was a farm girl and knew how the next generation of cattle or horses or pigs came to be. I understood the mechanics. But I had no idea what the, well, what making love was.

And, it turned out, neither did Chester. My marriage night consisted of me undressing and waiting for him in bed, him arriving half drunk, taking my virginity, and falling asleep. The whole encounter was about five minutes. And that set the stage for my pre-David sex life. For some reason, he never said and I never asked, Chester had decided Thursday was sex night. It was like he filled up and needed to drain or something. It was mechanical. It was, again, me waiting in bed, naked, him mounting me, the fucking, the gasp of his release, and his snoring.

Chester bought the little dry goods store in town and to my surprise, I think his too for that matter, turned out to be a very good businessman. Much better at business than farming anyway. He was good with customers, always willing to extend credit and since he didn't get pushy, I don't think over his 30 years running the store he had more than a dozen accounts go bad. He was popular, spent eight years on the Town Council, and we were prosperous. We had the big house built and were considered, well, to be immodest, the "upper crust," although I think we both knew very well that we were big fish in a very small pond.

It was a good life and, as they say, you never miss what you never had, so I didn't mind our sex life. We did manage seven children, so something was working.

We were even talking about retiring and traveling.

And then he dropped dead.

It was nothing dramatic. No car wreck or catastrophic collapse of the store building or anything like that.

Like almost every one of our generation, he smoked too much and I fed him the fried food he liked.

Then, one day, climbing the roll-around ladder to get a hat for Margie McDaniel, he had the widowmaker and I was a widow.

I was okay, financially. He had good insurance, the house was paid for, and we had money in the bank. Mostly, though, the store was a going concern so I sold it to a bright young couple. I made them a good deal and invested, well, hired a man from two towns over where they had such things as financial planners, and he invested well.

But it got lonely in that big old house and, well, I had passed the Medicare card threshold and thought it would be nice to have some young people around. So I went to the local campus of the state college and posted a little note card - Room to let.

The first, well, I guess you'd say "applicant," was a young girl who looked like she would have boys over every night so I told her "no."

The second was a young man who looked me up and down in a way that made me blush. I told him "no" too.

David was the third. He was nice and polite, a bit older than the previous two. I think the thing that made me say "yes" to him was the way he seemed almost old-fashioned. He held the door for me when we went into the house and answered with simple, "Yes ma'am," or "No ma'am" when I asked questions.

It turned out he was a veteran, just home from almost three years in Japan. He was very studious, almost ridiculously studious, and when I asked him about it he said he had just decided to be a "good student" after an, as he put it, "performance in junior college that was not stellar."

I enjoyed talking to him. Often it was more an "interview" than a "conversation." He was studying to be a teacher and liked my reminiscences about things that he only read about in his books. We laughed about "duck and cover" drills in the 1950s and he seemed fascinated as I told him of the olive-drab colored barrels of emergency supplies stowed in the hallway of the basement of my grade school or the little triangles that used to be on the dials of our AM radios for something called "Conelrad."

Forgive an old woman's wandering. What you care about is how he, well, how he "awakened" something in me. I laugh, these days, when I hear all of the bitching about "woke" this and "woke" that. What he "woke" in me was special and wonderful.

I was up at night. As I got older I found I ate little at meals, even when I cooked for both of us, but would wake at night, hungry, and needed to get a little snack.

I do wander, don't I? Forgive me.

I was up at night, standing in front of the refrigerator door, looking for something to snack on. I was contemplating the meatloaf that was left over from dinner and, if I'm completely honest, lingering in front of the refrigerator (he always laughed when I called it an ice box), enjoying the way the cold air against my skin, my robe was open, made my nipples so hard they ached. When something touched my hips I screamed.

I turned suddenly and he was standing there, hands held up kind of defensively.

"Sorry," he said with a laugh, "but I couldn't resist."

I was gasping for breath, my heart was hammering so hard I could feel it.

"God, David," I started but then realized where his eyes were looking and quickly closed my robe.

He was smiling that smile that always made me smile back.

I smiled, but I felt a blush spreading.

"Looking good, Marie," he said.

Even as I said it I knew how much, how perfectly, I sounded like my grandmother when I said something that can only be written as, "Oh, pshaw."

He laughed and mimicked me. "Pshaw?" he said and that made me giggle.

"Okay," I said, getting myself together, "you got me. Would you like a sandwich?"

He smiled, not the grin he often flashed or the smile that was so infectious, but an easy smile.

"Would you like to know what I'd really like?" he asked, and without thinking I said, "Sure."

He took a step, startling me, and put his hands on my shoulders.

I was surprised. Hell, I was shocked. Oh, I knew he was a toucher and I enjoyed the shoulder rubs he was free with, but this was, well, different. It was intimate. He was well inside of what we used to call my "personal space." And his face was serious, no smile now, no grin.

"I would like what I just saw," he said, his eyes holding mine.

My, "Pshaw," made both of us giggle a little.

"David," I said, "I'm flattered but," and he cut me off by touching my lips with his fingertip.

"Marie," he said, and when he brushed his fingertips across my cheeks I felt a tingle in my belly, something I had only felt when I masturbated, "we're good together, we have fun together and, honestly, you are so much more interesting than any of the girls in school I can't wait to get home and be with you."

I was too surprised to speak.

"And we're both adults and," he kissed me then as his hands moved down, getting under the material of my robe and making my skin tighten in goosebumps where he touched.

"David," I said, but he cut me off with a kiss.

"I'm not a rapist," he said, his mouth so close to my ear that each word was a warm moist little puff, "and I'll stop if you say to."

I didn't say "Stop."

Instead, I said, "David, I'm three times your age."

His hands moved farther under the material of my robe. He started at my shoulders, his nails very lightly tickling slowly down my back, around the depression at the small of my back, and ending by covering my ass, his palms flat and gently pressing.

"I didn't hear 'stop,'" he said.

"David, stop," I said and he looked almost childlike the way his face fell.

I stood, taking deep breaths for several seconds and I was pleased at some deep, instinctual level to see that his breathing wasn't any too steady either.

"David," I said, this time it was my hand moving to lay gently on his cheeks, "I'm not saying 'no,' but I AM still hungry and I think we need to talk before this goes any farther."

And again, it was the childlike look on his face that got to me.

"Wellllll, a meatloaf sandwich WOULD be good," he said.

I made two sandwiches then, aware every second that I was naked under the light robe, aware every INSTANT that this man was watching me.

He said nothing while I prepared the sandwiches, cutting thick pieces of the meatloaf and adding a liberal coating of mayonnaise to the bread. I put the sandwiches on paper plates, added a handful of potato chips, poured two glasses of milk, set it all on the little kitchen table, and sat across from him.

After a couple of bites, the worst of my hunger assuaged, I could talk.

"What is it you think you want, David?" I asked.

He grinned around his own mouthful and said, "A woman who can make a sentence that does not include the words 'like,' 'totally,' or 'awesome,' and can talk about something other than how drunk she got."

I giggled and said, "Well, that's like totally awesome."

He threw a potato chip at me and said, "Noooooooooooooooooooo."

"David," I said, serious again, "I won't be some one-night stand, some notch you put on your belt or your bedpost or whatever it is you do."

"Marie," he said, matching my seriousness, "if that's what I wanted, believe me, there are plenty of schoolgirls fresh out of puberty with tight asses and perky tits who would like to have a slightly older and maybe a little dangerous veteran. Plenty of them have made it pretty obvious. But they bore me."

"I don't bore you?" I asked, interested in the conversation now and not thinking at all of my, well, my nakedness.

"Marie," he said, talking around a mouthful of his sandwich, a few crumbs escaping his mouth, "you fascinate me. You are the precise, mathematical opposite of boring."

"Okay," I said, meeting his eyes over our snack plates, "I'm not saying 'no,' but I AM asking again, what is it you think you want, David?"

"I want to share your bed, Marie," he said, reaching across the table and covering my hands with his, "and your life for the next three and a half years."

He held my eyes with his, letting that sink in.

"I'm not proposing marriage," he went on, "I know that's impossible. Hell, I see kids in my future. But I am proposing an enjoyable third of a decade, plenty of pleasure, and, based on what I've noticed, a lot of new experiences for you."

I said nothing for a few minutes while I finished my sandwich and chips and milk. I said nothing because my mind was racing down so many pathways I couldn't formulate an articulate thought. But each pathway - you're going to get hurt! - he's so much younger! - what will people think? - are you crazy? - all led me back to one place.

"Yes," I said, meeting his eyes.

He stood, took my hand, and began pulling me to my feet.

"David," I said, but he kept pulling and I had no choice but to stand. Well, I suppose I could have let him just pull me off of the chair and then fall on my face, but that would have been stupid.

He was almost a force of nature as he pulled me to my feet and then led me out of the kitchen.

"David, the dishes," I said but he said nothing, just kept pulling me along.

Eventually, we did them, the next day. We were naked when we did them.

I surrendered and followed him along.

In my bedroom, he released my hand long enough to turn on the reading lamp beside my bed before he returned to me and gently, holding my eyes with his, opened my robe and started working it down my shoulders and arms.

"David," I said, "I've never been naked with a man with the lights on."

He smiled but still said nothing, just kept working the robe down. He wasn't forcing me to do anything, but he was, well, "relentless" is a word that has a negative connotation but it's accurate in this case. I suppose I could say "persistent," but that's too emotionless and this was a very emotional event.

Dammit. I'm wandering again.

I resisted, holding my arms tight against my body, aware of how I sagged and of the weight I had put on since menopause, and of the cellulite dimples that went with the weight.

But he was relentless and eventually I surrendered, straightened my arms, and allowed him to pull the robe free.

I have never, before or since that instant, felt more completely naked, more utterly exposed, than I did right then.

I could feel the blush starting at my cheeks and spreading.

When I started to move my hands to try to cover myself he closed the distance between us and caught my wrists.

"No," he said, speaking for the first time since I said "Yes."

So I stood, blushing, almost feeling his eyes as he slowly looked me up and down.

"You really don't know, do you?" he asked.

The non sequitur of that question broke my trance, and "trance" is a fair word. Looking back, I now understand how the mouse feels, frozen by the sight of the snake approaching, or the deer, mesmerized by the oncoming headlights that will kill her.

"Know?" I asked.

"I'm always amazed," he said, stepping closer, completely invading my personal space as we used to say, his hand moving to my shoulders and very slowly, very gently, caressing down to my elbows, his palms delicate on the soft skin of my upper arms, "that beautiful women don't understand the effect they have on men."

And that broke the spell.

"Now I know you're being silly," I said, but I surprised myself by not trying to cover my nakedness.

"No," he said, his hands slowly moving up my back, not stopping at my shoulders but his fingers entwining in my hair, "I'm being honest," and he kissed me.

It was a kiss such as I had only imagined during the throes of orgasm as my carefully hidden vibrator finished its work, usually in the afternoon alone in my bed, the curtains drawn and the doors carefully locked. His lips were soft but demanding as his fingers held my head, unable to move.

I gasped when his tongue touched my lips, a sensation I had never felt before.

And my body went a little wild. I felt my nipples and areolas harden until they ached and deep in my belly a pressure bloomed that only my vibrator had caused before. I could no more have stopped my arms from moving around his neck than fly. And the movement of my hips, rocking, pushing myself against him, was as automatic as peristalsis.

He held that kiss, fingers in my hair with one hand, while his other hand slowly moved down my back to my bottom, taking my breath away.

Finally, he broke the kiss, moved both hands to my shoulders, and pushed me to arm's length. He met and held my eyes with his.

"I am going to have SO much fun," he said, his voice soft, almost hypnotic but, then again, I was pretty much open to suggestion right then, "making you understand that you are beautiful.

He released me then, and flipped the blanket and the top sheet back, and helped me into bed.

I watched as he peeled off the T-shirt he wore and then pushed down the long silk shorts he wore instead of pajama bottoms.

For the first time, I saw a man naked and erect in full light.

And he was gorgeous. Oh, he was handsome, and he had that slender hard body you associate with long-distance runners or speed swimmers. But my eyes kept going back to his erection, to that beautiful core of his manhood.

And I did think it was beautiful. I had never seen Chester naked and erect but, of course, I had felt him. And I had spent plenty of time with my vibrator.

David was a bit smaller than either of those, but it was, well, I don't want to overwork the word, but it was beautiful to me. His balls swung free in his loose scrotum and his erection, okay, his cock, pointed straight up his body, framed by the thick delta of his pubic hair.

I couldn't look away.

Unbidden, a random thought came to me. I remembered an episode of Sex in the City in which Charlotte met an artist who filled his studio with paintings of women's vaginas. When Charlotte asked, he said he thought he captured the essence, the core, of a woman with his paintings.

In that instant, I understood that artist. David's true core wasn't his brain or his mouth that said those outrageous things that made me laugh or think. His true core was that beautiful erection, standing proud and ready to take me.

When he started moving toward the bed I laid back and spread my legs, as I had done every Thursday night of my marriage.

But he didn't just crawl up and take what he wanted.

Instead, he moved to lay beside me, his fingertips very light, exploring me as if he was a blind man learning what I looked like with his fingertips.

I yelped when he plucked a hair from the tender skin of my armpit, reminding me that I hadn't bothered to use a razor since I buried Chester.

"Oh, God," I sort of moaned, "I'll shave in the morning."

He kissed where he had just plucked that hair and then said, "Nuh-uh, I like it this way."

I didn't have a chance to reply because he covered my mouth with a kiss and his hands started exploring again, stealing my breath.

The soft skin on the inside of my upper arm where I had put on so much weight seemed to fascinate him and he tickled and touched and kissed and each tickle and touch and kiss took away a little breath.

He cupped and lifted my breasts, rolled my nipples, and found my belly button, all with hands and fingertips.

When he reached lower, finding my mons veneris and then my clitoris, hiding modestly under the little hood of the fat pad there, my body responded, my hips thrust, and my legs kicked.

For the first time in my life, the man in my bed wasn't in a hurry to get what he wanted and be done. He took his time, caressing and kissing and, I suppose most of all to my state of mind, telling me I was beautiful. I was crying softly but, as the saying goes, they were tears of joy.

When he finally took me, face to face, what I've since come to know as the "Missionary Position," even that was slow and gentle. He kissed me and told me I was beautiful as he slipped inside of me where I was wet and slick and more ready than I had ever been before.

Even then he didn't hurry.

His rhythm was slow and almost gentle, and my body responded as it had never responded before.

That night, for the first time with a man, I achieved my orgasm. It was different from what happened with my trusty vibrator. It wasn't as sudden. It went deeper. Deep in my belly the pressure built and released and built again.