The One-Night Backflip

Officer, before you say anything, I didn't intend for anybody to be hurt.

As far as I knew, Rajesh was a sweet, thoughtful twenty-two year old working in Silicon Valley as a programmer. He worked for Google and made six figures, keeping in reasonably fit shape by heading to the gym over his weekends, which impressed Ava, my wife.

Rajesh had won at life in every area except for the softest and most sacred of all arenas, the bedroom. We were swingers in dire need of a threesome, and we began the 'interview' process at a corner booth in Longhorn, a semi-upscale steakhouse with good service and even better food.

Rajesh was a little put off by the fact that he was talking to a married couple instead of just Ava, but it wasn't anything he wasn't aware of already. He found us on Tinder looking for a one-night stand, and was pleasantly surprised to match with Ava-- a beautiful brunette with movie-star good looks-- whose only caveat was that she insist I join in on the fun, which he agreed to.

Even in our old age, when we should have been fretting over early retirement, 401Ks, and what kind of boat or fancy car to buy to offset our midlife crisis, we were always looking for something new to try. Me and Ava operated as a team. On our wedding night, Ava made a sex bucket list of all the things she wanted to do, and before my fiftieth year on Earth we'd already managed to cross off the most important ones, which effectively meant that we were banned from the local zoo, the paintball park, the grocery store, and from ever being allowed to go skydiving again.

I'm proud to say that, despite all other areas of my life being perfectly humdrum, me and Ava had cemented ourselves in the Guinness Book of World Records for the highest altitude two people have made love to each other while falling out of the sky until reaching terminal velocity in an article titled "The Mile High Club."

You could bet our public notary had one hell of a time watching us. He screamed all the way down, but that might have just been his adrenaline talking. Falling out of the sky can do that to you sometimes.

Lately, though, we'd fallen into a kind of rut. We were getting tired of each other, if it was even possible for a couple that lived in the same bed for three decades, and suddenly nothing seemed as interesting or exciting in the bedroom as we wanted it to be. Sometimes Ava would look away from me, her eyes noticeably dimmer, as if I had said something to offend her, and other times when she would refuse to speak to me halfway through and leave us in the middle of panting, awkward silence.

I realized we'd have to take drastic measures if I wanted to save our marriage. I threw in the wrench into the rusted gearwork of our nightly routine by adding a third person to the mix, which was something, ironically enough, that we'd never tried before. Ava was the only person I trusted, but now I felt like I was ready to meet someone new-- with her, course, which only made it doubly exciting.

So Rajesh matched with us and made it a date, and the rest was history. As far as I knew, Rajesh was a bright, charming young man who was more or less up for anything new. I liked him.

"I just thought it'd be fun," Rajesh said, taking an enormous bite out of his tenderloin steak.

"Well, you've come to the right people," Ava said, nodding slowly and smiling on the strength of two glasses of red wine. "That's what I love about California. People are always willing to try new things, not like those prudes in Idaho."

"Yeah, those people," I said.

Ava shot me a look. I sank into silence and returned to my salad, which she ordered for me as part of my diet plan. My love handles were getting in the way of our love, and she'd resolved to do everything she could to fix that.

But sometime during dinner, Ava had shut me out of the conversation completely while talking to Rajesh, which irritated me. But it was her night, and more importantly, her date, and I knew better than to stop her when she was tipsy.

"I'm just so tired of the expectations everyone puts on me," Rajesh said.

"How's that?" said Ava.

Rajesh rolled his eyes thoughtfully. He let out a long sigh. "Well, my parents want to arrange a marriage with me and some girl whose parents they know. I don't really have a choice, but until then I figure I'm going to enjoy everything while I still can."

Rajesh took a hasty sip of wine and grimaced. "If they knew I was here, they'd be mortified."

"You're your own person," Ava said. "Sometimes you just have to listen to the voice inside instead of what doing other people tell you." She leaned forward. "Do you know what they called me in college?"

I made a dry, whimsical expression and shrugged. She'd told this to me a million times, her signature innuendo.

"Sally Ride," she said. "And can you guess why?"

"Because she's an astron-- ohh," Rajesh said, as if she had just told him a joke with a clever punchline.

"You can't let those people get to you," Ava said. "Do that, and they'll start telling you how to do everything. What to wear, where you should eat, what kind of person you should be. It gets exhausting."

"I can imagine," Rajesh said. He turned to me out of politeness. "So what do you do, exactly? I'm curious."

"We're accountants," I said. "Been a certified CPA ever since I graduated from Berkeley."

Rajesh nodded, looking at me in a new light.

Everything balanced out in the end, and it was by law of nature that with such boring, domestic white-collar jobs, we should, by cosmic appointment, compensate for this by having wild, record-breaking sex lives.

After we paid the bill and giving our waiter a generous tip, Ava and Rajesh piled into the backseat of our minivan while I started up the engine. Rajesh whispered something in her ear and Ava covered her mouth, stifling a giggle. I glanced into the rearview mirror. "What's so funny?" I said, wanting to join in on the fun, but they ignored me.

I drove home, troubled by thoughts of why Ava had seemed so distant from me during dinner--almost cold-- like I was a stranger and Rajesh someone she'd known all her life. I wondered if it was something I said, but that didn't seem likely. I'd noticed her act this way for a couple weeks now. It bothered me more than it should.

When we arrived at our home, Ava and Rajesh followed me past the front door, chattering with each other. Rajesh, despite making more in one year than both of us combined, stood in the middle of the parlor, his head tilted towards the wooden railing of our second-floor balcony, awestruck. "Nice place," he murmured. "I wish I had a house like this."

"You will," Ava said. She took his hand and led him upstairs. "Now come on. There's a lot I want to show you."

I followed them upstairs, and the three of us ended up in the master bedroom. Ava went right to work, jumping straight into her preliminary stretches. She bent over and tried to touch her toes a few times.

"What are you doing?" Rajesh said, the grin fading to puzzlement.

"Just warming up," Ava said, showing him the distracted, playful smile of someone in the middle of a workout. She stretched her triceps next, rotating her hips with the effort. It was only when she began doing jumping jacks in the middle of the bedroom did it dawn on Rajesh that something was fundamentally different about the way we did things.

He looked to me in growing bewilderment. I wasn't much help, because right then I was busy strapping on my Schwinn bicycle helmet. "Safety first," I said, pulling the straps tight. I flashed Rajesh a friendly smile to show him there was nothing to be afraid of, but he didn't seem to appreciate this.

"I'm leaving," Rajesh announced, abruptly breaking the concentrated silence of me and Ava's pre-coitus warmup routine.

Ava stopped in mid-jumping jack, startled. Her face looked wounded. "What's the matter?"

Rajesh lingered around the doorway in a limbo of indecision. "I don't know if this a practical joke, but it's not funny."

"Sorry, Rajesh," Ava said. "We don't get visitors often, and we're-- well-- we're very adventurous, you know? We love trying new things."

Ava blushed guilelessly, like a lovestruck teenager. Seeing that there wasn't a trace of irony in Ava's beautiful face, he softened a little, and plopped down at the edge of our bed, confused and vaguely alarmed. But mostly he looked demoralized, as if someone had just punched him in the gut. This night was not turning out the way he expected it to.

"Hey, it's all right," Ava said, rubbing his bare back with her hand. She tilted her head to look at him. "Rajesh?" she said, searching his face for any sign of reciprocation. He only looked sullen.

"Yeah," he said.

"I'm sorry if I put you off with my stretching routine," Ava said, genuinely upset. "Things can get rough sometimes, and I cramp up. It's not a pleasant feeling. When you get to my age, you'll understand."

Rajesh didn't respond. Ava continued to search his face with her eyes, this time with more compassion. She touched the underside of his chin with her fingers. "If at any time you feel uncomfortable, just say the safeword and I promise we'll stop in the middle of whatever we're doing. Do you still remember it?"

"Pineapple," Rajesh said glumly.

"That's good," Ava said, coaxing him out of his shell a little more. "We want you to have fun. It's going to be an experience."

Rajesh smirked a little, but I could tell he was feeling better about this, which made me feel better, too.

"Yeah, I guess."

"You ever been with a woman before?" Ava said, with half-lidded eyes.

"Not since high school, really," said Rajesh, managing a little shrug. He grinned, but mostly out of embarrassment. "It was kind of a disaster."

"That's okay," Ava said. "You can't expect to be good at anything without practice. Now let me show you a good time." She lifted her wrist and activated the stopwatch on her digital G-Shock Timex.

Rajesh looked up at Ava expectantly. I gave Rajesh a double thumbs-up to show support, but he ignored me.

They kissed. They kissed some more. Then they did some other things. Once they got really into it, Ava reached out and gave me a tug. I joined in, but at this point Rajesh didn't seem to mind.

Like Ava said, things could get rough. For me and Ava, our bedroom was like a WWE ring, but because Rajesh was with us, we toned things down. I wasn't any spring chicken, but I'm proud to say I still had a few moves, mostly the ones in midair. Ava, who normally had been underperforming with me in a kind of athletic rut for the past couple weeks, impressed me with a few new tricks of her own. She even started doing cartwheels halfway through, which I'd never seen her do since our honeymoon in Key West. I got so excited that I must have passed out, because the next time I opened my eyes Ava and Rajesh were doing the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which takes a few minutes to prepare for.

Ava came down from the ceiling like a paratrooper dropping foot-first into enemy territory. I curled up and rolled onto my side in a fetal position, my hands wrapped around my neck. I hadn't seen a doctor for an entire year since my last heart attack, but at this point I wasn't taking any chances.

"Yaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!" she said.

"Aaargh!" said Rajesh.

That was when she must have done her signature triple-handspring backflip, because the next thing I knew Rajesh was lying spread-eagled on the floor in his birthday suit, unconscious.

"What the hell happened?" I said, watching Rajesh with growing panic. Did he have a concussion? Would I have to call an ambulance, or, worse, the police? We were always model citizens, the two smiling middle-aged people who mowed the lawn and raked the leaves for fun and said hi to our neighbors when they came home from work. What would everyone think? I started hyperventilating, but Ava didn't seem in the mood to help.

"I don't know," she said, as if she was the last person I should have asked. "I guess I just got carried away. You know how it is."

"You never knocked me unconscious before," I said, my facing growing hot.

"Well, it's just, you know," Ava said, her bright green eyes blank with incipient panic. She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. "I mean, I never really thought you'd like it."

"You could have at least asked," I said, wounded from her obvious betrayal. "You always said you were too tired, but the moment we bring a stranger into this house it's like you're a different person."

"Rajesh isn't a stranger," she said, gesturing towards the unconscious body on the floor. "He's a very sweet man."

"And I'm not?" I said.

"How is this relevant right now?"

I took Ava's hand roughly and pulled her into the tiny walk-in closet that was barely larger than a refrigerator. We stood toe-to-toe, nose-to-nose, confronting each other. "What is your problem?" she said.

"Hey, this whole thing was your idea," I said.

Ava began to rationalize everything I said in her own words, which was one of the most effective argument tactics women use when they are in the wrong. "You're implying something, aren't you," Ava said, nodding vigorously as if she had just discovered something worthy of a Nobel Prize. "Because I keep getting this feeling that you want to say this thing, only you're not saying it, and it's driving me crazy--"

"You don't love me anymore," I blurted out.

There was the agonizing silence of an impending disaster, like a car that has swerved off a cliff and hasn't yet reached the ground.

Ava scoffed, and my heart just broke. She closed her eyes and shook her head in disbelief. "Look," she said. "Just because we brought Rajesh in doesn't mean I don't love you anymore. You were the one who wanted to spice things up."

"The way you looked at him," I said, as if this was all the evidence I needed. Ava wasn't the smartest person I've met, but when we began arguing, it was like talking to a Harvard-educated lawyer. You couldn't win.

Ava appeared clueless, which somehow made it even worse. "The way I looked at him? Is that all I did to make you feel this way?"

"You never did the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with me," I said. "You always said it was too dangerous, but all of a sudden you and Rajesh were having the time of your lives while I was somewhere else."

"You fainted," she said. "What was I supposed to do, throw a glass of ice water at you?"

"Only when we did the Aqua-Man meets Black Manta roleplay last Tuesday," I said.

"Oh my god," Ava said. "Why do you feel the need to bring this up right now?"

We were starting to sound like an old married couple, bickering over the tiniest things. Not that we weren't two middle-aged suburbanites who had once been madly in love with each other, but when you started to sound like an old married couple, you were in trouble. "Listen," I said. "There's an unconscious guy in our bedroom. Why don't we figure out what to do with him instead of arguing?"

"We're not arguing," Ava said. "We're just having a calm discussion." If Ava didn't have so much fun taking care of me, she would have made a damn good politician.

I opened the closet door. To my shock and dismay, Rajesh was nowhere to be found. The bedroom door hung ajar.

"Look what you did," Ava said. "You scared that poor young man away."

"I scared him?" I said, leaving my accusation hanging. There were more important things to worry about.

"Help! Help!" a voice came from the street outside. Ava and I looked at each other, momentarily united by panic. She moved to the window and pulled the shutters open. Rajesh was staggering down Main Street like an escaped convict, his eyes swiveling around wildly. A triangle of dried blood had formed beneath his nose and ended at his chin, making for a grisly, visceral image beneath the fluorescent streetlights.

"You broke his nose?" I said.

"I told him to wear a helmet," she said. "He wouldn't listen."

"He must be cold out there. Let's go. Bring the space blanket."

"But I was saving that for our Apollo 69 Roleplay--"

"Come on, Ava," I said.

Rajesh was talking to two police officers when we finally caught up to him. He had both hands locked in steel bracelets, covering his groin from the elements and the prospect of future embarrassment. The two police officers had their hands on their hips, and looked just as alarmed as we felt at that moment. One of them said something into his walkie-talkie in a clear, impersonal voice that filled my heart with dread.

"You two live around here?" one of them said.

"Yes," I said.

Rajesh turned to look at us with fearful, terror-stricken eyes. For a brief moment he forgot about his embarrassment and raised both hands in pointed accusation. It was not a pleasant sight, let me tell you.

"She dried to gill be!" Rajesh said, speaking through his nosebleed. "That lady dried to gill be!"

The two police officers looked at us. One of them shrugged. "You're coming with us," he said.

Ava and I were resigned to whatever fate had in store for us; this situation was bad enough as it was. The policemen, out of whatever policy, had to take us to the precinct in handcuffs, which wasn't entirely unpleasant.

"Tighter, please?" I said to the officer behind me.

"Shut up."

At the police precinct they separated me and Ava and placed me in an empty interrogation room with a bottle of water and a one-way window that looked like a mirror from my side. After what seemed like an eternity, a large, weary man in a rumpled suit and a badge necklace came inside with paperwork for me to fill out. After reading me my rights, he asked me if I wanted to have a lawyer present. I declined.

Instead, I told him everything.

And now I see I have quite the audience. After I explained to the detective what the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was, he gave me a bright, puzzled look, and I realized he was trying very hard not to laugh. He excused himself from the room and came back with two more detectives at his side. "Listen, you gotta hear this," he said. "Bob, tell my friends how you do the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."

So I told them. They laughed. They laughed and laughed. The two detectives left and returned with four police officers and the chief of police.

"Tell them what you told us," one detective said.

The police chief, a stern, white-haired man who looked like he hadn't smiled since the turn of the millennium, sank to his knees in laughter, pounding the floor with his fist.

"I gotta try that with my wife someday," a detective said.

"Wait'll you see the look on her face!" someone else said.

"So, does this mean I can go?" I said, taking advantage of the brief mood of levity that had entered the interrogation room.

There was silence. All the detectives stared at me, and all burst into laughter at once. Some of them clapped me on the back. I grinned. There was an air of camaraderie, and for the first time that night I felt like a part of civilization again. I was one of the guys. It was only when they led me out of the room and began guiding me down the basement into a holding cell that I realized that wasn't the only reason they were laughing.

"You, my friend, just confessed to assault and battery," a detective said, grinning with mirth. "Thanks for making my job so easy. It's the easiest night I've had in months."

They slid the bars closed behind me and locked the cell door. "Hey, wait a minute!" I said. "I want a lawyer."

"Should have asked for one earlier," the detective said. "Though I'm sure he'll be more than interested to learn what you were up to tonight."

"Come on, guys," I said, growing more and more disheartened. The group of police officers and law enforcement agents turned down the hallway, their voices merry with laughter.