The Trouble with Pre

Author's Notes: This is a light hearted romp through, and a bit of a rant at, the way that advertisers are torturing our language, which, by the way, is English English. There is little, if any, sex involved, so if you are looking for a stroke story, there are plenty of others that will meet your needs.

A few explanations may be helpful to those outside the UK. Essex is a county just to the north east of London and its girls have a reputation of being brash, in your face, heavily made up and adorned with bling, and who are dedicated to the contemporary club scene. TOWIE is a TV show dedicated to the exploits of Essex girls - its full name is The Only Way is Essex.

If Essex is at one end of the cultural spectrum, Glyndebourne is at the other. It is a classical music (predominantly opera) festival held every summer in the grounds of a large private house near the south coast. Expected dress for men is Dinner Jacket and for ladies, it is an evening gown. Dinner can be taken there, or if you picnic, then a hamper from Fortnum's is "de rigeur".

With that said, over to you.

~--~--~--~--~

There was nothing particularly inspiring in my wardrobe: which was probably appropriate, because I wasn't particularly inspired by the dinner that I had been invited to. At least this time, Sian had been honest. Yes, there was going to be a single lady there, but no, this was not set-up. Said lady was as leery as I, but she was good fun, and given that Jack had invited people she didn't know, fun was otherwise going to be in short supply.

"And, honestly, that's really why I'm inviting you as well. I'll need some support, otherwise it's likely to be a very, very tedious evening! You can be very entertaining when you put your mind to it", she continued, "and Pixie has a very similar sense of humour. The two of you could be quite a double act!"

"Sian," I growled ...

"Don't worry, Richard, I learnt my lesson," she laughed. "This is just a genuine invitation to dinner. I know you can't turn down my cooking," she chuckled.

"Mmmm... All right, I'll come then," pathetically being pushed over. "Beef Wellington - for old times' sake?"

"God, has it been that long? Too passé now. I've moved on," Sian teased.

"As long as it's none of that Nouveau stuff - all decoration and no substance!"

"Oh no - much better than that! I've got hooked on to Hestor Blumenthal and his ideas of experimenting with all sorts of different tastes: I've perfected a truly mean version of his scrambled egg ice-cream."

I swallowed hard. "Oh look, my diary is telling me that I forgot that I have a very important appointment that evening. I'm doing a tasting on old shoe leather - it sounds infinitely more tasty than your concoctions, so I am going to have to pull out!"

"Oh, sod off, you idiot," Sian laughed. "I know you and your appetite." She paused. "And at least it seems that you haven't lost your sense of humour since we last saw you." Her voice became more concerned. "I know that you've been hiding yourself away, but the messages were that you had been seen out and about, and I was hoping that you might be feeling up to being sociable again. If you aren't up for it, don't worry, I understand - but I do hope you can come. It's been too long, and Jack and I really do want to see you again."

"Thanks, Sian, but I'll come. I need to get off my arse again and get out. I'll have to go shopping first though."

"What? Your clothes were always out of fashion - they're probably back in by now!"

"No. I need to get a hospital sized pack of indigestion tablets," I threw back laughing.

"Bastard! 7.30 on Saturday week. Just bring yourself, don't worry with any wine. Jack's gone as experimental with his wine as I have with my cooking. See you!" And she put the phone down before I had a chance to come back with some pithy retort.

But she was right. I did need to get out. Working from home with no daily companionship gave me cabin fever at times and I wasn't a great one for going out to bars and clubs. Personal ads gave me the shivers: "WLTM Male 50+, N/S, GOSH with view to...". EeuucchhH!

And as for online matching sites, Christ, everyone's at it. "Find the special someone who loves <fill in the blanks as appropriate> as much as you do." Newspapers, classical radio stations, even popular science magazines, are all promoting their own "super special" matching sites, with their own "super special" filling for the blanks in the ad. Having done the Myers-Briggs test as part of a job application, I knew that there were some parts of my psyche that I was quite happy not exposing on a public forum! So if I were lying, what did that say about the respondents?

No thank you. I prefer to handle things myself. If the right opportunity comes up, then it comes up. I'm really quite happy in my own skin, and after all these years, and the odd kicking from life, I think I know myself pretty well. I've learnt to say 'No', so why should I still be so leery about being set up? Let me explain.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

As you have probably realised by now, I am single. Divorced is actually the check box I tick on those damn application forms and product surveys. I have been divorced now for nearly 20 years. It wasn't one of those "Bury the Bitch/Butch" type of divorces: we just drifted apart as the kids grew. My working abroad for long periods certainly didn't help matters, and our incompatible interests meant that when we were both in this country, we still didn't spend that much time together. I love sport (participating, and not just watching) and hate Amateur Dramatics; she was the total opposite.

There are plenty of other stories here on the theme of "Opposites Do/Do Not Attract (delete as appropriate)" and this is not going to be one of them. Suffice to say that, in my view, they don't. Anyway, our divorce was quite amicable, and we remain friends, even now, despite (or maybe because of) what happened next.

After a brief hiatus, a couple of short flirtations and some 'few-night' stands, during which I learnt that there was a huge difference between marital sex and non-marital sex - one of the main ones being that it is a lot more enjoyable when you can actually see your partner - things between my ex and I had settled down to the point where she started pushing her friends my way.

And one of them happened to be a tall red head with tumbling curly hair that fell half way down her back, and a bubbly personality that was always exciting and laughing. Now, I have always had a thing for red heads - the more vibrant the colour the better, as far as I am concerned. So it was a while before I took in the rest of her body. A decent pair of boobs, and a trim waist; legs that looked better in slacks or under a long dress than on display, but hey, you can't have everything. That hair just had me drooling. Oh yes, and grey eyes.

Hooked? Line and sinker!

It wasn't long before the banter turned flirtatious and the odd 'double entendres' that were dropped into the conversation to test the water became more frequent and less subtle. By the time I flew off on a business trip to the US, they were blatant.

That they had turned into single 'entendres' was confirmed on my return. She met me at the airport, and when we took the lift to the 7^th floor of the Car Park at Heathrow's Terminal 3, I assumed it was busy and that was the closest place she could park. But when the lift door opened, the car was sitting in splendid isolation as far from the lift as you could get.

I turned to look at her. "Worried about hitting something?" I asked as the door closed behind us.

"No, just wanted some space," she grinned. She slid my hand which she was still holding into her coat. "I didn't think you were quite ready for an audience for a welcome home fuck," she continued as she pressed my fingers through a very damp patch of pubic hair and into her slit. "I thought this would be a good time to turn words into action."

The last word got swallowed as with one hand she grabbed the back of my head and pulled me in for a full tongue kiss. Her other hand undid the buttons on her coat.

When the last one was undone, she retrieved my fingers from her pussy, sucked them clean and started walking across the floor to the car, her coat flapping open around her. I was rooted to the spot. Hell, it hadn't been that long ago that I had progressed from darkened rooms to being able to see what I was actually doing. This blatant exhibitionism was another quantum leap for my mind to get around.

My cock, however, had no such reservations. When she turned round to see where I was, holding the coat wide open, it ignored the 8 hours of cramped torture in the back of the plane, and just leapt to attention.

"Like what you see?" she asked as she turned round and flounced (there is no other word for it) across to the car. I hurried after her as best I could, hampered by a suitcase and a raging erection. We got to the car at the same time. She went round towards the passenger door, and I followed, putting the case down by the back seat door.

She pulled me into a passionate kiss, pushing her tongue deep into my mouth. Her hands were working on my trousers. As soon as they were loose, and had dropped to my ankles, and she had pushed down my briefs, she let me go. She pulled the coat aside and draped herself across the bonnet of the car.

"Now, fuck me!"

So I did. I lifted up the tails of the coat and draped them across her back, and plunged straight in. God, she was hot and wet. Even if the door to the lift had opened, or if a car had come up the ramp, I wouldn't have been able to stop. Neither of us was going to last long - we were just too excited - and we didn't. We both came together, and neither of us was quiet in our release. There was no one else on the floor to hear us, and if the sound did make it to another floor, then so what - I doubt anyone would come to investigate!

As I pulled out, she turned round and came into my open arms. "Well, that was some welcome home present!" I laughed.

"Well, we were going to make love at some stage soon, so I just thought we should make the first one memorable."

"It was certainly that - I won't forget this in a hurry."

"I hope you won't forget it at all!" she quipped. "Now we had better get home: we can repeat this evening, and this time, I'll get to look at you when you come!"

I leant down to gather my briefs and trousers. On the way down, I gave her clit a quick lick which sent a tremor through her (and yes, the carpet did match the drapes). The juices that had leaked out of us when I pulled out had made a small puddle on the floor, but at least we wouldn't have to worry about clearing it up. There are some benefits of screwing outside, I thought.

As I put my case in the boot, she slipped on a pair of knickers "don't want my coat to give people the wrong impression" and settled into the driving seat. I would have been in no good state to drive home after the flight, and with the added activity, I was asleep by the time we had reached the ground floor.

That episode pretty much set the tone of our relationship. Sexual aggression, and the more chance there was to be seen, the more aggressive it was - but only if those in a position to see were total strangers. As I gradually came to realise, there was no way she would risk being regarded as anything but an upright, well behaved and modest Catholic girl by her local peer group. The joke about the stains on her coat was only partly in jest.

After the ersatz vanilla of my marriage, this was pure excitement. Sure, we were the model middle-class, sober couple when in company: we were never invited to any partner swapping parties, that's for certain. I sometimes wonder if they exist beyond story-tellers' imagination. There were still limitations. She wouldn't let me come in her mouth, and neither of us had read "Anal Sex for Dummies": using butter, a la Marlon Brando, just seemed too gauche, so the one attempt remained just that.

Not surprisingly, we took a lot of trips to other parts of the country in those early days. Ever wondered why those spiral staircases in castles curve clockwise as you ascend? The text books will tell you that it allows the defenders full use of their sword hand as they attack the aggressors, whose right hand is cramped against the central spine of the stairway.

Bollocks! It's an easy right hand grope straight up the skirt of the woman walking up the stairs in front of you. Get the right grip, and the knickers come straight off as she continues up the stairs. If you take my advice, though, it's probably best not to try the same thing with the skirt until you get to the top - too easy for her to trip and fall back, using you as the cushion to soften the fall.

Go somewhere a bit off the beaten track, and you can really let the exhibitionism rip. A quick fuck at the top of one towers with the now skirt- and knicker-less partner, followed by a photo shoot of her naked body walking across the castle keep, or posing against the castle wall - hands not coyly hiding boobs and pussy as one might expect from a stolid middle class lady, but actively playing with them - all with a leery and seductive grin.

Inevitably, this was all followed with yet another rambunctious fuck in the middle of the castle ward before retrieving our clothes and heading off for a well-earned lunch at a local pub. (If you are going to follow in our footsteps, I would suggest not doing this at one of the English Heritage or National Trust managed sites! There are plenty of unmanaged castles in the Welsh Marches.)

Throughout all this, I had never fully moved in with her. Because of my divorce, I was renting, but she had done well out of her own divorce, and had a decent sized house in one of the better areas of our town. Obviously, I spent a lot of time there: the odd week night turned into most week nights; the occasional week end turned into every other weekend. Until finally, we arrived at that great sign of "togetherness" so loved of the middle class - the DINNER PARTY!! We started hosting those as well.

"Head in the Clouds", "Walking on Air" - you're all familiar with the clichés. It takes an outsider to knock a sense of reality into the infatuated. In this case, it was three insiders. My children refused point blank to be near me if she was going to be around.

Go to her house on their weekend? No way.

Lots of the LW stories on this site involve a burgeoning relationship between divorcees being 'managed' by the children of one or other adult. Often commentators deride the author for implying that anyone under the age of consent can be so Machiavellian. Noooo... Children learn to manipulate their parents within minutes of being born: they just get more astute about it as they get older. Recognise, also, that most children are extremely caring and protective of their parents, and you start wondering just who is looking after whom? And if they have been raised to be reasonably confident and to have their own opinion? You will get it - from both barrels, and on rapid fire!

And that is precisely what I got.

With their pretty constant sniping, the rosy tint in the glasses started to fade. I started to realise that almost all of the social occasions were of her making. Even when drinking in the bar after a cricket match, I realised that her constant presence at my side was not because of companionship, she was making a statement: "I'm allowing him to be with the lads".

The straw that finally shattered the glasses (terrible mixed metaphor, sorry, grammazis!) was a suggested trip to Venice: it's been an ambition since I was young. When I got back from work the following day, I was presented with an almost complete itinerary of what we would be going to see, for how long and where we going to eat. Oh, there were a couple of gaps that I could fill in, but 'I thought it would save time to plan it all out' madam was in control - and don't you forget it!

As you can imagine, there was no trip to Venice. There was a blistering argument, slammed doors, fists thumped on arms and chest - even bites (thank God she didn't watch boxing, or she might easily have followed Tyson's example). I know that red-heads have this reputation for a fiery temper, which is really unfair, because there are plenty of women out there with really bad tempers whose hair is a different shade of bottle, but, in this instance, the stereotype was on full display.

When that didn't work, it was the tears and the apologies. Like others who have written here, there is that yearning to forgive and go back in these situations. The memories of the good times burn brighter than the swirling grey clouds of the bad times of anonymity.

But like giving up alcohol or smoking, it has to be all or nothing. In this case, it was a complete withdrawal: batten down the hatches, don't answer the phone, don't open the door.

And, like thousands of others before, you re-emerge into public life only to get pissed off with your friends when they ask how you could have been taken in, been so gullible. And you're only pissed off because you've been thinking the same thing yourself, and the only answer you can come up with is that, basically, you were an idiot, letting your little head rule your big head - but that's not something you can really talk about among the professional classes at a dinner party, is it?

And you ask yourself, was I that shy when I was growing up? Did I have my head in my books so much that I ignored life? Why couldn't I see what everyone else saw? Hell, what WERE the signs that they saw? Were they written in some sort of ink that is only visible under UV lighting - like the patterns on flowers that are visible to bees but not to humans?

And then, to preserve a little self-respect (and sanity), you come to realise that being a shit is gender neutral. People who are committed to getting the relationship they want will go out and get it: it doesn't matter whether they have a pair of tits and a pussy or a pair of balls and a cock. They bait the line, hook the mark and reel him/her on in. If it means using others to push your prey into the trap, then that's what they'll do too. But, if you're really lucky, some one (or three) will be there to cut the line just in time!

That's what my ex-wife came to realise, too: she had been used too. She's never tried to set me (or anyone else up) again. And, as you can tell, it's also why I have an almost rabid phobia about set-ups!

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

The reminiscences faded, but at least they had served the purpose of reinforcing my "I will not be set-up" mindset. They had not, however, helped me decide what I should wear, and I was still staring vacantly into my wardrobe. Without too much agonising, I grabbed some clothes that seemed to go together, and which, I thought, were sufficiently up-to-date that one of the more casual TV presenters would have worn them, and got ready to leave. I called a taxi: if the evening was going to be as bad as I imagined, I would be having more than just a couple of glasses of wine!

Jack met me at the door and looked at his watch. "Damn, only 15 minutes late! I had you pegged for at least half-an-hour." He sniffed the air. "And unless you've taken to drinking aftershave, I don't even detect any alcohol. Double damn!", he grinned at me and pulled me into a big bear hug.

"It's great to have you back and out and about, Richard", he whispered fiercely in my ear. As he released me, he whipped his head round, saving each of us from seeing the moisture in the other's eyes. "Sian," he called, "he's here," and turning back to grin at me again, added "and you win on both counts, sod it!"