Five Nude Men and My Wife

Thick, gray clouds scattered a mist over the upper part of the mountain on which my wife, Nicole and I had checked into a spa, a one room cottage, with screen doors that banged shut, and pebbled paths that cut beneath Douglas firs and tall Spruce. The air was clean and thin.

We were there for a bachelorette party for my wife's wealthy sister, Ashly. This would be her fifth marriage. Along with my wife, Ashley had invited 8 of her best girlfriends who, despite their middle age, looked remarkably beautiful.

As we walked to our cottage, the mountain, with its carpet of trees absorbed me in its vast quiet space, in the ongoing circle of life it contained, in the fine delicate indecipherable whispers that beckon us back to the root of ourselves.

My wife's sharp voice snapped me out of my rumination. "Why put the suitcase there. Put it on this luggage stand."

"Sorry," I mumbled, moving it.

Later she clanged with irritation from the bathroom. "Why didn't you bring the new toothbrush I bought for you. I set it on your bathroom sink you couldn't miss it."

"Sorry." I mumbled again, "I put it in the drawer."

"The one you're using is full of bacteria. There's a cocktail party in an hour. I want you to go to meet everyone."

She dressed methodically rolling her hair in curlers, slipping on a long blouse, then white stretch pants, and sandals before peering at the mirror, grim faced, to start on her makeup. I gazed at her. Her face was fixed with impatience, a look she wore constantly lately, at least in my presence, as if she were imbued with an irritation she couldn't shake, a midlife misalignment I couldn't interpret despite our 22 years of marriage, two children, and an ongoing sorting out of our differences that had seemed, at least in my mind, to have won us a warmth we could easily locate and an intimacy that minimized the wounds we might inflict on one another. But something felt ruptured.

At the cocktail party my wife's sister held up her hands to quiet the room, gesturing for calm. Everyone held a glass of wine, or a mixed drink or both and stood at attention or sat with their legs crossed, thinking, I imagined, that this would be the first of many rambling overly sentimental toasts.

"Beware!" she blurted out, grinning fiercely, sucking in her cheeks, and holding up her scotch and water, "of naked men in the public hot tubs." I heard sighs and saw eyes rolling, but an amused buzz lifted the room too. Then just as quickly, to dampen what zest she had provoked, she added, "probably not the kind of naked men you want see." Everyone chuckled. The ladies resumed their conversations. I touched my wife's elbow. She was flush.

"Watch out for male nudity," I bantered as I caressed her arm lightly, preparing to leave for a hike.

"Are you headed to a hot tub tonight?" I asked.

She didn't answer but grinned, which was the first time I'd seen her smile all day. She touched my arm, then kissed me on the cheek.

"Okay, Im gonna go." I said after standing waiting for her to say something.

"Have fun," she said in a song like voice. The next day, after my long hike in the morning and her massage and pedicure, she suggested we go to one of the public hot tubs.

We put on our bathing suits and thick terrycloth bathrobes. The hot tubs were at the top of a very long, steep wood planked staircase that reminded me of a Buddhist temple in Nepal. The arduous hike was complicated by my cheap unfitted flip flops. We arrived breathless. My wife poked her head behind a tall wooden gate, just to our left, and turned to me.

"This one's fine."

We disrobed in a small dressing area. I hung my heavy cotton robe on a hook and waited for her to put her hair back in a ponytail.

Though it was late afternoon a wet gray cloud sat just above us clasping the mountain. I could feel the heat from the tub when we stepped to its edge. There were five men sitting submerged. One tall square faced black man with droplets of water in his beard, two young men sitting close as if holding hands, another small bald man, overly wrinkled, with blue eyes that met mine uncomfortably, as if questioning our presence. The last, reminded me of a warrior. He was half submerged, ponytailed, and brown eyed. His tanned hairless body glistened. He had the shoulders of an ocean swimmer and the presence an ancient chief.

We tiptoed in together, and sat with our backs against the jets. The water stung and soothed at the same time, pressing on my skin with the touch of a masseuse. It opened my pores. My face moistened. I tried to stop my mind from poking me for attention. I'd been working on staying in the present, not getting carried away by my thoughts but staying with sensations, sounds, textures and tastes, being mindful. Ah the air. The scent of the evergreens. But my mind wanted to investigate the guys. My mind said we'd stepped into a new world.

The two guys across from us, the ones sitting close, didn't appear to have swim suits on. I glanced a second time through the churning water and it looked to be true. I arched my back and looked up at the sky, which was threatening rain now, and took a deep breath. But as I straightened up to lean along the edge of the hot tub, the tall, black bearded man pushed himself up by his hands and out of the tub, grabbed a towel and plopped down in a lounge chair, legs opened. He too was naked. I realized we were the only ones wearing bathing suits. A few minutes later the warrior lifted himself onto the edge of tub. He moved athletically, spun himself sideways on his butt cheeks, opened his legs, then sat back lounging, on an elbow, on display it seemed, for my wife. Brazen. Proud. His cock was long and thick, tubular, lazy, as if he'd just had an erection that was sated.

I looked at Nicole. She looked at the warrior. She stared, fixated, studying his organ as if captivated. A wondrous glaze came over her, and she glanced at me, her face girlish, filled with a sense that she had something she wouldn't give up, something pure and material, something rearranging her heart. But what, I couldn't tell.

But then as quickly as I'd seen this aura enveloped her it disappeared, was gone and the worry was back. Her eyes darkened, she knitted her brow, crumbling her face into a maze of wrinkles before she dipped her head under the water.

I shook my head. I felt I had caught a glimpse of someone in my wife I didn't know. A brief quake broke through my chest and the skin of my neck and cheeks stung as if pricked with needles. I couldn't yield. I splashed the water with both hands in response to what felt like a violation. I'd been pierced, not by the cocks of these men, or their nakedness, or the raw Whitman like maleness of the warrior, but by my wife's full cherubic grin, the amusement his presence raised in her that left me sure that even with me there, had he offered his hand and pointed to the empty shed, she would have taken it and followed him.

"We need to go," I growled.

"No." Nicole laughed, treading water before dipping her head below the surface again.

I stammered. We stayed for thirty minutes. All but the warrior left. He stayed and sat without speaking, his penis distinct and full, languidly laid out on the concrete edge, himself disinterested, raw, like an animal.

"That was fun." Nicole grinned, as we dried each other off, a come-hither ease filled her eyes, her lips were wet and she seemed eager to speak but kept her words to herself.

My irritation broke. I had learned not to hold on. I laughed.

That night as she told the story her face glowed with a euphoria I not seen in years. "He was huge," she told two women we sat with who leaned forward as she spoke. "He sat like a statue, like a drunken satyr. He might have had horns. I could barely look away."

The next day, I planned a long solitary hike in the late afternoon. Nicole was going shopping with a friend. When I returned home, she still wasn't home.

Moments later she arrived wearing her terrycloth bathrobe and bathing suit. She flung off the robe, fell back on the bed, spread her arms and let out a huge sigh while staring up at the ceiling, beaming.

I flushed.

"Where have you been?" I asked, thinking she had been shopping.

"I went back to the hot tub." She said, still looking at the ceiling as if basking in a memory.

"I thought you were going shopping."

"I was, but I changed my mind." She said again, without any hesitation.

"You wanted to go to the public hottub instead?" I asked.

"Yep."

I was silent. She didn't speak. Much hung in the air.

"Were any of the men there we saw yesterday?"

"Yep." She said with a jab as if she meant to stick me with the word. I listened.

Turns out the guy who flashed us, the warrior was there again. And naked again. His name was Jules. He was a sculptor from Taos, has an exhibition opening in Denver next weekend and a gallery a block from the ocean in Venice California."

I felt the crack in my chest open again. My skin pricked, then burned and I clenched my fists. I was overcome with a blindness that ruined things between us, that separated us in a way I hated. She'd sat up. He face blunt and obstinate, gathering a force or a vision with which she'd pummel me. I wanted to duck. I wanted to avoid the disconnect. I was going to say something but stopped. Instead I put my hands behind my back, took a breath, and rocked in my shoes trying to ground myself in the moment.

As I tried to steady myself, I saw the recent hardness and irritation return to my wife's face. She'd been celebratory when she walked in but her joy had vanished. Her face grew stern and flat.

"Did you have a good time?" I offered.

"I did. I really did. I was hoping Jules would be there. You don't know how excited I was to see him there."

I growled, though stayed settled. "Why the affront? You sound as if I tried to forbid you."

"You do. Not directly, but you do. If I would have told you I planned to go to the hottub alone you would have wanted to have a long discussion about it. You would have drained away my excitement."

I felt on top for a moment.

"I would have?" I scoffed.

"Yes, yes, you would have." She stewed. "You can't fuck me anymore. You're too afraid of hurting me. So you fuck me with your mind except you don't give me anything when you do instead you empty me."

"I don't understand."

She shook her head dismissively.

"You can't understand. You're just being you. Let me tell you. Let me explain. It's nice to be among men, among naked men, raw, proud, open, desirous, naked men."

I laughed.

But she sneered in response.

"It's a joy to sit with a man who isn't afraid of his cock. A man who has no hidden hand to play, nothing to hide, who nocks his arrow and lets it fly and shoots for the bullseye and never apologizes for a miss."

I stepped back. She glared at me.

"That's the kind of man who moves me. Men unlike you darling. Men who won't let the woman in their lives turn them into little bunny rabbits like you've become, following me here and there, always asking what I want, trying so hard to make sure I'm not...I'm not upset, not disappointed in you. I need a man who can take my hate. Your pandering tires me out, and neuters us because it's all in the service of your little ego."

"Good, you cook me dinner, you wash my clothes, you arrange a wonderful evening at the opera but where's your cock? When was the last time you were hard for me? I want a nude man. I want his erection. I want the steel in him. I need that. I need to feel that power flowing from him, that naked rich vulnerable power. I want a man who's proud of his cock, a man with big full balls, filled with a juice he wants to fill me with.

She was unstoppable. I felt wounded and punched and wanted to punch back. But she'd undone me. My habit of deference had so buried my defenses I had nothing to claim. The truth, the bit of truth struck me with a droll emptiness, like a writer with writer's block, a warrior so disorganized he'd lost his sword. Tears were near so I turned away and sank back imaging the scene, imagining her and Jules together in the hottub. All I could think about then was one thing.

"Did you take off your bathing suit?" I asked in my best matter-of-fact voice.

She smirked. "He told me to get naked."

"Did you?"

"What do you think?"