LITMIR.BIZ

      Flaunting It

      Rachel Kramer Bussel

      When I reveal that my husband Brent and I have been together for half our lives, people are usually surprised, whether they’re middle-aged like us, younger or older. At first, I bristled at their looks, as if there were something wrong with being a long-term couple, but, over the years, I’ve softened, become used to those responses. I understand them, as best I can. We aren’t living in a time when couples tend to stick it out, and certainly not where they’re still as passionate as they were when they first got together, or, in our case, more passionate. Their shock is indicative of what modern marriage has become, something fleeting, something to start with and move on to another arrangement later if things don’t work out. Marriage isn’t seen as a grand commitment but a grand adventure, and I’m living proof that a true sexual and soulful union can be both. Certainly, it hasn’t been as easy as I’d thought it would be the day I walked down our makeshift aisle in the backyard of my friend Caroline’s house, the Northern California sun glinting down on us, me in my mother’s worn but beautiful dress, Brent in a tux that somehow looked too big on him, his stubbled face as handsome as I’ve ever seen it.

      But our marriage is not intact simply because we took those vows way back in the mid-80s. It’s intact because we’ve worked to keep it that way, to infuse even the darkest times with the fire that made us sleep together that very first night we met at a bar not too far off campus in Berkeley. My friends were delighted that I’d finally lost my virginity at twenty-three, and so was I, but, whereas they thought Brent was but a stepping stone to a college career of campus hookups, somehow I knew he was the real thing.

      I wasn’t his first – we’re less than a year apart, but he was an early bloomer – but he’s told me since that he feels in many ways like I was. I know I was the first woman he wanted to spend the night with, truly sleeping next to me, often worn out from our very vigorous sessions, in bed, on the floor, anywhere and everywhere, rather than keeping one eye on the clock until it was time to go. I was the first woman he fucked with the lights on, taking the time to look at every inch of me, even when I winced in half-delight, half-fear, urging him to enjoy the comforts of the dark. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other, but that doesn’t mean we spent all day in bed; we were both active in campus groups, and we’d go hiking, do touristy things like walk across the Golden Gate Bridge, and argue our way back to his apartment after taking in the latest show at Berkeley Rep.

      He became a professor, while I stuck around after getting a not-so-useful master’s degree in sociology and went to school to become a therapist, consulting out of our home while raising our two kids. We were, and are, devoted parents, but we’ve always made sure to carve out time for us, where our undivided attention is on each other. Well, make that our almost undivided attention, because our real secret for staying together for over twenty years is that, when jealousy strikes, we don’t ignore it, we address it directly, head-on. We examine it, celebrate it, flaunt it, and we’ve managed to turn it into a form of foreplay. Whereas some women get their claws out when another woman hits on their man, I curve my lips into a smile. Brent takes it one step further: he actively enjoys watching men hit on me, so much so that, if we’re out with a group of friends and he notices a man checking me out, he’ll comment on it, taking pride in my ability to attract barely legal freshmen all the way up to men with white hair. ‘You can be a MILF or a sugar baby. I love that,’ he told me once.

      It took me a bit longer to get used to the girls who fawned over him, who would gladly have given new meaning to ‘office hours’, and not just for extra credit. I was proud that he still looked as sexy as he had in our student days, with an added gloss of maturity. He’d always been big, stocky, the kind of man who, feminist sensibilities be damned, I knew would protect me, so he didn’t have to worry as much as some of his formerly thin friends about packing on the pounds. We tend to eat a healthy diet, marked with the occasional indulgence. The sweet young things didn’t bother as much when I was closer to their age; now that they’re younger than our kids, who’ve by now graduated college and settled on the East Coast, it can unnerve me a bit, but Brent makes sure I know he’s always more amused than aroused.

      ‘What would I even do with one of them, Nadine? I bet she barely knows what her G-spot is,’ he’ll whisper to me. ‘Unless you wanted to help her find it.’ And then we’ll be off on a filthy fantasy in which we tag-team some innocent girl who we know deep down desperately wants it. That fantasy has come true a few times, once they’ve moved on to other professors for their formal classes, but what works best for us is the other way around; Bill is far more the voyeur than I am, and we’ve done everything from making our own sex tapes to screwing in front of windows where the chances of being seen are high.

      Recently, though, while celebrating our twenty-seventh anniversary in Las Vegas (we celebrate every year, rather than simply waiting for the ‘big’ anniversaries), we took our predilection for perversity to a new level. Aside from those women we’d bedded together, and a few steamy kisses at parties, I’d never been with anyone other than Brent, and definitely not another man. Oh, I’d looked plenty, online and off, and had my share of fantasies, but, up until then, simply telling Brent about my naughtiest daydreams had been enough. That was my way of flaunting it, and whenever my friends would tell me in hushed tones about lusting after their co-worker, lawn guy, painter or plumber, I’d wow them with stories of brazenly flirting right in front of my husband, and how hard it made him. The logical extension of these flirtations was something I’d been nervous about, always balking at actually taking things to the next level, but something about turning fifty had made me just a little bit bolder. I knew I looked good

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