Part 3: Events of the last month or so
(You may be looking for Part 1 or Part 2)

I. Let’s Talk Dirty to Each Other Again

A few weeks ago Joan messaged me about having dinner at their place. I was pleased to hear from her, and glad that someone had requested our company; outside of Jill’s extended family this is something that happens much more rarely than I would like. We’d invited them over for dinner twice in the last six months, but nothing ever came of it, i.e. they never got back to us with a date that would work for them. It wasn’t a big deal.  We’re all busy.

As we communicated back and forth, figuring out the details, she was the first one to make a suggestive comment. I didn’t run with it. I just let it lie there, and pretended that it hadn’t happened. It was the first time she’d done such a thing in years, and frankly I didn’t want to take the bait. She can be a bit of a tease, and I figured that if I showed interest in her comment she’d ignore it anyway. When I did eventually steer the conversation into the sexual realm, it was after I had her express approval and encouragement. After awhile, she asked why I never attempted to have sex with her before I was married, ostensibly because she would have been more receptive to such an overture than she is currently. With an eyeroll she couldn’t see, I reminded her that she wasn’t interested. Beyond her demeanor and body language, the “brother” comments made that clear. Any statement to the contrary is revisionism.

As we talked more, she told me that she was uncomfortable with Jill knowing of my sexual interest in her. I assured her that it posed no problem for my marriage, nor for her friendship with Jill. I asked her why she felt uncomfortable, but she remained vague and wouldn’t explain further. In retrospect, this was a red flag: Honest and open communication is essential in a relationship, whether it’s a marriage, a parent-child relationship, a business relationship, or virtually any other. I didn’t realize it at the time, but she was angling for me to keep our flirting a secret from my wife. More on that later.

We barely wasted any time on her discomfort before she reinitiated the sex talk. It was very explicit, far dirtier than it had been during her separation, and I was pleased with the breadth of activities she said she wanted to try with me, even if I knew it was never going to actually happen. She was flattered to know that I was attracted to her, though she claimed that she never had any idea. I found this strange, as I’d told her on several occasions. She also claimed that she’d never thought of me in a sexual fashion before, and that it was unusual for her. Were I thinking with the proverbial big head rather than the little one, I would have smelled bullshit. But I was just glad that she’d used the word “cock” in an IM conversation. First time in years!

II. It Gets Weird

She asked me if Jill was going to read our chat transcript. I told her probably not, though not because I was going to keep it a secret from her but rather because Jill doesn’t have time to read my chat transcripts. I could tell that she found this strange, that it wasn’t the answer she wanted. She wanted me to say that our chats were her and my naughty little secret.  I refrained from asking her what kind of a person insists on micromanaging their spouse’s online interactions, or trusts the person he or she married so little that such a level of disclosure is necessary. And while Jill and I do disclose just about everything, we don’t find it necessary to go through chat transcripts with a fine-tooth comb as though looking for punctuation mistakes.  If I am reading a chat my wife has had with another man, for example, I’m doing it because I want to get turned on by it.  I should have bailed then, but I didn’t.

It was around this time that I noticed her wildly fluctuating self-esteem. It had always been this way, but now it was very noticeable. When I told her that she had a cute butt, she expressed surprise that I didn’t refer to it as “sexy”, “hot”, or “fucking awesome”. I couldn’t find fault with her confidence, even if I didn’t remember her ever being quite so secure in herself. Still, I’ll take such a self-assured response over “OMG stop it my butt’s not all that” any day.

On the other hand, when I told her that I liked her body, she said that I didn’t have to say that if I didn’t really like it. This was another major red flag; why would I say something just to validate her? Especially with the knowledge that I found her attractive, which she’d mentioned just before that, why would she think I didn’t mean it genuinely? It seemed a very odd thing to say, and it quickly became obvious that she was desperate for my validation. Perhaps she was desperate for any man’s validation, and I was just the only one who was offering it. Maybe she was too sheepish to seek it elsewhere.

On a similar note, she said that she missed having girl time with Jill. She said that she really wanted to hang out with her, but that she was certain Jill wouldn’t want to. I imagine that she was expecting me to say “Oh, of course she wants to hang out! Are you kidding? You’re a super person! Why would anyone not want to hang out and be your friend?” And while Jill would have undoubtedly been happy to have girl time with Joan, that kind of desperate attention-seeking makes us both uncomfortable.

Rather than placating her, I tried a different tact: “Why do you say such horrible things? Is your self-esteem really that low? I mean, you just suggested that I don’t like your body right after I said I did. Do you not trust us? Or do you just like the validation of us telling you otherwise? If that’s the case, fine, I’ll give it to you, but you should know you don’t have to say self-deprecating things in order to get it.” My reply may have been insensitive, but that kind of thing really bugs me. So I continued: “A couple days ago when I said your ass was cute you said you prefer when people say it’s sexy, hot, or fucking awesome. Where’s that confidence now?”

III. Dinner at Their Place

That weekend they had us over for dinner. I’d expected some sex talk, as she’d hinted it was coming. Joan has always wanted to know details about our sex life, including but not limited to what positions we prefer, our oral and manual sex techniques, and unusual places where we’ve had sex. She typically does not ask us about our forays into non-monogamy, though this is mainly because she knows nothing about that side of us. Why would she? She and her husband are traditionally monogamous, and it makes sense that she would assume the same of us.  Additionally, we’ve never thought to share that side of our sex life with them.  Though at times in the past Joan and Danny have presented themselves – to us privately, if not in public – as sex-positive, there’s no way to know how they might react to the news that we are, for lack of a better word, sexual deviants.  After all, it’s one thing to talk openly about lube when you’re childless.  It’s something else altogether to countenance the idea of married people who are not yourselves having sex with multiple partners when you’re a vaunted pillar of the community (or not).

During most meetings between the six of us, the subject of sex was broached once the kids were out of earshot. A previous dinner gathering at our place saw them pull out some sort of sex-related card game, the kind where you draw a card and ask everyone at the table a personal question. But this time nothing like that ever happened, even though their daughter and ours spent most of the evening playing in the former’s bedroom. The husband plied us with alcohol – okay, maybe he’s just being a good host; obviously they weren’t expecting to have a foursome with children present in the house.

We had a nice time, and dinner was great. After dinner, though, while the kids played, they turned on the television and we watched TV more or less in silence for the next few hours. I didn’t require or even expect sex talk, but some conversation with other adults would have been nice. It isn’t every day that I find myself conversing with an adult who isn’t my wife. I could have watched TV at home, while naked if I wanted to, and probably had a better dinner beforehand. We got the sense that once dinner was finished they had no idea what to do with us and just parked us in front of the TV like a clueless teenage babysitter.  By the time we finally left, both Jill and I had been ready to go for a couple hours.

During an IM conversation the following day, Joan said that she didn’t want to talk about sex at all while our kids were around. I understood completely, and told her that she’d come a long way from wanting to watch Jill and I fuck while her daughter slept in the next room. She claimed that she had absolutely no memory of that incident. Later, however, she told me that she did remember it, and that she also remembered calling it off because of her aforementioned sleeping daughter. She had no memory of Skyping with Jill and I, or with just me. However, she did remember the same-room sex that occurred with my ex (though she could recall no details). She insisted that her memory wasn’t very good, and while I remembered details by the truckload – many of which are included here – I understand that my sharp memory is the exception and not the rule.

“A lot of things have happened in my life between then and now”, she wrote. “I’m sure you can understand.” Fair enough, I guess. I didn’t tell her that many people we know online who’ve watched us on Skype still remember the experience. And while I have no reason to doubt that her memory is bad, my gut feeling is that she is so full of shame over having done such things that she’s either repressed it or is flat-out lying. Or perhaps not; she didn’t remember writing a school paper on my sexual history, but she did remember coming over to use my AOL connection for Cybersex (though not what transpired afterwards).

She proposed that the four of us go out drinking one night in the near future. With the caveat that it’s rare that Jill and I are ever able to get a babysitter, I agreed and jokingly asked if same-room was on the agenda when we were finished at the bar. She said she’d have to get Danny drunk first – there’s that recurring motif again! – since he’s a total prude. Now, I’m not sure whether she’s forgotten how desperately he wanted to sleep with my ex, or if she’s blocked those memories out. I don’t know if she’s unaware that he and my wife would occasionally message each other. And I don’t know if he perhaps carries himself differently around his wife than he does around other women. It’s possible, certainly. I have heard stories of husbands losing all sexual interest in their wives once they bear a child. I have no way of knowing whether this is the case with him. I hope not. But the guy is far from a prude.

IV. It Gets Really Fucking Weird, and I Share Some Standup Comedy

She asked me what I would do if her husband gave me his blessing to have sex with her. I told her that it doesn’t matter because it’s her body and the decision would ultimately be hers. “Danny isn’t your pimp,” I said. And while I can admit that I said that specifically to stymie her expectation of me talking explicitly about how I was going to fuck the living shit out of her, the truth is that that’s exactly how I feel. She’s not his property, and he shouldn’t be the one to decide who she fucks. I think that blew her mind, though. She had no idea how to react. A man giving her sexual control? Though I really wouldn’t have guessed it, I now assume that she doesn’t have much of that within her marriage. Anyway, it’s a moot point, as her husband isn’t going to do so.

“How do you know that?” she asked. “Maybe he is my pimp.” Yeah, she had no idea how to react to my answer. I told her that that was fine with us as long as it was fine with her, and that she wasn’t the only sex worker we knew. I’m sure that flabbergasted her further, though I get the sense she’d never heard the term “sex worker” before. She didn’t ask me if “sex worker” means “hooker” though.

Though Joan and I have some things in common politically – unlike Danny she’s a democrat and she and I tend to have similar views on certain issues – she’s far from politically correct. She has been known to suggest that I wouldn’t be able to control myself if I were alone with her, which is the reasoning of ass-backwards misogynists, right-wing Republicans (same thing, I know), and others who insist that revealing clothing, flirting, alcohol, and things other than rapists are responsible for rape. She also said on a few occasions during our back-and-forth that I should have been more aggressive in my advances toward her when we were younger. I did my best to keep from blurting out (or whatever the online equivalent is, anyway) that maybe that’s why some guys hear “no” and think “yes”, and that she was doing women everywhere a great disservice. I’ll let comedian Louis CK explain why that’s bullshit.

[EDIT: Obviously in 2023 I can’t include a YouTube link to a Louis CK routine in one of my posts, because fuck that guy. However, in 2015 it made total sense to reference a routine in which he talks about a woman who told him she was “turned on when a guy just gets frustrated and just holds [her] down and fucks [her]” despite her insistence that he stop. And while I can admit to the absurdity of one person expecting another person to “just go for it” and the humor of the routine in question, the fact that the guy who claimed to have been shocked to hear the woman’s viewpoint has shown literally no interest in consent means, once again, fuck that guy.]

She also asked me to delete our conversations. I told her I don’t delete my conversations, and changed the subject. She admitted that she probably wouldn’t believe me even if I told her I would delete them. I took some offense at this, and said that I value honesty. I’ve spent my entire life being honest – well, my entire adult life, at least. Her trust issues were more than apparent by this point; I recalled that during her separation I’d asked her to show me her tits on Skype and she refused, citing the fact that she didn’t trust me enough. This, despite the fact that I’d let her watch me with absolutely no quid-pro-quo. I would have understood completely had she said that her body was private, that she didn’t feel comfortable sharing in this fashion, or that only her husband gets to see her naked.  The implication that she found me untrustworthy was upsetting back then, and upon recalling it, somehow moreso now.

I asked why she wanted me to delete our conversations, whether it was because she wanted no general record of what we’d talked about, or to prevent someone specific – my wife, obviously – from seeing them. I’m not sure what difference it would have made one way or the other; as I told her, it wasn’t going to happen. It was a moot point, as she didn’t answer.

She messaged again later after she’d gotten home from work as though she simply hadn’t noticed the inquiry. At that point she said “I don’t know how yours and Jill’s relationship works. Danny doesn’t see any of my stuff on my phone. Not that I’m trying to hide anything. I just feel if and when I want him to see stuff I will show him.” If that isn’t a red flag, I don’t know what the fuck could be. I’m guessing her husband has no knowledge of anything she hasn’t made a point of showing him, and that she makes a point of showing him very little, if anything. Thus anything we had done was well outside of his comfort zone. I kind of felt sorry for him.

Coming up next: Part 4 (Coming to a crossroads)