The note was short but piqued my curiosity to a degree that I could think of little else as I showered and dressed. It was taped to the bathroom mirror and read only, " Happy Birthday. Enjoy your new toy."
When I found the note, I looked around but found no "toy", so I returned to the bedroom and stood watching her as she slept. She was lying on her stomach and had already stretched her arm out onto my vacant side of the bed, just as she always did when I wasn't beside her. The sheet left her nude upper half exposed, causing me to think back to the night before. She hadn't been naked then—never slept that way, and she hadn't been in the mood for sex. Of course, it had been late evening by the time we'd arrived at the resort and checked in to our bungalow. We enjoyed a leisurely walk on the beach after supper and then, exhausted from the flight, we'd gone straight to bed. But now there was the note and her nakedness. Neither was like her. And I would know. I'd been married to her for more of my life than not. What toy?
Barbara deserved better than me. She was a special person, so loving, so giving, and so kind to all she met. Her cup of friends overflowed, while her list of enemies remained infinitely empty. But in recent years, I had lost some degree of appreciation for those qualities. I could dwell only on what she was not.
My wife was not a sexual creature, or at least not a "sexy" one. She enjoyed sex though—at the proper time—in the proper place—in the proper fashion. My needs went beyond that. I needed . . . something. I wasn't sure exactly what. I felt of "it" much like a famous psychologist once said of schizophrenia "It is so diverse in its manifestation that I can neither define nor describe it, but I do recognize it when I see it."
When I returned from having my morning coffee in the open-air café off of the hotel's lobby, Barb was in the bathroom. She heard me come in and called out, "I'm almost ready." We had made plans to hit the beach early.
A few minutes later, she emerged from the bathroom wearing a small bikini. That was a first for her and my surprise didn't escape her notice. "You like?"
"Uh . . . well yes. I do." Could that be the toy?
She just smiled and then gathered her beach bag and our towels. "Then let's go."
Visitors to the Dominican Republic are mostly European, so the beaches there are tops-optional; a fact that I hadn't realized until we'd made the two hundred yard trek and were searching for a place to squat. Several of the ladies had chosen to take advantage of that option. Barb spotted a couple of empty chairs that were centrally located in the midst of several of those. She knew I wasn't fond of just sitting idly in the sun for extended periods, so she leaned close and whispered, "this spot should keep you from getting bored."
I sat down and opened my mystery novel, hoping that no one would be able to tell through my sunglasses that my eyes were bouncing everywhere but towards the written words. Barb had been busy flattening her chair and spreading a towel over it. But she had no sooner lain down than I saw her reach back and unhook her bikini top. She was laying face down, but still.
After about thirty minutes of turning pages without so much as glancing toward them, I finally told Barb that I was going to walk over to the beachside cabaña for bottle of water. "Do you want anything?"
"Yes, I want you to sit back down and relax. I'll go. It's your birthday, remember?"
I chuckled "Okay", deciding to play along. But then my shy little Barb did something that I never thought I would see in a million years. She got to her feet and stretched mightily before reaching down to retrieve her bikini top. Then she put it on, reaching inside the fabric to adjust the fit. "Back in a bit." She said and began weaving her way through and around the other sunbathers. I was left sitting there not knowing what to think—how to react. I was totally blown away.
By the time she returned with the bottles of water, I was just starting to regain my composure. That didn't last long. Barb readjusted one end of her chair into a half-sitting, half-laying position. And then I watch in amazement as she unhooked her bikini top again, folded it, and placed it in the beach bag. She sat down and laid back, her arms at her sides, and let out a deep breath that she must have been holding for a long time, "So, are you enjoying your birthday so far?"
She wasn't looking at me, but rather out toward the ocean. I couldn't be sure, but I was fairly certain that under her sunglasses, her eyes were closed. She was smiling. First the bikini—in public—and now this. Could this be the toy?
"You have no idea." I answered in a low reverent tone. Her smile grew wider.
~ ~ ~ ~
Barb was no model. She was an ordinary woman physically. Her medium breasts sagged from age, but not uncommonly so. She sported the extra pounds of two childbirths and a career that left her little time to for luxuries such as regular visits to a gym. Such things had never been high on her list of priorities.
Weeks before leaving on this vacation though, she had announced, quite out of the blue, that she'd run across a new diet she was going to try. I didn't think much of it at the time, just as I didn't when she began making regular trips to a tanning salon and health club. I naturally assumed that it was her way of preparing for the trip. Could she have had motives other than those any woman would have before taking a trip to the beach and wanting to look good in a swimsuit? Regardless, her hard work had begun to show. She looked better than she had in years—many years. Had she been planning this all along?
I had suggested a trip to our favorite ski resort in southern Colorado. The Dominican Republic had been Barb's idea. The more I thought about it now, the more details I remembered that I had thought nothing of before. I became convinced that she had already researched it before bringing it up to me. She bought the bikini before the trip, and she would have known of the tops-optional status of the beaches. Had she been planning to sunbathe topless—for me—for my birthday? Did she know how much her boldness would excite me? I couldn't imagine that she did, but there she was, lying topless in the chair next to me.
The other women around us vanished from my consciousness. My world existed of Barb, her tanned breasts exposed to passersby, her never fading smile, and the echo of her last words, "Are you enjoying your birthday so far?"
~ ~ ~ ~
It was early afternoon when we went for a swim in the ocean. She had remained topless all the while. Afterward, she donned her bikini top and we had sandwiches at one of the beachside cabañas before returning to our bungalow. Once inside, I immediately grabbed her and kissed her deeply and passionately. When I withdrew, I held her at arms length and started to tell her how erotic I'd found her boldness. Her fingers on my lips stopped me before I got the first words out. She peered deep into my soul and then smiled knowingly. "shhhhh." She whispered. And then her mood lightened. "Let's have a drink on the patio."
We sipped our dinks in silence for several minutes before she asked, "So what would you like to do now?"
I chuckled and then showed her a devilish grin. "Do you have to ask?"