My old buddy Daniel grew up on a farm and learned about sex from observing the animals. He learned that animals fuck: there is some preliminary ritual and then the male sticks his penis into the female, it's something both male and female want but the male wants it more, and when the male is done that's the end of it. Sex did not have any deep significance for him, it was just part of nature. Though he was religious he perceived himself as a member of the animal kingdom, and as such he expected sticking his penis into a female to be a straightforward part of normal life.
His wife Rachel also grew up on a farm and learned about sex from the animals but she took away a whole different lesson. She interpreted sex as a kind of irresistible force of nature that made you do wild irrational things. It did not seem to be important who the partner was, or what kind of behaviors were enacted, or what kind of fences had been erected to keep individuals separated. Sex, for Rachel was a portal that opened to a universe of unlimited freedom and pleasure. Rachel was a seeker of the ecstasy of letting go with another person or persons, escaping from time and the constriction of mortality, taking risks and daring herself to try new things just to see what will happen.
Daniel did not understand women or his relationship with them, and he had a unique way of blowing things out of proportion. He and I would be out doing something and he might exchange a few words with a cashier or waitress, and then for the rest of the day he would be tense and uptight thinking that he was going to have an affair with her, worrying about how complicated it would make his life. In truth the cashier forgot him as soon as he was out the door, but he imagined that somehow she had become obsessed with him, maybe like some kind of Fatal Attraction thing. This kind of weird worrying kept him from straying much from his marriage, and discouraged an experimental attitude. He liked to go home at night and bang his ol' lady, and she seemed to put up with it, and that was enough for him.
Maybe his naivetΓ© explained how their marriage survived. His wife was smart and world-wise and she ran circles around him. Because he was so tangled up in his conscience and his misconceptions about women, his lovely wife was able to get away with murder. She flirted and joked lasciviously around him, and he shrugged it off as a quirk of hers, and life was good.
Over the years I had seen them having sex a number of times, camping or partying -- neither of them had a big concern with privacy or sexual shame -- and they had been in the room when I was with various girlfriends. Sometimes we would cheer each other on, laughing and having fun; none of us was self-conscious about it. They would sometimes bet sexual favors in our card games after a few shots of booze and I would watch them pay up, and if it was especially good I might pull my dick out and jack off, watching. Nobody minded. Their married life followed from their beliefs about sex, and it all seemed natural and fun. Afterwards Daniel would talk about those times for weeks, for instance the time he fucked Rachel over the arm of the living-room chair after beating her in Blackjack. Driving around doing stuff, he talked to me about how her pussy felt and how good it was shooting a big load of cum into her for losing. Sex was just another topic, like the weather or something for him.
How did I end up part of this? It's a long story involving a divorce and a not-exactly-successful career leap, and they took care of me in my hard times and I helped them out and we became almost like family, so I got to study their relationship close up. She teased him in subtle and sometimes outrageous ways, and sometimes I joined in. Typical example: one night the three of us were playing cards, nothing serious, some variation of war for three players, but we were using an old Swedish porn deck that Daniel had saved in the back of his sock drawer for many years. Each card had a picture on it of some guy with an outlandishly big dick doing something to some whorish looking woman wearing a ton of makeup. When we would throw down our cards, Rachel would frequently say, "Ooh, I like that one," or "Wait, let me look at this one for a minute."
We were drinking tequila and the conversation pretty much had no limits to it, as usual. She would comment on a card, and I would sometimes say, "Which card is that?" and she would hold up the one that had caught her eye. Daniel showed little curiosity but I would ask "What is it you like about it?" And she would try to embarrass us with answers like, "That guy's dick is huge. Just the way I like them." Having been naked together many times we all knew that neither of us guys was in that league, she was just fucking with us.
As the game slowed to a close, I said to Daniel, "Rachel here seemed to enjoy this game."
Daniel said, "I don't know why."
I said, "I think she likes the cards."
She was grinning at the two of us. Daniel said, "I don't see what she likes about them. It's just some old porn."
"Well," I said, "It looks to me like she likes the cards where the guy is cumming on the lady's face."
She laughed and clapped her hands. "Uh huh. You noticed."
Poor Daniel looked confused.
"Does she like it when you do that to her?" I asked him.
"How would I know?" he said. "I never did anything like that."