Driving up from Leicestershire to Leeds for a business appointment gave me a lot of time to think about what Gary had done. I suppose I didn’t need to think about what he’d done because he had told me minutes before setting off. My husband had told me as I was ready to leave the house that he was sorry but he had fucked one of his work colleagues, a woman called Harriet, on a recent trip. Though he spared me the details I had a pretty good idea what that would involve. I suppose then I was thinking more about what it would do to me. I had to work out how I was going to react.
I was mad at him but not as mad as I might have expected. I knew I needed to think this through and then do what had to be done. Business first, then sort him out.
The way I saw it there were three options. On my return I could explode and demand apologies and then be cool and distant to Gary for a while, or I could cut him out of my life entirely in order to start again. The third option was I could just carry on being the dutiful wife and try to pretend my husband had never told me
he had screwed this woman and everything was normal.
I had time to think as I drove north on the M1 and I had to admit none of the three options I outlined to myself addressed the problem. I had known Gary since we were about seventeen, which was thirteen years ago. I thought we understood each other perfectly. I had never thought anyone would make a play for Gary so I trusted him to not do anything like fucking around when he was away with female colleagues. Gary went to great lengths to assure me this had been the first time. He was drunk, she was drunk, they were lonely . . .
Oh, spare me! We all get lonely at times and many of us have a drink and stay quite sensible.
But the three options I had outlined to myself would end up hurting me. I liked my husband – probably still loved him, for all I knew – and certainly didn’t hate this Harriet female. I just didn’t want to meet her, that was all. However, abandoning contact with Gary would effectively cut off my nose to spite my face. His family had money and connections and, while I hate to be mercenary, I had to think about the bigger picture.
Ignoring what he had done would be hard because I wasn’t sure how I could trust Gary ever again and his work, like mine, took the man away from home.
Above all, my acting as if nothing had happened would just be a stress fracture in our marriage waiting to break apart one day.
There was no point in ranting and raving either. Sure, I could break a few things, but then I’d only have to clean up afterwards and nothing would change.
As I drove north that day I felt in a complete fog.
Fortunately I think I am not easily distracted when I drive so I kept my speed down and remained in the left-hand lane. Everyone else could rush past me and I wasn’t worried about them. I also had plenty of time for my appointment in Leeds so I was in no rush. I needed to be away from the house so this was as good a way as any.
The trouble with motorways is that things happen that are nothing to do with you, but even so you have to deal with them. As we approached Rotherham I saw the matrix signs saying there had been an incident near Meadowhall on the northbound side and to get ready for a diversion. I came off at junction 33, as everyone else did, since the M1 was closed ahead, and we were filtered in a slow-moving line on the side roads towards junction 34. We would get there eventually and, as I say, I wasn’t panicking. I had other things on my mind. As we made our way along the minor road I saw on my left a sex shop. It was unlike some you see in rundown retail areas; this was a modern sort of building away from the road with a decent-sized car park. Now, as it happens, sex shops leave me cold. I had been in a couple, with a friend for a dare, and been amazed and amused at the sort of things they sold. Of course, you can only sell sex if you have hookers and the like, and I doubted if there was any of that here.
What they were selling would be PVC corsets and
lubrication cream and a range of bondage items like handcuffs and lots of magazines showing very well-endowed women enjoying intercourse with someone well-endowed in a different place.
As a friend once said as we leafed through a sex magazine, who knew so many women wore high heels to bed?
Stationary in the heavy traffic, I watched from the road as a couple – middle-aged as far as I could see – climbed out of their car and went inside the store.
There were several other cars in the car park and as I looked I saw a woman come out of the shop carrying a large bag. A woman of about my age, my build, and even the same hair colour. I had to admit that for a moment I thought that it could be me.
The woman-who-might-be-me got in her car and left the car park (probably to find herself soon in the line of slow-moving vehicles) and I shuffled my vehicle forward. In a couple of minutes I couldn’t see the sex store and I went back to thinking about Gary and me.
Eventually all the traffic got back on the M1 and I headed to my appointment. I represent a company that sells air conditioning and so I would spend a couple of hours looking at a factory and making recommendations. No stress there as I am good at what I do.
Driving back from Leeds with the feeling that I may well have wrapped up a contract, I noticed I was approaching the turn-off for Rotherham. I have no idea
what made me do it but I swung off the motorway and took the road I had crawled along a good few hours earlier. It had considerably less traffic now and I glanced over to my right. The sex store with its car park was still there (though I hadn’t expected anything else) and the place looked open. I don’t know what possessed me but I pulled off the road and drove into the store’s car park.
The large windows had the usual stocking-clad, shapely models on display and nothing looked offensive. None holding a flogger or handcuffs or a dildo. Just fancy dress, in a way. I stared at the windows and reached for the ignition to leave and go home. I didn’t know what I was doing here; my problem was nearly fifty miles away in Loughborough.
But I didn’t start the car. I stared again at the store and on impulse I went inside.
I can’t tell you what I expected to find other than what I had seen in the past. Indeed, everything I expected to see was there. There were magazines and DVDs and gags and fetish wear and, yes, plenty of lubrication cream. They even had different flavours. I walked round and stared at it all and wondered why I was here.
Putting off going home, I guessed, because I was trying to postpone making a decision on my three options.
I could make up my mind about air-conditioning vents but not about my personal life. However, postponing the inevitable only works for so long and I was about
to leave when the assistant caught my eye. She was a woman a little older than me and she began talking to me, starting with the usual “Can I help you?”
Yes, she could, and as they weren’t too busy at that moment I began to unload my frustrations and dilemma. The woman, to her eternal credit, listened and didn’t show any sign of thinking she wished it was her day off and she had avoided this nutcase. The woman, whose name badge said she was Anne, listened to me sympathetically, and then came up with a solution. “You need to control him and his desires,”
she said, and pointed me towards the chastity devices.
Now, if you have never seen one, a man’s chastity device is considerably smaller and far more sensible than what a woman might be expected to wear in medieval times. No belt-like structure with a perforated crotch band. Just a compact piece of plastic that fits round the man’s ball sac. In other words, any attempted removal would be painful to say the least.
So too would be an erection.
I pointed out to Anne that the device was plastic so surely a man could cut if off, right? She smiled and replied that few men ever let anything remotely sharp near their “wedding tackle”.
But if I bought this how would I get him to wear it all the time?
Anne was ready for that question. “Ultimately you have what he wants between your legs,” she said.
“Forget about this Harriet because he knows that she has just become out of bounds. Once he realizes the only way you will allow him to have sex is when you let him out of his device, you’ll be amazed at how eager to please he will be. It’s either wear this and let you decide when, or it’s never have sex again.”
I doubted it, but Anne was adamant. She told me she had had the same problem with her sister’s husband, always bothering her for sex because he thought, with her working in a sex shop she’d be, as he put it, “mad for it”. Anne laughed when she told me that the opposite was true and, once her sister knew, they agreed to put the would-be errant male in a chastity device. “It worked a treat,” she said. “My sister has all the fun she wants, when she wants it, and not when she doesn’t. He just follows her around like a loyal puppy now.”
I understood. I also understood that my ultimatum to Gary was to wear this whenever he was likely to be anywhere near this Harriet, or any other woman for that matter.
I bought the device, thanked Anne and drove home. As it turned out, Gary and I didn’t row anywhere near as much as I’d thought, but I resolved to lay the law down. Knowing he was in the wrong, Gary took it well but he did look startled when I produced the device.
His words were something along the lines of what the hell was that? I explained, and added that without it our marriage was as good as over. However, if he wore it, there was a chance.
I told Gary that if I knew I could trust him then we could make progress. Without thinking, I said I would be happy if he wore this for a month and then I would start to let him out. The look on his face was a picture, partly I think because he realized that a month in this device (providing he washed himself properly down there as the diagram on the leaflet showed) definitely ensured no masturbation.
Gary tried to say that he occasionally went through metal detectors on his travels but I had the answer. A numbered plastic tag would keep it locked and as there was no metal to alert anyone it was up to him if he wanted to reveal it. He shook his head hard. No, no one would know, he said.
When he said that, I knew he had agreed to it. I locked the device on him (I admit there was a certain primitive satisfaction in clicking the padlock shut and hearing him groan a little as his manhood was securely locked away) and I hid the key where he wouldn’t find it.
I told Gary he could still share my bed and if he was good he could perform cunnilingus on me. In fact, as that was his only pleasure for a while, he took to it very well, all things considered. I got to like falling asleep after half an hour of him lapping at me.
When the month was up I said it wasn’t time to take it off permanently, but he could have five minutes without it alone in the bathroom. Gary agreed, almost
gratefully, and the device went back on after his few minutes of relief.
At this point I have to tell you this was some months ago and, apart from his “bathroom break” times, my husband wears the device constantly. It doesn’t make a bulge in his trousers (but if it did, so what? Who is he going to tell?) and in many ways he is a changed man.
He has got used to it, has become docile and very attentive. But then I had promised him the occasional extra bathroom visit if he behaved to my satisfaction.
But I also remembered what Anne had said when I left the shop that fateful afternoon. “Your husband may not be free in that thing, but don’t forget you are. Like all women, you need a diversion from time to time.”
While Gary is happy to be under lock and key, I have come to the conclusion I can do what I want. After all, I have needs too, above and beyond my husband’s patient tongue. I ran into an old university pal and, as he had always fancied me, I took the opportunity to let him screw me. Me on top, of course, because I think I’m getting quite a taste for that now. Of course, as Gary had been honest with me, the least I could do was be honest back. I told him what I’d done and he just nodded submissively. That night his tongue seemed very eager indeed to please me.
If Anne was right about freedom for one and not the other, I think I’ll be meeting up with a few old friends more often. I am sure Gary won’t mind at all,
providing he appreciates my honesty and gets access to the bathroom from time to time.