She pulled her arm, giving my neck the suggestion of a squeeze with the edge of her forearm.
I could feel the pull of anger-induced erections tugging one way and the insanely disruptive jealousy pulling the other. I needed to find a solution or it would tear me apart.
CHAPTER 13
Garth supplied me with erections for only a few more days. Tessa demanded I talk to him. Where I had found success, I now was forced to confront him or she would find somewhere else to run and that meant somewhere I couldn't watch her.
She went out running after having told me to come out and talk to him.
I didn't want to talk to him. I didn't want him to stop. What if it meant I lost my erections? But, she was adamant and I had to accede to her wishes. It was only right, just, and my duty as a husband. Dustin texted me before I went outside.
I sighed in resignation and deleted the picture. The previous day had been the first day he missed. I could only hope that eventually he would tire of sending the text and picture every day. Walking outside, I stuffed the phone into my pocket and headed across the street.
Garth, upon noticing me, faltered as he ran beside Tessa. Despite his uncertainty, his dick jutted up and down stiffly beneath the stretched fabric of his running shorts. He came to a stop, threw his head to the side as if looking to run somewhere else, then reluctantly ran on, continuing his approach. His pouting, petulant scowl was annoyed and peeved. He spoke first, "Leave me alone."
I blocked him, placing my hand against his chest. "No, you leave my wife alone."
"Fuck off, dude. It's a free country."
"Right, and she has a right not to be harassed by you." My wife stood beside me, hands on hips, watching.
Garth held out his arms dramatically. "What, are you racist? Because I'm a quarter American Indian?"
I looked at his freckles, reddish hair, and blue eyes. I brought my knee up hard. I felt the impact against his soft ballsack and the bottom of his stiffness. The knee-to-the-groin move shoved his dick upwards, popping it out of his shorts. He went down onto his ass, hard, dick flopping in the air. I whipped out my phone and thumbed, grabbing several seconds of him groaning and rolling around, then I leaned over him. "Listen… Garth. I have this cute video of you now, exposing yourself in public. If I hear any more about this, or you ever talk to my wife again, I'll make sure this gets seen by the police." I was pretty sure such a thing wouldn't stand up to any legal scrutiny, but I was hoping this asshole didn't know it.
Tessa had covered her mouth, amusement sparkling in her eyes. She touched my arm and mouthed, "Thank you." She ran off while Garth squirmed and panted, hiding his dick and cupping his balls at the same time.
I turned and left him.
Over the next several days, he left Tessa alone, flipped the bird at the house whenever he passed on a jog, and I lost my erections.
Failure and emasculation crowded in on me like old familiar clothing, pressing in on my psyche and robbing me of the ability to breathe.
This was worse than before.
Tessa, on the other hand, was bubbly, bright, and believing that my problem was just a temporary glitch. She was definitely happier not having Garth saying lewd things to her as she ran.
She held up the vinyl catsuit. "The pirate outfit was cuter."
"This one has ears," I said warily. I held up the hairband and wiggled it. "Very cute."
She pursed her lips at me and tried on the ears. "If you say so."
"Maybe the party will…"
"What?" She dropped the ears back into the box.
"Maybe I'll get hard again."
She looked at me with large eyes. "I'm going to be covered from neck to ankle."
It was true. I just didn't want guys checking out my wife. Except that my dick seemed to need it. I had gone for two weeks now without an erection. Days passed to weeks and I grew more and more emasculated. My nerves had frayed almost from the start: to overcome my issue and then have it come roaring back had disintegrated my mental and physical recovery.
I was worse, physically.
On the other hand, I wasn't angry over men checking out my wife, just jealous. Still, the worse physical condition far outweighed such an advance. A return to the same syndrome as before would have been total failure. Even a semi-return would've been defeating. But worse?
My helplessness produced an anxiety that tore every rational sentiment from me and left me falling on the inside.
Falling faster.
An ache had developed in my muscles, tensing my shoulders and neck to the point I could barely move. I felt it day and night, awake and asleep. My eyes had developed deep circles. Even my teeth hurt from the misery of my masculine failure.
Tessa seemed not to think it was serious, but that was often how she viewed things. Her indifference showed that she didn't put much thought or care into believing how bad things could get. She did care when it concerned me, but it just didn't show; she thought I would recover eventually. Setbacks, she called them.
I didn't agree.
My entire being knew she was wrong. This wasn't some simple little step backwards.
The Halloween party was not something I looked forward to; I imagined my already shattered nerves becoming totally unraveled. As I drove us to the house where it was being held, I clutched the steering wheel with the sure knowledge that I would not be driving home ever again. No, I was going to be tied up in a straitjacket and hauled off to some filthy insane asylum for hourly electric shock treatments.
I wanted to babble incoherently already – even before turning off the car.
Tessa almost bounced in her seat, looking out the window at the bright lights and people standing around on the spacious lawn.
And here we were, at the Halloween party that I had hoped would be another domino falling in my victorious march of conquest over my ED. She got out. I sat, hands gripping the wheel, panting in panic, and dizzy like I was going to pass out.
"Come on," she said.
I'm not sure how I got out of the car. I tottered around it as if I couldn't even feel my feet or legs. Was I walking on stilts? It was as if my legs had fallen asleep without the stinging tingles.
"Is that part of the costume? That act?" Her head was tilted in curiosity.
"No…" I was wearing a few bandages: one around my head; a big square one on my upper left breast exposed by my unbuttoned shirt; an arm sling; and a belt on my thigh tightened to look like a tourniquet. All of the bandages were liberally soaked in spots with blood red dye.
"Are you okay?"
I nodded, not wanting to get into it here. "I'm fine."
She touched my arm briefly, and then took the lead. I followed her into the house, checking out her form from behind. Dressed in a full black vinyl catsuit, she almost disappeared in the gloom outside. But once inside, she gleamed like moving obsidian. Every curve and cleft of her body was almost perfectly outlined and displayed. Almost. It was the best we could do with online ordering.
A pit of sickness knotted in my stomach and I looked around at the ages of the people cramming the large house. I wasn't the oldest… but… almost everyone was younger than me.
An Arabic guy confronted me and Tessa just inside the door. "Invitations? Who invited you?"
I proffered the bright green flyer. "My wife's old high school friend, Fairuza?"
He grunted and nodded and dismissed us as fast as that, moving beyond us to the next incomers - cold, quick, and callous.
Tessa said into my ear as if anticipating a question from me, "They're Lebanese Christians, not muslims."
I shrugged.
The enormous table in the dining room immediately to the right was stuffed with people crowding around the heaps of platters containing little left of what had probably been mounds of food. People were flicking over the remains of carrot sticks and celery chunks. The party was only twenty minutes old.
Music blared, modern, American, and loud. At least it wasn't rap. Everywhere, people s
houted their conversations, laughed, and checked out costumes.
I got separated from Tessa by a thick girl who looked up at me expectantly. She was dressed in a western outfit with a red bandana at her neck. I drew my eyebrows down in focus and concentration. Her face was wide in a cute way, and her eyebrows rose in counterpoint to mine – as if she was expecting me to talk to her. A little smile graced her lips with a hint of… challenge.
Huh? I drew back just a little.
Another girl gave me a dirty look and shouted to the thick girl, "Come on, Bella. Not here."
"He's checking me out. He's a sexist misogynistic pig—" Her eyes blazed at me with eager fury.
"Come on." The wide girl's friend pulled her away.
"We can't let the patriarchal social—"
"Come on!"
I glared after the thick girl. What the fuck is her problem? I was just standing here. I looked around desperately for Tessa. So many people packed the place that I couldn't see more than six feet in any direction.
A carrot was shoved in my face. "Want some?" Tessa's raised voice was barely audible.
I shook my head vigorously. The carrot looked as limp as my dick.
A light-skinned beauty in a belly dancer outfit attached herself to Tessa. "Hi!"
"We made it! It's so crowded…"
"I know…" Her eyes were dark and outlined in black. Her hair was as black as her eyeliner.
My wife tugged me towards them. "This is my friend Fairuz."
I nodded and tried to say, "Nice to meet you," without shouting.
Tessa called into her ear, "This is my husband Clark."
Her smile was infectious and she touched my other arm, not bothering to yell. She turned her eyes to Tessa, and made an unintelligible noise while checking out her costume. She slid her hand down my wife's arm to feel the vinyl. Her approving nod and smile put me at ease.
Then Tessa was pulled away from me.
Girls. I sighed with resignation and began maneuvering through the throng to find someplace… Quiet was quite out of the question. There was a spot directly behind the large sofa and I hovered there at one end – away from the other end where I might make the chick sitting there think that I was trying to look down her top. The sofa was all packed, though, and the man I stood behind craned around to look up at me. I pretended to look elsewhere and he gave up a second later.
If the pressure inside me wasn't enough, the extremely loud party was definitely enough to create tension all on its own within my skull. Didn't Lebanese Christians believe in quieter parties? Was it something cultural? Religious? Racial?
If I felt I was falling due to my ED, I realized a faster feeling when first I saw girls touching Tessa's vinyl, and then their boyfriends. Much worse and more dramatic, some guys who didn't seem attached also slid their hands on her vinyl. Instantly, I regretted not getting her the slutty pirate outfit.
As a guy would touch her, oily sensations of sickness slid down my soul. Pain knotted in my stomach, causing an almost physical distress so severe that I struggled to avoid bending over.
She danced with Fairuza, though it was really more shouting at each other to be heard. How girls could dance and talk at the same time escaped me. But then Tessa danced with guys and they… touched her. None of them appeared to make any moves and I was frozen into place, cacophony receding in my ears, watching the admiring hands feeling her vinyl. Blood pounded in my ears alongside a heavy high pitched hum – as if my ears were ringing in deafening silence.
This was not a case of tinnitus, however, but rather of panic. Jealousy juiced my body into a tension that was so tight it caused severe physical distress.
Hands roamed over her arms and hips. She smiled through it all with that flirtatious spread of her lips that encouraged them to… partake.
My throat was so tight I couldn't swallow.
When one of the guys pulled her for a close dance and ran his hands up and down her shaped little butt, I got hard. I also gaped, trying to breathe, as my vision swam with intense jealousy. She was mine and being touched. They might as well have been naked. Was that what she was thinking? Why wasn't she stopping him?
The answer that pounded into my chest – and heart – along with the thumping music I could no longer recognize, was that she perfectly enjoyed the guy's physical attention because he was her age – or at least looked it. He was as young as her; I was almost old enough to be… their fathers? Maybe not that old, but I was on the backside of life. Didn't people die in their fifties and sixties? All the time. I was thirty-five and on the short side of time. My prime had been passed long ago.
I watched perfect youth dance with perfect youth. There was no place for me there. My dick swelled further as the guy's hands slid all over her and she didn't stop him. He hunched his hips, pushing his crotch forward into her.
They fit together and she did not try to get away. Her arms were around his neck and she still moved as if dancing, but really all they were doing was grinding. Like a tsunami, the awareness that I was ill-suited for her swept away any swelling down there that I had achieved for the first time in days.
Driving that sinking feeling home was when the guy kissed her and she accepted it. Her head tilted so they could kiss easier and they basically just stood there, in the cleared-off dance area, and lightly swayed as they engaged in a deep kiss.
My guts twisted so violently that I gave a dry heave and a gargling gasp.
They were perfect together and everything inside me knew it. I sank faster, trembling now as if ready to tumble over in a faint any second. I began stumbling around the couch, walking on wooden legs towards my wife.
She saw me at the last second, and disengaged from the guy. I could see why she liked him; he was cute in a boyish way. She reluctantly met me and looked guilty.
I said through a jaw that didn't seem to want to work, "I'm leaving. I can't… I'm going. I'm sure you want to stay. I bet you can get him to drive you home—"
She grabbed my arm and pulled. "What are you talking about?"
"I saw you kiss him."
Her face took on a reddish hue and she looked down. "Clark…"
Bitterness at my inadequacy made my voice brittle. "I'm sure you want to stay with him. Will you be back in the morning?"
"I'll come home. With you!" She said it, but looked disappointed.
I knew.
I knew I was wrong for her.
CHAPTER 14
She removed the costume, slowly, without much energy behind her intent, and listened to me rant.
"Why did we get married? What the fuck did you ever see in me?"
The same lack of care kept her expressionless, but there was a slight tightness around her eyes that told me I was getting through. Or so I thought. I had seen her kiss him; there was no attempts at denials from her.
Finally, I asked, "Why did you kiss him?"
She straightened, resolute, irritated, and looked at me with a vague look as if she were looking through me. "It was just a kiss, Clark."
"We're married."
"Is this that whole cheating thing? Yeah, because I haven't cheated on you. Kissing isn't cheating."
"Hey, maybe I could see a peck on the cheek, but a full-on tongue fuck?"
She rolled her eyes. "A kiss. That's all it was."
"Do you even understand—"
"Have you ever kissed a girl besides me?"
Huh? She knew I had. I gave her my best pained look. "Oh, come on—"
"Well, have you?"
"Of course."
"And did that mean you were going to marry her?"
"Of course not, but—"
"Did that mean you were going to have sex with her?"
"Yes."
"And did you?"
"No, but my intention—"
She held up a hand. "I know, all guys want is sex. But girls kiss and it's just a kiss. I've kissed lots of guys and didn't throw my legs open for them."
I let out an audible sigh to sh
ow her my frustration.
She shook her head. "Don't get pissy. I've kissed girls, too. Didn't mean I was going to have sex with them or marry them."
My eyebrows twitched. "Girls kissing isn't cheating."
"Whoa, we agree on something."
"Well, it isn't."
"But kissing a guy is?" She pressed her lips into a questioning frown and lifted her eyebrows as high as she could in mockery.
"Uh…"
"Uh huh…" Her dry tone delivered her verdict on my ambivalence as surely as a single pound of a gavel.
I heaved a silent sigh. "Okay, maybe kissing isn't actually cheating—"
"Great. Now that that's settled, can we get in bed?" She was already tugging at the covers where I sat on her side.
I got up, not wanting to necessarily go to bed but not wanting to give her any ammunition that I was being inflexible.
She climbed in naked. "Get undressed and come to bed."
It was late. She was in bed. I stood there hand in the air as if to continue the argument until I realized there wasn't one – on kissing, anyway. I frowned ferociously and went to undress in the bathroom. Several splashes of water on my face later, I came out and climbed in.
She immediately turned over to me, grabbing my limpness.
I tried to twist away, ashamed at my condition, but she held on.
She murmured, "Want to know something?"
I grunted noncommittally.
"All those people putting their hands on me and feeling my outfit?"
I made the same noise, but with a lessening of indifference.
"A few of the guys who felt me up said they wanted to try it naked."
I wasn't liking this. I scowled at her. "The guy you kissed?"
"No, not him. Other guys. Maybe that's why I kissed him; he wasn't as crude."
"Wow, that's a relief."
"I'm being serious. Feeling all those hands on me… By the time I danced with him, I was all… slippery… down there. The nasty things they said—"
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