Red Negligee

She walked in from another room wearing only a tight one-piece silky red negligee. She had never worn anything like that before, so at first I didn’t understand its meaning. Then she moved in a way that was supposed to be suggestive. It hurt me to watch.

You have to understand that my wife is a beautiful woman. She had never needed to act out being “sexy”. A beautiful woman doesn’t need to bait her attractiveness. She is allure without effort.

Slivers of pain and distrust had slowly been pushed in like splinters between us. Enough had entered to form a gap in our togetherness.

Gaps can be peopled with pleasure. The gap between us remained empty. Empty of exchanged warmth. Empty of eagerness to be near each other. Empty of sex. Just empty.

A memory stands out from that time. I was walking alone along the village high street. A car came toward me on the same side of the road. As it got near and passed someone in the car recognised and waved to me enthusiastically. They were going too quickly for me to see who it was. But I wept because someone had been pleased to see me. Someone, a woman I think, had wanted me to receive her feeling of pleasure. I did, and from it knew how lonely I felt.

All of that was the backdrop to Lorraine standing before me in the red negligee. All of it was part of the pain I felt.

We often forget how much history is in everything we do. But as Lorraine stood looking at me, I knew it all. The arrow shafts still emerged from where they had struck us both.

But the core of that history still remains to be exposed. I had left Lorraine and partnered another woman. Lorraine and I were facing each other now because I had returned to tell her of the change. So, as she posed in the red negligee I shouted at her angrily, “Fuck you Lorraine!” and turned away.

You see, the red negligee was crying out to me that Lorraine was convinced the only reason I would turn to another woman was that for nearly six years our marriage had been without sex. And that was like a punch in the face. The reason I had wept in the street wasn’t because I was longing for sex. What I needed was to see eagerness and admiration in my wife’s eyes. I longed to be wanted and have my woman proudly show me to her friends. I wanted a wife.

Tony Crisp

Copyright ©2003 Tony Crisp