That’s What Friends Are For · Part 1

That’s What Friends Are For · Part 1 (1/2)
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More Nostalgic Recollections From The Golden Age of Troilism

A man always remembers his first time. His first fight, first beer, first fuck. And I can recall with absolute clarity the night I became a cuckold. The skin-crawling, scalp-tightening realisation that another man had just had my wife; the wave of cold, sickening dread that swept through me, clutching my balls in its icy grip, plucking them off like frozen fruit, unmanning me.

I remember how the humiliation slammed into me like an uppercut, how my mouth dried, my knees shook and my stomach turned over; the way I walked around on dead, unresponding legs, like some punched-out boxer trying to find a friendly corner where the pain would stop.

No, no man ever forgets the night he becomes a cuckold.

Yet try as I may, I still can't be absolutely certain of the year. I know it was early in the 1980s and that portable VCRs and video cameras had just come on sale, because that was how John, my best friend, hooked me, with videos of his wife Carol.

Looking back, I can't believe I didn't see through the way he played me along, like some prize fish, landing me exactly when he wanted. But things happened gradually over several months and I never suspected a thing. It was a dangerous game we were playing and I guess a psychiatrist might well suggest that somewhere deep down I wanted it to happen, that subconsciously I engineered my own cuckolding. If I did, I certainly wasn't aware of it.

No, the plain truth is I had plans of my own for Carol. My real reason for getting my own wife, Karen, to pose for the Polaroids and then the video – and later on getting her into the bondage and the outdoor sex scene – was quite simple. I wanted to fuck Carol, and I'd wanted to for years.

Okay, I'll come clean and admit that showing John the pictures of Karen did do something odd for me, something I didn't really understand or even wanted to think about too much. It was a kind of Masochism, I suppose. It was about this time I first read Leopold von Masoch's book, "Venus in Furs" and I can't deny that I found some of his feelings familiar; that letting another man see my wife naked wasn't entirely unpleasant. I always got this weird feeling in my bowels each time I showed John the latest set of pictures, or the latest tape, and watched his eyes sweep greedily over every little detail of Karen's body. A kind of fluttering sensation that tickled my belly and sent shudders down my spine. At one and the same time I wanted to rip the pictures away from him, yet show him more, even stronger.

And yes, maybe I did occasionally fantasise about John and Karen together. But I was no reckless kid. I was a married man in my late twenties, the father of a young son. I had a lovely wife and home. I wasn't about to risk losing all that by pushing things too far. I was old enough to know that fantasies are best left as they are. And smart enough to know that the closer you could get to turning them into reality, the more intense they became. The secret was to take them to the wire but stop short.

I think I was twenty-eight when the Polaroids first started, which makes the year 1982 or 1983. So Karen would have been twenty-six, John about thirty and Carol a year older. We were used car dealers, John and me, except he wore a suit and had a fancy title in a Ford dealership, while I hawked my clapped-out stock of old smokers from one garage forecourt to another, moving on whenever the locals looked like forming a lynch mob.

After a few skirmishes in the late seventies, we eventually realised that if we did business together, we could save the time and trouble of him driving his trade-ins all the way to the auctions, where as often as not, I'd buy them and drive them all the way back.

We did pretty good out of it, too. Soon we were socialising; me and John at first, then with our wives, and finally as families. We got on so well we even went on holiday to Ibiza together one summer – must have been in '82 – and came back still on speaking terms. Once John and Carol had staked their claim to the best bedroom in the villa, that is, even though we'd gone equal shares on the cost. That just about summed John up – he always had to get the better of everyone, to come out on top. But I needed his trade-ins more than he needed my cash back-handers, so I went along with him.

It was on this holiday that I first experienced the electrifying effect Carol could have on me. The four of us had arranged a baby-sitter for the evening and had gone out to a bar where we ended up getting drunk as skunks and dancing the night away, mainly with our own partners. Both girls looked absolutely stunning in their summer dresses and neither wore very much underneath. Carol wore a short skirt and a white T shirt so tight the dark circles of her nipples were clearly visible. And Karen had on this thin white dress that showed off her tan and clung to her like a second skin.

Me and Karen were dancing to a slow one when she started winding me up, clasping her hands at the back of my neck, looking me straight in the eye, singing the words of the song and grinding her mound into me. The effect on me was inevitable, and clearly outlined in my thin summer slacks.

Then Carol broke into our reverie by tapping Karen on the shoulder and saying this was a 'ladies excuse me'. So we swapped partners and I tried desperately to keep some air between me and Carol while I tried to get the damn thing to go down, even visualising my mother-in-law wearing nothing but a shower cap and rubber gloves. But as every man knows, erections have a will of their own and suddenly I had a dick with attitude, one that figured that since he was on holiday too, he'd stay up as long as he liked, and fuck you, too, pal.

Seconds later Carol and I were pushed close together by the crowd and my secret was out. Well, not exactly out, but getting that way. I'll never forget her expression. It was priceless, the way she changed from looking shocked to flattered in about two seconds flat. She thought it my reaction to her, see? Then next thing I knew, she was pulling me so close my hard-on was practically drilling into her belly, and whispering in my ear that 'someone seems pleased to see me'. Well, I could hardly tell her it was all Karen's doing, could I? Not and hang on to my nuts.

Besides, before long, hanging onto my nuts was exactly what Carol was doing. Whether it was too much booze or too much sun or far more likely, sheer animal magnetism on my part, Carol took full advantage of the dark dance floor to er, get the measure of her man, if you get my drift. Finally she discreetly clamped one hand around my dick and buried her face into my neck.

Karen saw the love-bite later on that night, as we fell into bed. It certainly proved to be an interesting conversation starter. It wasn't until after she collected one of her own the following night, with John being the prime suspect, that she seemed to get over it. She's like that, Karen, never lets me get away with a damned thing. We might well have all gone further, maybe even swapped, but fate intervened in the way of a stomach bug and the most intimate we ever got as a foursome was keeping the lavatory seat warm for each other as we coped with two days and nights of the squits.

It was right at the end of that year, sometime between Christmas and New Year, that John started putting the pressure on. We'd paid them an afternoon visit to exchange belated presents for the kids and had got through several bottles of wine when in all innocence, Karen asked Carol what she'd bought John for Christmas. There was an awkward pause and a snort of laughter from John that had Carol blushing furiously in seconds, before she gave up and joined in. She'd bought him a new Polaroid camera and from Carol's embarrassed expression, it was obvious they'd been making full use of it. Sounds tame now, but this was the early eighties and Polaroids were the cutting edge of swinging technology.

Carol must have known what John had in mind and watched us like a hawk, but he managed to show me the photos anyway. To disappear together into his study or garage would have been a dead giveaway, so he waited until the girls were clearing up in the kitchen before handing me a thick envelope, giving me a broad wink and suggesting I paid a quick visit to the bathroom.

There was a set of ten and Carol had done a strip routine down to her knickers. Finally, on the last shot, her bra came off – and as near as dammit, so did I. Hoping no-one would notice the tent in my slacks, I walked casually downstairs, to where my host was waiting, with sly grin spread all over his face.

I wasn't sure what to say – hell, I wasn't sure I could even speak, but fortunately the girls came back into the room. When they were looking the other way, I caught John's eye and pushed the envelope down the side of my chair, between the cushions. And that's how it all started, how I inadvertently arranged my own cuckolding. A quick look at a small, blurry, too-light Polaroid of Carol showing her tits and suddenly I was like a dog with two dicks. Karen didn't know what hit her as soon as we got home and she got our son to bed.

Soon I could think of nothing else but those damned pictures. They occupied every waking moment. Carol unzipping the familiar blue dress, Carol in her black lace undies, Carol taking her stockings off. And finally, Carol smiling sheepishly at the camera, her naked breasts on full display.

Naturally, I decided to play things very cool. In fact I think I lasted damn near the whole of next day before I phoned John and suggested a boys' night out, and once we met up in our local pub, The Feathers, I managed to make small talk for, oooh, the best part of a minute before I asked him if he'd taken any more pictures.

That's when I struck a deal with the devil. Sure he'd taken some more, he said with a smile. And they were a lot stronger than the ones I'd seen. But first he wanted to see some of Karen. It was only fair, he pointed out. Besides, that way he could be sure I'd keep my mouth shut, since if I dropped him in the shit with Carol, he could do the same to me with Karen. That's what friends are for, Mark, he told me with a laugh.

Anyway, I thought this over long and carefully, for at least a second. Sure, I'll take some, I said. No problem. Karen was a good sport. She'd be game for a laugh. Meanwhile if he could just see his way clear to letting me take another peek at the original set……

Now I'm not sexist by nature, honest. But am I the only man in England to notice that women can be so fucking mercenary at times? To cut to the chase, those first shaky Polaroids of Karen cost me a new washing machine, damn near a whole new wardrobe and the agreement that if ever I showed them to anyone else, she could remove my nuts very slowly indeed with a rusty can-opener; something that Karen acknowledged would be akin to her cutting her nose off to spite her face, and therefore best avoided by the photos remaining in her safe-keeping.

It took me two weeks to find them. One night after we'd drunk a whole bottle of vodka between us, shot two sets of ten and screwed ourselves silly, we both fell asleep on the bed in a post-nuptial, alcoholic haze. Sometime in the middle of the night I woke up and could hear Karen moving around the room. I played possum. Then the hall light went on. I kept my breathing regular, deep and slow, listening as she came back in and gathered up the photos that were scattered all over the bed and floor. As soon as she went out again, I opened my eyes and peeked through the crack between the door and the frame.

She was in the hallway, crouched down by the open door of the cleaning cupboard – the first place I'd looked. I had to wait three days before I knew for certain that she'd be out of the house all afternoon. I eventually found them in a shoe-box, underneath the Christmas decorations. Like a kid with a new toy, I drove straight down to John's office.

As he shuffled through them, making polite noises, I got the same peculiar feeling I'd got when I'd seen the love-bite on Karen's neck the previous summer. And like then, I wasn't sure if I the sensation was pleasant or not. We were both car salesmen, remember, and well used to conducting negotiations. No way was I going to show him the most recent Polaroids. Instead he got the first set, which he noticed immediately was virtually pose-for-pose the same as the set of Carol that he'd shown me. When he got to number ten, the one in which Karen had finally dropped her bra, I felt like I'd been kicked in the stomach, and held out my hand for them back. Tantalisingly, he pushed the first nine across his desk to me and held onto the last one, looking at it dreamily until I stood and said I had to go.

A few days later, while we were having a drink after our regular Wednesday evening game of squash, John upped the stakes and I saw the first pictures of Carol naked, posing on the sofa I'd sat on so often. I wanted time to look at them and knew exactly how to get it. I handed him the two in which I'd managed to talk Karen into pulling her pants down and facing the camera.

And so it went on. Before long, both girls' confidence grew and they began to enjoy showing themselves off on camera. You could see it in their faces. And being salesmen and competitive by nature, John and me soon started trying to outdo one another, to see which one of us could talk our wives into showing the most. First came the open-leg shots, then the held-open poses, then the shaving routine, then the vibrators and so on. It was like a drug. Each time we shot a set we wanted to go further. Then John found this advert for a long remote control cable for the Polaroid camera and we started getting into the action ourselves. Within three months of starting out, we were showing each other pictures of our wives fucking and sucking in every position we could think of. And still we wanted more!

That's when the videos started. The portable VCRs that had just come onto the market were heavy, clumsy affairs with shoulder straps, an umbilical cord to a separate camera and a battery life of about twenty minutes. And they cost a fortune. Even so, John talked his directors into investing in one for the company, putting stars in their eyes about how this exciting new technology would revolutionise the way people would buy cars in the future.

I'll never forget the first one of him and Carol, or how quiet she was compared to my own wife. The only sounds were the creaking of the bed and the occasional moan. I remember I plied Karen with booze, then crept downstairs in the middle of the night to watch it. It had me reaching for my dick within seconds, this close, interminable, static shot of Carol having sex with her husband. The tape lasted a whole lot longer than I did. I was okay until she looked straight into the camera with a mouthful of cock, and winked. That was the moment my own dick started playing the whale.

I soon came under pressure to make one of me and Karen but things didn't go too well. Borrowing the camera made Karen suspicious. John must know what we want it for, she said. And if he does, Carol will. And she wouldn't be able to look either of them in the eye again. It was difficult trying to get hold of the damn camera, too, as all the directors in the dealership had mysteriously become so enthusiastic about its sales potential that most nights, one or other of them wanted to take it home to demonstrate it to their wives.

On the two occasions I did manage to borrow it, Karen did a strip but refused to go any further, and John made it clear there that the tape of Carol and the Cucumber wouldn't be forthcoming until he got something similar in return. Not that that stopped him telling me about it most days. You won't believe what she does with this cucumber, he'd whisper down the phone – it'll hook you onto salad for life.

Eventually it was Karen who provided the solution to the impasse. She's always been a great wife to me, always supported me in whatever I tried to do. It was the same with hobbies. In our teens she tagged along to football matches she didn't want to go to and cheered me on from the touchline. In our early twenties, though nursing a baby, she somehow found time to learn Spanish with me when I suddenly announced that my ambition was to sell up and run a bar in Ibiza. Whenever I got a new hobby, be it golf or squash or photography, I seemed to have to spend a fortune on the right gear and Karen never complained, just went along with me.

Now it was the same with our Polaroids. She let me talk her into posing because she knew I wanted it so badly. At least that was how it was at first. It wasn't too long, however, maybe after half a dozen packs of film, before I began to see my wife in a new light. Through the eyepiece of the camera I could practically see Karen's self-confidence blossom. The sex between us had always been good but after a Polaroid session it was amazing. Something, whether it was the camera or the sexy underwear or (more likely, now I look back) the sneaking suspicion that I was somehow showing her pictures to John, brought out the rampant exhibitionist in my normally demure wife.

One night Karen showed me a new catalogue that she'd sent off for. That's how we bought most of her sexy underwear and all the vibrators and sex toys she was fast accumulating. But this brochure was different. Everything in it was made of leather and chrome. My eyes popped out on stalks when she showed me the things she thought she'd look good in. And not just at the prices either.

I'd expected her to want the pants and bra set, maybe even a basque. And I wasn't disappointed. But then I saw the red circles she'd drawn around all these straps, harnesses, studded collars, wrist cuffs and ankle restraints. I must have looked shocked because suddenly she snuggled into me, her eyes glittering with a brightness I'd never seen before. As I turned the page and saw more red ink around a pair of beautifully made stocks, I felt her unzipping me. By the time I got to the torture rack I was past caring about the price. Karen could suck for England in those days.

You won't believe what that stuff cost! But I soon realised it was the smartest money I'd spent in a very long time. I should have guessed before then that Karen was submissive by nature. But I just thought she was easy-going. In fact I'd often remarked on the way she tried to duck responsibility for big decisions – it was always me that made them.

The best advice I ever had on sex came from an old boy I knew from the car auctions. We were sharing a table in the snack-bar one day and talking about the trials and tribulations of selling used cars. "Just find the button, son," he spluttered through a mouthful of hamburger. The button? "Yeah, the button. The thing that turns them on. Might be leather seats or mag wheels, might be the sound system, whatever. Everybody's got a button, son. You just gotta find it, then press it."

Now, after several years of marriage, I realised I'd finally found Karen's button. And suddenly I had a different wife on my hands. The first night I trussed her up in her new leather gear she made so much noise she woke our son up and started the dog next door barking.

I soon learned – we soon learned – that it was a sense of helplessness that unleashed this rampant animal within her, turned Karen the respectable wife and mother into Karen the uninhibited, insatiable, slut-from-hell. Tying her up seemed to give her a strange kind of freedom, though 'total abandon' might be nearer the mark.

Consultative, considerate sex, she explained one night in the heat of the moment, required a lady to refuse certain practices for the sake of propriety. Not that she actually used those words. But I got the gist when I tied her legs to the headboard and she hissed that if I were to fuck her in the arse right now there wouldn't be a damned thing she could do about it. So I did and soon every dog in the street, not just the mutt next door, was howling along with her. It was bedlam.

John, meanwhile, was practically coming in his pants each time I recounted the sordid details of the latest depravity, which I usually did just before asking if he happened to have the tape of Carol and the Cucumber with him. Eventually he offered a compromise. If he couldn't see Karen on video, he'd settle for seeing her perform 'live'. This was a compromise? Not for nothing was John the best car salesman in town.

That’s What Friends Are For · Part 1 (1/2)
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