The Bourgeois Empire Read Online Free Page A

study during act something, scene something of Shakespeare’s something or other. She stood in the doorway while you sat, busying yourself with forceful longing. She came to you—which was best, because you couldn’t get up. She sat on your lap and poured a drink for each of you. You relaxed, felt looser. Your throat was still tight, so you just drank without talking, far too aware of her ass on your crotch, wondering if it was damp—the fabric between you. You put your hand down the front of her skirt. It was very much as it had been in your adolescence—there wasn’t a clear understanding of what you were allowed to do. Her pussy was smooth, probably shaved. The young girl thing to do, apparently. She must have noticed your noticing. She said, “Did you expect something else?”
    Was the kid trying to embarrass you?
    “A big seventies bush? Is that what your girlfriends have?” She thought she was being very funny, waiting for the laugh riot.
    “I don’t have girlfriends. No. Not at all.”
    “I can grow a bush. I had one until I was thirteen. Is it a sign of virtue for men your age?”
    “God no. It’s not. You’re really very mouthy in person.”
    “I’m just having fun. Aren’t we having fun?”
    Of course you were. You were having the best night of your life.
    It was difficult to continue; she’d broken your concentration, your hard-on was losing its character, things were just not right. The position you were in, in the chair—it was solid wood, a beautiful Sam Spade kind of thing built for grown men of business—wasn’t made for fooling around. But the panties and the stockings? They were doing a fine job. So you drank more, smoked cigarettes and talked. You wouldn’t be her first time; at twelve some lucky hockey player had enjoyed that honour—a botched threesome between her best friend and her best friend’s sister’s husband. The other girl pussied out and left Charlie to her own devices: bland and mercifully short-lived factory-town fucking. She told you it was okay but not anything unique, and that “He left his hat on, which was a good focal point.”
    Not being her first was A-okay with you.

CHAPTER NINE
Health Punt
    A GIRL DOESN’T MAKE YOU INTO A MAN , surely, but her presence, the thought of her, made you want to become a man again. Charlie was a catalyst. Nadine couldn’t do this; Nadine’s wiles were diluted by an onslaught of pseudo-feministas in couture-fitted yoga wear. After Nicola, your second daughter, was born, you put out for a mom-job—the tummy tuck was all Nadine was after, but you were trying to be generous. A fine surgeon, recoup time, live-out nanny (you had your limits). Nadine had always had a great body, a killer ass as more than one of your friends had pronounced it, and good, even better than good, tits. But after the babies and the mothering, things had changed, dropped. You still noticed other men looking at her, leaning in to talk to her at parties, holding her hand a little too long after a handshake—their standards, it stood to reason, were lower; they didn’t know she’d been even better, before. Nadine was lively and energetic, she was, you remembered, a skillful young mother and housewife and she made it work, painlessly, each day, a magic trick none of your friends’ gals had ever been able to match.
    You felt guilty about the fling you had with Barbara, Peter’s wife. Barbara the Lush. She talked about Nadine while she showered, as she dressed. She smelled like (not of) dirty martinis, new car and menthol. It was the eighties after all; the affair lasted only a couple of months. But she’d gone slightly rabid when you broke it off. You might have been worried, but she seemed too drunk to properly compile her facts and present them to the involved parties. Barbara was not a careful woman and she served as an
aide-mémoire
about the importance of a healthy, happy wife—a good mother, a well-kept lady of the house.
    Times changed. Nadine had