[The following story, which took place a few years ago, was published in the March edition of ENM Magazine – Ethical Non-Monogamy.  Unfortunately, despite heroic efforts by its publisher, this month is the last month of its short existence.]

Saint Patrick’s Day in Chicago, where the river runs green and the jazz of a bygone era still swings.  Lo and I had gone there for Lily and Jim’s wedding.  It was an extravagant affair.  All the quaint rituals and odd practices of the public betrothal symbolizing holy monotony.  I mean monogamy.  I mean matrimony.  Sorry, I struggle to find the right words sometimes.  All the focus on the bride as an unblemished princess performing for her solid, stoic king.  There’s just something about it that provokes the puckish prankster in me.  Especially when I know that the beautiful bride in her pure white gown has a devilish desire for exceptionally large cock and that her groom comes up short. 

But Jim is a good friend of mine and a sometime paramour of Lo’s, so we took added delight in the carnal knowledge that behind all the nuptial vows, the oaths of fidelity, and the pomp of the ring ceremony, both Lily and Jim hadn’t any plans of restricting their bodies and pleasures only to the one legally bound to them.

So, as all the other guests let out gentle expressions of awe and shed a tear in reflection of this display of love and affection, I grinned a wicked little grin as I sipped my expensive scotch.

Lo saw my mischievous look and rubbed her leg up against mine under the table, indicating that she had some ideas of her own.

We both knew Lily and Jim to be swingers and so, when the formalities were over and the dancefloor opened up for revelry, Lo missed no opportunity to scandalize the evening.

We sat at the table next to the newlywed couple.  Rather than the usual choice of two entrées, there was a choice of four and so people were passing bites from their plates around for each other to taste.

“You are so generous!” said one guest to me after I let her have a bite of my food.

“Whenever I experience something amazing, I just want others to share in it,” I replied, rubbing Lo’s arm.

“I’m the opposite,” said the young woman to me.  “Whenever I find something amazing, I keep it all to myself.”  She also rubbed the arm of her partner.

“You can have him,” I thought.

Meanwhile, Lo was seated next to Lily’s Uncle Collin.  He arrived to this event without his wife Suzanne and no one blinked an eye about it.  The family was used to their “independent” social schedules.  This wedding happened after the shenanigans that had taken place at Collin’s mountain cottage, so Lo was very familiar with ‘Uncle Collin’ and his love of young women and his E.D. issues.  The whole night, any stranger would have thought that Lo was Collin’s date for the evening.  Given the age difference, they might have thought Lo was his hired companion as his FGE – “Full Girlfriend Experience.”

They danced together – marvelously, I might add – and reminisced, quite loudly at the table, about the days at his cottage.  He repeatedly alluded to Lo suntanning nude along side Lily, going to a farm and milking goats, and they laughed about how Lo lost her bikini bottoms while tubing behind his boat on the lake.

As they told these stories, Collin gradually drew the other guests at our table into their intimate stroll down Memory Lane.  He is charismatic and a good storyteller, but the whole time I was silently fuming, ready to burst out with, “Yeah, you could read all about it on our blog!  With photos!!!  I wrote it better than he tells it!!!”  But I remained silent and let the senior statesmen have the spotlight that he so craved.

He subtly hinted at, without giving too much detail, the nudity, sex, and other debauchery that took place at the cottage.  He was in on the secret we shared with Jim and Lily – that they got married prior to this large ceremony to appease their Catholic families and that, though they lived “in sin” prior to the private wedding, Lily was and continues to be an A.O.L. girl (Anal Only Lifestyle).

After Collin regaled them with his tales of titties and sun, one of the young women at our table, noticing Collin’s wedding ring and Lo’s “hotwife” ring, asked, “So you two are. . . married?”  She asked it hesitantly, knowing it was an inappropriate question that was only sparked by the gaping age difference between them.  Yet the curious guest was inebriated enough to broach the subject and display her incredulity.

“Oh no,” said Lo, laughing and delighting in the twist of the knife that was about to take place, “I’m not married!”

“Oh, so you’re. . . ?” the woman’s half-formulated question hung in the air awkwardly.

“We’re just friends,” said Lo.  “This is my partner, HH,” she added, as she put her delicate hand on mine.

The fact that they weren’t married, but had shared so much together, compounded with the fact that Lo was dating another, yet different, older man who was seated right next to her as she laughed about these sexperiences, seemed to blow the mind of our dinner companion.

“Oh,” she said, feigning comprehension, but displaying complete befuddlement.

The band began to play again and Lo begged me to dance with her.

I demurred, saying, “Dancing is emblematic of our relationship.  When we dance, you do whatever you want.  For me, though, the goal is to have fun.  But all you do is criticize and then, when I stop, you criticize because you always have to have an object of your derision.  Without it, you feel a tremendous void.  And whatever I do – driving, cooking, dancing, cleaning – I’m your eternal object of derision.”

Lo replied, “Well, when dancing, it’s more fun for both partners if one is not stepping on the other’s toes.”

“That’s only possible if you’re dancing solo.”

“You’re right, dancing is emblematic of our whole relationship.”

As harsh as this banter sounds, it was all said lovingly, tongue-in-cheek.

One of our friends at the table overhead us and said, “You two should write a book chronicling your lovers’ quarrels.”

“That’s a great idea!” I replied “That way I could document my long suffering.  I could call it, ‘The History of my Calamities,’ after Abelard.”

“Your calamities,” chided Lo, “you should be so lucky to have an Eloise like me!”

Having fully lost our audience with our theological allusions, Collin remarked, “You two have great erotic tension.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but no erotic release.”

“There’s a difference,” said Lo, “between erotic tension and sexual tension.”

“And what is that?” I asked.

“Erotic tension is in your head.  And you have a great release for that – the blog.  Sexual tension is between your legs and you have a great release for that.”

“What might that be?”

“My puss.”

“How’s your sexual tension?”

“I never have sexual tension,” said Lo casually, “I only have sexual release.”

“I suppose that’s what it means to be ‘a liberated woman.’”

She got up to dance with Collin some more.

Louis Armstrong’s “Just a Gigolo” was being sung by the crooner and Lo, wearing her green velvet dress in honor of the Irish holiday, looked stunning as she twirled and dipped with Collin.

As they kicked up a storm on the dancefloor, one of the women at our table sat next to me.  “Aren’t you jealous,” she whispered in my ear.  I couldn’t help but think of her as Iago.  Though green was the color of the day, it was not the color I was seeing as I watched my Desdemona dance with her Cassio.

“No,” I replied with a smile.

“Not at all?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Want to get some air?” she asked.

“Sure.”

I followed my femme Iago out onto the balcony of the hotel and, though it was freezing in the windy city, she offered me a few puffs from her vape pen.  Not wishing to be rude, I accepted.

Suddenly my Shakespearean companion transformed into a jovial leprechaun and the next thing I knew was Lo, Collin, the sexy pixie elf and I were at The Green Mill, a dancehall throwback to the age of Swing.  A big band was playing with a tall, lean black trumpeter in the lead.  They were pounding out “Tain’t What You Do” as Lo was passed from partner to partner in the crowd that was jumpin’ and jivin’ to the beat.

In my mind, the spotlight was on Lo and her eyes were on the prize – the trumpeter who seemed to be singing the words especially for her, with a peculiar emphasis on them, changing the meaning from, “Tain’t what you do, it’s how you do it” to “Taint, what you do.  It’s how you do it.”

“How you feeling now?” asked the leprechaun.

I felt as if a green wave was carrying my Lo further and further out to sea as I was stranded on the shore watching her recede into the distance.

There, far on the horizon, I saw her up by the stage, talking with the trumpeter who was standing, his crotch eye level with Lo’s face.  She was looking up at him, saying something.

The band took a break and Lo disappeared, as did the band leader.

Collin returned to the table and I inquired about her whereabouts.

“It’s Saint Patty’s Day!” he said, “The luck of the Irish.  I believe that Lo is getting lucky!”  He slapped me on the back and bought me another drink that I didn’t need.  “When in the Emerald City, anything can happen with a little magic from the Wizard,” he said, removing a teal handkerchief from his jacket pocket that suddenly turned into Lo’s satin panties.  He handed them to me and said, “Improbable, yes.  Possible, perhaps.  With Lo, all is green go-go and Eternal Return of the Dame.”

When I heard these words, I knew that I was slowly losing my grasp on reality.

The last thing I recall from the evening was a Julie London song, “Hey Daddy,” being played by the band as an instrumental number.

When I woke up, I was in my hotel room in the bed and Lo was rising and descending on a large bottle of champagne.

Groggily I rubbed my eyes and looked at her to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.  I then said, “Be careful darling, I wouldn’t want that bottle to break.”

“Not to worry.  I’m wide, wet, and willing.”

As she proceeded to hump to her heart’s content, she said, “Will you order some breakfast from room service?”

Always the dutiful daddy, I said, “Sure, what do you want.”

“A bowl of Lucky Charms.”