Anyone

Author’s note: Portions of this story are autobiographical.

“So whose baby is it?” I asked Kathy, just hours after receiving my negative paternity test result.

My wife squirmed a little. She was sitting up in bed, naked, reading, as if it were ten o’clock in the evening and not five in the afternoon. Kathy liked to do this: tempt me, drive me wild with desire for something she would ultimately deny me, like a hand slapping down a troublesome fly. She’d been expecting me. That was the reason her lovely, pale, unblemished body was on full display. “I’m not sure,” she eventually replied. “Could be several guys.”

“Several?”

“It’s probably either Maurice or Jared though.”

“The guys in our building?”

Kathy answered with a reluctant nod—while I felt the blood draining from my face. “They’re both married.”

Kathy sat stone-faced.

“They’re both black.”

“So?” my wife shot back.

“So I’m not.”

Kathy shrugged bare shoulders. Looking at her—her pretty face and body—made me think of how far we’d come in eight years. Kathy, still an improbable virgin after graduating from art school; naive, largely unread, unworldly (despite having lived in New York City her entire life). Looking to me, over six years her senior, for wisdom, guidance, sexual experience (I in fact had little) and decision-making even, in practically all areas. A father figure in other words. Then one day a fellow teacher at the school where Kathy taught art asked her out for coffee, and...

Everything changed.

I bore a lot of the blame. For years now, during our foreplay, I’d been sharing my cuckold fantasies with her. Ones usually involving a black man with a stereotypically big cock. Her first lover (the guy at school) had been Latin. There had apparently been a couple of white guys along the way, nothing long-term. Then, somehow, the aforementioned Maurice and Jared had gotten wind of Kathy’s promiscuity and they, individually I assume, began making the discreet afternoon trek upstairs to our top-floor apartment. Maurice was a jazz musician, saxophone. I’d occasionally encountered him on the stairs. Jared—I had no idea what he did for a living. All I knew was one day I came home early from work and found him holding Kathy’s ankles while she did sit-ups in skin-tight spandex. Kathy had suddenly gotten the exercise bug.

I’d also, increasingly, shared my same-sex fantasies with her. And she’d even gone so far as giving me a few gay porn videos for both my most recent birthday (36) and Christmas. Sometimes she would watch them with me and we’d comment together on how beautiful this one’s body was or what a big cock and/or pair of balls that one had. “With gay men it’s more like gymnastics,” Kathy once commented, making me laugh.

I had taken it one step farther. Sometimes if Kathy needed the apartment on a weekday evening for “entertainment” purposes, I would stay out after work. We had come to that agreement early on in her extra-marital “phase.” After having a few drinks, and maybe a burger, I would walk over to one the gay theaters in midtown, sit in the back row, open my pants and masturbate to the flickering images on the big screen. I confessed this to Kathy and she said, rather flippantly, “Maybe you’ll meet someone there.”

“In a place like that? Not likely.”

“If you do just remember to be careful.”

I said nothing. For one thing it didn’t yet apply. For another...this was more than just a little hypocritical of her. When I’d brought the same subject up months ago—practicing safe sex, wearing protection—she’d waved me off with a dismissive, “I know what I’m doing.” Meaning: I’m on the pill, I let them fuck me with their bare cocks and I’m going to continue letting them cum in me. So there.

My how those words, that misplaced, arrogant, feminist certainty, had come back to haunt her. Us I should say.

“So what are we going to do?” I now asked.

“We?” she shot back.

“Well it’s our problem isn’t it? Me and you?”

Kathy slammed her book shut muttering, “I was trying to read...”

“This is important, Kathy.”

“I know it’s important!

“We have to review our options here.”

Kathy’s eyes narrowed to slits as she looked at me and said, “OK Mr. Know-it-all. What are our options?” As little as a year ago my wife never would have spoken to me this way.

I looked down at the space of bedsheet between us. The gulf. I said, tentatively, “Abortion...”

“No. Absolutely not. I want this baby.”

“O...kay,” I said back, case closed. “We could split up...”

“Is that what you want?” Kathy again said in her dagger voice.

“No. You?”

“I want to be with you forever,” she said melodramatically—albeit without the least trace of melodrama in her voice.

“OK, we’ve settled that.” I thought for a moment and asked, “What about the father, whoever he is?”

“What about him?”

“It’s his child. Is he going to want to lay claim to him? Her?” I was quick to add.

Kathy straightened her long, shapely legs out and said, “With maybe one exception...every guy I’ve screwed on the side has been married.”

“Oh,” I replied, thinking: Well that’s convenient.

“Whoever he is,” she went on, “he’s not going to want to ruin his marriage. I’ll cease to exist for him once he finds out. Just watch.”

“Doubt that...,” I murmured.

“What?”

“Nothing.” I pretended to give it some more thought—actually I’d hashed through all these possibilities a dozen times already—and said, “What about our parents?”

Kathy sighed. “I’ve thought about that. Mine...? They’re gonna have to know. But yours don’t live here. You can tell ‘em...I was having trouble getting pregnant so...”

I waited.

“We adopted. A child of color. Simple.”

“They’re going to want to see you.”

“Tough. It’s February...,” Kathy counting off the months in her head. “We can skip going down there for Thanksgiving. Then we have a newborn...that’ll give us an excuse for skipping Christmas with them. We always have Christmas with my parents anyway.”

“People are still going to know, Kathy...”

“Like who?”

“Friends, neighbors...”

“Fuck ‘em.”

“People are gonna know you’re pregnant,” I went on. “Then when the baby comes out and it’s brown...”

“That’s on you,” Kathy shot back.

“Me?”

“You’re the one who gave me license to do this...”

“What do you mean by license?”

“Sleep with other men? You’ve been encouraging me for years. You’re the one who gets off on it. I...” Kathy calmed herself and said, “We got unlucky is all. One in a million. Now we’ve got to live with the results. If you can’t live with it you should...”

“Should what?”

Kathy left the obvious unstated.

“They’ll be laughing behind my back...,” I mused, more or less to myself.

“Let ‘em laugh. You’re a willing cuckold. Now pay the price.”

That was harsh, I thought. I bowed my head anyway. “We could move upstate. You—”

“Now?” Kathy frowned.

“No. Afterwards. You’ve been saying for years you want to get out of the City. Remember when we visited Ithaca? After the baby is born we could pack up and leave. Get away from everybody...”

Kathy blinked as she thought this over. “I don’t know...”

I knew what she was thinking: All my lovers are here. If we leave the City I’ll have to start all over...

“It’s something to think about,” I concluded.

“Yes...,” she agreed. Sort of.

I leaned closer. “Can I kiss you, darling?”

Another frown. “I’m not in the mood.”

“All I want to do is kiss you.”

“Yeah and we all know how that goes.”

Reluctantly, she offered a cheek. I kissed it. And kissed the sticky corner of her mouth and her ear. I kissed her cheek again as Kathy reached down.

She shoved me away, saying, “Really? We sit here talking about me being pregnant by another man and you get...a hard-on in your pants?”

“I...”

“Cuh!” Kathy exclaimed. Some short derisive noise like that.

My wife turned from me saying, “Go away! Leave me alone! Sleep on the couch tonight!”

Adding, as I reluctantly obeyed, tail not between my legs but standing upright: “You’re incorrigible! You know that?”

One thing we had not discussed was how she was going to inform the two probable fathers. Kathy decided that she would invite each of them up, separately, and lay the news on them gently.

I’m pregnant. It could be yours, not sure. Nothing to worry about. My husband’s going to take full responsibility for the child. He’ll be the father. He’s a good man in his own weird way. As for us...? Yes you can fuck me tonight but it’s the last time. It’s our parting fuck. The affair’s over. Sorry.

But—

No buts.

While my wife was conveying this news to either Maurice or Jared, one or the other, I took my place in the center of the back row of the midtown gay porn palace. I opened my pants. I began stroking myself, fondling my balls...

About a half-hour in a man entered the theater and looked down my otherwise vacant row. He made his way down it. Initially he sat one seat over, to my right. Then, after watching me masturbate for a moment, he moved over next to me, his pants open as well now. “Hi,” he said.

I said hi back.

“We could stroke each other,” he suggested.

“OK,” I reluctantly agreed.

“You have a nice one,” he said, closing his hand around my erection. “Long and...Nice head, too,” he added, his loose fist beneath it.

“Thanks.”

“Most guys...”

He didn’t finish the thought. I said, over the screen moans, “When I first got married my wife said I had the perfect cock for her. Perfect fit.”

The man looked over in the flickering darkness. “You’re married?”

I nodded.

“To a woman?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you doing here?” he laughed. I took him literally and said:

“She’s entertaining a friend tonight. Needed the apartment. Go slow,” I cautioned, referring to his hand.

“Quick cummer?” he smiled.

Another nod.

“What kind of friend?”

“Huh?”

“Your wife.”

“Boyfriend,” I replied. “Lover.”

“Oh. Wow. You’re tolerant.”

“Too much so, I guess.” I looked over at my new friend. “She’s pregnant. Not by me,” I added.

“Very tolerant then,” the man laughed.

We sat there stroking each other, our eyes on the screen for a moment.

“Tonight’s the goodbye fuck,” I eventually said.

“Goodbye...?”

“There are two possible fathers. She’s telling—”

“Two?” the man asked in disbelief.

“Two, yes. She’s telling each of them what the deal is. One last fuck then...”

“And you believe that?”

“No,” I admitted.

“How long has she been pregnant?”

“Just found out.”

“Then she still has months to go. She can fuck all she wants. And,” the man again laughing, “doesn’t have to worry about getting pregnant. Plus some guys get off on fucking pregnant women. I see it all the time in the personal ads...”

I sat there mulling over this—these new realities—all the while trying to will myself not to cum. I stopped his hand.

“What?”

“Don’t. I’m going to cum.”

He leaned over, and down. “Then cum in my mouth.”

“No, let me suck you first. I need a...break.”

“OK,” he agreed. “Suck my cock. You go first.”

I went down on him, taking him in my mouth, retracting my teeth...I’d seen it done hundreds of times in porn flicks. Kathy used to suck me regularly, back in the good ol’ days of our relationship. There couldn’t be much to it. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

I went further, tucking my free hand, my left hand, under his balls, so I could fondle them as I sucked. I went deep. I gagged. I tried it again. Gagged again. I decided to just concentrate on pleasuring the top four inches or so of his cock. Let it go at that.

“You do that so well...,” the man said dreamily, once I got my rhythm down. “You come here often? I haven’t seen you before.”

It’s dark in here, I thought. Sometimes, I would have replied, had my mouth not been fully occupied.

“Maybe we could meet up here,” the man suggested. “Couple of nights a week? Suck each other? Sounds like getting away from your wife won’t be a problem.”

No, I thought. No, that is, it wouldn’t be a problem.

The man’s body, and not just his penis, went stiff. His back arched. He said, as if his jaw had just been wired shut: “I’m gonna...cum!”

I found Kathy sitting up in bed naked again, reading. She’d started wearing glasses, black-rimmed ones, which for some reason made her look even sexier.

As I emptied my pockets and began to undress I asked, “How’d it go tonight?”

Without looking up Kathy replied, “He understood. He got it.”

I wondered who “he” was. Which one?

“Did he fuck you?”

“We made love,” Kathy said after a pause.

“The last time?”

“We’ll see.” She laughed much like the man in the theater had. “It’s not like he can get me pregnant again.”

“No,” I could not help agreeing. I was down to my briefs. I approached the bed. Kathy looked up from her book and said:

“This is the first time on a night when I’ve had a friend over you haven’t had an erection in your panties. What happened?”

“Nothing,” I said, sinking a knee into my side of mattress. “Did you change the sheets?”

“Do you see a wet spot?”

“No.”

“I always change the sheets, you know that. And don’t change the subject. I just fucked another man. How come you’re not hard?”

I stacked two pillows against the headboard, pivoted on my ass and leaned back. “I jerked off in the theater.”

“What theater?”

“A gay one. Midtown.”

“How does that happen exactly? Without making a mess?”

I thought through the possibilities. Then, surprising even myself, decided to tell the truth. “Another guy blew me,” I sighed.

“Oh.” Kathy looked positively rosy tonight. I’d never seen her so pretty. She had a glow. Was it the baby? She sounded surprised—but then again not so much.

“And I blew him,” I added.

“Did he...wear a condom?”

“No.”

“He came in your mouth?”

I nodded. “And I came in his.”

“Did you swallow?” Kathy rarely did. I could never understand why. I had countless images in my head of an oyster of fresh cum landing on the ground, or in a saucer, or in a cup or empty glass.

“Yes.”

“Do you know this guy?”

“Not before tonight.”

“He could be...anybody.”

What could I say? Anonymous sex in a dark theater. Two men. Complete strangers. Happened all the time.

“Did you like it?” Kathy asked.

“The taste?”

“Everything.”

“Yes,” I nodded.

“Plan on doing it again?”

“With him?”

“With any guy?”

I shrugged. “We’ll see. Guess it’ll depend on how often you need the apartment.”

“I’ll be needing it a lot it turns out,” Kathy smiled, slyly.

“Well then...”

Kathy shifted against her stack of pillows. “So I guess you’re officially bi now.”

“Am I?”

“Bi or gay, one or the other. You sucked another man’s cock...”

I answered with silence. Silence equaling assent. Yes. Yes, I was.

Kathy took my hand and put it on her modest left breast. She leaned over. “Kiss me,” she whispered.