Our Decades of Open Marriage: Part 2

2

Newlyweds

I met my Paula in my senior year at the very conservative Christian college at which we were students. When I met Paula at 23 years old, despite the fact I’d been raised in a liberal home, I was mostly clueless about the realities of sex.

During my last few years of high school, I nearly always had a girlfriend, yet, I was in the grip of fundamentalist Christianity, so I tightly controlled what I did with them.  My senior year of high school I was totally in love with a beautiful girl who had an extensive sexual history.  She made it abundantly clear that if I wanted to have sex, she would be more than willing. Yet, I felt an obligation to her and to God to abstain. She trusted me and as hard as it was, we did not even make out. I was sure that should we start down that path, I would not be able to stop, and she was open about the fact she would not even try.

I went to a small college just outside of Chicago. Since my father had worked his way through college, he was determined that I would do the same. To do so, I had to forgo nearly all of what most people think of as “college life.”  I lived in the dorms and my weekdays consisted of going to class, driving an hour to my job at a large hotel in downtown Chicago, and then getting home well past midnight… every day.  On weekends I was expected to do Christian ministry work in the city when I was not at work.   I simply did not have time to do the college life things that one sees on TV and movies. I worked and went to class and studied… that was my life. So it was easier not to break my vow of chastity than it would have been if I’d had more free time. 

My Datsun 510 in front of my dorm.

Yes, there were temptations for me by working at a 2,000-room hotel. I had opportunities with both other staff members and with girls staying at the hotel. Several times I danced at the edges of “losing my purity,” but never went over it.

At the Palmer House, circa 1984. I"'m the handsome one to the left of our boss in the tux.

On top of that, this was the early 80’s and “adult theaters” were still a normal part of big city life.  By stopping by a near by X-rated theater after work (before driving back to my dorm) I was able to see big-screen porn a good many times. Additionally, on a couple of occasions, the theater had brought in the lead actress to perform live after the film. So. I did get a little exposure to sex, but no actual experience.

Beyond the fact I didn’t have time to date, the school that I attended was so conservative it was almost cult-like.  Of course, when I say conservative, I mean sexually repressive. Not only was premarital sex an expellable offense, but so was almost any physical display of affection in public or private. After every Christmas and summer break, there would be a few sermons in the daily chapel time that focused on the great sin of premarital physical affection.   That would be followed up by a call for confession.  A couple, whom I knew quite well, heeded that call to confess the sins committed over summer break and were promptly expelled because they had felt each other off when they were back home in Texas. 

It should not be surprising that the college which was so strict about student sexual conduct was rocked by a series of sex scandals shortly after I graduated. Most notably, it turned out that the founder of the school (and pastor of the mega-church we were required to attend) had been screwing his secretary for literally decades.

If that weren’t enough, it was a commonly known secret, that his son (the youth pastor) had not only been screwing the teen girls but taking nude Polaroids of them.  When that secret began to get out of control, his father arranged for him to take a large church across the country.  A year later, the cache of Polaroid's were found by a church employee.  Of course in good Christian fashion, the church did not turn the photos over to the police but destroyed them. I know about this because one of my best friend’s father was a deacon at that church and knew about it firsthand. But in the cult-like environment of the college, that was seen as a godly act: protecting the reputation of the pastor. 

The founder's son-in-law wasn't so lucky. After the college founder died, he became the leader of both the mega-church and college. But, a few years later he went to federal prison for taking a minor (a student in the church’s high school) across state lines for sex. Again, it was an open secret that the church staffers drove the fifteen-year-old girl to a Lake Cabin for a number of weekend “prayer meetings” alone with the man.  The only difference was in this case, the girl’s parents wouldn’t stay silent even after they were kicked out of the church. 

All that to say our college was very sex negative.

I met Paula in January of my 5th year of school (working full-time made it impossible to finish in four years). Not surprisingly, at our Puritanical college, dating off campus, even in groups was forbidden. Because of this never once were Paula and I actually alone until I graduated in August of 1986 even though we’d been engaged for months by then.

Paula and the Professor in our first months of dating.

We did have a few days unchaperoned when I flew to South Carolina to meet her parents.  Over those few days, we kissed a lot, but we never took off our clothes.  Once, however, while we kissed, she straddled my thigh and began rubbing really hard, hard enough it hurt as we were both wearing jeans.  I at least knew enough that when she climaxed I knew what had happened. I'd never once been with a girl where she'd had an orgasm.  The bliss was short lived, because no sooner had she come down from her orgasmic high than she felt so overcome with guilt she began to cry.  She was so upset in having committed such a sin so close to our wedding.  She was also guilt ridden about the fact she’d had sex with her last serious boyfriend. It was only years later she admitted that she got married because she very much  wanted more sex and at the time she thought the only guilt-free way to have it was in marriage.  Guilt was the controlling force in her sexuality well into the early years of our marriage. But, like with all people it was complicated.

I was befuddled by all of this to say the least.

On our wedding day I was still a virgin and our first lovemaking turned out to be as much comic as romantic. 

Though from my earlier years, I was well versed in the writing of Xandra Hollander and the other writers in Playboy and Penthouse and had even read a good part of  “Everything You Wanted to Know about S*x but were afraid to Ask”, I found on our wedding day, there was so much I did not know. To this day she teases me about how little I knew about the female anatomy.

Since I'd just finished college we were broke, so our wedding was on the cheap. This actually helped us in our effort to prevent getting out of control again because we had to do everything ourselves. We even climbed a big magnolia tree and cut greenery for the decorations.   But in the end the wedding was very nice and went as smoothly as if we had a professional wedding planner.

Our wedding, 1986

One of her cousins had given us the use of their beach house on Fripp Island, a very exclusive private island off the SC coast, for our honeymoon.  With a 1:00 PM wedding time, it was still the middle of the day when we headed out to the beach.  The drive from the reception to the beach was about two hours and by the time we were half way there she had her shirt off and front-close bra unfastened.  I found myself within reach of only the third set of bare breasts to which I'd been so close.  I was surprised how soft and malleable they were. Most surprising was that I actually didn't realize that women's areola's can shrink and the nipples enlarge.  How was I to know they change shape? Nipples in magazines were always erect.  I was actually a little disappointed when she opened up her bra to show me her tits and I saw her nipples were essentially flat, no "point" at all. Then as if by magic, they shrank, got darker, and nipples the size and shape of pencil erasers appeared.  I guess it was at that  moment I realized how little I knew about women and sex.

So, in our Mercury Lynx, I played with her tits while zooming down the rural US Highway toward Beaufort and on to Fripp Island.  I thought even then how anyone we passed could have seen her, yet she did not seem to care. That was also a moment of enlightenment.  My new wife was both horny and not very shy.  It was only years later she told me how she pressed for an early wedding because she so much wanted to have sex. I’m sure we got a lot of looks from passing cars as she was essentially topless and our car plastered with “JUST MARRIED." To make us even more conspicuous I’m sure I was weaving as I played with her wonderful boobs.

When we arrived at our honeymoon beach house we had our pick of bedrooms in which to consummate our marriage.  Having worked my way through college working as a bellman, I'd roomed many honeymoon couples. Most were just tired, but the few for whom that would be their first sexual experience were very obvious with their excitement and nervousness.   Paula was very excited and very ready to fuck, but I was the one who was nervous. The beach house had five bedrooms. We chose a room with a sliding glass door which led to the sand road that led to the beach which lay about a quarter mile away.  It didn’t even occur to ether of us to close the drapes and spoil the tropical view. 

As if in the script of a movie, she went into the large bathroom and shut the door so as to primp for the big event, while I got naked and crawled under the sheets.  I waited, and waited. I waited so long my erection died. But eventually, she came out in white lingerie.  It was a sight I will never forget. Though I am now an outspoken advocate of sex before marriage, only those who have waited for that well planned moment can understand what it is like to see your new bride for the first time. My erection came back.  

I took my time and slowly removed her lingerie.  I'd read enough in Penthouse Forum to know that was the right thing to do. But things then got comic. I was such an  utter neophyte that I didn't know anything about real sex. She had to tell me step by step how to not only eat her out, but how to not bite when I sucked her nipples. The next part, putting my penis in her vagina, just did not happen as naturally as I thought it should. I just sort of thought if we lay together it would slide right in her, well it didn’t. To make matters worse I thought the vaginal canal was pointed to the front. After all most sex scenes showed the guy on top, thus the pussy must be pointed forward. That seemed to be what was described in all the Penthouse articles, so why would I question my "research."  After several failed attempts to find the right way in, she said "Here let me help" and she reached down and guided her new husband’s manhood into her body.  Soon thereafter we were in full sweat with our naked bodies making honey on our honeymoon bed. It was everything that I'd imagined it would be, but for her the whole event was a comedy of errors that she has told many people (to my chagrin) over the years.

The house sat in a manner that the sliding glass door looked down the sand road, rather than perpendicular to it. We'd chosen that room for the view.  That was of little concern, since we'd not seen any cars out but ours since we arrived. Fripp Island was primarily summer homes and/or winter homes for very wealthy northern "Snow Birds."; but, being mid November we found the island nearly deserted.  Furthermore the sand made it so that there was no sound made if a car did come up the little road.  Just off this same road sat our car still plastered with “Just Married”.

 All this to say, while we were deep in our long first experience of lovemaking, we noticed a shadow moving on the wall. It was from a car just approaching the glass door on the sandy road.  There was a shadow because the late afternoon sun was coming from the water right into our bedroom, almost like a spotlight. The shadow was barely moving.  We were on top of the sheets and she was on top of me grinding away. Lifting my head, I could just look down past Paula, while she had to look over her shoulder.  We made direct eye contact with the middle aged man and woman in the front seat.  While I vaguely knew they were watching us have honeymoon sex, my mind was way too full to process that part.  So, noting that it was just a car, we continued on the business at hand.  It was a little while later when the shadow returned. The same car was back, this time hardly moving.  I didn't know if Paula saw the shadow, but notice or not, she did not respond. She kept her focus on grinding her clit down on my pelvis trying to achieve an orgasm that way.  Momentarily the car came to a stop. They were overtly watching us have sex. I told her the car was back. She didn’t slow down or cover up.  Finally, she gave up on getting off that way and Paula looked over her right shoulder,  directly at the middle aged couple in the car.  From my vantage point below Paula, with my head now propped up on a pillow,  I could see the woman smiling and then say something to her husband before they drove off and didn’t come back.  We have laughed many times knowing this couple came back to get a good look at the newlyweds making love (of course if we were them we would do the same).  So, I learned something else about my new bride, when she's turned on, she has few inhibitions.

Well that week I learned that Paula could not get enough sex, and she liked variety. We made love in every one of the five bedrooms, on the living room floor, the couch and even the kitchen counter.  I was virile and she was horny, so we had sex three and four times a day for a week. And never once did we shut any of the curtains.  For a very conservative Southern Belle, my new bride was quite bold.

Notice that even on our honeymoon she wore a knee- Leanght skirt. At that time she'd never even worn a bikini in her life.

I also learned that unlike the magazines, she just could not get an orgasm without direct clitoral stimulation with her hand or by riding my thigh. It would be some months before I would learn to get her off manually, and a year before I could induce her orgasm by giving her oral sex.  But, truth be told we had a lot of great sex over those first few years as she broadened the ways she could get off.  It would take twenty years and the onset of menopause before she became orgasmic through intercourse.

The only disappointment was that because a cold front had come in we did not make love on the beach. But that was a small thing. Looking back, it is too bad this was way before the era of digital photography and phones that take photos and video.  The next week we did get a photo of us in bed at an anti-bellum mansion in Vicksburg Mississippi using the autotimer on my manual Olympus OM-2.  Out of fear of not being able to get the photos developed, even in that photo she covered up her wonderful breasts.

It was when the honeymoon was over and we set up house, the first appearance of what was both a long-term problem and later the rational for our open marriage made its appearance. The fact that we did not have sex until our wedding day might seem romantic, but it forestalled knowledge of our different sexual styles. Simply put, Paula wanted to have sex every night and every morning and every afternoon I was home.  She felt she'd held back her libido for a very long time, but now she was married she deserved to make up for lost time.  Within a few months, she was already unhappy with our sex life, but we were not yet ready to address it directly. In short, she expected me to fuck her brains out morning, noon, and all night every night.

Well, I had taken a new management job and I was working a lot of hours and I wasn't up to fulfilling her expectations.  Many a time I came home to sit in my easy chair only to have Paula flop into my lap saying “I want some attention.”

After a year in Dallas, we moved to South Carolina for me to start my master's degree at a conservative Christian University and my stress and hours only increased, Over that first year, the disconnect between her sexual expectations and my sexual capacity put a strain on our marriage and the stress only increased with time. For her. things got worse when I went off for almost five months of training with the US Army Reserve.

I tried to make up in quality what I couldn't provide in quantity. I tried to plan wild sex outings.  Now, to some readers what we thought were wild outings would seem tame, but for fundamentalist Christians in the Deep South in the 1980's, we were quite wild.  We would have sex in parking lots or in highway rest areas. Once we stopped at an interstate rest area right at dusk. We began making out in the car, but we soon got really bold and screwed right on the concrete picnic table in full view of the parked cars.  On another memorable time after I got home from school she said she wanted to go out for dinner and then to make love in the car.  After thirty minutes of looking for a good spot to do it , we ended up only about ten blocks from our house.  We parked in a residential area and began to make out.  Almost immediately she removed all of her clothes. She quickly decided there was no room to fuck in the front seat of our little car. We tried crawling to the back of our Mercury Tracer wagon but were still cramped.  So we opened the hatch and she got out of the car, completely naked and leaned into the car so I could enter her from behind.

 It was still early evening and not close to dark. So she stood there right in the residential street in the nude, apparently not the least bit concerned that she could be seen not just by anyone who came by, but from all the houses around us. Soon I had my pants at my knees banging her as hard as I could.  Initially, I was really having a great time and didn't think about where we were. While she did not seem to care we were having sex in public,  I began to think that if anyone in the houses nearby looked out the window they might call the police. While I appreciated that my previously conservative wife had developed a taste for public sex, I knew this was not California and didn’t want to be arrested, so I sped up. Though I know she wanted it to go on and on,  I finished up sooner than she’d wanted so that we could get out of there. 

Another place we found for erotic adventure was at my job during our second year of marriage.  While in graduate school, I worked as night guard at a downtown high-rise office building.  Often Paula would stop by and tease me, but we were not alone, there was a night cleaning crew of about ten people, a 24-hour radio station on the 7th floor, plus any executives who stayed late.  One night she was particularly frisky. She came with me on my rounds and as we walked she began to tease me. She began grabbing my rear and making lewd comments. I literally dragged her into the elevator and I put the car on hold.  We began to kiss passionately.  We pulled off all our clothes with abandon and we made love for a good half an hour (which was way too long while I was on the job).  It was great not just because we were in a public elevator making love, but because the ceiling was a mirror, so we got to watch the whole thing. So even in those early years, she was opening up to sex beyond closed doors.

This pattern of regular bouts of semi-public lovemaking continued over the next couple of years, even after I finished school and went to work for a Baptist Church.  Like when we had gone to a local lake and walked along the shore for some time before we got crazy. She knelt down and gave me a fast but awesome blow job right on the shore about 1:00 in the afternoon with a good half dozen fishing boats in sight.  When she had sucked for about 10 minutes she stood up dropped her jeans and bent over a large rock so I could rock her from behind.  We found that having sex in public places provided quite the sexual zip for a monogamous couple.

I was by then a full-time minister, but it was apparent, even in my first job that neither of us were going to fit the mold.  To this day Paula gets angry when she recalls how we got called into the Senior Pastor's office at that church to be scolded for how close we sat together in church and public displays of affection.  At the same time we were realizing that a sex positive approach made us more effective with both teens and other young couples.  It was at that very first church in which I was a staffer, I developed my first seminar for parents on teaching kids about sex at that church. While I got some criticism for it, I got far more parents thanking me for the seminar. 

We also began at that time to expand our knowledge about sex beyond the "Christian" books on the subject.  I remember distinctly when we rented an educational VHS video about  sex and it turned out to be illustrated by real couples having real sex.  While I’d seen X-rated movies before, it was quite a shock (and thrill) for Paula. Making love while another couple did the same on the screen was thrilling... and a foreshadowing of the future. Not for the first or last time she was faced with something that turned her on, but also made her feel guilty.

Once again, I must remind readers how different the world was in the 1980s, before the internet. In most communities in the South and Mid-West there was no legal way to even obtain videos that had real sex in them.  But, as this was a legitimate educational video it was allowed. It might have been legal but it was certainly way outside the normal acceptable content for fundamentalist Christians.   We loved it. It was produced in the  late70's and was pretty hippy-dippy, but it was informative and a turn on.   As it was common practice in the day, we were able to just keep the video by paying the purchase price from the rental shop.  It was the first of a collection of “educational sex videos). We actually have it to this day.  Too bad we don't have a VHS machine on which to watch it.

So, even by the end of our first year in the Christian ministry, we were out of step with the accepted behavioral norms. Before we left the ministry less than a decade later, we would have a sexually open marriage.  How we got there is the subject of the next few parts of this narrative.