Pokerface Ch. 01

PLAYLIST for Part One: La Follia, Trio Sonata in D minor, RV 63, by Antonio Vivaldi.

FRIDAY EVENING

"A new friend will join us for Poker Night." My husband shouts from the bathroom, thrilled.

"Really!" I do my best to look interested, but my mind flies toward my Concert Evening.

The distinctive exposition of La Follia--the sarabande-like harmonic progression in triple meter--resounds in my ears again and again as I spread my legs in front of the vanity mirror.

Gone are the times when I was ashamed of my pussy! I apply two drops of Chanel Number Five to my mound, then I reach for the silk guêpière laid out beside my brush.

"Really. I guess you may like him." Greg insists

Unlikely. My husband's colleagues are invariably boring. But I try to be kind while I brush my bush down there. I had Mr. Vidal groom it in the new almond-shaped fashion. Vidal Salon has just opened in our city, he is the rising star in Lower Hairdressing.

"Oh great! So I'll try to say hello to your new friend before my taxi arrives..." I lie. My plan is escaping just before any poker chum arrives.

Perfect! The almond hairstyle goes so well with the black lace thong I shall wear under my Little Black Dress for Concert Evening. But I don't slip the thong on place, not yet.

My fingers find the suspenders--four satin straps, light as ribbon, ready for the silk stockings that come next, sheer and cool as I roll them up my thighs.

Finally, the black thong. Always after the guêpière, is the golden rule for Concert Evenings. Always over the guêpière, I repeat to myself, feeling that liquid feeling of naughtiness down there.

Greg's electric razor noise stops, and I know what it means. He has completed his beard contouring and is coming to our bedroom.

"You could like him, Aria. He is French, you know. A real Frenchman."

I hurry, slipping the Little Black Dress I selected for tonight from its hanger, gather the satin shoulders in my hands, and step in, mindful not to snag the stockings. The silk slides up cool and weightless. I zip it halfway just as my husband's shadow spills across the doorway.

"Need a hand?" Greg says, leaning against the frame, arms crossed, amused.

I turn my back to him with a smile, lifting my hair. "Just in time."

His fingers brush the small of my back before he finds the zipper, drawing it up slowly. Someone else shall zip it down faster, later this very evening. The quintessential distracted husband, Greg hasn't noticed my new lingerie. LaPerla. Beautiful. Expensive, I guess. Thank God it is a gift. Not from Greg, from my first lover, the Lebanese shipowner who used to say:" If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning."

The man who made a Good Girl discover her Exhibitionist Self. Every time he honored the quote with a gift, he requested something in exchange. To parade in a public place wearing the new gift I remember the first time. He fastened the gold necklace around my neck right there on the sidewalk, in Greek Street, Soho. His knuckles grazing my collarbone. The pendant felt warm already, like it belonged to me--or marked me.

"A gift," Ziad said, his voice low. "Now take off that trench. Walk. Just the necklace and your sumptuous body. And that lingerie I gave you."

I swallowed. The air buzzed with Friday night noise--music spilling from pubs, the clink of glasses, laughter too close behind me. I looked down: the sheer black lingerie he'd chosen for me was obscene--lace barely covering, transparently daring. Under the soft silk trench I wore, it felt like a secret pressed tight against my skin.

I hesitated. Then I untied the belt.

As the trench slid off my shoulders, he grabbed it.

A beat of silence, then gasps, whistles, a burst of laughter from somewhere across the street. My cheeks burned. But my nipples stiffened against the lace. I felt their eyes--dozens of them--drag over me. I stepped forward in my heels, head high, each stride a small explosion in my chest.

I walked past the bar. Men turned. A woman blinked, stunned. Someone muttered "Jesus Christ."

By the time I turned back and walked toward him again, my shame had transformed into something darker, hotter. I wasn't just obeying.

I was performing.

I loved it.

"Timing's everything," Greg murmurs. He doesn't know how much the warning applied to his sweet wife. In Soho, someone had alerted the decency squad, and I sashayed back to Ziad and my trench and safety just in time.

My husband is the quintessential academician. Tall and fit for his age, three-piece grey suits, gold rimmed round glasses. Elegant, and boring. His subject--International Relationships--looks equally boring, not that I know what his research is about. His good manners are also becoming boring. This is possibly why I date those transgressive types now.

Gone are my good-girl times! Tinder has changed all that. It is the bad-girl heaven. The perfect evolutionary environment, in which any good-looking woman can select any man she fancies. And I am--they say--more than good-looking. Much more.

Men come to me in all shapes and sizes, in more segments and subsegments than the twenty-first-century automotive industry has invented for cars. And all my lover compare with luxury cars. I am not after One one-night stands, I plan to keep my lovers for weeks, maybe months. Until I fancy a new toy-boy segment. After more than forty years of Good Girl control by my Good Girl self, I want to make up for the lost time.

After the exotic Lebanese, I am now into BBCs. Big Black Cocks. DeWayne is muscular, naughty, suitably rich. So handsome I guess he could have stolen the role from Michael B. Jordan for 'Creed'. And the living demonstration that the legend about Black cocks being bigger than white ones is not just a legend. Dimension is not everything, of course. But it IS something.

And he is so creatively perverse. 'Thong comes last' is his first rule for me. Wearing panties over corsets or garter belts is frowned upon by classy women. But the clever arrangement allows me to remove my panties in public. My lover requests a small, show from time to time. I am no submissive, but love the thrill of giving him the minuscule black thing as other men are staring. And the naked, increasingly wet feeling underneath.

Last week, we met a friend of his just in front of the Harry's Bar in Marylebone--a place I love because it reminds me of my hometown, Venice.

DeWayne's hand was steady on my back. Then I felt it--his hand pressing lower. Waiting by the curb was a muscular, pale-blond man in a cream jacket--Vladimir, DeWayne said. His wife, broad and flushed, picked through her handbag with impatient fingers.

"Aria," DeWayne said smoothly, "this is Vladimir. And that's his wife..."

"Natalya." the overweight blonde added.

I offered a polite smile, shook Natalya's plump hand. Vladimir's blue eyes--as cold as the Neva river in front of the State School Music in St. Petersburg--scanned me with Soviet thoroughness. I had the impression that DeWayne didn't like the man. Natalya excused herself and turned away to scroll her phone, muttering in Russian.

DeWayne looked at me with that slow, deliberate heat in his eyes, right there in front of Vladimir.

The message was: time to warm up some Russian coldness.

Smiling at the Vladimir, I slid a hand beneath my minidress, easing the thong down my legs in one smooth, fluid, casual motion.

"The vodka here is good, da, but not as good as Russkaya, back home--too smooth..." Vladimir was saying. Then, he fell silent.

I half pirouetted, then I bent over to pick it up, my back to Vladimir

"Svyataya bludnitsa! Holy Bitch!" he muttered under his breath.

I didn't see his eyes, but I felt them--sharp and heavy on the back of my thighs, just where my pussy peeks, as I took a few seconds in the bent position before straightening, the scrap of black lace into my palm as I turned to face the two men. I gave it to DeWayne, who nonchalantly pocketed it.

La Follia is still playing. The tempo shifts, subtly at first--a heartbeat picking up. The violin digs deeper, the bow biting into the strings with urgency, insistence.

DeWayne is the perfect lover to elevate me to a new level. When it comes to multiplicity, I am still a good girl--taking one at a time. I want more. Threesomes, moresomes and thensomes outnumber any other sexual fantasy. So why I haven't ever considered the idea? But tonight, that's about to change. I smile as I remember DeWayne's promise to introduce me to threesomes. And something more, he added. I wanted to ask him for some details, but is was difficult at that very moment, because I was sucking his cock, and it is pretty large. So I just looked up at him--I was on my knees-- nodding yes with my eyes.

He looked down at my eyes, then at my tits. He taught me to bare my tits and keep my hands behind my back for blowjobs, "So I can imagine you are handcuffed, plus you can enhance your dick-mouthing." Which is true, but I know he also wants to look at my tits all the time, checking if my nipples are tout enough. He slaps me lightly if they are not.

Greg ruins the magic, "The poker gang should be here in a few minutes."

I roll my eyes. He knows I don't like to see his friends, old and new, so why is he insisting? Greg's old friends are as boring as him. Or worse. They usually keep staring at my butt whenever they thinks I'm not looking, So why is he suggesting that I meet his new poker friend? The issue was settled long ago when we decided we both needed a free evening a week, so Greg organizes his poker nights, and I arrange my Concert Evenings, with my dear friend Michelle.

I slip into my high heels. Ready! Feeling deliciously naughty, I ask Greg to check my outfit. Feeling great in my Loubies high heels and Chanel LBD--an attire I woundn't have considered in my Good Wife times--I sashay forth and back in front of him. "Is everything ok?"

He takes a step back to give me a better look over, straightening his regimental tie at the same time.

"You look stunning, Aria. Isn't that dress too short and sexy for a concert evening?"

Indeed it is. Not just the length or the high slit, but the plunging neckline and the deep scoop at the back are delightfully outrageous. Way too daring for a formal venue. But I am not going to the music hall, after all. As usual, I am meeting my lover. But this evening is special. DeWayne promised.

"Oh no. Fashion has changed. It would help if you came to a concert one of these weeks, Greg, and see for yourself."

"Oh, you know I don't like classical music."

So, how did you marry an Italian violinist, Greg? But the reverse question also holds. Why have I married the British academician? And accepted to live in London, among the British. Badly dressed, sexually repressed, football hooligans, as that American savvy guy once said.

"And I can't stand your friend Michelle."

I nod. This is true, for obvious reasons. The same why I love her. She is a Lesbian, a scholar in Gender Studies and a fierce feminist doesn't lose any opportunity to criticize the Patriarchal dominance of academia, embodied in Greg. He shakes his head--rather sadly, because Michelle is a gorgeous redhead with big tits.

"You should stay for Poker Night sometimes, you see, Aria. And play. You are a good player."

That's not new. He tried to keep me at home for Poker Night, several times. He detected my desire for more than repetitive conjugal sex and even suggested some spicy version of poker. Serving whisky in skimpy dresses for chips. I declined, gently but firmly. It is our free night after all, and I am an intellectual, a musician, not THAT kind of woman--I objected. Do your friends' wives attend poker nights in sexy attire? He looked about to argue, then his shoulder slumped. Fair enough, he admitted. Everything was settled long ago. Before I found this new approach to my Concert Evenings. Before I set my transgressive self free.

Michelle graciously agreed to keep my affairs secret. She goes to concerts with her wife and briefs me on the program. She has a crush on me, so we are friends with benefits. She is a gorgeous brunette and has those big tits, so from time to time I have tea with her and her skinny wife. Lesbians like a threesome from time to time, and these two are amazingly creative in bed. Discovery: a heterosexual woman can learn useful things from her Lesbian friends: slower pacing, tongue skills, toys for exploring the whole body. I donated a few to to my boyfriends, adding the instructions I got from Michelle.

I feel slightly wet right now, but I resist the temptation of fingering myself down there. I don't want to drip all over the place. Not yet.

The doorbell chimes. My taxi has arrived earlier than expected. Good. I put my ecological fur on and say bye to my husband with a little kiss, "Have a nice poker night, Greg."

Timing is everything.

Just then the door opens, and there stands the first poker buddy--damn early.

A stranger. Greg hurries and greets him.

"Pierre! You made it."

Mid-fifties, disheveled, in a charcoal blazer worn over a black shirt, top buttons undone, the stranger steps inside. Greg is beaming.

"Pierre, meet my wife--Aria Vivaldi. Aria, this is Pierre Delon."

I extend a hand. The Frenchman ignores it, leans in instead, brushing a kiss on each cheek.

He smells like smoke and leather and maybe a little perversion.

"Enchanté," he studies me with a half-smile.

I smile. Too late to hide the shiver. But he looks pleased.

"My pleasure, Monsieur Delon"

"The pleasure is mine, Madame Vivaldì," he says, lips curling, stressing the last syllable of my surname like the French do, because they believe they own all the Italian surnames in the world. "Please call me Pierre."

"Pierre..." I reply, trying to be cool, to keep the distance. "And it is Vivàldi, you see, I am Italian."

"I know, Madame Vivaldì"

Vivaldì. Again. He does it on purpose. I roll my eyes. But he holds a bottle of Bollinger Grande Année, and a small package, like an offering, so I eventually smile back.

He is the quintessential Frenchman. A silk scarf, loosely knotted, hints at both vanity and self-assurance. The French! They are not as elegant as we Italians, but everyone believes so. Their arrogance makes the difference.

But no amount of French arrogance can disguise the truth of his body: thick-set, ruddy, his nearly shaved head catching the hallway light, neck lost in rolls of flesh. His deep-set black eyes are sharp, and when they drop to the hem of my little black gown, they don't bother pretending.

"You're leaving dressed like that?" His gaze lingers, insolent.

"For the concert," I say, already stepping past him, unwilling to give him my back.

He chuckles softly. "Dommage."

La Follia is reaching its climax. The rhythm stumbles and recovers, like laughter caught in a breathless chest. The melody returns again and again, faster, hotter.

A soft knock at the door. My taxi? But since when does a taxi driver come all the way up to our loft? A slight alarm starts ringing in my ear.

La Follia. Madness. It's madness, yes. But it's exquisite. A dance with no restraint.

Greg opens the door and his new friend comes in.

He is not a stranger.

He is DeWayne.

My lover.