Stephen Keshner - Cockpit Confessions of an Airline Pilot

“So, what are you saying, that you guys don’t sleep with each other, don’t have sex with each other?” She’s becoming more genuinely interested now.

“No, we still fool around occasionally, not too often, that’s true, but whenever we do, it’s great…we always say ‘why don’t we do this more often?”

She’s up pouring us another drink now, getting another pack of cigarettes from a carton in her suitcase. “Pardon me for a minute,” she says, heading for the bathroom.

I start to think back on Geri and me and sex….. times we shared my mattress in Stigo’s apartment… he would come in and catch us all the time, always laughing and pretending to be covering up his eyes, looking through his open fingers, the way kids do… “excuse me people,” he would announce, going slowly by, getting a good, honest look. We would laugh along with him, not caring, it was only Stigo, and we were in love.

One morning, after Stigo pulled that routine of his and headed for the shower, Geri and I quickly decided to get even with him. “Let’s see if he can handle it.” We both got completely naked, snuck into the bathroom, pulled back the shower curtains and casually stepped inside with Stigo. “You don’t mind, do you” we asked, both of us starting to lather up.

That fuckin’ Norwegian freaked, I’ll never forget the look on his face, and how he blushed… I laugh to myself, thinking how we blew him away…

Then, that one time in Honolulu, it was Geri’s birthday… I told her to get into her tuxedo, I got into mine, and I surprised her with the Limo for the evening. Up at the top of Tantalus, standing through the open sunroof, watching the sunset, we started fucking around. I was eating her out while she stood there, the Limo heading for the nightclub now. For the thirty-minute ride back to downtown Honolulu, I’m pounding into her from behind, both of us trying to see if the driver can tell what we’re up to, through the partition’s smoked glass, neither of us really giving a shit if he could…. man, we were hot and that Limo reeked of sex, I tipped him bigtime as we got out, barely back into our clothes…..

Joan’s frowning now, as she lights another cigarette, easing into the seat across from me again. “You’re going to sit there and tell me that you don’t find other women sexually desirable? A woman like me, for instance… I’m opening my legs a little, like this, and you don’t feel anything?”

“No, I honestly don’t.”

“What about now,” she gathers her skirt up around her waist, knees wide open, bringing her legs over the arms of her chair. “What do you feel now… you’re watching me. You’re watching me slide my fingers into my pussy. It’s pretty, isn’t it? I shave just the lips,” holding them open with the fingers of one hand now. “I sometimes sit on the floor in front of the mirrored closet doors in these hotels, watching myself slide these fingers in and out of my pussy… don’t you like to watch?”

I am watching, unable to look away… “You are beautiful, you are sexy, and it is fascinating to watch you play with yourself like that, but I’m not going to get involved.”

“You’re not going to get involved? You are involved! What’s sex? Do you think it’s only sex if these were your hands? Your tongue?” She brings the slick moisture down to her rectum now, arching her hips up for easier access.

God, I am mesmerized, watching her wet finger travel between her pink, splayed pussy, and her asshole. She’s teasing her own ass now, slowly sliding a fingertip in, twisting it. Removing her hands, she does this little trick with her asshole, puckering and unpuckering it. I watch as a film of her moisture stretches across the open rim, and I think she’s about to create a bubble, it looks so like the rainbow pattern on a kid’s bubble pipe, just before the pursed lips blow…

“No,” I finally answer through my dry throat. “It’s not sex for me… I could be looking at a penthouse magazine, or even playing with myself reading the Penthouse letters and looking at the pictures, and that wouldn’t be cheating on my wife. I would just be getting myself off, relieving the tension, but I wouldn’t call it sex.”

“So, I’m just a living fantasy for you, a three-dimensional centerfold, that’s all… right?”

“Well, yeah, that’s right.”

“What about my smells then, Steve ? Can you smell the musk of me?” Her hands are back now, churning her flow into cream. “Come on, I can see you’re affected, don’t you know how all this tastes, smelling my pussy, and my naughty, forbidden asshole?”

She laughs before I can respond, “It wouldn’t really be sex if you took your dick out and played with it, while you’re watching me, would it? After all, I’m just a magazine fantasy, right?”

I don’t say a word, reaching for one of her cigarettes, attempting to hide my nervousness. As I light up, I haven’t smoked at this point for years, Joan continues:

“I’m going to suck your balls. I’m going to slide my tongue in and out of your ass. I want you to spank me raw… to pinch my nipples hard… harder, as you butt-fuck me…I want you to pull it out, and finish in my mouth.”

“…I love my wife,” is the best I can do under the circumstances. I push my chair back against the wall, struggling to get up.

“You’re lying to yourself” she chides.

“I’ve lied to everyone else all my life,” I say, “why shouldn’t I lie to myself?” As I approach her bed, my body is shaking, sodden with sweat. I don’t bother to pull the covers off, I don’t remember hitting the mattress, only the slow motion falling, falling…

I jump awake, my erection is a painful reminder of the vivid dream.

“Jesus,” I say to my bathroom reflection. I’m so hard, it hurts to push my cock down and coax it to pee. “Man, what was that all about,” thinking aloud again, doing more of that nowadays, in empty hotel rooms. Splashing cold water on my face, a mixture of guilt, pride and loneliness affect me, and I start to cry, alone in my room.

“Folding wash is all the therapy I need,” I realize, angry at the lateness of the revelation. Geri is the only one really trying, and I’m marking time, getting by, quits.

Except for Elton John singing about (or to) Daniel in the background, I’m alone in the house. I stopped folding the wash, thinking that “the seeds of our own destruction, or the seeds of our own salvation are always within us.”

Geri and I had worked out at the gym together, yet apart, not in itself significant. Dropping her off at her therapist, Dr. Levine’s office, came the question I’d been anticipating for a long while…."will you take therapy together, if I ask Levine?”

“No, I don’t believe in that shit,” I blurt out. “Well, if it means saving our marriage or something, of course I’ll come talk to him with you,” I say now as I see Geri’s face clouding up.

“Been there, done that,” I think, pulling away. All I could really think, escaping the situation, was that people say things to each other in the presence of a therapist that might not be conducive to keeping a relationship going. “ I don’t feel like having sex; maybe I don’t feel like having sex with you; maybe we don’t like each other so much anymore.”

I know there is no fucking way I’m going to let this relationship reach separation or divorce, but it has more to do with Kiley, than what my relationship with Geri has become. All these thoughts blow through my consciousness, register, resonate and are instantly suppressed back into the soup of my unwanted feelings. These thoughts are there and gone before I reach the first traffic light.

I breathe a sigh of relief just to be away, on my own in the car, (the Captain, in control?).