“I missed having sex when I was out on tour,” she said. “I missed it a lot. So, I ... you know ... learned to take care of myself when the pressure got too great.”
“Ahhh,” Celia said knowingly. “You started paddling the pink canoe, as they say. Yeah, I’m familiar with that method of coping. My canoe has been getting quite a workout of late. I’m probably about halfway to a circumnavigation of the globe at this point.”
“Really?” Laura asked, surprised. “You do it too?”
“Often and well,” she said quite truthfully. “When one has made the decision to cut one’s husband off, yet is not going to have extramarital relations, one must have a release valve or the pressure will make you explode. Is that what this is about? Were you jilling off thinking about this Squiggy guy?”
“Squiggle,” she said. “And yes, I did bring the thought of him up more than a few times while I was doing it.”
“And you’re feeling guilty about that?” Celia scoffed. “Girlfriend, we all think about someone else while we’re getting lost in the deep end. Guys do too. It’s perfectly normal and natural.”
“That’s uh ... good to know,” Laura said. “I was raised by Mormons, remember, and they did not discuss sex with me in any way, shape, or form other than to say that you never do it until you’re married and you never do it to yourself.”
“That’s something right out of the 1950s,” Celia said, appalled.
“Right,” Laura said. “Jake has done a lot to bring me out of that world and into the real one. But ... it wasn’t just fantasizing about Squiggle that has me all torn up inside. Something else happened.”
“What do you mean? You said you didn’t have sex with him, right?”
“Right,” she said. “But ... we did ... uh ... I’m not even sure there’s a word for it.”
“What did you do?” Celia asked, quite intrigued now.
“Well ... like I said, we got to be close to each other, and there was a definite chemistry between us. If I hadn’t been with Jake, I’m sure we would have hooked up.”
“Does Squiggle have a wife or a girlfriend?”
“He’s divorced,” she said. “And he’d been seeing someone before going out on tour, but it was casual. He would hook up with a groupie once a week or so, but he wasn’t really a fanatic about it. Certainly nothing like what Jake has told me he was like out on the road.”
“There are smooth jazz groupies?” Celia asked, surprised.
“Yes,” Laura said. “Anything you want and Ron—he’s the head of security—would get it for you.”
Celia nodded. She was familiar with the duties of the head of tour security. “I see,” she said. “Anyway, you were saying that you and Squiggle ... did something.”
“Squiggle was really easy to talk to,” she said. “That’s where it started. It got to where we could tell each other about anything. And I was attracted to him as well, not like I am to Jake, but ... he’s cute, and in good shape, and he plays the horn just like I do, and ... well ... at some point we started talking to each other about ... you know ... how we took care of ourselves out on the road.”
“Very intimate conversation indeed,” Celia observed.
“Yeah,” Laura said with a sigh. “And then one night ... it was after the show in Lima, we were having drinks on the bus on the way back to the hotel, and we’d just smoked some pot. Squiggle was rooming with Sally—he’s the trombonist—and Sally had himself a groupie that night but Squiggle didn’t. I roomed by myself because I was the only girl and it was in my contract that I got a private room. Anyway, I offered to let Squiggle come back to my room for a little bit and hang out until Sally was done doing his groupie. This was nothing unusual. He’d been to my room before without anything happening. Like I said, we talked a lot and in my room was where a lot of that talking took place.”
“But something different happened on this night?”
“Yeah,” Laura said. “On this night I was particularly horny. Just playing with myself wasn’t really doing it for me the way it used to. As such, I hadn’t done it in more than a week and ... I was like a bomb about to go off. As it turned out, Squiggle was in the same boat. We sat in my room, talking like normal, and then the subject of self-pleasuring came up ... as it often did. I mentioned that I was going to have to take care of myself that night—it was just naughty, flirty little fun ... at least in my mind.”
“Not in Squiggle’s though?” Celia asked.
“I guess not,” she said softly, looking around to see how close the waiters or any eavesdroppers might be. “Squiggle let me know that he was going to have to take care of himself as well. And that led to a discussion about what we were going to be thinking about while we did it. I was a bit vague with my answer at first ... until Squiggle told me that he was going to be thinking about me while he played with himself.”
“Uh huh,” Celia said softly. “And then...?”
She sighed. “The thought of that turned me on even more. It was flattering, it was ... dangerous. And so ... so I told him that I would be thinking of him as well.”
“Very risqué,” Celia said.
“Yes,” she said. “A little too risqué, really. Because once that was out there, Squiggle suggested that since we were going to be thinking of each other anyway, wouldn’t it make sense if we just ... did our little deeds right there in the room and ... and watched each other doing it.”
“Wow,” Celia said. “That’s quite a suggestion.”
“It was,” she said softly. “And I was a little drunk and a little stoned and a lot horny, and I knew what he was suggesting was wrong but ... but it seemed like a harmless idea all the same. It was just watching, as long as we kept it on that level. And watching isn’t cheating, right?”
“A debatable point,” Celia said. “And that’s assuming the game stays at just watching.”
“Yeah,” she said, sighing again. She said nothing else.
“Did you do it?” Celia asked her at last.
She nodded slowly. “We did it,” she said quietly. “I laid down the ground rules. No touching of any kind, just looking. He agreed to that. And then ... I laid down on the bed in the room and I ... I took off my shorts and my panties and started touching myself. Squiggle stood at the side of the bed and undid his pants and let them drop. He was already hard.”
“I bet,” Celia said, feeling a little surge of moisture starting to brew between her own legs.
“And we did it,” Laura said. “He asked me to pull up my shirt so he could see my boobs too. I did it. He reached down to touch them as soon as I did this. I told him ‘No! No touching!’ and he pulled his hand back. He didn’t try to touch me again but we kept going. It was very sexy, very erotic. I’ve never even done that with Jake before ... you know ... playing with myself in front of him, and it didn’t take me very long until I was on the verge. And through it all, Squiggle just kept stroking himself, and he was panting, and his face was flushed. When I came, he did too. He shot his ... you know, his stuff ... all over my belly and my boobs.” She chuckled a little. “There was lot of it.”
“I bet there was,” Celia said. “What happened next?”
“Well ... he was a gentleman. He pulled up his pants and then went and got me a towel so I could clean myself up. After that, I got dressed again and ... well ... things were awkward between us.”
“I can see how that would be,” she said, thinking of her and Jake the morning after their little encounter.
“I made him leave the room,” she said. “Once the orgasm was over, I felt guilty as hell. I almost ... this might sound stupid ... or maybe not, since Greg did this exact thing to you ... but I almost called Jake right then and there to tell him what I’d done.”