The Box, A Gift Of Love

"Susan, I've been home from work for an hour. Why isn't supper ready? I'm hungry."

"Sorry, Hon, I was caught up in watching soap operas all day. I figured we'd call out for Chinese take—"

"You've been watching soap operas instead of readying my supper? He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her to his chair. "I'll show you."

"Let me go. You're hurting my arm."

"You're arm won't be the only part of your body hurting," he said pulling her down on top of him and bending her over his knees. Then in one quick pull he lifted her short skirt and pulled down her panty.

'Slap, slap, slap, slap.'

"Ow, Michael, that really fucking hurt."

"Are you sassing me, woman?"

'Slap, slap, slap, slap.'

By the time he was done paddling her ass, she was hot with desire for him. It didn't matter what they did; it was all for fun, experimenting with this and trying out that was their way to give one another the pleasure they so wanted and so deserved. No one was to know what they did to keep the flames of their passion lit, but with all that they did; they managed to continually keep the flames burning brightly for 27 happy and sexually satisfied years of their marriage.

They were always hot for one another. What they did on this one day of the year lasted a month of Sundays. The feel good feelings of love and togetherness and erotic sexuality and intimate sensuality carried forward to make the mornings tingle and the evenings erotic with renewed passionate desire for one another. Armed with the sexual information they learned on their special day, their personal peccadilloes allowed them to make that part of their sexual routine new and exciting, until next year when they tried something else.

Their time together, especially this one day was their special time to reflect on their love with erotic sensuality and steamy sexuality. This one special day meant more to them than all the other days and nights spent together. It was their lasting memory that they looked forward to and promised to celebrate every year.

They didn't just get physically naked on Nude Day. Sharing their most forbidden thoughts, they shed their intimate secrets with their inhibitions by baring their souls to one another. Sometimes whispering what they wanted, every time they giggled with excited anticipation at the thoughts of getting it. As if what one said to the other was their sub-conscious thoughts, much like a Mafia Don granting the wish of his guest upon his daughter's wedding day, whatever they said on this one day was sacred and just between them.

"I want you to rape me and force me to blow you."

"Seriously? You want me to rape you?"

"Yeah, I've been having this reoccurring dream, a fantasy, that you break in the house, grab me, tear off my clothes, and have your way with me while I'm resisting you."

"Okay, that sounds like fun. This is something I don't remember ever trying with you, but I'm game."

"And Michael?"

"Yes, Susan."

"I want you to hit me."

"Really?

"Yeah, but not too hard, I want you to slap me hard enough to make me want you."

"I have to slap you for you to want me?"

"You know what I mean."

Where do you want me to slap you?"

"I want you to slap me across the face."

"Okay."

"Just let me get changed into some old clothes that I don't care if you rip to shreds."

"I'll wait outside pretending to be peeping on you getting changed."

"Oh, great idea," she said running in her room to ready the show.

Michael watched her changing her clothes from outside through the bedroom window before going around the front and barging through the front door.

Dressed in a housedress, bra, and panty, Susan turned and looked toward the front door.

"Who's there?"

Michael grabbed her and with one hand over her mouth and another hand around her waist, he reached up and felt the fullness of her breast through her clothes.

Susan struggled, but he was too strong for her. Finally she pulled away and ran for the phone, but he beat her to it, picked her up and carried her to the bedroom. In one quick rip, he tore open her housedress exposing her bra and panty. Then, with the scissors she had left on the dresser for this intended purpose, he cut away her undergarments. She was naked.

Pure, unadulterated pillow talk that continually tested the boundaries of their sexuality, it was of no consequence if they were in a heated discussion later, neither could use what one told the other on this one precious day against them in an argument to make them feel bad or dirty or perverted. Doing so would violate and ruin the secret covenant of pleasure that they vowed to have from this day forward, on this one special day, for better or for worse. It was a way for them to cleanse their thoughts without fear of being thought less of or admonished for having those most secret of thoughts and unfulfilled sexual desires.

Eliminating the need of psychotherapy, marriage counseling and/or mood enhancing drugs, Nude Day proved to be a very healthy day for this devoted couple. It was a day that carried itself over to other days in the course of the year, and it was their way for them to clear the air sexually without their thoughts becoming suppressed fetishes or deviant behavior to be played out with another man or woman later, behind the back of one or the other in an extramarital affair. Cheating would ruin all the intimacy, eroticism, sexuality, and trust that they accomplished as a couple in their happy marriage.

They freely gave of themselves so that there was no reason to ever go outside of the marriage to get what they needed or wanted. This one day so connected them that they never drifted apart. Whatever it was one needed or wanted, the other freely and happily provided. Isn't that why we marry some one special person because we want him or her to be our whole world? There were no secrets between Susan and Michael just love and pleasure. What they willingly did for one another, few couples test the boundaries of erotic sexuality and dare do.

Too embarrassed to admit to their secret desires and too ashamed to share their most private of fantasies, too many couples are alone in their thoughts, wants, and needs. Too many couples do not trust their partner enough to lay themselves open for their unadulterated inspection and to volunteer their sexual suggestions for fear of their partner's rejection. Yet, if they don't expose their deep rooted sexual thoughts, what hope will they have that it will lead to an unprecedented and exciting explosiveness of eroticism, eroticism that would evolve in the sexual expressiveness of physical actions for the enjoyment of both.

For this married couple, no desire was too perverted or perverse. No thought was too outrageous or impossible to grant. Whatever one wanted the other received without a question that would make them feel ashamed or destroy the mood by having a questioning conversation before or after that would change their mind and ruin the experience.

Susan was lucky. She met the love of her life early, while still in high school. She never thought she could be as happy when Michael asked her to the Prom, but she was when he proposed to her two years later. With their life already set, they weren't worried about college. Now that they found one another, they never wanted to be apart. Growing up in a small, rural town, they'd follow in their parents' footsteps and build their house on the ten acre plot of land that his folks gave them as a wedding gift.

The labor to build was cheap. Their family and friends all helped them to build their house and it was done before the cold of the winter hardened the ground. That was how it was done back then with neighbor helping neighbor, friend helping friend, and family never turning their back on family. Sue and Mike couldn't imagine living anywhere else. This is where their family lived. This is where their friends were. This is where their life is now. This is their home with their roots growing wide and deep.

The easy part was building the house. The hard part was earning enough money to finish the interior and to furnish and decorate it. Grateful for the hand-me-downs given to them by relatives and friends, furniture and appliances cost much more than the cheap labor they received to build their house. They just had to buy the food and drink to feed and quench the thirst of their family and friends.

A modern version of a log cabin with an oversized attached garage and a barn like loft above, they cut what lumber they needed long ago to allow the lumber to dry from the trees they cleared from their land in anticipation of building their house. With heavy equipment rented to dig out the foundation and move and put the logs in place, so much like pegs on a Lincoln log toy, their work was made easier than their ancestors who homesteaded this land back in the 1860's with a team of mules, block and tackle, and plow horses. What took them months to do back then, took them days to do today.

Yeah, their families have been here a while and now with their house built, Michael and Susan would be here a while, too, as they expected their children would be here a while, also. Already owning their home and their ten acres of land without having to be indebted to the bank and with Michael and Susan working along side his Mom and Dad and her Mom and Dad at the factory, things couldn't be more perfect. Only, there was one problem. Michael's couldn't give Susan the one thing she dreamt about, a child.

His sperm wasn't active enough to impregnate her. To compound matters, as the star quarterback on the high school football team, The Eagles, he had forgotten to wear his cup one fateful day. The low hit dislodged, ruptured, and so damaged his testicle that it had to be removed. Now, with slow swimming sperm and one testicle, his chances of impregnating his wife were slim to nil.

Michael had always dreamt about having a son to throw a football with around the backyard. He had visions of teaching him to fish and to drive, and giving him advice during his high school football games. Unable to afford the medical procedure of in vitro fertilization that was not covered by insurance to impregnate his wife, he felt incomplete and empty not being able to reproduce and it hurt to watch all the other dads with their children at the fair. His brother had three daughters and his family name would end with the death of them.

Susan had always dreamt about having a girl to play dress up with dolls and to help her furnish the dollhouse she had when she was a little girl and that is squirreled away in back of the closet. Wanting to take her to church every Sunday, get dressed on Easter, take her trick or treating on Halloween, and experience her wide-eyed excitement on Christmas morning, she felt incomplete and empty in not being able to give him a child. She wanted to be pregnant; she needed to give birth to feel like a woman.

They talked about adopting a child, but they never did. The wages they made working at the factory barely provided them with the necessities they needed to survive, food, gas, healthcare, and utilities, once cheap, were now expensive. There was never any money left over for extras and adoption cost more than they could afford. Maybe later, they could afford to adopt a child, but for now they were still newlyweds and were contently happy to start a new chapter of their lives alone together.

If there was one spike to drive a hole in their relationship, not being able to have children could have been the split that would have separated them. Only, whatever they experienced as a couple, good or bad, added to their love instead of diminishing it. They were just happy to be together and there was no need to borrow trouble by thinking about things that couldn't be and things they couldn't change. The important thing is that while others were still looking for Mr. Right and finding Mr. Wrong, they had found one another early and right in their own backyard.

There was a reason for everything and in God's plan, if they were not meant to have children, then so be it. Besides, they were preoccupied with love and sex and still so very young that they didn't miss not having children, just yet. They were barely adults themselves. They had their horses, Molly and Runner, and their dogs, a Coonhound named Buster and a Border collie named Irene, and the boss of the clan, a tough little cat named Cyclone, who acted as if she owned the house. Whenever the dogs ventured too close, Cyclone would go into a cyclonic frenzy of paws, claws, and hissing. So long as she stayed away from their food while they ate, the dogs knew enough to treat her as their pack leader, even protecting her from other dogs.

When the economy soured and worsened and the factory slowed, overtime was cut and then the second shift was laid off. Still hanging on at the factory, but to make ends meet and to fulfill his patriotic duty to his country, as his Dad and Granddad did before him, Michael joined the Army Reserves. The extra money was good. He'd only have to give up one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer. It felt like going to camp and the time spent away from Susan invigorated their love affair upon his return. They loved one another so very much.

Michael with his shooting skills, his ability to follow instruction and take orders, and his easy country manner made him a natural leader and he quickly made sergeant. With his healthcare paid for by the United States military and his PX card used to buy cheap food and other necessities and niceties of life at the commissary, things were looking up for Susan and Michael, that is, until, at 47-years-old, they shipped him off to Iraq.

*****

Willie Johnson and his wife Marlene had been going through a bad patch. Married fourteen years, neither one could see making it through one more year together as man and wife.

Willie was a fireman, loved his job, but didn't love his wife. He didn't hate her, it was just that things were so turned and twisted around that he didn't know how to untangle the mess to get it straight and make it smooth again.

The flame that once fired their love and the lust for one another that sparked the romance and heated their desire died with the death of their only child in an automobile accident. Busy talking on the cell phone while driving and not paying attention to the road; he blamed Marlene not only for the accident but also for not having the child properly restrained in a seatbelt.

"He's dead, Marlene. Little Willie is dead. You killed our son."

"I'm sorry, Willie, but we can't continue as a couple unless you find it in your heart to forgive me."

That was seven long, tumultuous years ago and although they tried, they gave up trying to have another child. As usual, assigned to rescue, he was the first responder to the accident. After the rest of the squad responded, his firefighter brothers pulled him away from the scene when they recognized his car. They stabilized Marlene, but there was nothing they could do for his son.

They tried to revive him. They tried to bring him back. They tried making a miracle for their beloved brother, but his son, William, Jr., God rest his soul, may he rest in peace, was gone. He died at the scene of the accident.

Marlene clerked at the law firm and she admitted that she loved her job more than her husband. It's not that she hated her husband, it was just that things were so turned and twisted around that she didn't know how to untangle the mess to get it straight and make it smooth again either.

They had just grown apart, mostly from their inability to communicate. She still hadn't gotten over the guilt she felt for her responsibility for the tragic accident and he still hadn't forgiven her for the death of his son. They needed to talk for her to lose the guilt she felt and for him to lose the resentment that he felt towards her.

Both spent their days hiding away from one another with work. Willie spent his time at the firehouse and Marlene made excuses to go in early and to stay late working overtime. When at home together, she watched television downstairs and he watched television upstairs. Other than going food shopping, not even taking the same vacation week off, they seldom did anything together as a couple.

They spent their time, as if doing time and not living as husband and wife, but more as brother and sister. It wasn't bad most days. With their feelings for one another detached and nearly severed, seldom saying more than a few words to one another, they never argued.

With the magic of love long gone and the spark of sex no longer there, they spent their time going through the motions of life being married. Their life was status quo and both had the attitude of why rock the boat and if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Yet, their boat was sinking and their marriage and their lives were not only broken it was shattered and in pieces. Neither of them was happy.

There were some days that the frustration of not having a happy marriage with a satisfying sexual relationship filled them both with emptiness and despair. Whether it was job, material things, hobbies, sports, family or friends, nothing could replace their unhappiness with happiness. While watching television shows and movies that showed happy couples, they both verbalized to friends and family that they'd be happier apart.

They went through life numb, as if they were the ones who had died instead of their son. They weren't living, they were slowly dying. Not only couldn't one help the other exist after their tragic loss to repair their marriage but also they couldn't even forgive the other for the pain and suffering that they had put one another through.

They didn't celebrate Nude Day. Hell, they didn't even celebrate their anniversary. Both days were just another day of stick in the mud, going through the motions of drudgery and misery for them.

Willie's thoughts were consumed with other women and having an affair. He was ready. Horny, he had already been online corresponding to some women who lived the next town over. Only, he feared being caught, losing the house to her, and making his life worse for the sake of having some empty sex with a person that he didn't care about.

Willie had his affair and Marlene caught him. Actually, she didn't catch him in the act; she knew that he was having an affair by his sudden good mood and distant behavior. He confessed and she forgave him hoping that by forgiving him his sin, he'd forgive her hers, but it apparently didn't work that way with Willie. Her accident that killed his son was much bigger than him having an affair.

Marlene already had her eyes on a cute lawyer who worked at her firm. Flirting with a conversation filled with innuendos, they regularly lunched together a couple times a week and she was just waiting for him to make his move, but their relationship was stalled. Not wanting to jeopardize his job, especially in this bad economy, by having an extramarital affair with a co-worker, her intended lover was reluctant. He was married.

*****

Susan first became unsettled when she hadn't received a letter from her husband in more than a week. That wasn't like him. She never went more than a couple days without receiving his letter. Then, she dreamt that he was dead and he was.

Already armed with her womanly intuition and a foreboding feeling, it wasn't as shocking when she saw the car approaching her property from the distant road, before turning and driving up her long driveway. No one came to her place but friends and family and the occasional door-to-door salesman or Holy Roller. She knew every car. She knew the Army was here to give her the bad news and they were and she was already numb to it. She didn't want to hear it.