California King

When you'd grown up as I had, in a home where spending money was perhaps the greatest of all sins, in adulthood you sometimes found yourself breaking into a cold sweat when you had to buy the simplest of necessities, like tires for the family car or school supplies for the issue of your loins, your most precious children. Some of those juvenile feelings are very hard to shake, as I was about to learn.

It was a sunny Saturday morning about six months prior to my writing this little vignette. I was resting peacefully on my trusty and quite comfortably seasoned Serta mattress, adorned with Martha Stewart's finest God-only-knows-how-many-threaded sheets, dreaming the end of an extraordinarily sensual dream, when my wife rolled over and awakened me by unceremoniously ingesting my engorged manhood into the depths of her throat in a singularly beautiful act of fellatial expertise. I'm sure I moaned with the obvious pressure she applied to my happy friend and also because of the not-so-obvious interruption of my dreamed vision, in which I was about to consummate my nocturnal activities with the beautiful, young, and nubile woman of my reveries.

The fact is: I wasn't fully awake yet so I was pleasantly misled. I instantly thought, as you might have, had you been in that fortuitous position, that I had probably died in the middle of the night and had already advanced through Heaven's Gates without having to pass through any of the purgatorial stages about which I had also learned so much during my youth.

In reality, she simply cheated, as women often do, by pandering to my more basic self, that self the all-inclusive "they of the female persuasion" often describe as being controlled by the "little head".

I think I've told you in another writing or two that my wife, Annie, is the consummate cocksucker and, even better by my standards, enjoys showing me that she loves to swallow my seed with relish, but the details of that aspect of my marriage are probably best left to those stories and somewhat removed from this exercise, at any rate. This is not a sexy story about a steamy morning blowjob, earned or unexpected, at least not yet.

Alas, neither my sleepy fantasy had come true nor was I about to be treated to some wistful, imaginary scenario my bride had hallucinated in her sleep. She simply wanted me to awaken and thought that sucking my evident erection into her throat might do the trick. It did!! And no sooner was I awake than the object of my affection spit out my penis with less ceremony that she had mustered when she originally sucked it in; well didn't actually spit it out, but she certainly wasn't treating it with the same respect with which she had led me to believe it was going to enjoy as she had begun my day, either.

"I want a new mattress," she explained, "one of those memory foam types that conforms to our bodies' shapes and promises to relieve us of all of our aches and pains. I've had a persistent pain in my back and neck for the last week and it has made me stiffer in the morning than you ever can, even when you're feeling your randiest. I've put up with this old mattress long enough, so today is the day, my good husband," she continued, sounding suddenly very nasal and shrew-like to my ears, "for us to buy a new memory foam mattress."

She continued without even taking a breath, "It's a great day for mattress sales and I've found half a dozen stores that are having specials on those very items today."

"Up and at 'em, my lover," she continued, successfully resisting the pressure I was observably applying to the nape of her neck in order to get her to finish the task she had so pleasantly and recently started.

"We need to get to the stores early in order to have the pick of their inventory. They've been heavily advertising and I'm sure there will be volumes of consumer traffic as a result."

"What's the price tag on one of those fancy mattresses, Annie," I asked innocently enough, already knowing the answer in roundish figures. I'd heard other men talk about having to mortgage their houses to buy a new "memory foam" mattress.

It's not that we don't make a good living. I've practiced law for many years now and our income has been steadily growing. But remember that childhood parsimony with which I acquainted you at the outset of this piece? It had me by the throat or lower, depending on your perspective.

The rejoinder was obscene to my ears and I cannot even bring myself to repeat it here. I'm afraid of shocking your conscience, to begin with, or maybe worse, depressing you with the foolishness of my day-to-day existence. She told me and I recoiled.

"No fucking way!" and I really meant it when I said it.

"If I'm going to pay that kind of money for a mattress, I want to be able to live in it." I immediately intoned sounding exactly like my father; bless his deceased soul, and not even surprising myself at the sound of his voice. And even then, I knew I was going to have a new mattress, and soon.

I found myself confronted with a beautiful and sexy wife, my own, whose controlling desire, at that moment, was to sleep the next night on a mattress that would mold to her wonderful shape, a mattress that should have been spun from gilt thread and not made of "memory foam," whatever that is, to justify the price being asked for it.

I relived every second of my miserly childhood in that instant. The sweat was soon upon my brow and I made every argument I could muster to forgo what seemed a totally exorbitant price for a mere mattress, or so I thought. Suffice it to say, I did not win that battle but, looking back on it, the price may have been a bargain.

Instructing me like a mere schoolboy, she said, "We'll need the measurements in order to not have to buy a new head- and foot-board, as well. Go get the tape measure and we'll make short work of the preliminaries. I'm going to grab a quick shower while you measure."

I went for the tape measure, the entire time muttering about going into the mattress business in my next life.

The bed measured seventy-two inches by eighty four inches and we carefully wrote the dimensions on a notepad. Annie, who had quickly showered while I measured, as she said she was going to, stuffed the paper with the bed's proportions into the lacy cup of her bra, where she keeps things no other person would ever think of putting into such an intimate place because one might actually have to retrieve whatever was stuffed in there publicly. We were off to the mattress stores, checkbook and dimensions in hand, well...checkbook in hand, anyway.

We travelled up Ventura Highway for a short distance until Annie directed me into our first store. The salesman sought information about the reason for our early visit and Annie, of course, did all of the talking. I would have beaten about the bush, so to speak, for a moment or two anyway, trying to mislead the salesman into believing that we might want a new mattress or something (although the store didn't seem to sell anything but mattresses) but really hadn't decided on buying one, in order to help with price negotiations. Not Annie.

"We're going to buy a new memory foam mattress this morning," she blurted. "Can you show us what you have in inventory, please?"

The pitch went something like this, though I paraphrase a bit: "There are several types and brands of memory foam but only this most expensive one is the real deal. Anything less will certainly be a disappointment to you, will leave you with the same aches and pains that brought you here this morning, will result in your having to, again, wake your husband from a sound sleep in which he was enjoying the charms of another, young, nubile and willing woman and come back here in short order to buy what I'm telling you to buy today, so you might as well open the wallet now as opposed to later. "

He didn't breathe as he rapidly spoke and the two of them reminded me of peas in a pod, just on opposite ends of the stem.

He gave us the price for the expensive brand in the standard size and I nearly went into convulsions.

To her credit, Annie asked, "Is this the one on sale?"

The reply was short and again I paraphrase: "No, only the cheaper ones are on sale; this most expensive one is NEVER on sale because the manufacturer knows stupid people like you and the idiot with whom you arrived will pay full price for their superior product."

At that point, he appeared to remember that he hadn't asked the size of our new investment.

"Oh, what are the measurements of your current bed? I should have asked that question before I quoted that price."

Annie dug into the cup of her bra, much to my amazement and the prurient pleasure of the leering salesman, and announced, "Our bed measures seventy-two inches wide by eighty-four inches long."

The salesman's lips curled upward at the ends and, had he had one, he would have begun stroking his narrow, black mustache.

"Oh," he proclaimed, "that is a California King. There aren't many of those around in private use. They used to be the preferred type of mattress for luxury motels and hotels but have fallen out of favor primarily because the mattresses are so hard to find and so EXPENSIVE to replace."

I felt my brow moisten again and I'm sure Annie saw my body shudder as his words settled into my psyche.

The salesman recalculated the price upward by the appropriate percentage and, speaking directly to Annie, provided her the supremely increased damage.

Annie thanked him for his help and asked, "How long is that price good for?" Both the salesman and I ignored the dangling participle.

He replied, "I can guarantee it for this weekend but we'll have to special order the mattress."

We left the store, much to my delight, and travelled a bit further north on Ventura. About a mile up the road, I pulled a U-turn to get to a second mattress store. As we entered, we noticed it was very warm inside. Annie asked if there was a problem with the air conditioning in the store and the salesman said that he had just opened and the air simply hadn't cooled the interior as yet. We made a quick trip around the store, saw very similar inventory as that we had viewed at the store we had just left and, feeling too warm to negotiate seriously, left that store as well. I was beginning to doubt Annie's sincerity about buying a new mattress and asked if she would like breakfast instead. The look she gave me would have withered a healthy California date palm.

"We're going to buy a mattress before we do anything else," she opined and I resigned myself to a bit more shopping.

At the third store, we heard the same pitch we had endured at the first and, as we were leaving, Annie said, "We might as well just go back to the first store. They have what we want and, besides, I liked that salesman."

The purchase of the California King was accomplished shortly thereafter; delivery to our home (at no additional charge) was promised for Tuesday of the next week; and I began to think about the UCLA football game that was to be played later that afternoon against the Stanford Cardinal.

"Breakfast now, Annie?" I asked.

"We have one more stop, my love, and then we can have breakfast," was the answer.

Our next stop was to an emporium called Bed, Bath and Beyond, a store I had never thought of entering, let alone had visited previously. It has an amazing array of stuff, most of which I would not be able to identify, if my life depended on its usefulness. I knew there was a method in her madness when she picked up the next container of a set of unknown objects, so I just went along and paid for nine "risers" she had accumulated as we shopped.

For those of my readers who aren't familiar with risers, they apparently elevate your bed to a height desired for reasons only the purchaser could determine. We were on our way home and I, feeling substantially lighter, was relieved.

The remainder of our weekend was uneventful; The Bruins lost to the Cardinal; and I returned to the office on Monday, as is my norm.

Tuesday afternoon, Annie called to let me know the bed had arrived and that she loved it, but especially its height. She said two very nice, strapping and handsome young men had brought the California King in, had set it up, and had even helped her with the installation of the risers.

For those of you who have read some of my other works, I know you are expecting something on the wilder side here but I swear that was the end of our conversation.

Every Tuesday afternoon, toward five o'clock, I work out at the local LA Fitness and shower there before I return home. It's a routine that I've become accustomed to and had no reason to alter on this particular Tuesday, despite the fresh and looming presence in my bedroom.

When I arrived home after my workout, Annie met me at the front door, to my utter surprise, wearing a truly stunning, lavender bustier with real whale bone stays; a gorgeous lacy, black garter belt strapped to thigh high, black stockings with wide lace tops; black, shiny, six inch heels that screamed, "Come fuck me, big boy!"; and a dirty grin on her face that led me directly to the bedroom.

Her hair was long, blond and shiny; her breasts sat high in the bustier, wonderfully exposed, reminding me of the old Bob Seger song that bragged, "she had points of her own sitting way up high." Just a peek of creamy, white, thigh could be seen between the bustier and the stockings' lacy tops, held in place by my favorite suspenders. She wore no panties.

I was instantly ready for whatever she and the California King had planned all day.

Annie said, "Look!" and I did as she bent over the side of the California King, demonstrating its perfect height for "doggie style" fucking and so I did just that.

As I hurriedly stripped off my clothes, my eyes never left her gorgeous bottom, displayed and ever so perfectly arranged upon our new mattress. I entered my very wet Annie without even having to bend my knees and pounded away at full strength in utter ecstasy, leaving the stress of my efforts somewhere in the past.

The height of our new bed, with the risers, had been engineered by my Annie for effortless sexual escapades and pile-driver-like thrusting, much to my delight. I was soon ready to fill Annie's velvet crease with the fruit of my efforts.

Before I could reach my zenith employing the doggie position, however, Annie stopped me and insisted I wait another minute while she readjusted her position on the bed.

She lay on the King, as I had begun to view him, and draped her head over the edge, leaving her slackened jaw and open throat at the perfect height to engulf my raging and oh-so-ready penis.

As she contentedly moaned, I enjoyed the finest deep throat fellatio of our many years together. She wanted me to cum that way and I couldn't resist her wish, didn't even try to resist, if the truth were to be known. It was every bit the heaven I had imagined I was going to enjoy the previous Saturday morning, and even more, as I shot my semen deep into her abyss and felt the joy of sex like a teenager once again.

I had only been home a few minutes and we had already successfully christened The California King. The future loomed even brighter than it had in the morning or when I had left the gym, two times of ultimate optimism in my life.

It was then that Annie confessed the reason for the need to buy our new mattress: She had gotten the idea to rearrange the height of our bed from an old pornographic movie starring the Ivory Snow girl, Marilyn Chambers. Ms. Chambers, in one of her finest performances, had been draped over the edge of a pool table as she enjoyed the attentions of several men who were able to stand and comfortably thrust into her willing charms.

The King had to be memory foam to fulfill the promise of some television salesman that sold the fact that we could continue to sleep together without any hope of disturbing each other as I flipped and flopped all night in hopes of comforting my painful hips and knees but Annie's foresight envisioned even more entertaining possibilities, thanks to the late, great Marilyn Chambers and her playmates.

I am six feet three inches tall and weigh nearly two hundred forty pounds. When I played football at UCLA, I was chiseled; now, not as much, although my weight is nearly same as it was in my senior year at that august institution. Annie is five feet seven inches and weighs one hundred twenty-five pounds.

She had been struggling for a while with our sleeping arrangements and our sexual intercourse because of my size. Even though I encouraged her to ride me like a cowgirl as we enjoyed each other's body, she enjoyed other positions, as well, and wanted to be free to carry on our robust sex life without the restrictions of the old Serta. The California King had been carefully researched and was specifically designed to allay the problems caused by our physical differences.

Sometimes, I've learned, even when the sky is the darkest and there appears no ray of light in our daily routine, our wives will show us the way, if we can just let them.

I had had to overcome the persistent teachings of my parsimonious childhood but the purchase of the California King in the form of memory foam has been so worth it for us that I'd like to pass along a few lessons I've taken from our adventure:

One, trust her when it comes to feathering the nest;

Two, there is usually a method to our wives' madness, though we husbands will seldom see it beforehand;

Three, lie back and relax, the money is there to be enjoyed, despite what our parents taught us; and

Finally, long live The California King!