Sycamore Hill Pt. 01

People have asked me when I first knew something was wrong with my marriage, and the truthful answer has always been that it's hard to say. By the end, of course, the issues were obvious, but I should have known the marriage was in trouble long before then. I've discovered, though, that love can play tricks on your mind, and hide away obvious problems, especially if those problems are variants of old behaviors ; behaviors that worsened gradually enough that the short term differences are barely noticeable even if the long term changes are immense. Like some sort of an eclipse where the daylight gets progressively dimmer until you suddenly realize you're immersed in complete darkness and you don't know how it got that way.

I'd known Lara to be moody since the day I met her, and honestly, in some ways it endeared me toward her. The periods of icy indifference were relatively uncommon and the contrast made the times she was cheerful and full of life seem even better. My mom and had been that way and my dad seemed to be happy, so when it came time to consider marriage, I was pretty sure I'd be able to put up with it, and that-overall- life would be ok.

We met when we were juniors in college, working at a bookstore just off campus. I saw her as a brooding, more serious version of the girl next door, a reticent, melancholy beauty who seemed to be complicated and a little bit broken. Her dark wit appealed to my sense of humor and the sad aura of compromised self-esteem brought out my innate desire to be a rescuer. We talked at work for weeks before we started dating and then gradually became more serious, until one night, while I was trying to comfort her in the middle of an inexplicable crying jag, she threw her arms around me, called me her hero and begged me to promise that I'd never abandon her. That moment supercharged my desire to be a knight in shining armor and we became an inseparable couple, for better or for worse.

Two years after graduating college, we officially tied the knot and, for the first 4 years of our marriage things were ok. Not perfect, not terrible, but OK. I brought flowers home and she cooked special meals, she complained I watched sports too much and I made an issue of her buying too many clothes, we had fights, we made love, we were frustrated at times and incredibly happy at others. Good times, bad times, but, generally speaking, we were ok and there was little doubt in my mind that we loved each other. I felt in my bones that it was just a matter of time before we'd go from a couple to a family and that we could weather any storm, that we were in for the long haul.

I'd been working at an insurance company as an actuarial since graduation and was slowly improving my position, working hard, being reliable, putting my shoulder to the wheel in hopes of establishing a career, creating some security. Overall, I liked the work. It paid the bills.

Lara had a business degree and got a job at a large medical clinic after graduation, but found the work tedious and unfulfilling. So, a little over 8 months before everything finally came apart, she quit her administrative job and went to work for Williamson's charities, raising money, administering funds and helping to keep the organization-which was generally staffed by amateurs- running smoothly.

Lara liked her new job much better and for a couple of months she was happy and upbeat, the warm and fuzzy Lara that made our marriage workable. But gradually her mood soured, the nights became colder, the mornings joyless and I started biding my time, waiting for the happy Lara to reappear.

Except that this time she didn't.

She started working later and later at the charity, claiming that the work load had increased and that she wasn't getting the help she needed, but I couldn't shake the feeling that she was trying to avoid home life. She'd begun to lose interest in some of the things she typically loved to do. Going to the movies, watching TV in front of a fire, eating out, playing a board game. It became apparent to me that she was only going through the motions, and that most of the things she'd previously enjoyed had essentially become chores for her to do, unpleasant responsibilities she had to check off her list at the end of the day.

On a typical good night, she'd come home and eat a quiet dinner with me, watch TV for a while and then move to the couch and immerse herself in her laptop or I-phone, furiously typing texts and e-mails. On a bad night, she simply ignored me, moving about the house anxiously, with a sense of desperation, as though she was waiting for something, almost like a drug seeker wondering where the next fix was coming from. On those nights, she'd barely eat dinner at all before shutting herself away in our guest room to bang away more messages on her laptop without me around.

Sex, of course, dropped way off, and would have ceased altogether if I hadn't insisted from time to time. Prior to this, we'd had a very healthy sex life, making love three or four times a week, with Lara initiating things a fair amount of the time. Some nights were more passionate than others, complete with frenzied, desperate couplings, while other nights we indulged in slow, comfortable lovemaking.

That was all gone now. The few times I was able to get her into the bed with me, she barely participated at all, robotically spreading her legs and absentmindedly pumping her pelvis against me until I finished, essentially becoming a fleshy sex toy.

As the weeks of melancholy and indifference dragged on and on I found I was nearing the end of my rope. I now realized that this time, things might not get better and that the light of my marriage had been growing dimmer by the day and I knew something had to happen, something had to change before things became completely dark.

And then, one night out of the blue, something did; only it wasn't what I'd expected or hoped for.

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On the evening of St. Patrick's Day I'd gotten home early and, in hopes of doing something to make Lara smile, decided to try something she'd enjoyed in the past, a theme dinner of sorts, in this case a meal of corned beef, cabbage and beer that I'd dyed green. She grinned with vague amusement initially and murmured a few compliments, but we settled back into having yet another silent meal together.

She began her fidgety routine again, only a little more pronounced than usual. She'd pick up her fork to stir around her food and then put it back down without really eating. She kept tapping the table with her fingers nervously and, a couple of times cleared her throat as if to speak, but never ended up saying anything.

So, at the end of the meal, I expected what had become her usual behavior with some nervous pacing around while she ignored me until she disappeared for the night. But I was pleasantly surprised when she sat beside me on the couch while I watched a movie and snuggled up. After a few moments she nuzzled her nose into my neck and started kissing me while her hand started running up and down my thigh, and then, hesitantly, whispered a breathy invitation to join her in the bedroom.

I turned the TV off immediately.

When we got into the bedroom she suddenly seemed shy and anxious again. We lay on the bed together and kissed, but I felt like things from her were forced, like she was kissing me out of duty rather than desire.

I tried putting some passion into the kisses and started rubbing her crotch through the soft cotton of her panties to try and get something going, but she responded by pushing me away, standing up and removing her clothes in a nearly clinical way, as if she was simply trying to change clothes quickly, rather than preparing for sex.

As soon as she was naked, she got on the bed again and, without saying a thing, aggressively pulled my face roughly into hers while mashing her lips against mine hard enough I thought we might bruise each other. But, the kisses still seemed automated, and for all of the energy she was expending, the passion seemed false, like she was doing what was expected, what she was programmed to do.

I tried to change the tone, to introduce some tenderness and romance, but she would have none of it and responded by literally pulling my shirt off and attacking my belt, fly and zipper to get my pants off as quickly as possible. I again tried to slow things down a little and asked, in a light hearted way, what the rush was. She responded abruptly, with a little anger in her voice.

"What the hell, Kevin, do you want to fuck or not? Because you sure as shit can't do it with your pants on."

I laughed sheepishly to try and keep the mood light, raised my hands in a gesture to indicate I was on board with her and started pulling my clothes off while she sat and watched impatiently on the bed. I was just getting my pants off, one foot still off the ground, when she lunged toward me, settling on her knees, and took my prick into her hand before inhaling it into her mouth. There was no getting around the fact that, even without any sense of real romance or affection, what she was doing felt pretty damn good, so I stood there, my hands on the back of her head, enjoying the wet, slick sensation of her tongue and her lips, slowly humping myself into her while she furiously worked on my erection.

She never liked swallowing semen so we'd developed a signal in which I'd pull back, gently on her hair, if I was nearing orgasm. When I did, she looked at me with a leering grin.

"Feel good?"

"Uh...yeah, very." I choked out in reply.

"Want to fuck now?"

"Absolutely."

She smiled and crawled onto the bed and I moved toward her, but she held her hand up to stop me.

"Stop there. Just hold on. We're doing something different tonight." She reached under the pillow and pulled out a tube of lube and teasingly waved it at me, smiling coldly while she raised her eyebrows expectantly.

"What...?" I asked, hoping I wouldn't have to guess what she wanted to do.

"Just stand and watch, Kevin. I know what you want."

Facing away from me, she rolled over onto her belly and then up to her knees, arching her back severely until her butt pointed toward the ceiling, and then spread her long, elegant legs to an obscene angle, exposing her crotch and the darker skin between her cheeks. She turned her head to make sure I was watching and then positioned the tube of lube just above the cleavage of her butt and began to squeeze. A large, gelatinous glob rolled down between her cheeks, some of it dripping in long, translucent, filamentous strands to the bed below. She emptied all of the lube onto her butt, watching my reaction the whole time, and then carelessly threw the empty tube to the floor before moving the heel of her hand to her tailbone with her fingers touching the top of her ass. Slowly she slid her hand downward, effectively snowplowing even more lube between the crack, until her fingers rested on and around her asshole. She luxuriously stirred the thick gooey mass around for a moment or two and then smoothly started pushing some of it in with her middle finger.

I watched, completely mesmerized, as her finger continued to move in and out, pushing more and more lube in with each penetration. This was, without a doubt, the most overtly sexual display I'd ever seen and my body, specifically my throbbing prick, was responding as expected.

But deep down, something about the display was disquieting. Lara and I, over the years, had experimented with various positions and sexual techniques, but we'd never tried, or really even considered, anal sex. I know a lot of men have fantasies about it, but, until this moment, it never really appealed to me. Moreover, Lara had told me, quite explicitly, that she was willing to try a lot of things, but she had no interest in anal sex whatsoever and made it clear that she considered it humiliating, unromantic and frankly messy.

So, now, faced with a clear cut invitation to her ass, a warning voice was sounding in my head, telling me something was off. For weeks, really months, our sex life had deteriorated and Lara had become increasingly cold and distant, and now, suddenly out of nowhere, she was aggressively offering something that she'd previously told me was frankly demeaning and inappropriate. It occurred to me that this was some sort of a challenge, a test by Lara to see if I thought enough of her as a person to respect her wishes and turn down an almost irresistible sexual invitation in deference to my love and affection for her. I swallowed hard and began to choke out a few words.

"Uh...Lara...uhm, we don't have to do this. I know how you...uh...feel about this sort of thing and I can tell you that I'm more than happy with the way we normally make love. You don't have to..."

Lara took her hand off her ass, but stayed on her knees, looking back to me with an expression of annoyance and incredulity. She interrupted my stammering sharply.

"What the hell Kevin? Does it look like I don't want this or something?"

"Come on Lara...I know how you feel about...uh...anal sex and I don't want to disrespect you or anything. I want you to know that we don't have to do...do this sort of thing to..."

Her face expression turned darker, her face turning an angry red while she very nearly screamed at me.

"Are you shitting me Kevin? What the hell kind of a pansy-ass man are you anyway? Most men would kill for an invitation like this..."

"Lara, it's just that..."

"Cut the sensitivity shit, Kevin. In fact, just shut the hell up altogether and fuck my ass."

An epic fight between my rapidly developing desire to give Lara's ass a try and the nagging idea that this was some sort of a test was waging inside my head, and I took a couple of hesitant steps toward Lara before pausing. This progress was apparently still too slow for Lara and she began screaming at me again.

"What the hell is the problem Kevin? Do you need some sort of a written invitation? Here, let me spell it out for you." She rose up slightly and moved her right hand back behind her again, pointing aggressively to her exposed ass. "Get the hell over here and stick your cock in my asshole. Is that clear enough? I want you to fuck my ass and I want it right...fucking... now."

With that last angry outburst, any residual reluctance to more forward vanished, drowned by her rather aggressive insults and my still acute sexual drive. I took the last few steps to her and positioned my cock at the verge of her ass as she turned away from me, dropped down to her elbows and arched her back upward again. I touched her skin with the tip of my cock, rubbing the lube a little, and then pressed forward, slowly penetrating her until the head was inside. I'd always heard a guy has to go slow with anal sex, so I paused there, waiting for her to relax, but Lara shouted back at me.

"Don't stop, you faggot, put it in me. Now."

Her incessant taunts were starting to make me more than a little angry and between that and my increasingly uncontrollable desire I gave her what she asked for and shoved the rest of my cock in. She gave a grunt that sounded a little like a cry of pain, but between her insults and the incredibly tight feeling I was experiencing, I couldn't bring myself to stop. I pulled back and pushed in again, eliciting another grunt from her and another surge of pleasure for me and then I simply started to hump, smoothly and slowly at first and then more aggressively, deeper and faster and with less and less control.

I still couldn't tell if her cries were out of passion or pain, but I felt no inclination to pause and sort out what she was experiencing. I was feeling an exquisite pleasure mixed with a sense of anger that was finally being released after months of indifference and borderline contempt that she had demonstrated toward me and our marriage and I just didn't care anymore. This was a release, not only from the limited sexual activity I'd been experiencing, but also from pent up emotional frustration.

But, any thought that should ease up, that I might be breaking her down vanished within a few minutes when she started taunting me again, demanding that I push harder, rougher, that I grab her hair, slap her ass, be a man. My anger toward her surged and I got even more aggressive, plunging into her with abandon, yanking her head back by her hair and throwing taunts back to her, calling her a slut, a bitch, an ass whore, shouting out whatever insult came to my mind without any attempt to filter what I was expressing.

Finally, after several, exhausting minutes of this out of control, hyper-aggressive sex, I couldn't take it anymore and let myself explode into her with a few, final, violent pumps. And then she collapsed, laying prone on the bed while I lay on top of her, both of us panting hard, sweating, saying nothing.

Eventually, I slipped completely out of her and rolled away, noticing a trace of blood on my wet, shrinking cock. I turned back to her, trying to hold her, thinking that I might apologize, but she simply turned her back to me, cold as ever, apparently unwilling to engage in any kind of tenderness. I spoke to her softly for a few minutes, trying to get through to her, but she wouldn't answer, lying on her side, breathing raggedly. After a while, I realized she was crying and I pulled gently on her shoulder to try and force her to look at me, but she firmly resisted. Finally, I raised my voice a little, in an attempt to get through to her.

"Look, Lara, I'm sorry if I was a little rough, and I'm sorry for whatever the hell I've done to make you so mad at me, but we have to talk if we are going to survive. You have to communicate with me."

She snorted in reply, paused a minute and, in a bitter, somewhat sarcastic tone answered.

"Look Kevin, I'm sure your cock could use some cleaning at this point. Why don't you go shower yourself down and leave me alone."

I felt totally exhausted emotionally and couldn't muster the energy to further attempt to get through to her. I considered responding sarcastically, to throw out another challenge, but I just sighed, slid off the bed and took a long, hot shower.

When I was done, I cracked the door to the bedroom and saw Lara, still naked, still laying on her side, staring off into space. She was no longer crying, but her eyes were red rimmed. I trying to talk to her one more time, but thought back on the strange sex we'd had, the contempt and anger she held for me and the complete failures I'd experienced trying to get her to respond to me and decided not to. Quietly I closed the door and wondered grimly about our future together.

As it turns out, this was the last time we had sex.

I wasn't even vaguely surprised that the strange, hyperkinetic sexual episode represented another downturn in the ever- worsening emotional ice bath that had become my marriage. Something had to change.

I broached the subject of couples counseling, of the possibility that she might need to adjust her anti-depressants, that maybe we should take a long vacation together- or even apart-but all my suggestions were met with non -committal grunts or exasperated eye rolls.

I found myself beginning to consider the thing that had previously been unthinkable, looking over the internet for advice on how to end a marriage, perusing the phone book for lawyers, looking for apartments closer to my work.

But somehow I just couldn't quite pull the trigger. I've always been an obstinate guy, and when there was something that I wanted, I'd always been more than willing to go to some pretty extreme lengths to get it. My marriage was important to me, and I just didn't feel right about throwing in the towel just yet. I wanted to keep trying until the bitter end, until I was certain there was nothing salvageable. I was diligently looking for any opportunity to move back on the right track, to make any sort of emotional progress with my wife.