Loose Ends

First– a big Thank you to all of the people who have sent us their best wishes. We apologize if we have been unable to reply to you personally since by publishing our e–mail address we have attracted a spate of adverts to make big willies or illicit CDs or see pictures of naughty women and we delete these. Some of your replies may have been amongst the twenty or so we now get each week.
Second– we must also apologize to those who have taken all of our tales as complete truth. In order to join them together we have had to fabricate some sections but each one has a kernel of what really happened. Our children are not really called Stanley and Hilda; neither are we Robert and May. I hope we are forgiven for this but it would be too awkward if we were to be singled out in our daily life, as it is we worry that we could be identified.
Third– Money. When we had a conversation with the man who May calls Mr. Posh, she had been listening to his account of how some item of equipment had worn out she had guilelessly said that Robert was rich and would buy him a new one. The man immediately replied, quite kindly, “Oh he’s not rich, he works, I can get one easily enough.” I tell this to illustrate that in May’s eyes I am wealthy. Her family can pay their bills well enough but unlike me they are not descended from a long line of childless aunts and uncles who passed on their lifetimes savings to the only living survivor of the family line, me. It’s another of the factors that make me feel uncomfortable with her. Then there’s the matter of her job at the plastic factory where that slimy manager of hers was content to let her go on working for ’100 a week (about 150 dollars) because she would not argue her case to make a living wage.
Fourth– there is a lot of time in between our accounts when we acted as ‘dry’ people. Most of our acquaintances know nothing of our special interest.
Fifth– Intimacy. Neither of us has ever lived with anyone else and so we can’t tell if our ways are normal. For example we enjoy washing each other. As we’ve said before we have never had an argument. For my part I’ve never felt any resentment towards May that could occasion one on my side and she has such a placid nature that even when I’ve been at my most idiotic she just smiles. As I read through what we’ve written I wonder if I’m a bit overbearing since I nearly always seem to get my own way. What happens is that I suggest some activity and she replies “Oh yes, let’s.” We have a working agreement that she is in charge of events from 7pm to 7am and I get the daytime choice, it works well because she chooses to initiate…activities that she knows I enjoy and I aim to do the same for her when we are up and about.
Sixth– May herself. She has put up with jibes from unkind people who call her fat, but I can personally verify that her square–ish shape is mainly muscle, in fact I’d say she is strong with a most attractive little spare tire round her middle. She once went to a meeting of a women’s lib group and came home crying, not for herself but for one of the contributors who had some glandular malfunction which left the poor woman marooned in a mountain of fat. Her main point was that being so big she would never have known what it was like to snuggle up in someone’s arms since they could never have reached around her. She cried on and off for a couple of days about that. She has also said that she’s lazy but if you could have seen her busily dusting the whole of my house and redecorating it over the last year or two you might disagree with her.
May’s talents have not been mentioned but she has a good eye for a design in the crochet work she does and I hope she will take some of her items to a craft fair one day. If she could be persuaded to go on the stage her acting would win her some admirers but she is still very reticent about putting herself forward. Then there’s the typing that she does, it’s almost flawless and I’ve found she can type at the speed I can dictate. Her time at the plastic factory has given her an uncanny ability to organize paper work. She undertook to regiment all of my notes from past years, a collection of hundreds of pages and masses of maps, diagrams, receipts, letters, magazines and a host of assorted documents. It took her a week hidden away in my attic and at the end she had it reduced to a bookcase of files. They are labeled, dated and typed. When she started, it was a two–foot deep covering over the whole floor. In all of that process, she only had to ask about a couple of doubtful pieces.
Now some last wet events to round this off.
The house where we live has been referred to as mine since it’s where I spent most of the last thirty years but when we finally made our decision to wed, it was redesignated as ours and we held a small party. Two of May’s friends from the secretarial college who had witnessed our first meeting came along, AnnaMarie and her bristly headed chauffeur were there, as was a lady I’ve not mentioned before who is the only other person I’ve ever known who took the wet direction. She’s nearer to my age and I’ll call her Janet. Her claim to fame is her eccentric delight in leaving wet patches anywhere she takes a liking to. She comes to visit twice a year and I have to wash the cushions when she leaves. The party needed some more men but I could not invite people who might be offended by our games. So we were seven in all.
Of course Rissa came across for the party but Don had to play football so she volunteered to come via the Manchester airport and collected Janey, who arrived all the way from America. What a friend! Nathan brought AnnaMarie in the company car from Swindon. Janet, true to her eccentric style came on a motorbike even though she has already celebrated her fortieth birthday. By five o’clock that Friday evening we had all gathered.
Everyone had already been forewarned that it might well be a house wetting rather than a house warming so we sat around getting acquainted and began telling of relevant incidents. Janet kept us amused with her listing of places she had liked. To her it’s not a social or sexual matter, more an aesthetic one. She has taken to a bank while waiting for a cashier, her boss’s chair while he was out, a cliff top overlooking the sea and several friends’ carpets.
Janey told us that America is a place of extremes where the reaction to her interest ranges from fascination when she applauded some feat of baseball with a torrent, to fearful rejection when she wet her jeans at the entrance to a political gathering.
During our ‘getting to know you’ session AnnaMarie was quiet until asked if she practiced away from the privacy of her home. She looked at Nathan for a moment then told how she took a temporary job in a mushroom hut where it was gloomy and hot. Rather than go for toilet breaks she had kept cool by dribbling all day.
The first evening we contented ourselves with this story telling and spent ages over a meal straight from an Italian cookbook which May had been exploring. Chianti is vile wine but it cuts through greasy food quite well so we dealt with a number of bottles until we all lost count. Before we took to our beds we arranged the following day on the basis of ‘if it feels good then we’ll do it.’
May hates hangovers so she had finished off the day by taking in a lot of water and I joined her. This means that in the night I awoke to a full bladder. Disentangling myself from her often takes a long time because she sleeps attached to me and is almost impossible to wake. During the process I chanced to feel her lower abdomen and noted that the telltale tightness there would need relief, so I tried to wake her. Whispering in her ear produced a contented mumble but no movement so I slid my legs out of bed and maneuvered her into a sitting position, leaning against me. With much encouragement I managed to get her to stand though she seemed unconscious and continued to hold both arms round my neck. Like that we made a slow waltz along to the bathroom. There I was faced with a problem of what to do with her while I used the proper facility, she would not let go or stand unaided. The solution to it was to lift her legs one by one over the edge of the bath till we both stood in it. Unable to wait any longer I peed, squirting down between her legs.
For whatever reason May always wears panties in bed and I just could not remove them, so I squeezed her gently and said “You can wee now, my love.” That trusting nature works even when she is not really awake and so she did as asked. The whole fiasco then went in reverse till we had arrived back in the bedroom. It would have been unkind to let her return to her deep sleep with wet knickers so I laid her on the covers and with great difficulty removed her panties and dried her feet.
Thus we awoke the next morning. By seven, most mornings I am at my most active so I bustled about making tea for everyone and I could say that I’ve seldom enjoyed myself so much. When people wake up they are so natural and defenseless, they sometimes say the most unguarded things. Janet looked up blearily saying “Isn’t it quiet in the country– I feel so relaxed, do you mind if I pee right here?” I remembered that her bed had no waterproof sheet but still gave assent.
Even Nathan’s pretend grumpy I found endearing as was AnnaMarie’s attempt to help with breakfast. She came along to the kitchen before reaching respectability in her dress code. That is she wore an apology for a nightgown and nothing else, but showed no sense of it being strange. Her help consisted of opening a carton of orange juice and spilling it. Janey too, added to the pleasure for me by being true to the European stereotype of the American by saying “Gee” and “wow” and being thoroughly appreciative of everything from the view out of the window to the presence of the cat. The highlight of that morning for me was Janet going out into the garden stark naked to pee on the lawn. Whatever will the neighbors say?
We’d gathered our wits by nine. All but Janey took part in the traditional English breakfast complete with bacon, eggs, mushrooms, sausage, and fried bread. When she asked for coffee we were all struck dumb because she wanted cream in it. Such is the difference in national outlook. I love these people.
They all knew my interest lies in filming so all agreed that the morning should be devoted to making a record of the event on camera. First there was the group shot of us, arms around each other, in front of the house; then they insisted that I should be filmed with May at our own front door. We added pictures of Nathan with his flash car and Janet in full leathers on her motorized beast (750cc). Janey recognized that we were intrigued by her adherence to all things American and had brought a dress designed with the stars and stripes. She had circled the one that she said represented her home state of Colorado. There she stood resplendent in her glistening golden blonde hair dressed in the stars and stripes high kicking in proper cheerleader mode. She deliberately omitted the underwear. It made an unforgettable sight and we all applauded.
I feel strangely privileged to have been host to these people acting in such an uninhibited way. As I tell these things it sounds as if there was a strong undercurrent of sexual passion but that was not the general feeling, it was more of a sense that here we could do whatever we wanted and would not be criticized or taken advantage of.
Our guests insisted that another photo shoot should include the boat as it had played such an important part in our lives so we trooped off to the canal and held an impromptu party there, much to the dismay of the earnest engineers and painters at work that Saturday morning. We shouted and sang and generally played the fool for an hour till Nathan fell into the water and we had to take him home to dry out.
During the afternoon Janet took Rissa for an adrenalin surge to Hull and back. She achieved the eighty miles there and back in less than an hour. While they were gone the rest of us lazed about in the garden. May entertained us with stories amplified by acted examples of the various people we had met over the years. Again her portrayal of Rissa doing circuits of the boat deck in the altogether produced uproarious approval.
The high spot of the gathering had been planned for that evening. A five–course banquet with entertainment on the theme of wet pleasures appealed to everyone. Janet had never taken part in communal wetting and found it overwhelming but she joined in with gusto and surprised us with her unexpected ‘hissing’ as the soup arrived. I had my doubts because the event was taking place in a room with a carpet but that couldn’t be helped.
Janey kept us concentrated on the purpose of the party by presenting May with a huge key made of imitation gold to represent her arrival in the property owning classes. My lovable girl did her part in the proceedings with the most provocative and erotic curtsey ever seen. We ate fish from Japan with some oriental sauce that everyone approved of and continued with a joint of old–fashioned British beef and five vegetables, washed down with a pint of mild ale each that Nathan had brought along. Janet provided something sweet whose alcohol content surpassed absinthe. At that point we had to make a solemn declaration to avoid driving for the next twenty–four hours.
This meal had started at about six, so by eight we had eaten and drunk quite a lot. Rissa was saying things that she might have regretted in less informal surroundings and Janet had begun to drink carafes of water as if she had been in the desert for a month. Both May and I were loosing the thread of what went on and I have to say that my recollections of how the evening continued are vague. I know we had a water drinking contest, I know Janey played the Marseillaise on my old Harmonium, I know Nathan sang the national anthem. May tells me I gave a speech on the benefits of crop rotation. Janet definitely went to the local pub and brought back a crate of beer but whether Rissa really did a pole dance on the dining room table or May performed a demonstration of the ‘quick step’ with a bare Nathan are not certain.
What was clear on the following morning was that more than one of us made a wet mess on that dining room carpet.
We did drink a great deal– both of alcohol and water and various juices because much of it returned to haunt us when we awoke early on Sunday.
That awakening will remain with me for a long time. We had failed to reach our respective beds and came to in a heap on and around the double bed that occupies the loft space above my workroom. Exactly why we had gone there no one could remember but Janet says we had been talking about cave men that huddled together for warmth and Janey thought we were imagining ourselves as the crew of an interplanetary expedition.
Sunday morning was slow. By the afternoon we had made progress towards sanity but most felt that forty winks would be a good idea. As ever, May insisted on sleeping on me. It’s quite enjoyable but hard to sleep. She roused before three and told me she’d had a dream of being taken to the bathroom and weeing in the bath! Now she will know what sparked it off. Janet was less inclined to sleep so she wandered away down to the village. Her morning antics on Saturday must have been seen for she says that she had to engage in a long conversation with a group of young men who wanted to know all about her.
Janey wanted to see the city walls at York, which is less than an hour away so we promised to take her that evening. We would all squeeze into Nathan’s limousine at six, having dealt with a salad washed down with fruit flavored water, all very healthy.
The party had so far recovered in that there was much laughter to do with ‘P’ registered cars and the sign for a roadside lay–by P in a circle. The idea took hold and we determined that we also would P in a circle on the way back. Before that we walked a part of the restored Roman wall. The other part we ran because the need for a tiddle had afflicted us. There’s just no privacy in towns. The only complete foreigner amongst us found a public loo so it was Janey who had first say. The vixen said that we should not use it but hang on till we were on the way home.
The giant car was too smart to be used, so if the others felt as I did they had an anxious journey. The P sign we chose beside a grass field looked inviting so we assembled in a group wondering how to make good our vow. The girls ensured that a degree of wisdom prevailed and we crossed into the field. What would you have said if you saw a band of people all over thirty playing Ring–a–ring–roses in a field? Once we had all fallen down we could pee which was fine for those with skirts, they stood up a little later looking relieved, but Janey, me and Nathan were a sorry sight. We were adequately shielded back to the car and seat covers were arranged.
As it was a lovely sunny evening a stop for something to whet the whistle seemed in order. One thing led to another so it had become dark by the time we set out again. If I had not persuaded them to go by a country route we should have just crossed the swing bridge before it opened to let a ship through. The procedure takes ten minutes while the ship slides by. The queue of cars takes a further ten minutes to file across. We coped with those delays but distress came on with the faulty traffic lights on a construction site. They turned green long enough for only two cars at a time on our side but allowed those in the other direction almost uninterrupted travel for what seemed like a further ten minutes on each occasion.
“How much further?”
“When shall we get back?”
“Is there a place we could stop again?”
“I’m dying for a wee again.”
As it chanced that our route took us by the entrance to the wood where one of our recorded adventures took place, we thought that it might be nice to explore in the dark. The path has become overgrown with brambles; trees leaned down to brush our faces, strange whirring insects passed closely in the gloom. Everyone was skittish till we felt we had come far enough and it would be all right to water the ground. It’s fascinating how we went our separate ways to find a place hidden from the others. I could hear stumbling in the bushes and mutterings then a small scream as someone found a spider. A couple of startled pigeons caused an upset when they flew off noisily.
Back at the car we found that only Rissa had managed to do what was intended without a mishap.
A Tribute to May
All the while I write my part in these affairs I have a picture in my head of May. It’s not the dowdy girl I first met nor the fine young woman who bends lovingly over her children but the one who greets me whenever I’ve been out of her sight for more than a couple of hours. Her calm face lights up as if she’s receiving an unexpected present. It’s a touch embarrassing as well as being delightful. Once I fancied that it would settle down to a plain greeting but after four years she is still overjoyed to see me. Why this should be, I’m unclear. At night she sometimes says, “You won’t leave me will you.” The thought would never enter my head, I’ve far too much to lose, so I can only suppose that there is some deep fear within her that I’ve not fathomed.
It’s that greeting that forms the frame in which this last incident hangs. I’ve tried to build a fuller idea of what she is like, her outlook, her strengths, her appreciation of others and her loving and lovable nature. There must be people who would view her as a doormat, without a will of her own. I prefer to notice how often she will accept some scheme of mine and immediately add to it, especially those necessary details that turn it from an outright folly into an adventure. If I were a boat she would be the helmswoman.
It had become obvious that our old van would have to be changed. The heater broke, the engine leaked oil, the back door would not shut properly and to cap it all off, someone had shot both its eyes out while we were away. A 4×4 is the thing to have in these parts. The drive is not needed, it’s just an expensive fashion but I kept on about different types till we went to a dealer to see some. May had reservations but knows me well enough to persuade by small increments. The first we sat in was quite something, very butch, but May pointed out that the seats would suffer badly if anyone ‘had an accident.’ The salesman went blithely on about its strength in a crash but I understood what she was saying. The next one had better seats and rubber floor matting. She told me quite reasonably that it would take two of us to lift the outboard motor into it for the dory I sometimes use.
A third model was a cross between a sedan and a pick–up, much cheaper, much more powerful, a pea green color. May’s advice was to consider it for a day or two. At the time she was learning to drive and she is far too self–effacing to point out that she could not see over the dash or reach the pedals. The fourth, covered in chrome, was weighed down with initials like GT and X–cross and 20 valves. It had more buttons and switches and dials and lunatic extras than you would expect on a whole fleet of spaceships. May broke the salesman’s resolve by laughing at it. Indeed she couldn’t help giggling at each new ‘selling point.’ Oh, she apologized twice but he’d met his match and I could see what she saw, a monstrosity that was neither useful nor ornamental.
We left with a handful of brochures. In the evening we scanned them and came to the conclusion that we had no need for a 4×4. Next day I went tearing off to a meeting thirty miles away and came home late in a taxi. The van had finally broken. May’s greeting was more than usually touching; it was not the pseudo worry of the imagined disaster shown in exaggerated relief, nor the misplaced anger of the cook whose meal is past its best but a beautiful Thanksgiving at having her best friend back (me). I’m sure it’s quite obvious why I’m so taken with her.
The upshot of this was that the fresh vehicle would have to be bought sooner rather than later.
May would like to add a bit here:
It is quite right that I thought the motorcars we looked at were OTT. I’d have been terrified of driving any of them because they were so big. They were so flashy I thought they looked like the ones in the circus which the clowns come in, painted up to look like cars, but mostly just for show. The reason I was so pleased to see Robert when he came back in the taxi was because I had been playing a silly game while he was out. He left at ten in the morning and I had decided to hold on till he got back and then surprise him by weeing on the kitchen floor. You see, when he was about to set off I had been giving him a big kiss and he had lifted me off saying “Whoa, hold it till I’m back home safe, then we can play cuddly games.” With him being gone longer than I was expecting I had overfilled myself and waddled around and around waiting in absolute agony. It was more a case of being able to relieve the burden inside me that made me so glad that he appeared when he did.
Now it’s back to me, I didn’t know that, she held for some considerable time before giving me my surprise.
We had talked some more about another vehicle and agreed upon an upper price and some basic details regarding the size and convenience, as ever May left me to get on with it– trusting that I’d come back with something suitable. In the morning I took our car and went looking around at more sensible machinery. In the course of this I bumped into a crony who said he would be getting rid of his runabout van. I can’t do the dollar conversion but we had intended to spend no more than ’10000, and he offered the van at ’500 so you can see it was a huge difference.
Leaving the car at his house I toddled off to get some insurance for the van and as I came home it occurred to me that I had, in a manner of speaking, made a profit of thousands of pounds so I stopped at a roadside flower seller and filled it with flowers. May gave me her greeting at the back door so could not know what I had parked at the front of the house. We ate together and I kept quiet until she asked me if there had been any success. Offhandedly, I said I’d brought a motor with me to see if it would do. That’s a typical piece of male chauvinism; I had no intention of returning it. In the event she likes it.
Another additive from May:
It’s lovely– a sweet little Suzuki full of flowers. I can see out of it, I can reach the pedals and switches; it doesn’t go too fast and it has doors everywhere. It’s large enough inside to put a table and chairs and the heater works. Robert has said I can have it for my own. I shall let him drive it whenever he wants. I’m going to give it some new seat covers and I’ve found a bit of carpet that will be just right for the floor when I’ve cut it to shape. We’ll be able to put as much as we want in it when we go away on the boat and you can even lie down in the back so we could sleep in it if we wanted. There’s even a bobbly thing at the back to tow a boat or a trailer. We had flowers around the house for weeks and so we took dozens to my mum.
Back to me again, I’ve just been telling May off for being typically feminine but as ever she takes it as a mark of my affection. Her views about feminism are based on a maxim from my own youth to ‘do your own thing’ and she claims that if her own thing doesn’t fit with feminist doctrine then she’s a fully independent being. More power to her elbow!
Sorry about the digression. May was so pleased with the little van that she insisted that we go for a ride in it to test it. It would be reasonable to expect that we would get in immediately– but No! Her test must be of her choosing. First we have to fuel up with a pot of tea and prepare a flask, next, it has to be provided with an emergency loo. Before we go I have to rig a curtain across the back window. So far I’m in favor.
Her final requirement is that we go to a place some twenty miles away where there is a public car park overlooking a bird reserve. Without any encouragement from me she has taken to filling a notebook with a daily record of the wild birds that she sees. One of her pleasures from living in the countryside are the endless opportunities to see the wild in action, trees, birds, animals and plants. Before we met she had not known a buzzard from a badger but now she can identify anything that flies. The trip to the bird reserve would add to her list of ducks.
Off we go. I have to do the driving until she gets her license. As we travel I am aware that this is indeed much slower than the car. It adds ten minutes to the journey but May doesn’t notice, she’s enchanted and I’m pleased that she’s pleased.
We reach the car park and wander down to the lakeshore where we sit and watch birds flapping and squawking. May forgets the van and me when she’s seen the Pintail that she wants for her notebook. I set to on the flask while she peers out over the water. She settles to making a sketch of the scene, I drink a bit more. You can see what’s coming. Now that I come to write it, I’m curious that it never occurred to me that I would not be able to use the emergency loo if I did the driving. Confident that no restraint was needed I had finished the lot before she expressed a desire for a drink. With a sheepish look I displayed the empty vessel.
Not to worry says I, there’s a cafe less than a mile away. There we sat and May held forth about how ducks can steer when swimming, by trailing the foot that is not paddling. This watery talk reminded me that a crisis time would arrive soon so I suggested that we might be setting off soon. Always, she agrees with me but on this occasion she wanted a last look at the lake as we passed it on the way back. That took another half hour, by which time I was approaching a limit of tolerance, not with her I add, but with my plumbing.
Telling May that my time was approaching prompted her to signal that it was time to set off home. On the outward journey it took 40 minutes, not long for an experienced holder. The seating position in this vehicle is much more upright than a car, it sets up different lumbar stresses and it jiggles you about more. Returning in the late afternoon saw us waiting a long time to cross a major road, then we were held up behind a tractor with a load of straw. Then we had to take a diversion where a lorry had failed to get under a low bridge.
Once or twice I found myself gritting my teeth and looking for a place to stop so the emergency facility could be tried out. May glanced at me with solicitude, “Can you wait?” Manfully, I nodded but kept my doubts to myself. It must have been too convincing because she would have me stop at a shop while she went in for some ‘oddments.’ Again it took longer than I had bargained for but I could not bring myself to perch in the back even with the curtain fitted since the view through the windscreen was unobstructed.
She returned wreathed in smiles with a bag full and pulled one of the numerous doors open, deposited that and returned to the shop before staggering out with a bird table that she also put in the back. “One more stop at the pet shop, I want some birdseed.” Oh, I groaned inwardly, that could have been the only recorded time in human history that a bladder spoke. From low down inside it said to me “You rat, I thought you would have taken care of me before now. Suffer the consequences.” We went for the birdseed and set off towards home again.
Three minutes should not be too difficult but I could no longer hold on, a dribble announced that the time of final reckoning had arrived. It began to flow and I stopped on the roadside within sight of the house. Plunging into the back I initiated the ‘Porta Potty’ into its new role. What a wimp! In my defense I claim that only half of what I carried actually reached the receptacle and the rest soaked into the new van seat. May watched with approval, studied my seat and merely said, “It’s pretty good, runs off nicely.”
She emptied the van and I cleaned the inside. She set about the evening meal as I took my bicycle to fetch the car, still round at my crony’s house. It’s doubtful if I was gone an hour, yet when I returned the same overflowing greeting poured from her eyes. Not tears, you understand, but a sort of warm glow. When I mention it she says that it’s only lust. I don’t believe that, the nearest I can get is the recognition that if she rolls all the nice things she has in her heart about me and puts them on display to tell me “that’s who you are to me.”
And so– Goodbye to you all. We have come to the end of our tale and enjoyed the telling of it. The twins gurgle in the background, May potters about with armfuls of small clothes and there on the wall hangs a pair of stretched ragged pink panties to remind us of happy times past.
Yours with lots of love,
Robert and May