peeking out of the closet

Not long ago, J and I invited another couple, who happen to be two of our best friends, to our country home for the weekend.  In the early morning hours of the Sunday, J and the other woman happened to be up before their two sleeping husbands.  As Judy made coffee, the other woman casually perused one of several bookshelves we have throughout the house.  Her eye was apparently caught by one, and she pulled it off the shelf.  ”Hey, J?  What’s this?”

The book she’d selected was this one:

J, if you haven’t noticed, is fairly unflappable.  She simply said that it was a book I’d brought home one day, and changed the subject. (It’s the first book I’d ever bought on the subject, and not long after getting it I’d read pertinent parts of it aloud to J, in a night of confessions.)

Later that Sunday afternoon, after they’d left, J related the story to me with a hint of concern.  ”What do you suppose she thought?  Do you think she’ll tell him?” (I work with him, and see him every day. J was concerned about potential echoes in my office.)

I smiled.  ”I don’t care.”

My thinking was, they’re our friends, they’re a progressive couple, she is a very confident and accomplished woman (as is J), and he is always interested in discussing controversial and even anarchic philosophies.  Additionally, we live in a house filled with literally thousands of books.  She chose that particular, slim paperback book to inquire about.  I’m not a Freudian, but some of his aphorisms have extraordinary applicability to everyday life:

For example: There are no accidents.

Maybe her curiosity about it was coming from a very personal place.

Because:  one of the truths of being kept in the cricket for extended periods of time is that I’m led to a very personal place inside me, where being locked is not only sexy and beautiful and symbolic and necessary, but normal. The concepts and practices we’re discovering via male chastity interest me. Occasionally, they downright preoccupy me.

It’s not something strange or shameful to me at all.  I’d like to be able to talk about it with some people. Obviously, our sex life is private, and I’m not proposing that we sit around a table in a restaurant and talk dirty with people.  But many of the emanations that flow from being cricketed, as well as many of the principles involved, have little to do with the intimacies of our sex life.

Well, the bottom line is that incident happened a couple of months ago, and nothing ever came of it.  I remembered it this morning, and asked J to remind me what exactly was said.  I’m still cricketed, and I love J more than ever.  The way I see it is this:  if I never work up the courage to come out of the closet about being cricketed, and all that being cricketed means, I’m still way ahead of the game.  J and I, after all, came out of our respective closets together and ran right into each other’s arms, after nearly twenty years of marriage.  We grow as we go.  Life is fucking good.