The rugged, lunar texture of his strong tongue against her sleek wetness should have captured her attention immediately. His poking and prodding into the deepest parts of her should have had a greater effect on her. She wanted to be there. To be a part of their team, a real participant, not merely a spectator. Yet she was a million miles away from their humid sheets. Her mind wandered aimlessly, unable to maintain focus. She silently wondered if she was partaking too often in the solitary pleasures she experienced with her rocket-launching vibrator. She could scarcely find the patience to hear her husband’s car leaving the driveway and her buzzing pink partner in crime was already out of his not-so secret hiding place, firmly in hand, revved up and ready to go. She had recently read an article in a magazine warning sex-toy users that they ran the risk of somehow desensitizing themselves through the incredibly strength that their silent partners lashed out on them. The strength and the relentless frequency of their usage, she imagined. How odd that articles of this nature were now in all magazines. That masturbation was an everyday subject of conversation.

It had not always been so.

A distant memory rose up to the surface. She remembered that while she was in fifth grade, she babysat occasionally to earn pocket-money. She was called back often by a couple with a toddler who lived up the street from her. The Burkes. He was an Air Force pilot and she was a Canadian housewife with a short bob haircut and thick, nerdy glasses. She spoke with a very prim, proper accent. Neither one of them was in any way attractive. They had something extremely bland about them. Back in those early years, she imagined that only really beautiful people had sex lives. Her sneaky nature soon taught her otherwise about the Burkes. As soon as she had put the baby to bed, she would finish off anything salty and already open in the pantry and then she would begin her search. She was never quite sure what it was she was searching for, she just enjoyed the possibility of rummaging through other people’s lives, unseen. She knew it was rotten, betraying people’s trust in her like that, but the lure was too strong. She just couldn’t resist.

In a wooden chest at the foot of their bed, her surprise, like a slap in the face, leapt out to greet her curious nature. A big, black rubber dildo! There was other paraphernalia that she could not even imagine what to do with, but that black faux penis! Jesus Christ! The idea of Mr. Burke thrusting the thing into Mrs. Burke was unfathomable. Yet they owned it! It was right there at the foot of their bed! She would verify its presence in a state of fascination tinged with revulsion each and every time she babysat for them. When Mr. Burke accompanied her back to her own home after evenings out, she was unsettled by her secret knowledge and yet the idea that sexuality was a facet of every person’s life was oddly reassuring.

Her thoughts continued to ramble as her partner gave up, rolled over and went to sleep.