Pearls for Jimmy Read Free

an architect, and two successful business owners. We had collected nine husbands between us, two of whom were still around, one was deceased and six were filed away somewhere in the wreckage of our scarred hearts and the nation’s divorce statistics.
    Collectively, we had eleven kids, six grandkids, an assortment of animals, three scares with breast cancer and one total hysterectomy. Over the years we’d laughed and cried together; been each other’s bridesmaids, bounced each other’s babies, and helped pick up the pieces after a death or a visit to Divorce Court. We moved from sharing our angst over troubled teenagers to being worried sick about aging parents.
    Despite lives not always lived gently or sane, we were aging remarkably well. We were two real blondes, a redhead and two brunettes, and only one of us had given up the battle with gray hair, choosing to go au natural . We told her she was strikingly beautiful in silver hair and it was true; she looked fantastic.
    We watched our weight, exercised moderately, and three of us were devotees of yoga. No one smoked, we all drank moderately, and one of us wanted to be a vegetarian but kept failing miserably; we assured her we admired her for her struggle anyway and it was true.
    For the most part we had different complaints except for the one that we all shared – each of us griped about being sexually unsatisfied. This was especially true of my married friends, one of whom complained her second husband was “just as dead as the first” – and that jerk had been in the ground nine years.
    When the guy who’s alive is just as cold as the guy who’s dead, well, you know you have problems. I understood her pain. My marriage was the loneliest, most emotionally barren, frustratingly sexless place I’d ever been; just thinking about it made me cold and depressed which made me return to my shocking idea that I wanted a life with a man I’d just met and certainly didn’t know.
    Let me stress that I’d been saying for years that, although I craved male companionship, there was absolutely no way in hell I’d ever marry again.
    In fact, I wasn’t even looking to be a couple. I’d been in quite a few relationships since my divorce and they all ultimately proved as thoroughly unsatisfying as my joyless marriage.
    Yet there I was, not only fantasizing about sex with a complete stranger, but even more incredibly I was imagining a life with him.
    Clearly, my emotions were playing tricks on me. I suspected I was getting a bit geezed and asked if I was slurring my words. My friends assured me I wasn’t and they wouldn’t lie to me.
    Relying on the strength of their better judgment, I emptied the last wine bottle and joined in the discussion about dessert. Soon we were discussing the merits of every dessert on the menu with the same due diligence we’d use to choose a pediatrician for one of our kids.
    Finally, we decided to order every damn dessert on the menu. We told the waiter we’d share and he graciously returned with a variety of desserts, new forks and plates, and several carafes of freshly brewed coffee.
    Soon conversation double backed to sex which suited me just fine because I couldn’t get Jimmy off my mind and was beginning to wonder how the hell I was going to create an opportunity for something to happen between us when one of us started talking about her best orgasms.
    The next thing I knew I was announcing in the loudest voice I’d ever used that there was absolutely nothing I enjoyed more than oral sex and it was suddenly excruciatingly obvious to all of us that the restaurant’s background noise had greatly dissipated. Most of the diners were now gone, there were far fewer shouts of “Opaah!” and the Zorba the Greek music was reduced in volume.
    My emphatic “I love oral sex!” reverberated throughout the entire restaurant and for one godawful second we all froze in horror and then simultaneously burst into riotous laughter. Therese was in the