I want to sleep with your husband. I want to press my naked body against his hot flesh, breathe in the scent of him. I want to rub my palm over his chest and belly, taking in the textures: smooth or hairy, taut or meltingly soft. I want to close my fingers around his cock, savor the sounds he makes when I stroke it, feel it swell and stiffen.

Then comes the good part. I’ll tell him I’m going to suck him, let him deep inside the tropical wonderland of my pussy, but first I’m going to make him talk. I’ll make him tell me what he dreams about when he jerks off, what he’s longed to do in bed but never has, what it feels like when he comes, what the best fuck of his life was like, and all in graphic detail. And when I’ve drained his mind dry, I’ll drain his balls by means of that very secret desire he’s just confessed. I’ll drive him wild, but I’ll be cool—maybe scribbling a note or two as he bucks and quivers above me or below me or behind me–an attentive witness to that most naked of human moments, the ecstasy of orgasmic release.

Yes, when I’m done with him, your husband will be a boneless blob of Jello tangled up in very damp sheets, but that won’t be enough for me. Because then I want to be your husband when he’s sleeping with you. I’ll slip inside his body and then slip inside you, taking in every sensation, every sigh and grunt and wiggle of your hips. Then with a cursory wipe up, I’ll hurry off to a swingers’ party, an orgy, a Japanese sex club to enjoy the most expensive offering on the menu. After all, the night is young. It’s a demanding schedule, but it’s part of my job. And this year I plan to keep sampling new fetishes and seducing new husbands as best I can.

Please don’t worry, now. There’s no reason to put bars on your windows or handcuff your husband to your bed—unless you’re both into that for your own special reasons. I won’t really be showing up at your door in a Merry Widow, notebook in hand. But it is true that as an erotica writer, I rely on a polyamorous sense of adventure to keep my fiction fresh, even if the trangressions themselves are purely fictional.

Last year I started off Cooking Up a Storey with a saintly breakfast of oatmeal, fresh fruit and yogurt. But a new year of hope and change calls for something different, a fresh start, but one that still offers symbolic nourishment to get back in touch with the reasons I write.

Sleeping with your husband brought a very good one to mind. One thing I love about writing is that it expands my universe, gives me endless theatres to act out my every desire. Writing gives me special powers to slither into strangers’ beds with ease and walk through walls, spying on people as they masturbate or fornicate or vacillate before some new forbidden sexual adventure.

Granted I often use “real” material in the form of memories from a period of rootless adventuring as a young woman. The settings and details have definitely come in handy as inspiration, if the actual encounters were less than satisfying. But crafted experience through writing—and reading—can be a low-cost ticket to a trip around the world in every sense of that phrase. In my novel, Amorous Woman, my protagonist, Lydia, explains the appeal of living in Japan to an American man she wants to seduce: “It’s like someone’s given you a whole other life, an extra life, to live for a while.” Lydia has a point. Each new story is a chance for me to slip into my characters’ skins and live an extra life. How many jobs offer that fringe benefit?

Although we commonly think of fantasies as escape, I’m also beginning to realize that they are a kind of homecoming as well. Erotica writers are constantly straying into exotic territory, but when all is said and done, our journey is really taking us on a secret tour of the landscape of own sexual imagination. For some of us, this may be an obvious point, but it actually took me a few years to get it. Because I was sleeping with your husband and not my own in a particular story, I thought my fiction was hiding the real me from public view.

In looking over my work, however, certain patterns emerge. It’s rather fun to consider recurring patterns and images like an auto-scholar, a curious tourist of the self (particularly since erotica is unlikely to figure on college syllabi in the near future). Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising for a writer, but I’ve noticed a predominance of voyeur/exhibitionist themes in my stories. Although in real life you’re likely to find me in the corner at a party—observing and taking my voyeur’s notes on other people’s husbands—in my fiction revelation, exposure, and nakedness are central. Clearly somewhere inside my cool, not to say dull, exterior is a show-off itching to break every taboo of decency, and hopefully bring something honest and true into the light at the same time.

Of course, this kind of self-consciousness of artistic predilections has no place in the early, creative phases of story-writing. It’s more suitable to those times when your inner editor or therapist takes center stage. A writer’s psyche is a crowded place, a veritable orgy of tangled limbs and murmuring voices. But frankly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

In honor of the multiplicity of our sensual selves within, the recipe I’d like to share this month truly represents a different self. This is the food of an alter-ego, a me who hasn’t been mostly vegetarian for over a decade. Admittedly, it once had a place in my life. Throughout my youth, my mother always made this recipe for Hot Chicken Salad for work potlucks and parties with her friends. She had originally gotten the recipe from a friend who claimed it was very simple to prepare ahead of time then heat up right before the party—plus, it always brought rave reviews. And it did. We kept Xeroxed copies to hand out, because at almost every occasion someone begged for the recipe. Men especially seemed to like it, and I remember their effusive, almost flirtatious compliments on this slightly exotic departure from the typical food served at these gatherings.

Yet, oddly, because my mother had a life-long aversion to mayonnaise, she never once tasted this dish for which she was famous. When I was old enough to reveal my predilection for culinary pursuits, she left the preparations and flavor adjustments to me. I remember the chicken salad was pretty good, the perfect combination of textures: creamy sauce, moist chicken offset by the crunch of water chestnuts, almonds and that staple of the twentieth-century American kitchen, canned French fried onion rings.

It’s almost sinfully retro (Accent, anyone?), and yet part of me wants to revert to my carnivorous past and taste it again—the same part of me that wants to sleep with your husband and frolic at orgies and work as stripper in a Tokyo club.

Maybe in my next story?

Bon appetit!

The Best Hot Chicken Salad for Potlucks and Seducing Other People’s Husbands

Servings: Unknown
(My mother writes: “I don’t remember how many I fed with this but it’s a good amount.”)

4 cups cubed chicken breast (boil 40 minutes)
1 cup slivered almonds
2 cans sliced water chestnuts
2 small jars red pimento (cut up)
1/2 teaspoon celery salt
1/4 teaspoon Accent
1 can French fried onion rings
2 lemons (4 teaspoons juice)
2 cups mayonnaise

Mix all ingredients except lemon juice and mayonnaise in a large bowl.

Mix lemon juice and mayonnaise in a separate bowl, then add to chicken mixture and stir to combine. Pour into a casserole dish. The chicken salad can be covered and refrigerated overnight at this point.

Crumble 1/2 to 1 can of onion rings on top.

Bake uncovered casserole in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.

For the aurally inclined, you can hear me read “I Want to Sleep With Your Husband” at DonnaGorgeStorey.com.

Donna George Storey
February 2009

“Cooking up a Storey” © 2009 Donna George Storey. All rights reserved. Content may not be copied or used in whole or part without written permission from the author.