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Housewife 1946 (USA)

She could never think of herself as easy. She had not been 
brought up that way. She did not not love her husband. She 
loved him. Of course she did. But when a man put his arms 
around her, and his chest was broad, and he was tall, strong, 
comforting, and comfortable, and his voice was deep and 
reassuring, and his shirt and coat smelled like a man, things 
just seemed to happen.

The war was partly to blame. The war had changed everybody. 
Things were not the same. When absence, uncertainty, and loss 
were always just around the corner, you took comfort when and 
where you could. Once upon a time, married women mostly 
didn't. In early 1946, even in Philadelphia, they mostly did. 
The war was over but many husbands were still over there. In 
early 1946, it still felt like the war.

Glenn Miller could also take some of the blame. The band 
played on the radio and it made her need to dance, and once 
she needed to dance she went out looking until she found 
herself dancing. When Glenn Miller's music was fast it was 
fun. She danced wild, with a smile. And when it was slow and 
sexy, she danced unsmiling with strong arms around her, with 
her cheek up against a man's solid chest, smelling the man's 
smell, and she didn't want to take herself away.

The factory could take another part of the blame. She hadn't 
been brought up to grease engine components for trucks, but 
that's what you did in the war. Grease, wrap, pack into boxes, 
away they go in an endless stream from the production line to 
the trucks that carried the men, the munitions, the supplies. 
The factory work was over now, but she'd almost never forget 
the feel and smell of grease. But you could forget sometimes, 
when you dressed up, put on your make-up, put on the perfume, 
and went out to dance.

Glenn Miller and Moonlight Serenade. You just had to dance 
with a man and let him hold you close. The song of the war, 
for her, was Moonlight Serenade.

The war was over but Eddie was still over there, somewhere in 
southern Germany. She hadn't seen him for more than two years. 
Maybe he'd come home soon.

In Philadelphia, she had danced that night to the music of 
Moonlight Serenade. Once more. Another night of dancing and 
another man holding her close. Another man, in her bed, 
holding her close.

How many men had there been? She hadn't counted. To count was 
to know, and she didn't want to know. If she counted she'd 
have to admit to herself she was easy, and she had never meant 
to be easy. That wasn't the intention. It wasn't what it was 
all about.

Another night, another dance, another man. Not a new man -- 
just Marty, who had been in her bed four times or maybe five, 
but she wasn't counting. Marty had been invalided out of the 
army on a pension in 1943. There appeared to be nothing wrong 
with him. He danced superbly. In bed, she looked for scars on 
his body, and found none. Marty, she realised early on, was a 
rogue. But he was a charming rogue, and he was always there. 
He looked like Artie Shaw, but so did a lot of men in 1946.

Marty liked her breasts, but so did a lot of men. Petite 
ladies with prominent bosoms never had to wait long for 
gentlemen dance partners. It's your good fortune, her mother 
had said to her when she was a teenager, to have inherited the 
excellent bust of the Whitman female line. You'll never want 
for a man's attention.

Marty was dirty, of course. All men were dirty. She could put 
up comfortably enough with being penetrated, with having her 
breasts mauled and slobbered on, because she loved to dance 
and she adored to be held and cuddled. But they all wanted 
more -- all manner of things, all dirty, even Eddie, who was 
the nicest man of them all, and whom she loved with all her 
heart. One day Eddie would come home and he would hold 
her close all the day and night. Until then, she had to dance 
and she needed to cuddle. There were things you put up with to 
get it.

It was Saturday morning, April 1946, after a Friday night of 
dancing. Marty was still in bed asleep. Marty didn't like to 
get up before eleven at the earliest. He said he was a man of 
the shadows, and he probably was. Marty had used her body to 
his satisfaction, and he slept in peace. Later, he would get 
up, get dressed, drink a coffee, and leave with an easy smile 
and a wave. Maybe she would dance with him again, maybe not. 
Maybe Eddie would come tomorrow.

It was Saturday morning, April 1946, and at nine o'clock 
exactly the doorbell rang. In her dressing gown and slippers 
she opened the door and saw the man she most did not want to 
see in the whole world.

"Mrs. Edward Thomas Browning?" he asked, not quite meeting her 
eyes.

She didn't answer. Couldn't.

He gave her the telegram anyway. "Sorry, missus," he said, and 
ducked away down the path as fast as he decently could.

She stood with the telegram in her hand. The war was over. The 
telegrams were not supposed to come any more. For the women of 
America, that was all in the past. Happy days were here again 
and there'd never be another war. Sorry, the man from Western 
Union said. 

At the kitchen table she slit the envelope open with a knife. 
Truck accident. Eddie drove trucks. Eddie was dead. The war 
was over but Eddie had died in Germany after the war, killed 
in a truck accident.

Sorry, the man from Western Union said. She sat at the table 
for a long time and thought about nothing very much except 
cruel absurdities. It was 1946 and the war was over. Men 
weren't supposed to die. She couldn't get that out of her 
head. Like an impassable barricade, it blocked other thinking.

Abruptly, she stood up and moved purposefully to her bedroom, 
threw off her gown and slid beneath the blankets. "Marty, you 
bastard," she hissed, punching him hard on the chest with a 
balled fist.

"What the hell?" He was surprised but not angry. Marty was 
never angry. He was too cool and sly, a man of the shadows.

She wrapped a hand around his sleepy cock, and it hardened 
instantly. She swept aside the blankets and curled over his 
body to put the thing in her mouth.

"What the hell?" Marty was really surprised. He'd begged but 
she'd never done that. She's only done it with Eddie just 
once, hated it, and swore never again. Never again, Eddie, it 
will never happen again.

She sucked on Marty's stiff cock, doing the dirty thing he 
wanted. She would do all the dirty things today, because 
that's what would keep him with her. She needed Marty to stay, 
all day at least and for as long as she could fight off the 
pain. She could not bear to be alone. Marty could do what he 
wanted, as long as he stayed.

Marty gushed into her mouth in no time at all, and she 
swallowed the stuff with a grimace. 

"Oh, babe," he said luxuriously, his hands tousled in her 
hair. "What's got you so stirred up?"

She lifted her head and looked at his handsome, idle face with 
its blue-black shadows and its pencil-thin Artie Shaw 
moustache. Marty was the wrong man, but he was a man, and for 
today that was enough.

ENDS