by Shaun Kelly
The conventional wisdom is that the third date is often the one when a woman will have sex with you for the first time. With that prominently on my mind, I was nervous as I got out of the cab in the rain. The doorman to her building held an umbrella for me then called her for authorization to let me in. He smiled as he let me in, saying, "Have a nice evening."
I certainly hoped so!
I met Stacey Davis on a plane flying back to New York from San Francisco. I'm Stan, 26, an auditor for one of the largest accounting firms in New York, doing OK, making a decent buck, and hopeful of becoming a junior partner in the next year or so. I had attended an accounting conference that had ended on Friday and took an extra day for sightseeing. The firm allows us to travel first class, and I was in an aisle seat in the front cabin.
Shortly after I sat down, an exceptionally good-looking woman came to my row and smiled, gesturing she had the window seat next to me. I moved my legs to the side to give her room, and she slid past me, her body just inches from my face. I got a whiff of her perfume as she passed and thought to myself that she was the type of woman I could never get to first base with.
To be honest, I'm just not the type of guy that women flock to. I'm only about 5'7", I'm a little chubby, and I have to admit I get intimidated by assertive women, especially if they are tall and attractive. I'm not a virgin at least, but I'm way behind par for my age. At 26, I've only had sex with five different women, and three of them were only one time. None of them were particularly attractive, and two of the one-timers probably had too much to drink that night.
A ladies man, I'm not.
If I were the type of man I wished I was, I would have started a conversation with her immediately, but I didn't. I read for a while and shortly after takeoff I put down my tablet and drifted off to sleep.
When I awoke, I looked at my watch and saw I had slept for about two hours. I glanced over to the right and saw my seatmate - she was awake and smiled at me. She took out her earphones and said in a friendly voice, "You snore. I'll bet your wife gets angry at you."
I lifted my hand and smiled. "No ring," I said. "No wife, I'm still looking."
"I'm Stacey," she said. "Are you the type of guy who likes a quiet seatmate or would you prefer to chat a little? We still have about three hours to go."
I wish all questions were as easy to answer as that one was. To my great amazement, we chatted for all of the three hours. I learned she had grown up in Connecticut and now lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan (I was on the West Side). She was 27, worked as a copywriter at one of the large Madison Avenue advertising agencies. She had been in San Francisco for the wedding of her old roommate from Cal-Berkeley. She turned out to be a big sports fan. We differed on baseball - she's Yankees, I'm Mets - but we agreed on the Giants and Knicks. We talked about shows and concerts we had seen. Frankly, it was the easiest conversation I had ever had with any woman, let alone a looker like this.
It seemed like only a few minutes before the pilot announced final approach to the airport. "It's going to get hectic when we land," Stacey said. "Would you like my phone number?"
Are you kidding me? I'd kill for a chance to see you again. "Yes, sure," I said a bit nervously.
"Give me your phone," she said with a big smile. "I'll enter it. All you men are so irresponsible; if I write it down, you'll surely lose it. At least this way you're going to have to delete me if you don't want to call me."
The chances of that were less than zero!
I offered to split a cab ride back to Manhattan, but she had already made arrangements for a car service to pick her up. As she left to get to her ride, she said sweetly, "Bye, Stanny. Don't forget to call me." And she kissed me lightly on the cheek.
I'm sure you can guess what I did when I got home that night!
I called her on Monday evening and suggested a dinner date for Saturday. When I went to pick her up, I was impressed by the fact she was in a building with a doorman, and that while most singles in New York struggle to pay for just a studio apartment, she actually had a one-bedroom with a kitchen area and a living room. They must pay copywriters pretty well, I thought.
I took her to a nice restaurant near her apartment - it was a little more expensive than I was comfortable with, but I felt she was probably used to better things. As we headed back, I told her I had looked at the schedule and the Yankees would be home next Saturday night. She seemed to like that idea, and I got some good seats at StubHub. She kissed me at the end of both dates, and the second time she darted her tongue to me for a second - but no invitation to go back into the apartment.
She called me the night after our second date. "You've spent a lot of money on me so far," she said. "How about next Saturday you come here? I'm a pretty good cook, and I'll make you something nice." We discussed the menu, and I became very optimistic about my chances for a big score with her since she had invited me to her apartment where we would be together for at least a few hours.
It's always tough to get a cab in New York when it's raining, and I arrived about fifteen minutes late. I was surprised at how she was dressed. I would have thought for a stay-at-home date she would have dressed very casually, but she was wearing heels and a short skirt that accentuated her legs. I felt a stirring in my pants.
She was a bit angry about me being late and told me to hurry right to the table as our food was ready. But once we started eating, everything seemed to fall into place and again we were able to chat easily. I very much enjoyed talking to her, and she seemed to enjoy my company. We each had wine with our dinners, and after we finished eating, she suggested we move over to the couch. My hopes soared, and so did something else as I felt an erection starting to grow - I hoped she didn't notice.
We sat on the couch, and her smile disappeared. "Stan, there's something I need to tell you about me and my family."
When someone says, "There's something I need to tell you," you're not going to like it. It wasn't looking good, but I responded, "Sure, please do. It's early, and we have plenty of time."
"Believe it or not, this goes back four generations," she said. "My great-grandmother, her name was Martha, she was a very different kind of woman, especially for her times. She had five kids, three girls and two boys. Like a lot of other women back then, she was a strict disciplinarian; she had a razor strap and used it frequently on the kids, always when the other kids could watch their brother or sister getting it. But what was different was that she also used the strap on my great-grandfather, and when that happened the kids got to see their dad's butt turning flame red and him begging for mercy.
"My grandmother told me all about her. Martha believed that men were completely irresponsible, with only one thing on their mind. She felt the desire for sex gave men terrible judgment, and for a home to be run in a way that was healthy for the children, the wife had to take complete control and put her husband on the same level as the children in the family. She taught Grandma and her sisters they needed to be exactly the same way when they got married.
"Grandma and her two sisters all took Martha's advice. They kept on dating different men but wouldn't marry until they found a man who would agree to live in a wife-led marriage. And they all were happy in their marriages, both the women and the men. I was about eight or nine when my grandfather died, but I remember him a little, and he was always smiling and laughing when I saw him. Of course I didn't know then that Grandma punished him whenever she felt it was called for, but she told my sister and me all about it when we got older. One of her sisters got Martha's razor strap, but Grandma had bought a big wooden hairbrush and apparently used it on Grandpa many times. Her kids, my mom, my aunt, and my uncle, got their share of the brush when they were growing up too."
She glanced at me, assessing my reaction. I was totally absorbed by her tale, and nodded for her to continue.
"And then the same thing happened with the next generation. Mom told me she had dated dozens of men - she would tell them that she believed in a wife-led marriage with strict discipline, and they would all run like hell. But then she met Daddy, and he understood that the idea makes sense - a marriage with a clear and undisputed leader, so there's never any bickering or fighting. She makes the rules, he follows them. She makes the decisions, he accepts them. Daddy embraced his role as secondary in the marriage. It also freed him up in a way to concentrate on his work. Sure, he doesn't like it when he's screwed up and she decides to spank him with us kids watching - but on other days, he has told us many times he's a very happy man.
"Same with my uncle. I've seen Aunt Josie spank him a couple of times, but every time you talk to him, he's upbeat and seems very happy. And here's the amazing thing - we've never had a divorce in the family. Think of that; half the marriages in the country end in divorce, but in our family where the women are totally in charge, we've never had a divorce. That says a lot to me. We think our men are just smart enough to recognize a life style that works, and once they get used to it, all is well.
"My sister took quite a while to find the right man, but Jeff has adapted very well. I needed to spank him once last year when Jessica was pregnant and felt she couldn't do it that time. Jeff's a lawyer, and I told him I was the judge. He thought it was funny, but once the brush started to land, he stopped laughing.
"Even my brother accepted that the lifestyle makes sense. He went the other way with dates, kept on looking for a woman who would agree to take control of him. His wife Suzi is the cutest little thing - barely five feet tall, but he says she swings a mean paddle. I wasn't there, but Mom told me she actually gave Suzi lessons in how to spank Barry."
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