By Walter Bowne

Jim Brenner has an addiction: he just can’t get enough of his wife, Janice.

After seventeen years and three children, Jim Brenner still feels that overwhelming urge to grasp her, to kiss her, and to make the sweetest love ever known, just like when he first spotted her at the local library while she was perusing Marcel Proust.

“Call me whipped or whatever, but man, my wife still revs my engine,” he said. “I guess I’m lucky I’m still deliriously lustful for my spouse.”

His friends, however, are tired of it. Jake Brettson said it was one thing when Jim first met Janice. “I mean, love does crazy things to a man,” he said. “Initially. But when they both disappear from the table, and come back twenty minutes later as if they’ve withstood Hurricane Katrina, well, that’s a little much, especially for a couple in their forties.”

Another friend Peter Kingsession agreed. “There’s nothing more aggravating than when Jim decides to leave poker night early, and not go to Topper’s Strip Club.”

Jim asked: “Why should anyone pay for a woman to simply dangle her goodies in front of you when you could go home and have the whole kit and caboodle for free – and with someone that shares your soul.”

“I’m telling you, I hit the jackpot with her,” he said. “You want to see a picture of her?”

Finding time alone with three kids does not seem to be a problem, Jim said. He has turned the downstairs basement into a relative “love den.”

“It’s our own oasis,” he said. “Think of it like a Middle Eastern Kasbah, complete with colorful pillows and shams and lots of comfy couches for a variety of intriguing positions.”

Jim said he had no need for a harem – or a mistress. “When you have a woman like Janice, who is like twenty women in one, you only need one. Know what I mean? She’s infinitely unknowable and knowable all at the same time. Plus she does this trick with my penis that throws me out of my body!”

He said on “Lingerie Friday” she surprises him with a surprising costume of the Naughty Wench or the Naughty Policewoman. “It’s amazing the deals she gets at K-Mart after Halloween. She’s sexy and frugal. Is she wonderful or what?”

But he concedes that she doesn’t have to wear anything sexy. “You could dress her up in my dad’s ratty robe and she’d still be bangin’.”

The day that drives him wild is “No Panty Sunday.” When he’s with the kids at the community pool, or hitting the bottom nine at Kresson Golf course, or shopping at Shoprite for dinner, he just thinks about his wife doing the laundry with nothing on except some slacks or capris. “Do you know what that does for a guy’s imagination?” he said. “Jesus! It’s like something about of porn, but it’s not. It’s right in my own home! I thank God for such a goddess – a goddess that just doesn’t have a kick-ass booty, but a fertile mind as well. Did I tell you she knows French?”

“And that’s when I say, kids. Bedtime’s at eight o’clock tonight!”

One work friend, Steve Hollandaise, knows all about the no panty thing. “On Monday, Jim is on top of the world,” he said. “I’ve actually seen him dance down the hallway on the way to the office. The only way I’d be that happy is if my wife left me. But there’s no chance of that.”

Jim’s friends conceded that Janice is an attractive woman, but she’s not totally hot.

“I mean, she’s not the type you would rubber neck for while passing her in a store,” Jack said. He said she’s fine in a bathing suit for someone her age, but he just couldn’t get that worked up with legs with some varicose veins. “I mean, her eyes are nice, but there are wrinkles. You can’t fight gravity.”

It’s embarrassing when Jim comes over for poker nights, Steve said. Instead of smelling like Old Spice, he smells like the bodily fluids of his wife, especially when it’s on the pulse spots on his neck. The cards even reek of passion. “What does he want to do?” Peter asked.  “Turn on everyone with those pheromones?”

Peter said it had nothing to do with jealousy. It’s more about propriety. “I mean, it’s your wife. Common sense means making love once, maybe twice a month, in the dark, with no after-the-loving commentary or spooning. At this stage it’s always been more a duty than desire.”

Peter did say, however, he doesn’t recall the last time he made love to his wife. “She’s been quite busy with her book groups and tennis instructor – and that new young yoga sensei.”

So now when he does have those desires, he watches soft porn of college girls on YouTube. “Watching hot, young girls frolic. That’s makes sense. But your wife? Really?”

But Jim said he has no use for porn. He didn’t want to share the specifics, out of courtesy to his wife, but he did say that he has a “few things of her” to help him get through those rough days when she’s away at some conference. “How lucky am I that the porn I possess is not actually porn? I even think God would think it’s a good thing. Know what I mean? There’s no better feeling than the feeling of not being guilty or dirty. It’s within the sanctity of marriage. Can I get an Amen?”

Jim’s wife was shocked to hear the reports about her sex life, but she is used to it with her husband, who would announce to the world the glories of his recent bowel movement. “Am I happy that my husband is so happy,” she said. “Sure, but I just wished he kept our highly active sex life to ourselves.”

Another one of Jim’s friends, Joe Mahoney, recently divorced for the second time, and balding, said Jim was always competitive. “Who could crap the biggest, who could spit the furthest, and now it’s like, who can f-ck his own wife the most. It’s just juvenile.”

Jim said three things are essential to his marriage: the family Bible, dinner time, and the Kama Sutra. “At first I was like, I’m in no way flexible enough for the Congress of the Swooping Crane, but with lots of exercise and practice, we’re moved on to a whole new series of positions that we’ve created as a supplement to that ancient sexual manual.”

At first Jim’s friends thought he was simply exaggerating his conjugal exploits, until one happened to see him in action in one of the guests’ bedrooms during a recent Christmas Party. “It was sight I will never forget,” Jake said. “I was shocked, sure, but then I wanted to take notes.” He admitted that he shared the information with his own wife, and she said she wasn’t too interested, especially since ‘Dancing with the Stars’ was on TV that night.

“How Jim gets a wife who’s more interested in sex than TV is beyond me,” Jake said.

Jim says that more couples should follow his advice. “Life, like sex, is participant activity,” he said. “And we’re all going to die. You may as well enjoy the time you have on earth with that special someone, a someone who will suddenly appear naked in the hallway with just a plunger who’ll ask, “The kids are with grandma for the weekend. Can you help me out with my water works?”

That seems like great marital advice.