

I'm George, mwm, 52

by

George

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

George on Smashwords

I'm George, mwm 52

Copyright © 2011 by George

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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Chapter 1: Getting Started

I'm George, mwm, 52, 5-10, 145 lbs, average looking, I guess. Abby, my wife, is 48, 5-4, 104 lbs, blue eyes, quite pretty, and she turns more than just my head, as you will soon find out.

We've been married twenty four years and most of the marriage has been what most people would probably call happy, but keep in mind that there's always more to the equation than what floats on the surface.

If I had to pick out what is best about us, it would be that we say 'fuck' a lot. Not that we actually fuck all that much, but at least we sit around and shoot the shit and everything is 'fuck this' or 'fuck that'. It's kind of nice when you can sit down with your spouse and just say whatever you think or feel and not be overly concerned that they will take offense and get all pissed off and create some kind of big issue over some random words that, when you think about it, are really just imperfect representations of thoughts and emotions anyway.

I've never liked to hold things back, and Abby is that way on steroids. She's a lot more careful when other people are around, but when it's just me and her, I can expect a whole lot of shit to come flying out of her mouth, and I like that.

Abby comes from a Northeastern Catholic family, and that's where she gets her beautifully foul mouth. I'm from the South and I've learned to keep the conversation relatively clean, in most cases, down here. On the other hand, when we're up there, it's pretty much say whatever the hell you want, even around the kids, and nobody blinks an eye. I think it's better that way. Kids up there learn early on that the thoughts and meanings behind the words are important, but not the actual words themselves.

By the way, I digress a lot. It's kind of like reflection I guess. I get going on something and then I feel this need to reflect back on something else for perspective. Or maybe it's a mechanism to slow things down so that I can absorb what is going on in the present tense, since I try to absorb all that I can in a situation. I mean I really try to absorb it all. I want to take in everything. What everyone is saying is just the surface. I want to try and pick up on what they are feeling. Not that I want to try and read their minds or penetrate their defenses, I just want to tap into their positive energy because I'm basically a positive person. To me it's simply a practical matter. I figure that I can only have one emotion at a time, and any time I waste hating anyone or being pissed off or annoyed or self pitying or any other of those bullshit mindsets, it just takes time away from being happy.

Ok, so I was digressing a bit too much there and I lost my train of thought. That happens to me a lot. So now I have to try and reach back and remember what I was saying before the digression. Oh yes, now I remember, it was about Abby and her brain to mouth switch which she turns off when she comes home and resets it when she leaves the condo. Sometimes I wish she would just stop and think before she says something, but that's usually when I'm in some sort of mood where I need for her to be more understanding of me, and she just blasts past that need like it didn't exist. But most of the time, her keeping the switch in the off position works well for both of us.

Abby and I have cocktail hour every day at 5 pm, when we are not apart. Nothing interferes with it. Well, not quite true. Nothing interferes with her hair cutting appointments, not even cocktail hour. At cocktail hour she drinks a beer. Yuengling or Blue Moon. I drink wine. Usually the cheap stuff, on a daily basis. We go through the day's events. The good and the bad. There are a lot of "oh dear gods" from her these days, due to some financial headaches we have had in the past two years. And of course the usual compliment of "fuck this" and "fuck that." I wonder how many couples have a regular cocktail hour. If they don't, they should. Good way to stay in touch and sometimes hash out some potential issues before they become full bore problems.

One thing I should mention is that, other than cocktail hour, we don't spend all that much time together, except when we're sleeping. It's not as though we don't like each other's company. It's just that we have different interests and that works well. She likes biking and swimming and running and I like reading and cooking and walking. Actual waking hours together are pretty limited.

Speaking of sleeping, I told her the other day, when I was trying to communicate to her that intimacy was not her strong suit, for about the hundredth time, that I really hated when it was time to go to bed, because I knew, from many years of experience that not a lot was going to happen in the way of touching. I wasn't trying to be mean or argumentative, and in fact, I never would have even brought it up if we hadn't just had a really good summer sexually and now it was September.

I know this might be sounding confusing at this point, me saying that we have such a good and comfortable relationship, and then I make what might sound like a flippant and maybe even mean remark about hating to sleep with her. In my own mind this is not contradictory. I do love her and I do hate to sleep with her because I want us to fuck or at least touch each other a lot more often.

When I told her about hating to sleep with her, she started in her nasty mouth mode saying that I did a lot of things that annoyed the fuck out of her and she maybe did a few things that annoyed the fuck out of me, her words verbatim. Notice the "maybe" and a "few" when she was referring to herself.

And then she blew me away with "I'm just not a touchy feely person" in response to my requests that even if she didn't want to fuck, a simple scratching of my back or some spooning might be nice on occasion. And of course she had to add "besides it's a hundred fucking degrees in there and I'm way too hot to get close to you."

Just to set the record straight, since Abby is prone to hysterical exaggeration. She's talking about the summer and it's usually about 75 degrees in our bedroom when we go to bed. I know this because I go to bed first and she sets the thermostat to 70 when she comes to bed and then when I get cold because the vent is over my side of the bed, I get up and change it to 75. It never gets above 75. But never mind. Abby knows it is a hundred fucking degrees in there, and what Abby knows in her mind trumps everything. Even the thermostat.

I just had a flash. Maybe I could save myself a lot of consternation and get laid a whole lot more if I just left the thermostat at 70 instead of moving it to 75 to save a few pennies and not be cold. Isn't life like that sometimes? If you could just see the bigger picture, things would be so much easier.

But I'm getting away from the point here, and the point is maybe I've been wrong our entire marriage. Wrong in assuming that she likes to be touched as much as I do. After she said that, I went online and did a search regarding touching and went to some blogs and heard people saying how much they hate people touching them. "Violating their space," they called it. I know they were probably talking about random strangers coming up and touching them, but some of them were saying that they didn't want anybody to touch them, ever. I've never really thought about that. I've always liked people to touch me. Even random strangers. I'm not talking about some fag who comes up and starts grabbing my crotch.

Ok another slight but necessary digression. On the Kinsey scale where zero is totally heterosexual and ten is totally homosexual, and most people fit in somewhere between zero and ten, I'd be about a minus one. I'm not homophobic at all. I'm just a raging heterosexual and I love the way most women sound and think and smell and taste, not that I've tasted all that many of them. I just don't find men sexually attractive at all, and I'm convinced that if I was a woman I'd be a raging lesbian.

So back to the guy who might want to grab my crotch. It's not like I'd be totally offended, I'd just probably tell him that I was a Kinsey minus one and hope that I didn't have the scale reversed, and hope that the guy knew about the Kinsey scale in the first place. But if a random lady asked me for directions and then, kind of cutely, after I had given them to her, said thanks and laid her hand on my arm in a very casual manner, it would make my day.

Alright back to Abby and her touch aversion. How the fuck did this all of a sudden become an issue which she has never shared with me in twenty four years? Are you detecting a hint of anger in my voice here?

By the way, I really hate using shared with me because people usually use it in a condescending way, in effect saying, "I know something you don't and I'm going to take my valuable time to educate you." But since I am pissed at Abby for dropping that bombshell on me about her touch aversion, an aversion she has never mentioned to me in twenty four years I might add, I don't mind using it in a condescending way. It's as if I'm saying to her, "Abby, you piece of shit, that is total crap." I love the way I can at least think bad things about her and not feel guilty, even if I'm usually afraid to say them.

Are you getting a sense that something is amiss here? I sure am. The little guy in my brain, who talks to me constantly, suddenly shifts into overdrive and the ten signs of a cheating spouse suddenly appear in my consciousness. I file that thought for later reference.

Sometimes I like to approach a situation from a lot of different angles. I don't think I'm a good linear thinker. Time to me is probably a lot different than it is to most people. I've read a lot of metaphysical books and I've become convinced that time is either circular or perhaps 'ever occurring'. I know that sounds pretty bizarre or maybe even totally fucked up. But keep in mind that I function normally in society. I have a steady job. In fact I own a business that I have kept afloat for twenty four years. I've helped my wife raise three kids and by almost all standards they are healthy and functioning people. But there is a hidden part of me that thinks the future is already here, somewhere, and the past is also here, somewhere, and the present is not as big a deal as we make it out to be.

Back to my approach to situations. Back to Abby. Back to the little man in my brain who is telling me that my wife, my Abby, MY Abby, is maybe fucking someone else. As I said before, I'm really into analyzing situations from a lot of different angles, and one of those angles is time. So let's fast forward, or is it fast backward, to the night of the encounter.

I know that I'm jumping around in time here, but I'm hoping that you can deal with this. By the way I'm not trying to be clever or cute or innovative in this approach. It's just the way I think. Maybe it's the way we all think, but most people are more disciplined or focused than I am.

Not only do I jump around in time, when putting all this information out there, but it may also seem that I am throwing a lot of extraneous nonsense into the mix and that's really not the case. It all has relevance in sort of a convoluted way. Just be patient, please, and it will all come together. I promise.
Chapter 2: The Encounter

I'm sitting on the couch looking at Dewayne. Is it DE-wayne, or is it Dawayne or is it Dwayne. Why do I give a shit, at a time like this, how the asshole's name is pronounced? And actually, why am I wavering about him being an asshole in the first place or not? The motherfucker, according to Kimberly, is fucking my wife.

Don't worry about keeping a lot of characters straight in your mind. I'm not capable of doing that, so there aren't going to be many more. So all you really have to know to get it straight at this point is that Abby is my wife, Da fucker Wayne is married to Kimberly. Lara, will play a part later. But let's just get rolling with the four of us for now.

There's been a few week gap in time between when Abby first displayed one of the ten signs of a cheating spouse and when Kimberly was standing there calling Abby and Dewayne some pretty nasty names. As I am sitting there, I'm not real sure what role I am supposed to be playing in this. My first thought is that I am the aggrieved party. Well actually both Kimberly and I are the aggrieved parties, but it is somehow hard to feel sorry for her. I mean, the lady is drop dead beautiful; long blond hair, great tits, killer thighs, perfect ass.

And her nostrils are flaring as she rages on, and that is making her seem like one of the sexiest ladies I'd ever seen. So what if Dwayne cheated on her? She could have anybody she wanted. She could certainly have me. It just seemed so incongruous that she is so mad. But then again she is probably so mad because she knows she is so fucking hot and she could have anybody, and if anybody in their marriage should be cheating, it should be her and not the asshole Dwain.

I'm already forgetting if I told you how they got into our condo in the first place or not. I just looked back, and it seems as though I haven't, so here it is.

Abby has just finished her dinner and is lying on the couch watching Cash Cab. I am on my third glass of wine and I hear the knocking on the door. Actually it was banging. I think, "Who the fuck is that?" We never get any visitors in the evening. I start to have a panic attack. It feels like something out of the 80's when I used to smoke dope. "Fuck, it's the cops! Flush the grass," I think. But I quickly realize that I don't have anything illegal in the condo.

While I am doing all of this thinking, Abby is on her way to the door. As soon as she opens it, Kimberly blasts right past her and comes over to where I am sitting. DeshitholeWayne kind of ambles in and Abby shuts the door quickly, probably knowing what was coming. I have no fucking clue.

Just to make sure things are clear at this point. Abby and DefuckerWayne are porking each other, according to Kimberly who is Dewayne's wife.

I am sitting there thinking that someone must be somewhat concerned with my feelings at this point, but I'm not feeling it. It also seems like I should be exhibiting some form of anger or resentment or jealousy or something that a man who has some pride or backbone would feel. But I'm not. And since I've switched into my observing/analyzing mode, I am trying to penetrate the alcoholic fog I've slipped into and understand what I am feeling. Surprisingly, I am getting a little sexually turned on by all of this.

As Kimberly rages on, I am checking out Abby's face for any hint of guilt or remorse or anything that I can recognize. One thing she sure isn't doing is looking at me. Old Dewain is just sitting there with his head in his hands. Suddenly Kimberly sits down and bursts into tears. I have no clue what to do. Abby doesn't dare make a move to comfort her. That is smart, I think. Da motherfucker Wayne looks like a deer in the headlights. So this is my moment. I am clearly the one who needs to say or do something. Something profound. Something very wise and enlightened. Something to make everyone know I am in charge. Above the fray. So I say, no I slur, "Does anyone want a drink?"

Normally Abby would glare at me for making such an inappropriate comment. God, how many times have I embarrassed her? Like the time at a party when I asked a very hot woman if she wanted to have anal sex. Just flat out asked her. Good damn thing she was alone because any self respecting hubby or boyfriend would have punched out my lights. Abby is a saint for putting up with me for so long. But in my defense, I haven't done anything like that for years. Maybe decades. So when she doesn't glare at me this time, for asking a really stupid question, I know she is guilty and I wonder how long she had been fucking or sucking, or both, the sleaze ball Dwayne.

After my question, and after no one answers or reacts, I get up and head to the kitchen to refresh my glass. Then, in quick succession, Abby says "get me one too," Kimberly says "me too" and old motherfucker Dwayne, says "I'll help you." So in comes Dewayne and I try to be civil and also I'm thinking that this whole situation just got a lot more interesting, and potentially erotic.

Dwayne says "What can I do to help?" and I feel like saying, "Stop fucking my wife to start with," but I don't simply because I am starting to like the idea of him fucking her for a lot of reasons, not to mention the obvious that maybe in this twisted scenario, Kimberly might be spreading her legs for me. I pour the cheap wine for the two ladies and reach deep into the refrigerator to get the oldest and stalest beer I can find for the d-man.

Now back to the living room and we all have our drinks. I have the good chardonnay, Abby and Kimberly have the cheap stuff, and Defucker has the stale beer. He's probably too stupid to even realize it. And I'm not feeling one bit guilty about that. It is one of those very awkward silences. Kimberly had the floor and she has apparently given it up, but nobody in their right mind is going to claim it now. Not me, that's for sure. And what the fuck are Abby or her asshole boyfriend going to do or say?

We all sit there drinking our drinks. All of us except Kimberly. How she has managed to finish that full glass, in so short a period, was beyond me.

After a brief silence, Kimberly tries to start ranting again, but she's clearly had too much to drink and she seems to realize that she is no longer capable of bashing shithole Dewayne in a manner befitting his crime, so she gets up and says "I'm going home."

Dwayne gets up and tries to steady her by grabbing her arm, but we all know that's a big mistake. Kimberly yanks her arm away from him and, of course, falls back on the couch, her glass of wine with what little is left in it, ends up in Abby's lap. Good, I think, and too bad it's not red wine to stain her perfect white shorts. Kimberly issues what was clearly an insincere apology to Abby about the wine, struggles to get back up, and heads for the door, swaying like a drunken sailor. Fucker Dewayne follows and they let themselves out without any further conversation.

You might wonder what I was thinking through all of this. You would be quite right if you think that I was much more amused and aroused than angry. Truth be known, I had even been trying to conjure up some anger since I thought that was what any self respecting husband should have given that his wife was, most likely, I hoped, getting it in all three holes from her new boyfriend. But the anger just wasn't there.

It's really no use to try and anticipate how you are going to react in a particular situation, because I can guarantee you that you will surprise yourself. My advice is to just go with the flow and switch to your observation mode. Most likely, no one is going to really give a shit what you are doing or thinking anyway. They are only going to be so concerned and consumed trying to follow the script that they think they have to follow.

Take DebonerW for example. He's trying to walk that thin line between being involved in the discussion and being sorry. He's also trying to make sure his defenses are on red alert just in case I'm of the notion to get up quickly and kick his sorry ass. He doesn't really know me well enough to realize that that's not going to happen. He is bigger than I am for one. And I'm basically not inclined to start a physical altercation. Also, in reality, I suddenly realize, he is opening a door in Abby and my marriage that I have wanted to open for a long time. He's doing me a huge favor.

And, by the way, I'll stop with the name calling. It's out of my system now. From now on he'll be Dewayne or the boyfriend.
Chapter 3: Alone with Abby, Post Encounter

Now, I'm alone with Abby. Since you don't know her, you might be thinking that she might start crying and beg my forgiveness, as many women or men might do in a similar situation. Clearly you have no clue. She is just taking a moment to work on her defense, which, as I know quite well, is going to be a brutal and efficient offense. At this point, I need some more wine and I get up and move toward the kitchen. I briefly consider asking her if she wants some more too, but I trash that idea. I know she will take that as a sign of weakness. And I'm clearly the one in the position of power, here at this moment in time, even if for a brief and fleeting moment. At least I hope so.

I take my time in the kitchen. Well, not too much time really, because I don't want to give her much of an opening. I saunter back in the living room, trying to conjure up just the right face. A lot of anger, a huge amount of disappointment, a dash of stoicism. But I know deep down that it's not going to work. Abby sees into my soul.

This is an aside because I just realized that I said something in chapter one that probably offended some people. I know it offended some fags. Hold the self righteousness for a bit, though. Let me tell you about Frank, my fag friend. Frank and I met over twenty years ago. He is hands down my best friend. Many years ago we used to get together on weekends when Abby was away with the kids. We used to smoke a lot of really good locally grown pot. By today's standards it might not have been that great, but by the standards of the day, it was amazing.

Abby and I lived in a really big house then. It was also pretty isolated on a few acres down a long drive way that no one ventured down. So Frank and I would get some beer and start drinking and then start smoking the pot and pretty soon we were smashed. Frank had this interesting habit of always calling his mom when he was going to spend the night away from home. Yes, he still lived at home at thirty. It was actually a pretty thoughtful thing to do, calling his mom, that is. But that's not the point. The point is that Frank is a very highly evolved human. Not only is he whip smart, but he is amazingly perceptive. It's almost as though he knows what people are thinking. He definitely knows what I'm thinking most of the time. And he usually knows what I am thinking, before I know it.

Frank and I always use words like fag and cunt and a whole lot of racial slurs with total abandon. We both know that there is very little, if any, racism or misogyny or meanness in either of our souls. So when we call someone a cunt, it's simply a statement about how our current society labels people. Same thing with fag. Frank calls himself a dick sucking fag, which, indeed, he is. Abby is a cunt sometimes, and I tell her so. And you guessed it, I'm a dick at times, and she lets me know about it.

Now back to Abby and me on the couch. Well, she's on her couch and I'm on mine. She has a better view of the TV, but my couch is longer. I'd be glad to trade couches anytime, but she isn't about to give up her view, and I'm not about to waste the energy arguing. A lot of our marriage is that way, just trying to avoid arguments.

At this point, I'd just like to avoid another argument, about her and Dewane exchanging fluids. I consider the options, and then I just say that maybe we should discuss this situation later, if at all. Actually I left off if at all. Abby didn't say anything, but she was thinking "whatever," in a very condescending way, I am certain.
Chapter 4: Some Reflections on Abby

Abby is beautiful in my eyes. Physically and emotionally. I like all of her physical defects, but there aren't really many of them. I'm convinced that people in love are in love because they primarily see the soul of the person they are in love with. The physical body is just a manifestation of that soul. I don't just love Abby, I like her too. I once made a huge mistake by saying that she was simple. It was meant as a compliment. I didn't just one day sit there and say, "Abby, you are simple." If I had said that, I could understand why she might have been insulted.

The real context was a note I wrote to her one Valentine's Day. It was more like a love letter. I was tired of giving her one of those funny cards. I can't stand buying the serious ones because it makes me think I am too lazy to conjure up the thoughts and emotions myself. So I sat down and thought about why I liked her. I wrote that one of the things I liked best about her was that she said "it's ok." That is usually in response to my apology for fucking something up or saying something stupid or totally inappropriate. Like that time I asked that lady if she wanted to have backdoor sex. Don't get me wrong. Abby was plenty pissed about that. But when she calmed down, a few months later, and when I apologized, sincerely, she said "it's ok." It's not like it was really ok in her mind. Not in the least. But what she was actually saying is that she forgives me. And I need a lot of forgiving.

So back to the point about calling her simple. I said in the note that she was sophisticated and simple. She liked the sophisticated part. Not so much the simple part. What I was trying to get across, obviously poorly, was that she is simple in ways that are important. Not simple minded. Simple to me is a good thing. It allows you to make choices and get on with it. You go to the grocery store to buy chocolate and coffee ice cream. You know you want only Breyer's. You know they don't put any crap in their ice cream. Just some milk or cream and sugar and natural flavors. None of those bullshit things you can't even pronounce and that you know in your heart are really bad for you. Then you find yourself faced with all the other brands and you ignore them. Then you see even Breyers making things confusing with low fat and ½ fat and a million other flavors. So you become the lion that has picked out the wildebeest that is going to be dinner and you ignore the one that just ran in front of you and you could have killed in an instant. Instead, you have set your mind on that one brand and flavor and you know you have to have it.

That's simplicity in its best form. That's Abby. Too bad Abby doesn't seem to get my wildebeest analogy.

Speaking of analogies, I have another one. I haven't told Abby this one. For obvious reasons. First off, it's kind of negative. Negative toward Abby. Secondly, she doesn't like when I ramble on. She wants me to just get the thought or emotion on the table. No dancing around the issue. Just spit the fucking thing out. Listening to one of my analogies is painful to her. And she's not a particularly patient person. She would make a terrible politician. Thankfully.

I'll give you the short version of the analogy. A couple moves into a town and finds a restaurant they both like. It has just what they need. Good food, good prices, nice atmosphere, close to where they live. So they go a lot. Every week. They feel very strongly that they need to keep up their end of the bargain. They tip well. If the meal isn't perfect, they don't complain, and they would never consider sending it back, for any reason. They always cancel reservations if they can't make it.

Anyway, one day they go to the restaurant and it's closed. No sign on the door as to why. Just locked. They go away confused. However they are not going to give up on a good thing. They come back the next week and it's open and all is well. For a few months. Then the same thing happens again; it's closed one random day. They try and figure out if there is any pattern to the closings. Like maybe closed on Thursdays, or Fridays? But there is no pattern, and the frequency of closing is increasing, making in somewhat inconvenient for them. They ask the waitress and she is clueless. They ask the manager/owner and he just says, "We close sometimes," which they take as a sort of a snub, which is not what they are used to. Now they are miffed and angry.

At first they decide to boycott the restaurant for a while, which they do. After a while, they decide that they were acting silly. They devise a new strategy and here is what it is. If they are in the neighborhood, if they are hungry, if they are in the mood, they go there. And they generally enjoy it. But they feel no obligation to support the restaurant, no obligation to cancel their reservation, no obligation to tip if service is shitty, and if the meal is bad, they send it back.

At this point, I'm pretty sure you're in Abby's camp about listening to my drawn out monologues. I admit, it is long. Even worse, it's not over yet. I've got to tell you what it all means and what is analogous.

Basically the couple is me, George. And the restaurant is Abby. And all the shit about the good and bad service and obligations and lack thereof, is about our intimacy, or lack thereof. I want her intimacy and I try to do all I can to get it, and when it's not forthcoming or totally unpredictable, I have to devise a new strategy. Reluctantly.

I'm making myself out as the good guy in this scenario. I've tried to have respect for her and meet her needs and make sure she is happy. But since I keep getting the short straw, I've had to change my way of dealing with her. One thing I'm almost certain of is that she doesn't see any of this my way. Marriage is a hard proposition.
Chapter 5: Lara

Let's leave that scene on the back burner for a while so I can tell you about Lara. It seems fitting that since I just found out about Abby and Drano man, that I should come clean about my own affair. However if we are going to be accurate here, it really can't be called an affair since it was never consummated in the physical sphere. It definitely was an emotional affair, but it was all electronic. Abby has been exposed as the cheater that she is, but who am I to talk about cheaters, I hear you cry. And you're right. She may have been penetrated, physically, but I fell in love. Which is worse? Or in my demented mind, which is better?

In electronic affairs, such as mine with Lara, there is always the possibility of fraud. This thought has been swimming around in my brain for the past three months; What if Lara, as I knew her, never existed? I have pored over her emails, in great detail. Could I have been duped? Was she a he? Some demented fag who gets his rocks off getting men to fall for them?

I've got to be brutally honest here. I think, on some days at least, that I'm smart. Not incapable of being duped, but almost. I have pretty much dismissed the possibility of being duped. We lasted 37 days. From June 1 until July 7 when she disappeared. There is virtually no possibility that anyone was conning me. There was too much shared emotion. There were too many things she said that corresponded to actual events occurring in the same time/space. And no gay guy is that good in tapping into the lustful emotions of a woman and reflecting those back to her lover. I hope.

When Lara left me, and when I was convinced she wasn't coming back, I started reading chick-lit books. I'd never heard that term before, but somehow I needed to read something written by a woman. Many women actually. I was craving the perspective that Lara gave me. Also the eroticism. Those books helped, in a strange way. An ointment for my wounded soul, you might say. I devoured them. Then I emailed the authors telling them how much I enjoyed the lust. A few wrote back. That was awesome. I felt wonderfully in touch with them. Sick, I hear you say.

You look back sometimes and ask yourself simple questions. Why didn't I get Lara's phone number? Or even her last name? It just didn't play out that way. We were caught up in an amazingly intense and erotic emotional affair that was more than an affair. So when she left, I had nothing but her email address. And eventually that stopped accepting my emails. I kept a journal for about a month after she vanished. A lot of my thoughts and emotions. It was cathartic. It probably was also stupid and pathetic. She was gone, and I was talking to myself.

I used to like Craig's List. Until I met Lara. Actually I met her there. She answered my ad. It was a disingenuous ad. Nothing new there. I suspect a good percentage of the ads are disingenuous. Mine said something to the effect "older couple seeks coed."We live in a college town. I figured that with thousands of coeds walking around, there had to be at least a few who liked older men and/or older women. My ad was disingenuous in the sense that I was implying that Abby was involved in the search. She wasn't. It was mine alone. Somehow I was hoping that if I found an intelligent, beautiful bi-sexual lady who was interested in an older couple, i.e. us, we could work out the details later. I got the usual responses. Nobody really reads those ads very carefully. Some old man sent a picture of himself in front of a waterfall. He said, "I'm your man." At least the waterfall was nice.

All of a sudden I got an email from a lovely lady, Lara. I confessed in the first email about my white lie about both of us seeking. She seemed forgiving. It was slow at first just getting to know each other. I was taking it slow. This was new territory for me. Every email from her seemed to reveal another hint of her personality. Every email from me to her seemed to be bringing out something in me that I couldn't quite get my brain around. I liked the feeling. I liked it a lot. I started liking her a lot.

The funny thing is that I didn't have any guilt. Mind you, this was way before I knew about Dewayne. I even started thinking about cheating on Abby. In fact, I wrote an email to Frank, asking his opinion. I never sent it though. I did send it to Lara. When I was writing it, I knew it was going to just her anyway. I wanted to sound myself out. I wanted to throw out my internal conflict between not wanting to lie to Abby, and wanting, desperately, to go with this thing that was happening with Lara.

Lara was married and her husband went away for months because of his job. This job was actually a team of people and one of the members of the team was his lover. Lara looked for and found men for her sexual and emotional pleasure when her husband was away. The arrangement was totally open and transparent and it worked very well for them.

I've thought a lot about affairs and cheating and open marriage. I've also observed a lot in other people that I know and their relationships. It occurs to me that marriage, as we know and practice it right now, is broken. Not totally, but partially. We get married, life is good, we get bored, we cheat, we divorce. More often than not.

There's got to be a better way. How can we take the shared life with our spouse, all the joys and even the heartaches, and just toss them away because one of us is just doing what we are genetically coded to do? And it's not just that we throw all of that away. That is sad enough. We compound it by spending the rest of our lives blaming the other person. I guess the scripts have been written, and we just find it easier to follow them.

Don't you think that most people don't think about having an affair before it happens? I mean, does a person just wake up some day and say to him or herself, "I think I'll have an affair?" I think not. I sure didn't. I wasn't looking for an affair when I posted that ad on Craig's List. I was just looking for some stimulating conversation. Sure, in the back of my mind, way way back, I thought there was a chance something might happen. But come on, finding the perfect person on CL? Give me a break.

When you are with someone for twenty four years, things just don't spark like they did on the honeymoon. After I just said that, the little man in my head said, "Do you really blame Abby for responding when Dewayne paid her some attention?" I'm trying to get him, the little man, to be quiet because he's disrupting my thought pattern. He does have a point though, and I'll just have to come back to that later.

Are you getting my drift here? I'm pretty happy with Abby. I'm not totally satisfied with our level of intimacy. I didn't know yet that she has taken her lust elsewhere. I'm trying to get my lust from someone else without ruining my marriage. I'm fairly certain that this additional lust will be harmless flirtation.

And now I'm a few days into my internet affair with Lara and my world is exploding and expanding in ways that I didn't think were possible. After she left me, I did a whole lot of analyzing. I would call it soul searching, but I've come to disdain that term about as much as soul mate.

Slight digression, but not really. I'm finding it hard to go forward with just facts because there are so many underlying emotions involved, and those are much harder to describe, and they don't fit in nice neat time sequences like facts do. Trust me, this is all tied together in a certain way. I'm determined to mine my own emotional memory to make some sort of sense out of this.

By the way, I'm not distraught or depressed or suicidal about Lara leaving me. The other day, I was fantasizing about what I would say if all of a sudden I got an email from her. First thing I would say in response would be, "long time, no ees." She used to talk about liking to get emails from me. Her 'ees' she called them. Then if she asked if I was angry, about her abandoning me, I would say "5% angry, 20% confused, and 75% sad," which is truly how I feel about it. But since it's pretty unlikely that she is going to email me again, I'd better not spend too much time on that fantasy, alas.

I've got to focus here. To do a much better job telling you how Lara and I became an us. Abby and I are an us. Have been for twenty four years. A good us. Not a perfect us, but a damned good one. I never thought about the concept of an us until Lara declared that we were one. And then one of those aha moments. It made perfect sense then and it still does. Our us felt good. Really fucking good.

So now I've helped to create two us's. My two us's are both good, I thought. But isn't that a conflict I kept thinking? Isn't my us with Lara taking something away from my us with Abby. I was consumed by this thought/conflict for a while, but something magical was happening and I just let it go.

Just before going north for my summer vacation, I ordered a book about open marriages. My internet affair was in full bloom at this point and I was searching for a way to move it to the next level without declaring my marriage over. I had the book shipped to our summer home, knowing that Abby would have absolutely no interest in opening a package for me from a bookstore. And the backup plan, if she did open it, was to just wing it. I was feeling pretty heady at this point with Lara and she was bringing me into a world where there could be two us's in a person's life. She and her husband had one, her husband and his girlfriend had one, she and I had one, and Abby and I had one. It all made perfect sense.

So anyway, back to the early days of my e-affair with Lara. She's saying all the right things and pulling all the right strings and I'm totally falling for her. Nothing like this has happened to me in the past two decades, and I'm totally liking it. No, I'm totally loving it. She's a fucking sexual freak, which is a good thing. Many, many orgasms a day and she's giving me credit for her increased sexual arousal, which in turn is making me say and think things that have been dormant for a long time.

All the while I'm still struggling with the idea of moving the e-affair to a physical affair, and I find myself saying something like this, "George, think about this. When you're in the car, on that fatal night, careening over the two thousand foot cliff, with about four seconds to go before impact, you're going to be having one big motherfucking regret in life if you don't fuck Lara." Decision made.

Each day that goes by brings new surprises from Lara. Our perversions are so much in tune that it's scary. She is the perfect mistress, which is really not the right word for what she is, but it will suffice. She loves sex, she loves older men, she is extremely intelligent, she wants to save the planet, she is a very good wife and mother, and she has no apparent fears.

It is slowly dawning on me that something is changing in me in the whole process.

Kind of hard to put a handle on it, but the closest I can come to describing it is that I am losing my fear. I'm not talking about a fear of getting caught. It's much deeper than that. It's almost as though I'm working through some bullshit notions that society has imposed on me and I've swallowed the bait. Lara is presenting me with an alternative to a quick and furtive affair. Ours is deeper and more profound. I know, I know. That sounds like a crock of horseshit. Like a person trying to justify the deceit. But I swear to you that something else was going on here. I was falling in love with another woman by email.
Chapter 6: My Take on Societal Evolution

I've got to admit, the words just aren't coming as easily today as in past days. Yesterday was a great day. The words just jumped off the keyboard onto the screen. Today they are stuck somewhere between my brain and the keyboard. But I can't just stop and wait for the perfect day and the perfect conditions. It occurs to me that when I read a book, there are good parts and not so good parts. It must be that the writer was having some similar problems when they did the not so good parts. Just thought I'd throw that in, mostly to apologize for the shitty writing.

Have you ever thought about how a society evolves? The norms change. The process can be slow. Take for example saying the word 'fuck'. When I was growing up, it was an awful thing to say. If I had said fuck, within earshot of a jock, in high school, and if his girlfriend had also been within earshot, he would have proceeded to beat the fuck out of me, not right there and then mind you, because he wouldn't have wanted his girlfriend to see the blood, so I would have had to wait until after school, spending the next few agonizing hours anticipating by beating, which I couldn't have avoided by running away because the shame would have been far worse than the beating.

Now fast forward to today when fuck is a pretty common expletive, at least in most circles. An interesting corollary here is that the possessive jock is becoming somewhat of a dinosaur at the same time. Not totally, but the idea that a man owns a woman is certainly not there anymore, thankfully. Now let's suppose that the girlfriend, in the old days had said to the boyfriend jock, i.e. "Jack, you're not going to touch a hair on George's head because I kind of like him, and if you do, I might just start fucking him instead of you."

That of course, back then, would have sent Jack the jock into a rage because his manhood was being threatened on many levels. But fast forward to today, where women are not owned and protected, generally, by men, and they have every intention, thankfully again, of being with whomever they want. And most men, realizing this, have adapted and morphed into much cooler human beings than Jack the jock, because they know, that if they try to act like him, they are never going to get laid.

Do you see where I'm going with this? I hope so. I'm just trying to tell you that I've done a huge amount of thinking about how to save marriage as an institution because I think it's a good institution.

I'm not having a good day. It's a full moon and somehow that affects me in strange ways. I just went back and read a few of the hundred plus ees that Lara sent me. God, she was good. So fucking good. And now I'm depressed. When I was reading them, a wave of intense sadness swept over me. How could something so good just disappear overnight? I need to get away from this for a while, it's just too depressing.

Are you ready for my morality diatribe? I'll try and make it brief. Basically I think it's absurd that it's ok to take down mountains for coal, but when two people share love in unconventional ways, it's wrong. Man oh man do I have a huge problem with that. That's pretty much why I stopped going to church decades ago. Not that I was aware of what I am today about the world and how our society works, but I just couldn't get past the jealous and angry god shit. Here we are supposed to worship and obey this guy in the sky who exhibits human failings like jealousy and anger? Give me a break. And when you reject that dogma that has been spoon fed you all your life, you start to question things. Specifically about thy neighbor's wife.

Why isn't adult consensual fucking a good thing, always? Aren't we built for fucking? Of course we are. So why have we built all the walls around it and made up all these rules about when and where it's appropriate? Sure, it might be disconcerting if you drove down the street and saw people humping on every street corner, but you know I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about some adult recreational sex outside of marriage.

The French seem to have it right with their liaisons. Go to work, stop by the lover's house from five to seven, go home to the spouse at seven and have a nice evening with some wine and dinner and good conversation and sex. Who in god's name is that hurting? Oops, I invoked god's name when I don't believe in him. Well, I do believe in some sort of intelligent design but not by some angry and jealous man who is going to send me to the torture chamber for lusting after one of his own beautiful creations.

Ok, I'm sorry for being so morose and moralistic and pedantic. I'm usually not any of those things. I think.

Looks like I've been digressing a little too much lately. I'm hoping that I will eventually find my way back to the main story line, i.e. my and Abby's respective affairs.
Chapter 7: Back to Abby, and Let's Meet Deborah and Edith

Let's get back to Abby and her take on an open marriage. This is pure speculation because she basically won't talk to me about it. Isn't that weird? She will go out and have an affair with some guy, but when I mention that open marriage is a better alternative, she chastises me for being unconventional.

That's not the true time sequence of events. To be accurate, I have, on more than one occasion, in our marriage, suggested that we open things up. She always just kind of makes me feel guilty for suggesting it. Like I satisfy all of her emotional and physical needs, which is horseshit.

The asshole nuns did a pretty effective job of imprinting on her brain that sex was bad. But not a perfect job, as Dewayne could testify. So the real question is this. Can Abby's brain morph in such a way that she considers her affair a good thing and not something that was wrong, and if so, can she further expand her mind to allow the possibility that an open marriage might indeed be a good thing for both of us? Stay tuned.

Let me digress and tell you about two other women and how I had interesting situations with them this summer and fall. There is a whole lot of relevance here, but it's not obvious at first. If you bear with me, though, it will become so.

Deborah is a few years older than me. She's a smart lady. Sophisticated too. She has a summer home where we do, and it's a pretty tight community where everyone knows everyone. The story goes that she walked in on the hubby, finding him hungrily bopping some random lady, and she kicked him to the curb, as they say.

The following is my speculation of what happened based on what I've observed over the years about dissolutions of marriages. She most likely got a lot of sympathy from family and friends. "The bastard," they all cried. When the divorce was final, there was most likely a lot of encouragement, i.e. "Go girl, you can find a man who has everything the bastard has/had with none of the bad things."

After a long and painful search, reality sets in. Deborah does not find Mr. right, the bastard gets remarried to a younger hottie, and Deborah lives a life of relative misery. Yes, I know there are exceptions. And I also know the situation is reversed half of the time with the bitch getting a younger hottie. But that's not the point.

The point is that an orgasm should not derail a marriage. Period. Quitting a marriage over an infidelity is absurd, especially when we have created an institution that allows no flexibility thus almost guaranteeing infidelities.

So back to Deborah. She is lonely. How do I know? Well I caught her looking at me at a party this summer. I mean really looking at me. Now let me tell you something. I'm not Brad Pitt. Hell, I'm not Brad Pitt's grandfather. Nobody looks at me that way, anymore. Maybe when I was younger, but not now. I felt bad for her. I feel bad for all people in broken marriages. Especially when they involve infidelity and the inability of the couple to work out a solution.

I mean, come on, how can two people's libidos mesh perfectly all the time? They can't. And then throwing away everything, fucking up the kid's lives, giving half of the lifetime earnings to the lawyers. How smart is that?

The other lady, Edith, is younger. She's still in her prime. Good looking lady. A little too thin for me, but that's just me. She had an older hubby. Notice the 'had'. Same story. She kicked him to the curb. Now she's in the dating phase of recreating her life. I've talked to her on a few occasions about life and the hubby and she said something very interesting to me once. She said that the hubby was perfect in many ways. At least she wasn't so consumed with anger and self pity that she could see that. But still, she kicked him to the curb. Maybe there's just something about pride kicking in here. Maybe it's just too hard to have people see us forgiving someone who is unfaithful.

I like Edith and I think she might find someone else, but I hope she gets back with the hubby. Abby says no way. Anyway, recently I was with her and a few other people at a local bar and she said something about chopping a guy's dick off. It was supposed to be a joke, I think. I was surprised. Not shocked that she would say it, but surprised by my own gut feeling that there was some underlying anger toward men in her.

I challenged her with something like "why do we joke about mutilating a man but if someone said something about cutting off a woman's breast, we'd all be horrified?" I wasn't trying to be clever or contentious or even argumentative. In fact, I'm surprised I even said it. But she got really mad at me and said that men rape women. I was trying to digest this since it was so unexpected from Edith because she is incredibly smart and knows better. I mean, by extrapolation, should we lock up all Muslims because some are murderers?

I hope I'm making sense out of all of this. It just bothers me that people fuck up their lives so profoundly by being so quick to end a relationship because one of the two has a higher sex drive than the other. Am I being too simplistic here?
Chapter 8: Dewayne Does the Dirty Deed

Now back to two of the main protagonists in this saga, i.e. Abby the wife and Lara the internet lover. Sorry, the ex internet lover.

First let me recap, since I like to recap. Lara has vanished into thin air after a very hot and heavy month of mutual sensual and emotional exploration. And Abby is, or has been, fucking her biking buddy Dewayne. Did I tell you they were biking buddies? I don't think so. Well they were, and still are. Abby loves to ride and she has a group of biking friends, men and women, some very young, and she's about the oldest, and the prettiest, I might add.

Here's how my somewhat deviant mind conjures up the moment when Dewayne took Abby. Notice how I say he took her, which I believe to be the case. Not that I would have minded much, if at all, if she had done the taking. I would have just been surprised because I don't think she has a high enough sex drive to have initiated it. Also, she really doesn't have that big of an ego or a huge amount of self confidence in some areas, which I find one of her most endearing qualities.

Here's what I think happened. Dwayne and Abby were riding alone, which they have done in the past. Dwayne, being a man, sees Abby as being pretty and friendly and a little older, which is very much a turn on for him, and he senses an opportunity so he plans the ride, and Abby is glad because she would much rather be a follower than a planner.

Dewayne's plan is to end near his house because they will be tired and hot and he invites her in and then he says "do you want a beer?" which he probably knows she does, and then after the beer, he gets her another one, and then he makes a move. Abby, while not particularly aggressive sexually, does respond when someone, usually me, puts the moves on her. Her inner lust kicks in, fueled by the beer and the newness of a new man after many years and she just kind of lets things happen. Dewayne is thanking his lucky stars as he kisses her and starts to take off his pants and her clothes as quickly as he can, so she won't change her mind, and he quickly slips himself inside her and the deed is done.
Chapter 9: Lara turns up the Heat

Lara is a very sexual woman. Very, very sexual. She says that if she doesn't have some sort of sex every three days, she starts to get crazy. That's why she has to arrange for a lover or lovers when the hubby is away. Lara is also bi-sexual. About 50-50 she told me. She also told me that she had been propositioned by a cute little lesbian at a local book store and she had already cleared it with the lezzy for me to join them as long as I didn't fuck her, i.e. the lezzy. That was super ok with me, because Lara had told the lezzy that I was more oral than most men, which she has learned from our ees, and the lezzy was perfectly ok with me performing oral sex on her, once again, as long as I didn't actually fuck her. Can you see why I was falling in love with Lara?

Our ees were pretty amazing. Somehow we were in tune with each other, sexually, emotionally, and intellectually. We both just threw our eroticism out there and the other one caught it and used it and magnified it and returned it in spades. Do you remember when you were in school and the science teacher struck a tuning fork and then held it up to another one with the same pitch and it started vibrating too without even being struck? That was us. How often does that happen in a person's life? In my case, almost never. So when Lara and I started vibrating at the same frequency, it just felt amazing.

She introduced me to her concept of goddess. Early on, I kept saying things like "god, this feels good" and she started saying goddess instead of god and I kind of liked that and then she said that she thought goddess was only good and not wrathful which sounded good to me and then she said that goddess was probably bi-sexual and that sounded really, really good to me.

Suffice it to say that we both, I'm sure, fell at least in lust with each other and for me it was also love. We both talked about the concept of loving more than one person at a time. I was slowly discovering that loving Lara not only didn't diminish my love for Abby, it actually, against what I thought was possible, enhanced it.

That went against everything I believed. But I was in uncharted territory here and I was loving every minute of it. In retrospect, I've become convinced that Lara and this experience was stimulating some part of my brain slash soul slash consciousness that rarely, if at all, got stimulated. And that stimulation was laying down new brain cells, for lack of a better word or analogy. And those new brain cells didn't dissipate or atrophy when she went away. They are a permanent part of me now. A good part, untainted by my disappointment of losing her.

I'm not attempting to depict our relationship, our affair, as something unique in the annals of human existence. On the contrary, I'm thinking it was a fairly ordinary affair. But that's the beauty of it. That's the magnificent part. We all, as humans, are entitled to this magnificence. It's our birthright as humans. We just have to remove all the social garbage standing in the way.

Lara did indeed introduce me to the concept of us. Sure, Abby and I have an us just like every couple does. But Lara showed me that one person can have more than one us at a time. And they can both be beautiful
Chapter 10: Back to Dewayne

When you grow up as a man in our society and our time, you quickly learn that men have to act a certain way. First, you have to be a man. You can't be a cry baby. You can't be a sissy. You can't be a pussy. You can't do a lot of touchy-feely things with other guys, and you definitely can't have a boyfriend. Contrast that with women who can do all the above. Hardly seems fair.

Another short aside. Lara asked me if Abby had any experience with women and I said that I had no clue and then Lara asked me where Abby went to college and I told her it was a Northeastern all girl's college and Lara had an aha moment and told me that there was a 99% chance that Abby learned how to kiss from a girl and not from a man.

So we have this incredible double standard in which men have to behave so much differently and much more rigidly than women.

This chapter was supposed to be about Dewayne and it will be, but first I have to lay the groundwork about how I was, and am, supposed to react and emote when I find out someone is depositing his sperm into my wife's private parts. Did you notice how I said 'my wife'? I just did. Notice that is. I didn't mean to say it that way, but it just came out, which is helpful, by the way, in making the point that men, in this society, at this particular place in time of human evolution, still, to a certain extent, consider their spouses as their possessions which is part, if not most, of the problem.

One more aside if you will permit me. Have you noticed that I sometimes create very long sentences and on other occasions have very short ones in the mix? I think the reason for the longs one is that I get a thought going and I want to make a point and if I suddenly end the sentence, the point seems to have been made, and in reality it has not been fully established, at least in my mind, so I try and keep the sentence going until I can be assured that it is. The short ones probably come from the need, my need, to reset the brain and move on.

Now back to Dewayne and my gut, i.e. learned, response that I should hate this motherfucker for nailing my wife, and probably try to figure out a way to beat the shit out of him or hurt him physically, or at least embarrass him or somehow fuck up his life as much as I perceive he has fucked mine up. Maybe a duel? I could threaten to tell his wife, but as you know, she already knows, so that's a dead end.

There really is no model in my mind, no learned alternative to the above. So here is where is get's complicated and challenging. The little man in my brain is feeding me these alternative scenarios such as, it's pretty fucking hot that Abby is so sexually inclined that she has to go and get sex from another man, and it's pretty awesome that she is hot enough that other men will risk a lot to nail her, and what does it really matter what she does when we're not together, and I'm really glad she is independent enough to pursue her interests without having to ask my permission, and isn't it better to be in a relationship where both partners can pursue their own lust no matter who that may be with, and who am I to think that I can satisfy all of Abby's needs.

The battle going on in my mind and soul between what I have been taught to believe and feel and what I really feel is certainly, I belive, not unique. Maybe if I had more friends, close friends, male and female, I could talk about this and get some other perspectives. But as you know, or maybe I haven't made it that clear yet, Frank is my only true friend, and he has moved away and we still keep in touch by email and phone, but we don't take walks like we used to, to discuss world events and our own personal angst.

And besides Frank is gay, which is good, really good, because he can give me a male and a female perspective both at the same time. Also Frank surely knows what and how I think after so many years of knowing me, and I have no reluctance to just tell him everything, well almost everything, so he can provide me with some excellent counseling, at no charge, which is a good thing.

Alright back to the battle. Dewayne is either an egregious motherfucker or he is doing me a huge favor. I watch a lot of stupid TV and Abby gives me a hard time about it. I love those programs like Maury where everyone is cheating on everyone and then who knows who the father is because the whore has slept with about thirty or forty men, or a total sleezeball man has fathered twenty kids with ten different women. And sometimes two guys have fucked the same woman and then they get jealous and one physically attacks the other and the hired strong men have to separate them.

Good clean fun watching that shit. But the point is that all the people are jealous. I guess it wouldn't make for good TV to have them come out and say, "You know, I'm glad my husband is finding solace with another woman because it makes him a more complete person and enhances our relationship." Maury doesn't invite those types on his show.

We are all prisoners of our upbringing. Upbringing by our parents, our institutions, our friends. It's hard to detach ourselves from it. And detaching myself from it is just what I'm trying to do. I'm liking, very much, very much indeed, knowing that Abby is getting her rocks off with Dewayne and it doesn't threaten me. Maybe it should. Maybe I should be scared shitless that Abby will leave me for him. But I know she won't. For a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that he is married to Kimberly.

Abby isn't going to leave me. Come on. She's comfortable with me. She knows I love her and she can pretty much say or do anything she wants and I'm not going to get bent out of shape about it. And once she learns that I am ok with her fucking Dewayne or any other man or woman, she is going to, gradually I might add, embrace the idea and it's going to get interesting and erotic. It's going to take some time because of her catholic upbringing and her sense that the norm is where she wants to reside, and the norm is definitely not what she is moving toward.

There is reason for hope along that line. Specifically, about three years ago Abby was riding her bike in the Northeast and she stopped at a house of some friends of friends. She didn't know them, nor them her, but she stopped due the mutual friend thing and this couple, in the house on a lake, after some small talk, invited her to go swimming in the lake, and she said that she didn't have a swim suit and they said no problem and they all proceeded to get naked and go swimming. Now that I'm recalling this, the little man in my head is screaming to me that maybe they all got it on, and I'm liking my little man for injecting those little lustful innuendos into my brain.
Chapter 11: The Epiphany

Lara told me, after I sent her a picture of Abby's boyfriend, that Dewayne was not her type. Too much of a jock and not enough hair, which made me feel good on a few levels. I know you are probably wondering about the boyfriend statement I just made. And here is a lot of irony about to be dumped into the equation.

If you are still with me the time sequence, when I was having my affair with Lara, I didn't know that Abby and Dewayne were doing the dirty deed. So how and why would I have sent Lara a picture of Dewayne and why would I have called him her boyfriend? Those are both good questions.

Let me try and piece this together so that it makes sense. As I said, Abby has her riding buddies and one of them is Dewayne. About a year ago, I can't remember the sequence of events that led up to it, but Abby started calling Dewayne her boyfriend. It was pretty innocuous, or so I thought at the time. I wasn't sure where it came from, but it was kind of titillating to me at the time and, of course, I encouraged her by asking her how her rides were, and how was the boyfriend.

Now here is where it gets very interesting, thinking in retrospect. On two occasions, when we were on date night, at dinner, when she had more than one glass of wine, she came out with, "I don't care what anyone says, I think Dewayne is handsome." Of course, not only did this not bother me, it excited me. It was going, so I thought, in the right direction, of having an open marriage, even though, I knew, at that time, or I thought I knew, that it was creeping along at a snail's pace. What I didn't know, obviously, that something more concrete, much more concrete in fact, was probably happening.

If you're still with me, fast forward to the night of the encounter with Kimberly and Abby and Dewayne. In the fog that I was in, due to alcohol and shock, I was still in the observing and analyzing mode, and I suddenly figured something out. An Epiphany. I left this part about the Epiphany out before, not because I meant to, but because I had to lead up to this, trying to get you into my mind set about the conflicts I was having and still am having, although they are a lot less pressing now.

The epiphany that I had the night of the encounter, when Kimberly was telling me that her husband and my wife were sexual partners, was that Abby was signaling to me, those two nights at dinner, that she was having an affair. Signaling is not really the best word here. Signaling is usually an attempt to tell someone something by doing it in small pieces to soften the blow, perhaps.

But Abby wouldn't be trying to soften the blow to me at all. If she was having an affair with someone, knowing all the many times I have told her that I think it would be hot to be swingers, before I knew that open marriage was a more palatable term I should have been using, she would be just saying to me that she was fucking someone else and I'd better get used to it.

The problem here, for her, was not trying to spare my feelings. Not in the least. The problem was her sense that adultery or open marriage or swinging was not the norm and she desperately wanted to, and still wants to be normal. So her conflict was of her own making, but was very real for her, i.e. she was acting outside the norm, which she hated, but she loved the action.

Now back to my epiphany on the night of the encounter. Why would she have said what she said about him being handsome no matter what anyone else said? Why indeed! A major aha moment for me. Here's what happened. I am one thousand percent sure of it. She and Dewayne had been doing it for a while. She was conflicted as per above. She confided this with one of her girlfriends, not out of guilt toward me. Hardly. But out of guilt over doing something outside of the norm. Wanting to do it, loving it, no doubt, but thinking that she shouldn't be doing it, and her girlfriend, giving her some advice, let it slip, maybe not so subtly, that her analysis of the situation was, in effect, 'go girl!, but with Dewayne??'.

Now you get the drift here, I hope. Abby is proud of her boyfriend and the affair, but she is more than a little dismayed that her girlfriend doesn't share her taste in men. Thus the apparent justification at dinner, twice, about Dewayne's appearance.

I'm so fucking brilliant for figuring this out.

Isn't it interesting that, if you observe and remember and hold things in a place without prejudgment, and later try to put things together with those pieces, the pieces can just fall into place with a beautiful synchronicity?
Chapter 12: Making Sure Things Are Clear

Sometimes I stop what I'm doing and just take stock of what is going on to make sure I haven't forgotten anything. Like before I leave work to go home. Do I have the keys to the car? Do I have my hat? Do I have the bagels I bought in the morning for Abby? By the way, I buy them on the way to the office because the bagel place is on the way, and if I get them in the morning they are fresher, and if I put them in plastic bags they stay fresh. I do all of this even though Abby barely thanks me for this, and even though she gets mad when I don't do it, thinking that I should just remember it. And I know, with certainty, that she thinks wanting to get thanked is pretty childish of me.

Now I'm taking stock to make sure I have been clear about Abby and Dewayne and their affair and when it started. Specifically, did I make it sufficiently clear that I had no real inkling that she was straying until the night of encounter? Well that's the reality.

I hope this is not going to confuse things even further, but I've got to inject this into the mix because it's relevant. So very relevant.

Dewayne was between marriages, I think, when Abby was blowing and fucking him. At least I think she was blowing him. His first wife was a piece of cake. A piece of shit is more like it. Suffice it to say she is out of the picture. Kimberly, the new wife, the instigator of the encounter, is just recently on the scene. Well, just recently on the scene as the wife. I think she goes back a year or two, but I'm not real clear on that. She was also divorced and she and Dewayne began dating at some point. Where Abby and Dewayne were in their relationship when Kimberly came on the scene is unknown to me. So when we had the encounter, it's anybody's guess whether Abby will still getting boned by Dewayne or not.

There are a lot of possibilities here, none of which I really give a shit about, except for my proclivity to try and figure things out.

One possibility is that Dewayne and Kimberly, in a sincere moment of honesty, in an attempt to put their past behind them, confessed to all of their previous lovers, and Kimberly filed that away in her brain. And then after they were married, as many people do when they start worrying about their partners past lovers and turn up the radar and start checking email or text messages or whatever, she found what may have been an innocuous email to or from Abby about riding. And in reality, Abby and Dewayne had long since parted ways, but Kimberly didn't know this, and she just freaked and decided to create the encounter to see if Dewayne or Abby would fess us when confronted.

Another possibility is that Dewayne and Abby were still doing it, because why would Dewayne want only one pussy when he could have two? And Kimberly caught them in the act, or maybe found Abby's panties under the bed, or maybe Dewayne actually thought he could bring Kimberly and Abby together into a threesome, and he broached the subject with Kimberly, and then she knew he was still doing Abby.

Whatever the circumstances, neither Dewayne nor Abby denied the accusations at the encounter, so whether Kimberly was bluffing or not, we can now conclude that they are still at it, which seems to be fine with me but devastating for Kimberly.
Chapter 13: The Aftermath, or How Are George and Abby Faring?

I suppose it's best to give you a clearer picture of our everyday relationship so that you can get a sense of what has or hasn't changed since the encounter. OK, I'll confess right from the get go that nothing has changed. But since I started this, let me tell you anyway how things were and are. And then I'll tell you why things haven't changed which is probably a lot more interesting than how they might have changed.

Abby, as I have implied, but maybe not said outright, is a piece of work. Almost everybody likes her, and why not. She's cute, she's friendly, she's a great mom to our kids, she can be tough as nails when it's needed, but can be soft and compliant when called for. The total package.

Except.

She really doesn't appreciate me as much as I think she could and should. No, I'm not asking for worship or anything close. Mainly because I'm not a saint. Far, far from perfect. But give me a break, I keep telling her. Try to balance the good with the bad. Abby doesn't like to do that, alas. I tell her she's mentally lazy, which, I'm sure, doesn't help a bit. But if she just saw some shades of gray instead of living in her black and white world where a man is either a saint or a beast, my life would be a lot easier.

I've always detected a hint of her feeling like she has to fight for her rights in our marriage. Hell, hint is too mild a word. It's the elephant in the living room. It's almost as though if she concedes that I am right about something, it makes her wrong. That's bullshit. Total bullshit. And I tell her that frequently. To no avail. I also mention my shades of gray theory often, to which she just pulls, out of her ass it seems, some random things that I do wrong or have done wrong, in her opinion, in the past, and in her mind that's sufficient ammunition to support her saint or sinner mindset, and you can guess where that leaves me.

I sometimes tell her the joke about "if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, is the man still wrong?," and she says yes the man is wrong, and she doesn't really think it's much of a joke.

How does a man who dearly loves his wife deal with that kind of shit? Well, it's hard, I have to tell you. Is there a counterpart to misogyny in which a woman just hates most, if not all, men? Let's call it Mr. Ogyny. Maybe I'm being too strong here. Maybe it only seems that she hates me, or at least hates most of the things I do, but it sure feels like the burden of proof about my worthiness, is squarely on my shoulders, every hour of every fucking day. Glad I got that out.
Chapter 14: The Paintings

I like to paint. Oils on canvas and watercolors.

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I truly think I am a creative genius. One of the greatest, no actually the greatest, painter in the history of the world. My works belong in the greatest museums in the world.

On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays I think that Abby is totally right, i.e. I am a fool wasting my time and it's embarrassing that I even attempt it and I know she wishes I would just burn the fucking canvasses I have done and make room in the house for something of at least minimal value.

On Sundays, I ignore the little man who talks to me as above, and I just paint, which makes me a Sunday painter, which is about the most disparaging term you could give anyone, i.e. you don't even have the conviction to pursue your passion enough to give up your day job.

Abby calls me a hoarder, and therefore in her black and white world, and in line with her iron clad conviction that she is always right, I am a hoarder in her mind. And since all she cares about is what is in her mind, I would be more successful trying to convince her that the moon is parmesan cheese than trying to convince her that there are shades of gray when it comes to the definition of a hoarder.

When we moved into the condo, to simplify our lives, I thought, we had to do some major throwing away of stuff. I keep all the financial records, so when we moved I had about twenty boxes of those records and some personal stuff I had accumulated over the twenty four years of our marriage, and then some stuff my mother had given me from my childhood. My stuff takes up about one third of one room. Not bad when we lived in a thirteen room house, but a little bit of a problem when we moved to the five room condo. In reality there are three rooms, because the kitchen/dining/living all flow together.

My stuff takes up one third of the spare bedroom which is only a problem when the kids come home for the holidays. But I swear, they can still walk on either side of the double bed, barely, even if they can't use the closet because it's full of my paintings.

The one third of the room occupied is not just the twenty or so boxes, but also contains the paintings.

When I started painting it was 1998 and I thought that since 2000 was a milestone, it would be appropriate to do something special to herald in the new century. So I decided to do a leap year special, painting one a day for the year.

The first (yes it was one of many) series was entitled "366 variations of the Lake George Blue Spruce" honoring the huge blue spruce tree in the back yard of our summer home at lake George in Upstate New York. Ironically, as it turns out, it was a Douglas fir.

I'm color blind, and in my zeal to paint with blue because it's one of the few colors I can see clearly, I kind of glossed over the fact that the tree is brown or green or one of those muddy colors that I have trouble with. The paintings are definitely blue and Van Gogh would have no doubt approved, at least as regards to painting trees any fucking color you want, even though he would have never used the word fucking because he was very religious.

The next series in 2004 was "366 Views of NYC" based on photos I took there in 2003, and then 2008 was "366 Attempts to Crack the DNA Code of Simplicity" and that series included a companion water color each day, and in 2012, if I'm still alive and able, it's going to be something that I haven't quite gotten my brain around yet, but I still have time.

I admit, that when you do the math, the three series of canvasses alone, and the other random ones I've done over the years does add up.

But, does she really just expect me to haul them to the local dump?

About a year ago, I made out a simple list of things to do when I died, so that Abby, presumably consumed and overwhelmed with grief, would not have such a burden on her dealing with those mundane things I have handled, gladly I might add, our entire marriage. Insurance, social security, bank accounts, property deeds, etc. etc...

I was careful to point out that even though she saw little or no value in the paintings, she would be prudent to create a room for them, where she could simply close the door and ignore them, instead of getting rid of them, because there was a chance, in my mind it was a slam dunk, that they would be of great value in the future.

I didn't go into my conviction that she would have been depriving the world of one of the greatest treasures ever created by mankind (I made the list on a Wednesday). I figured if I said "great value" that would be much more effective in making her think at least twice before trashing them.
Chapter 15: Why Did We Get Married Again?

I would not be surprised if you are thinking, at this point, just why did you guys get married in the first place given your apparent lack of, shall we say politely, any common ground? I ask myself that daily, and, I have to admit, would be surprised if Abby doesn't do the same. Marriage is a compromise, I keep reminding myself.

I've got to admit that I do like the concept of marriage. Not every part of it, mind you, not by far, but having someone around, who at least tolerates you, is pretty nice. Even in my darkest hours, even when I think a divorce is the only alternative, I still know that I love Abby deeply and that getting divorced would serve neither of us well, especially me, for reasons I've already expounded on. I think that was in chapter seven. Yes it was, I just went back and looked. It was about Deborah and Edith and their quests for the perfect man.

Maybe we are at a crossroads as a society. Maybe we have bottomed out regarding divorce rates. Maybe marriage is morphing to accommodate our modern world and the rise of women in the workplace which in turn is helping to raise the percentage of women who cheat because they have better access than the old model of stay at home moms who only had each other and the kids to commiserate with.

I for one, and I know I'm not the only one, like it when I read that women are catching up on the cheating curve. It's only fair. And it definitely increases my odds of being able to find one. Hell, I already found one. And she, i.e. Lara, is so far evolved, sociologically speaking, that she and her husband have already figured out that they both win when they allow the other to fuck other people.

If we can just tackle jealousy head on. If we can do some deep thinking about the nature of jealousy. If we can come to realize that jealousy can be a huge aphrodisiac. If we can just not let jealousy control us. Then we can begin to use the jealousy, instead of it consuming us.

How fucking stupid is it, if you sit down and think about it, in a calm manner, if you can, before the deed, to kill your lover out of a jealous rage? What have you accomplished? Absufuckinglutly nothing. You're forever not going to have her or him. You're going to be locked up in some shit hole for the rest of your life, at best. Oh wait a minute, you have accomplished something. You've made sure that no one can ever love him or her again. The only problem with that logic? You're number one on that list of people.

So, just to be clear, as you can see, I'm not in the 'kill your spouse to solve the problem' camp. But more importantly I'm not in the 'divorce your spouse to solve the problem' camp either. I've spent half of my life with Abby, and I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure I spend the rest of my life with her. I'm hoping she feels the same way.
Chapter 16: More on Dewayne and His Two Wives

I want to be fair here. As fair as I can be, which may not be all that fair. Dewayne is not my type, and I'm not talking sexually here. He's nice enough, I guess. But I like a less self assured person. Maybe I'm just jealous, but I don't think so. It's like this. When I heard, from Kimberly, that Abby was fucking him, a lot went through my head, and you have already heard a lot of it. But there's a lot more. What if am wrong about divorced ladies, specifically Abby, finding the perfect man the second time around? What if my whole theory is totally wrong and what if Abby and I got divorced and she did find someone a whole lot better than me. What if her black and white theory is right and Dewayne is white and I'm black. That just sounded racist, i.e. why is black bad and white good? It wasn't meant that way, but I'm on a roll here so I'm not going to try and address that here and now, but I will later. Twice, I'm pretty sure.

It's funny what fears we have. It's also scary. So maybe I'm afraid that Dewayne is better than me, maybe sexually, maybe in all ways, and that Abby will see that and leave me for him. But wait, he just got married, and that was after he had been fucking Abby, so probably Kimberly was better than Abby. But then again, maybe he saw Abby as unattainable and he settled for Kimberly? Maybe I was lucky in that he didn't know that Abby might have left me if he had pursued her harder. God, what am I saying? Am I saying that I don't think I'm good enough for Abby or that Dewayne might be better? Sometimes too much thinking drives a person crazy. I need a glass of wine. But it's not five pm yet, alas.

I was going to tell you about Dewayne's first wife, but it's just not worth it and it's not really relevant except to the point that she left him for another man. They just weren't compatible. It didn't last long. The second wife, i.e. Kimberly, is nice enough, except of course, when she was on the rampage about him fucking my wife, and can we really blame her? I'm not sure how many people embrace the open marriage concept, or some variant thereof, at this point, but it's pretty clear she is not among them. Dewayne certainly seems to embrace it, as least from his perspective, but can we assume that he'd be ok to know that Kimberly was servicing me, for example?

Abby and I missed their wedding because we had a previous engagement with some friends of mine. I was willing to break the date with my friends if Abby wanted to, but she said no. Keep in mind this is before I knew about their torrid affair, at least I'm assuming it was/is torrid. Aren't all affairs torrid? However, I was still in the I'm hoping Abby is fucking Dewayne mode, and since it was just fantasy to me, but not to them, I was aroused by the jealousy, with none of the attendant potential anger and pain, once again because it hadn't happened yet, in my mind.

The wedding pictures looked nice and Abby told me five (I counted them) times how beautiful her ring was, both before and after the wedding. I took this as a huge insult and a potential challenge since hers is much smaller, but I reminded myself that we were quite poor when we got married and could barely afford wedding bands and it was love that counted, but I was having serious doubts now, those five times, that she felt the same way.
Chapter 17: Some Ironies

One of the biggest ironies in this whole situation is that I was so enthralled with Lara, when we were an us, that I was searching for a way to get Abby to go after her lust and strike up something with her boyfriend, at least I thought that was all he was at the time, when in reality, he was already her lover.

I have to say that Abby is always more sexual during the summer because she is not working. She is a teacher and that consumes most of her energy and the last thing she usually wants to do, nine months of the year, is have sex with me, in any form, except maybe Saturday night, and that's not a given by any means.

But during the summer, she drinks more, hangs out with her girlfriends and sisters, and I bet they talk some sex talk, so she is usually ready for some action a few times a week. So my heightened sexuality from my contact with Lara, combined with Abby's relaxed mode made for a very good summer sexually. Now that I think about it, maybe she was missing Dewayne, and I was just a stand in? Shit.

Another irony. I'm the one who has the higher libido, or at least that's what I've always assumed but it's Abby who consummated the open marriage first, and basically behind my back, which really violated the spirit of an open marriage, but as you now know, she doesn't like the concept of open marriage because it's on the fringe and she is such a straight shooter. What a crock of shit. I mean regarding her being a straight shooter.
Chapter 18: My Feelings Are Hurt

I don't think I have adequately described the pain I have when Abby ignores my creative endeavors. Not only does she ignore them, she thinks they are unmanly, I truly believe. Maybe that's the whole attraction to Dewayne, the jock. Maybe a man should be a man, and not a sissy painter. Geez. But Picasso wasn't a fucking sissy. And how about Jackson Pollock? Shit, he got drunk and fought every night.

So maybe I need to be more of a man's man. But I'm not. I'm not some sissy fag pussy at all. But I am sensitive and I have cried on occasion. Maybe that's the kiss of death in her eyes. Who the fuck knows. All I know is that my paintings are destined to change the world. It's Friday, after all.
Chapter 19: I Talk to Kimberly

It had to happen, i.e. 'the talk', and she wasn't calling me so I emailed her. I'm better at reaching out by email than by phone. The phone adds another dimension that I really don't need. Just the basics. No reason for anyone to try and guess my mood or intensions by reading the emotions in my voice. It's like the cute little cartoon of the dog typing on a keyboard and the caption says, "no one knows you are a dog on the internet."

I emailed Kimberly, unbeknownst to Abby and, I hope, Dewayne. Not that I needed to hide anything. Shit, I deserved, and so did Kimberly, some serious fucking with another person since our cheater spouses had already done it. I would have gladly settled for her, but I was guessing it was not vice versa since she hadn't made any moves on me yet. I wanted to keep the email neutral and above board just in case Abby or Dewayne ever saw it, though, which was probably showing a paranoid side of me.

"Kim," I said, hoping it was ok to call her Kim, "do you think it might be appropriate for us to meet and talk?" I sat there wondering if I should send it, and then I just slowly hit the send key. Immediately I regretted it. Damn, what the fuck am I doing, I thought, but it was too late. I left my office immediately, not wanting to think what/where/when we would talk about when/if she responded. Notice the 'we' because I wasn't about to carry the whole burden of the conversation myself.

Later that day I came back to the office and saw an email from her. I was instantly aroused. What if she was going to invite me over to her house when Dewayne was gone? Maybe she wanted to revenge fuck me in their bed. Nice.

Her email read, "George, I'm not sure what you want to talk about and if you want to involve Dewayne or Abby or both." That was it. Kind of negative, don't you think? I sure did. Sure didn't sound very friendly. I re read it about five times, looking for hidden meanings. I couldn't find any. It was pretty straight forward. So I attempted a reply. "Kim," I started, using Kim since she didn't sign hers Kimberly thus signaling me that Kim was ok, or at least that's how I interpreted it, "I'm really not sure about what I want to say and I think it should be just us." I liked using us. I also liked that I was sounding as cryptic and confusing as she was. And vulnerable. That's what I was trying to express.

She sent back another that just says "ok" leaving me the task of setting this thing up. So I said, "I'm good with any time or place that suits you and I'd just basically like to tell you my thoughts and hear yours." Pretty innocuous, I thought.

Just to be totally honest here, my final goal was to convince her that open marriage is a good thing and that Dewayne and Abby fucking is a good thing, and that she and I should consider fucking other people, not in any way coming on to her, but leaving the door open in case she wanted to walk through it, toward me.

I sure put a daunting task in front of myself, don't you think? But what the hell, I've got a lot of free time these days, the ultimate results would be worth the effort, I like challenges, and life is short.

When me met, at my place, excuse me, at Abby's and my place, Abby was at work and so was Dewayne. I had not told Abby about our upcoming meeting and I really didn't care if Kimberly had informed Dewayne or not. I left work early, got home, took a shower, just in case, put on some decent clothes, and sat there. Sweating.

When she knocked, it jarred me out of a fantasy that I really shouldn't write about here. I jumped up, quickly considered if I should tell her to come in and that I'd be out of the shower in a few seconds, since I already needed another one due to the sweating, but then realized that the likelihood of having any close physical contact with her, at this point in time was nil, so I just went and opened the door.

She looked stunning. I had forgotten how totally beautiful she was. Why the fuck would Dewayne risk losing her, quickly flashed through my brain. I invited her in and then something dawned on me. How could I have been so totally stupid not to remember that this is where the encounter took place? Jesus. I am a total idiot. I swear to you that thought never entered my mind until I saw her walking down the same hallway, toward the same couch.

Ok George, get a grip and focus, I thought. She broke the ice saying, "I think I remember being here before." I loved her immediately for saying that. It had so much relevance on so many levels, but the best thing about it was, I thought, that it showed she was able to see at least a speck of humor in the situation, gently poking fun, I thought, as herself for being a bit drunk at the end and maybe not totally remembering everything that happened and all that she had said. And it also showed, I thought, that she was able to perhaps look beyond the situation with Dewayne and Abby and move forward. I tend to read a lot into people's statements and comments, perhaps too much. In ways that tend to support my own hopes and beliefs, I have to admit.

She sat down in the same place where Abby had been sitting that night, i.e. on Abby's couch, when Kimberly spilled the wine in her lap. I sat down on my couch, deciding that Abby's couch was too small for two people not romantically involved, and I didn't want Kim to think I was being forward or presumptuous, when, in fact, I was both.

I have noticed over the years, when I'm in an awkward situation, which doesn't happen all that often, but was definitely happening now, that I kind of cock my head to the left, not sure why the left by the way, and then I kind of raise my eyebrows and put my lips together tightly, like I'm ready to say something but not knowing quite how to begin. It's not a deliberate or purposeful face; it's just what I have noticed that I do. I think I'm usually waiting for the other person to begin and I want to let them know that whatever they say is probably going to be fine because I really don't give much of a shit what people say as long as it's not hateful or mean.

Then, if the other person doesn't begin, I usually say "so," kind of trailing off on the o, I guess trying to solicit a response, and that is what I did. Once again, no response, so I thought about it for a second and launched into my diatribe, even though I had promised myself on numerous occasions that I wouldn't do a diatribe because I thought it might do a lot more harm than good.
Chapter 20: The Diatribe

I like the word diatribe. Not sure of the etiology of the word, but I like how it sounds. I also like how it allows a lot to come out, and if the listener is open minded and if the person delivering is not boring, some interesting information and, more importantly, some important emotions, can be delivered and absorbed.

Of course, when I'm delivering, I try to be as honest as possible, and I try to make sure that I'm not getting hung up on one particular emotion, trying instead to get the whole range of emotions out there. I know for sure, as least with Abby, in our mutual diatribes, that her diatribe is coming next after mine, and anything that I emote negatively to her will be returned in spades, so my tone is always conciliatory, or at least I like to think so.

As much as I like delivering diatribes, I know there is another purpose other than just spouting off on hearing myself speak. I want to try to move toward a solution, which generally means, with Abby and me again, to get her to back off from criticizing me or to stop treating me like a piece of furniture, or a hired hand, which she does quite effectively, and often.

I know the task at hand and I know it's going to be difficult but I like the challenge. I also know that I know absolutely nothing about Kimberly's mindset and I am going to have to look for some feedback in her face or body movements or, even better, in her responses.

So I began, "Kim, I've got a lot on my mind and I know you do too and I'd just like to tell you where I'm coming from and let you know my mind set. I'm guessing this is a lot harder on you than any of the other three of us, and that's based on your reactions and words from the other night. And I'm not passing judgment on you by any means or blaming you because I think it's totally understandable given that you just got married. Abby and I have been married for twenty four years and there's been a lot of water over the dam, and we've both done things that hurt the other person, not deliberately of course but still hurtful, and we are both pretty forgiving people and also practical, and we both took our marriage vows seriously and we plan to be married for a long time."

I took a deep breath, because I was out of breath, and also because I wanted disparately for Kim to say something to help me out here. I wanted to hear something to the effect that I wasn't just wasting my breath and she was going to divorce Dewayne anyway, and this little courtesy call of hers was just that. I waited. I waited a bit longer. Clearly I needed to continue.

"Kim, I don't know you at all and I don't know your mindset and I would never be so presumptuous to try and meddle into your affairs." Shit I thought, I should not have used the word affair. "But it's obvious that we are in a situation that involves both of us and our spouses and I think we have to communicate our feelings in as honest a way as we can to try and move forward."

I really didn't like how this was going. I was so used to my diatribes with Abby and I knew I could just lay it all out there, and she would too, and even if we resolved nothing, which was almost always the case, we had at least vented and that allowed us to move forward. What I really didn't like about this diatribe was the way I was slipping into some sort of prescribed form, using catchy words and phrases like communicating, and feelings, and moving forward. It all seemed so stilted.

What I really had to say could be done in one sentence, i.e. "Kim, it's ok with me for Dewayne to fuck Abby because it turns me on and the jealousy is kind of a delicious jealousy and I'd really like for you to try and think about it that way, and I'd like for you to think about approaching this as an adventure, setting aside your core beliefs because those are just learned responses and they can be unlearned, and if they are, you might see this whole thing as an incredible journey and an amazingly erotic adventure that will greatly enhance your love life with Dewayne."

Of course, I was chicken shit to say anything close to that, instead trying to somehow warm her up gradually to some new possibilities and at the same time, charm and woo her with my intelligence, my insight, my broadmindedness. Right.

I was dying to know what she thought and felt, so I asked her. This meeting was apparently meant to morph from a diatribe and a diatribe response, to more of a dialogue and that was fine by me. I knew I could hold my own, and by that, I mean I knew I could keep my ultimate goal in mind and do my best to steer the conversation in that direction.

Kim finally responded with "I really don't know what to say. Dewayne and I just got married and I thought he loved me and I thought we were going to have a wonderful life together and I knew he had had sex with other women and he knew I had had sex with other men and we didn't want to focus on that."

"We wanted to focus on us and our future, and now he has ruined that and now you are involved, and I'm sorry for that, but I'm not sorry for Abby, and I know you love her and I don't want to say anything bad about her but she was part of this. A big part of this. And I'm angry and I'm hurt and I'm confused and I don't know what is going to happen. And I'm also afraid of what is going to happen. I had one bad marriage and I thought this was going to be different and now it's not and it's ruined."

Then she started to cry. Not a hysterical sobbing. Just a genuinely sad crying. Not even trying to hide the tears, just letting them flow. I felt bad for her, but I also felt, genuinely, that something good was going to come out of this. Something good for all of us. Now don't be cynical and think that I was just looking to get into her panties, which of course I was, but it was lot more than that. I'm being serious here when I say that I was thinking about the old saying, "the best steel comes from the hottest oven" or maybe better, "first the breakdown, then the breakthrough."
Chapter 21: Rainy Day and Lara

It's a rainy day. The only thing I don't like about rainy days is when they end. I'm not sure what it is I like about them, but one thing is for sure, and that's that I'm never going to try and figure it out. Same thing regarding chocolate ice cream; I love it, and that's it. No need to analyze it. No need to break it down. No need to understand it. I really think we go way too far in thinking about some things. Why do we love someone? Why is someone attractive to us? Just go with the flow, I keep telling myself.

There is a point here, and here it is. Having Lara writing such erotic emails to me, telling me how she is having multiple orgasms, daily, reading my words, was mind blowing. I have no idea why I deserved that much eroticism. In fact, I know for a fact, that I didn't deserve it. It took me a few days, maybe even a week or so to just relax and enjoy the exchange. Good thing I didn't wait too long since I only had thirty seven days. Each day it just got more relaxed and comfortable and natural, and of course more erotic. We both, at first, used a lot of words and analogies to explain it. It being the connection between us. I truly think she was as surprised as I was.

At one point she said something to the effect, "I was just looking for a lover, and I got you." I realize that doesn't mean a whole lot to anyone else but me, but, to me, it meant the world. My little world was expanding and exploding in ways foreign to me, and even though I didn't understand the process, it felt good. Extremely good.

Since, I'd never had an affair before I had no idea how it was going to feel. Granted, this was not a physical affair, but from everything I have read, and I have read a lot lately about this, an emotional affair can be just as powerful as, or more so, than a physical affair. Of course some professionals don't use the word powerful. They use the word destructive. But since you already know my thoughts on the subject, you know why I used powerful and not destructive.

In this whole process, I never felt one ounce of guilt. Not one fucking ounce. And keep in mind this was before I knew about Dewayne and my cheating wife. Lara was so cute a times. Actually all the time. She talked about herself as a cheater, in jest, of course, because she wasn't a cheater at all. 'Cheater Lara', she called herself. She was cheating on her hubby with me, but, as we know she wasn't, because he knew and he was cheating on her, but he wasn't, as we know, because she knew. So I do the same with Abby, in my mind. 'My cheater Abby'. Everything in context.

When Lara went away, and when I send her emails even though she wasn't responding, and then when I kept my thirty day journal/diary, I tried very hard to keep the thing, which is a pitiful word for what we had, but the best I can come up with right now, that we had created protected from what I feared would be the eventual destruction of it (the thing) by time and my own human weaknesses such as self pity and anger and resentment and all the other garbage we as human are capable of. Maybe that's one of the good things about getting older, i.e. even if you don't become a better person by eliminating the things I just mentioned from your consciousness; at least you learn to identify them.

So protecting our thing, our us, our affair, our emotional involvement became the prime directive. I didn't want it to become tainted or sullied, and I have to admit, that after three and a half months, it hasn't, on my side. I have no idea how Lara is handling it on her side, though. She may think I am the biggest jerk or asshole or whatever. It's hard to conceive of that, but I do accept the possibility. But even when I allow that thought to enter my head, it doesn't change what I feel about her. I feel good that I feel good about her. I hope I always will.

I keep having to ad this disclaimer. Maybe at some point, I will have satisfied myself and won't need to any more. But for now, I still do.

I love Abby tremendously. Lara is not, and was not, a replacement for her. I totally reject the idea that you can only love one person at a time. That may have been what I was taught. Hell, it was what I was taught. By my experience, here, in this world, with my life, my empirical information that I know is true, tells me, with absolute certainty, that it is possible to love two people at the same time without diminishing the love for either person. I told Lara, in my journal, that one of the most important things I learned from her, and us, is that. And I told her I was forever grateful to her, and goddess, for letting me learn that simple but profound lesson.
Chapter 22: Why Does Abby Always Do the Man vs. Woman Thing?

There's one thing about Abby that drives me crazy. Well, a lot of things actually, but one in particular. And I know I do things that drive her crazy too, so I'm not looking to change her, which is not possible, and that is good, but I'd just like for her to, on occasion, try and be a little more open minded on the man vs woman thing.

Let me define this thing. It's a thing whereby a man or a woman, thinking their gender is better in some way than the other gender, disregards all information, of any kind, in every situation, that might point out that their gender is ever wrong.

I mean really, haven't we evolved enough as a society that we, as men and women, can move beyond the gender battle? Can't we suspend our own gender bias in at least some situations and look objectively at a problem and find a solution without reverting to "it's obviously his fault" or "it's obviously her fault?"

Abby seems to always take a woman's side in a conflict. Not that we are involved in other people's conflicts all that much or at all. Just the conflicts we read about in the news or see on TV. Doesn't really matter what the circumstances are, the woman is always right. I'm wondering if it's a self preservation thing. Is it like she has to fight for her rights or all women's rights or something along those lines?

Maybe there's a secret sisterhood of women that she belongs to and one of their solemn vows is to take the woman's side no matter what. Well, if so, I'm going to out Abby, see below, because there was one time in our twenty four years of marriage when Abby clearly, without hesitation, never wavering, took the man's side.

Her woman is always right shit does impact our daily lives, because I like to try and be objective and look at all sides of an issue, and we are going to disagree on those occasions, yes you guessed it, when I take the man's side. That's probably about fifty percent of the time. The other fifty percent of the time, I take the woman's side and we don't argue. I guess I should be happy about that fifty percent.

I guess I'm sounding pretty self righteous here. Me, the objective one, and Abby the 'stuck in the mental mud' one. I'll have to work on that and get back to that point later, but I'd better tell you about Abby and her one time thinking that the man was right, before I forget. This is a treasure.

One more character to introduce. Actually two, but they won't come up again, so don't waste any energy trying to remember their names. Abby comes for a large Irish Catholic family. Remember I told you about the asshole nuns who fucked up Abby at an early age by trying to repress her sexuality. Anyway, she has two sisters and four brothers, and the clear favorite in the family, the chosen one, who actually is a pretty nice guy in my opinion, is the oldest boy, Bobby. Lawyer. Smart. Personable. Good Looking. He is married, to Sharon. Nice lady. Also smart, personable and good looking. Sharon has worked for a lot of years while raising four pretty cool kids. Bobby has made the lion's share of the money due he's a lawyer. But Sharon worked in the trenches and did most of the work of raising the kids and running the home while still holding a full time job, most of the time. Pretty modern situation these days.

Abby and Sharon were friends for most of their lives because Bobby and Sharon met and started dating at something like eight years old, or so, I've been told. Sharon is one of those moms that kids have to love. She truly likes being a mom and doesn't mind having other kids over and really has devoted most of her life to the family.

You can guess what's coming. Bobby is a good father for sure, but, as time goes by, he, like a lot of red blooded American men, gets the wandering eye, maybe because Sharon is not paying enough attention to him, but that's just speculation on my part, and he finds some action on the side. Far be it for me to condemn him for that.

However, the old saying that blood is thicker than water kicks in, big time, and suddenly all of Abby's family, every freaking one of them, starts with their character assassination of Sharon. God forbid I ever get in that situation because I'm a far lesser person in most ways than Sharon, and assassinating my character would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

So Abby truly believes, because of her family thing going on here, which must somehow trump the sisterhood, that Sharon is at fault for some reasons that seem pretty obscure to me, but not to her or her family. There was even one occasion, a family deal, when Sharon got drunk, which is not unusual for her or any of the family, them being Irish Catholics after all, which is fine by me, because I like that side, i.e. the drinking side of the family because I like to drink too, but anyway Abby seemed to be pointing out that Sharon was drunk and therefore the breakup was her fault.

Now, help me out here, but is it unreasonable to think that Sharon was drunk, partly at least, because Bobby had left her for a younger woman, at least I think she is younger, and Bobby's life was pretty good right now with a new high rise condo and the younger woman, and Sharon got the old house and still had one of the kids to get through high school? Oh, did I tell you they are not divorced? I'm not real clear as to why, but maybe they are doing their own version of the open marriage gambit and I'm not going to criticize that path.

I'm not choosing sides here. I like the chosen one and I like Sharon. They are both pretty awesome people. In fact all of Abby's family is awesome. But their respective spouses are also awesome. And remember, I'm in that group, so I have to, at times, stick up for the spouses lest the gang of seven attack any of us.

My point in all of this is that Abby sees the world in a black and white mode with no shades of gray. I think I've said that before. Sorry. And I'm sorry that I seem to be picking on Abby here. I'd just like her to see that maybe Sharon wasn't the bad guy, excuse me, girl, here. At least Abby is able, in this one circumstance, to find a woman at fault, which may be a breakthrough, of sorts. And the thought flashes through my brain that if Abby doesn't stop giving me so much grief, I'm going to turn her in to the sisterhood.
Chapter 23: What to Do About Kim

So back to Kim and me in my, condo. Excuse me, Abby's condo. Kim thinks her marriage is ruined and I think it's not, but I'm not saying that, to her, at this point.

I'm just not sure how this whole thing is going to play out. I remind myself that I only have power over my own actions and thoughts and emotions. How everybody else reacts is up to them. It would be a shame, I thought, if for some reason Abby wanted to divorce me. But I can't really see that in the cards. Why would she? She obviously can go out and do other men, or at least Dewayne, and then come home to me and keep it all together. So why ruin a good thing? My only counter, to myself, along those lines, is that she might want to live with Dewayne. And that's only going to be possible if Kim kicks him to the curb, so I realize I have a huge incentive to try and make Kim see that she and Dewayne have to make the marriage work.

At this point I'm just feeling tired of the whole thing. Why can't we all act like adults, realize that lust is a powerful part of our creature hood, and just stop sweating the details. Let's all be nice to each other. But, alas, people just don't seem to be ready for that. At least the three people other than me involved in this situation aren't ready for that. I need a drink, but it's only midday and my rule is not before 5pm, and 4:30pm on Sunday.

I suddenly get an inspiration and I blurt out to Kim, "Kim, do you want to hear what I think about all of this?" She's pretty tired and drained emotionally and I guess I'm catching her off guard, and I think she'd probably rather listen than talk at this point, so she says "sure."

Ok, now here's my chance to educate her about the ways of an open marriage. To turn her into a polyamorist. But I know I'm going to have to do this gradually. Very, very gradually. One thing I know is that I can talk about something that I am passionate about for a long, long time.

So Kim, I say. Soooooo. Just for emphasis. Just to try and get my thoughts collected. Just to try and begin.

Here's the gist of what I said, not verbatim, but real close.

"Kim, Abby and I have been together for twenty four years and most of it has been great. We both believe in the institution of marriage and it has worked well for us. I, personally, am probably not as upset about this situation as you are, for a lot of reasons, and they are complicated. Even after twenty four years, I'm still finding out things I don't know about Abby. I've never tried to control her actions or thoughts or really anything about her. She pretty much does her own thing and I do mine and that works well for both of us."

I wasn't sure how it was going because I wasn't getting any verbal or visual feedback from Kim. Kind of like talking to a sack of potatoes, so far, even though I knew it wouldn't stay that way for long.

Back to my discussion.

"It's pretty obvious that Dewayne and Abby needed or wanted something from each other that they weren't getting from us."

Now I noticed an increased alertness on her part. Was it surprise? Anger? Defensiveness? It was like something inside her was stirring. This could either be a good thing or a bad thing. Probably bad, I feared.

Then I said "I know that sounds harsh, but from everything I read, that's what affairs are all about."

Now there was a definite quizzical look on her face. Something that might be construed as an opening, so I continued.

"Kim, I don't pretend to understand everything about this, but I am willing to take a long and deep look at it and see what can be done to mend the situation so we can all get on with our lives without this ruining anything."

That was my summation. I think I did a pretty darn good job with that last sentence. Take the word mend. I was reluctant in using it because mend generally means something has gone wrong, and as you know, I don't believe anything that occurred was wrong. But in using it, I threw her a bone, letting her believe that I also was aggrieved. I hated to lie, but our perceptions were so far apart, I thought I needed to at least let her know, or think is more accurate, that I cared that my wife was getting poked by her beloved.

Now consider 'getting on with our lives' which is definitely positive and it trumps the negative of 'ruining'. I wanted to let her know, in essence, that just because Dewayne stuck his dick in possibly all three of my wife's orifices, it was not something I couldn't get over.
Chapter 24: The Little Man in My Brain Kicks up the Volume

Isn't it funny how, once you know your spouse is cheating, that you go back in time and try to re-examine events.

That's pretty absurd what I just said.

Number one, it's probably not funny to most people at all, because they are most likely terribly distraught, as they are programmed to be. Number two, how the fuck do I know what most people think when they find out their spouse is cheating?

I guess I should just stick to what I was doing and feeling and thinking, and not try and guess how normal people think.

The little man in my brain is always there. Doesn't that fucker ever sleep or go on vacation? I just had a flash. How do I know he's a man and not a woman? I never thought about that before. I just listen because I really don't have a choice. The voice comes and I hear it. Sometimes I ignore it, but I can't stop it from coming.

So the voice, says to me, when and where did they do it? Good question I respond. Hmmm. I tell the voice, or myself, that I'm really not so concerned with when and where but with how, how long, which orifice/s, did she cum hard, or harder than she does with me, was his cock bigger than mine, was he on top, did she swallow, and things of that nature. Things I tell myself any aggrieved hubby would want to know, in as much detail as possible.

My next thought is will Abby still want to fuck me. Then, is she going to want to share with me the grimy and dirty details, hopefully leading up to and during our future lovemaking. I think probably not, alas, as she's not that verbal in bed. Then the little man asks me if I think she was a lot more verbal with her younger lover, and my answer is, hopefully.

There are, no doubt, those of you who see a certain, if not profound, sickness in all of this. Maybe that could better be phrased as a sickness in me instead of all of this. I definitely accept the possibility that my abhorrence to melting into the norms of society, i.e. joining the Rotary club, running for city council, going to church, singing in the choir, and so on, may have moved me to the fringes of what can be called normal or sane.

However in my defense, I don't drink and drive, I don't cheat, even in golf, I don't have any sexual desires for anyone aged under about twenty, I don't have ill feelings toward anyone except liars and thieves and bullies. So, all in all, I don't see that wanting to know all the details of my wife's affair is something that necessitates time on the shrink's couch, not that I would be hesitant to share with him, or better yet, her, these lurid fantasies.
Chapter 25: Kim Responds

Back to Kim, on Abby's couch, with me on mine. I have just told her, gently, subtly, hidden in layers of deceit, that I am ok with Abby and Dewayne fucking each other's brains out. Now I'm wondering if I have penetrated, I like using that word, her inner psyche and perhaps we have linked our souls into a oneness that will allow us to get on with our lives, hopefully in a more intimate manner.

No such fucking luck.

So Kim says, "You seem to be saying that you think it's ok for your wife to fuck my husband?"

I like her tone. And I especially like the 'your wife to fuck my husband' structure of her thought process. I was kind of waiting for that. So, now she has revealed some of her cards. Abby is the bitch cunt whore responsible for leading her faithful hubby into the realms of deceit and ruination. Nice. We're making progress.

At this juncture I have a definite choice. I can either act like the weasel slash worm slash lowlife that I can be at times, or I can step up the plate and try even harder to penetrate her psyche and move her, hopefully, to the open marriage camp.

I surprise myself by taking the latter, more honest, path and here is about how it went.

"Kim, if you look hard and deep at this, you have to admit that both of our spouses, and we too, have had other sexual partners before we were married."

I was very tempted at this point to add, "Is there really such a big distinction between them, i.e. our spouses, having sex before marriage and now that we are married?" But, since I knew she was looking for any cracks in my armor, that would have provided her all the ammunition she needed to know in her heart and mind and soul that Abby and I were two very fucked up individuals and that I was in collusion with Abby in this affair which I wasn't initially at least, I didn't add that.

This is the point where I wanted Kim to throw me a bone and start to at least soften her position and open her mind, at least, if not her marriage, or better yet her legs. I know, the legs bit wasn't necessary, sorry.

Kim was waiting for me to elaborate about having sexual partners before marriage, but I figured it was her turn and since she didn't say anything, I asked her to give me her thoughts at this point.

I said something to the effect, "Kim, you said your marriage was ruined. Do you really believe that?" Of course I was signaling that I certainly didn't believe it and I was willing to forgive my bitch cunt whore wife. In a micro second, I thought, but didn't say it. I hope, no I know, that you are getting it that there is nothing to forgive here, in my own twisted way of thinking.

I haven't done a digression in a while so here goes. Abby and I can say cunt or bitch or whore and a whole lot worse things, and we do, to each other, mostly at cocktail hour, because we both know that they are only words and we say them, sometimes to diffuse some anger, or make a point, or just to try and be funny, and it works. All the while I'm usually sitting there thinking how pretty she is and how much I'd like to fuck her more often, and most people think she is just some sweet little girl, when in fact she is the most foul mouthed cunt I know. And I love her for that. And also, she calls me a dick and a lot worse things and it just bounces off me, like water off a duck's back, most of the time, at least.

So being the non misogynist, radical feminist that I am, and I'm being totally honest here, I can, and do, call a cunt a cunt, when necessary, which is not that often, but it does happen, but only when I'm talking to Abby or Frank. When Lara and I were together, electronically, we talked a lot about cunts, specifically hers, and what she liked done to it, which meshed, I must say, perfectly, with what I wanted to do to it, and she said, the first time I used the word cunt, that she wasn't offended by it, which meant that she was offended, slightly I guess, but she did a very quick shift, given the circumstances of knowing me and my non misogyny, as she did, early on.

We didn't go into the difference between calling her vagina a cunt and calling a woman a cunt, but I'm guessing that if we had gotten deeper into our relationship, it would have no doubt come up, and I'm pretty sure she would have gotten on the 'she is a cunt' bandwagon, balanced of course by 'he is a dick', when we were referencing particularly egregious people of either gender.

Now that I've cleared the air regarding cunt and dick, I've forgotten where I was so let me go back and look. Oh yes, I wanted Kim to start giving me a glimpse into her soul for a host of reasons, some obviously to help heal this situation, and some, as you can glean, of a more personal and lustful nature.

Kim, as I had hoped, was backing off from the ruined marriage line. She said, "I'm just really devastated." Progress. Major progress. You can drive a Mack truck between ruined and devastated.

I wanted to hear more. A lot more. So I just sat there determined to let her try and make some more progress.

"I just don't know what I'm feeling right now," she said. "I'm so fucking mad."

Damn, we are making major headway here. The difference between devastated and fucking mad is huge compared to the difference between ruined and devastated. This is going well.

"Well," I said, violating my own rule about letting her do the talking, "sometimes anger can be cleansing." I instantly regretted saying that.

You fucking idiot, George.

'Anger can be cleansing'. How fucking trite. How fucking dangerous. I'm sitting on a precipice between being consoling and being in some twisted allegiance with my cunt wife regarding seducing her husband, and I try and diffuse her anger by calling it cleansing? Smart move, George.

Sometimes people surprise you. Kim sure did when she said, "I never thought of it that way."
Chapter 26: Major Fight with Abby

Well, fight is not totally correct. A major discussion about her black and white view of the world, or at least my perception of her black and white view, would be more accurate. The circumstances are not really important here, but basically she was ragging on some guy. It's pointless at this advanced stage in our marriage to point out to her that her ragging is almost always against a guy and never a woman, so I don't. I do however, point out that the person she is ragging on has a lot of good qualities, and then I use my tired, at this point, refrain that I wish she would see the shades of gray.

She, on cue, launches into a long and somewhat annoying refrain about how she has the right, no, the obligation, to point out certain things about people we both know and have somewhat of a place in our lives, and that her discussion is private to me and her and will never go beyond that, and that if I was a really good and thoughtful husband, I would understand that and back off and listen to her. How the fuck can you respond to that? Yes, the tree did fall, and I'm wrong.

So I suggested that we go watch Cash Cab, pointing out that it was one of the few points of mutual interest in our marriage, and it was one point over which we never argued. My not so subtle dig into the quality and depth of our marriage, by that comment, which I swear I did say and not just think, did have the desired effect of soliciting a wry smile on her face, and an agreement to do just that, i.e. watch Cash Cab, and I knew in my heart that we were inexorably linked in a way that would probably confound at least, but more likely deeply disturb, most trained professionals.

When we sat down to dinner, her on her couch, eating steamed broccoli and a salad with shrimp, and me on my couch, with the inferior view, eating smoked chicken pasta, drinking my third, or was it fourth?, glass of wine, watching Cash Cab After Dark, which is much better than regular Cash Cab, because the amounts are doubled, and New York City is so much more interesting at night, I reached out my hand to Abby and she squeezed it, and I told her I loved her and that I respected her, and she said the same, and I truly believed that she at least loved me.
Chapter 27: Filling In Some Blanks

You've probably come to at least be ok with my jumping around in time. If you're young and your mind is nimble, then it might even be interesting, but if you're old and less flexible mentally, I hope that I've made things simple enough, with a limited number of people to remember, adding sufficient redundancy, so that you can deal with it without being annoyed or confused.

You're no doubt waiting to hear about how Abby and I have broached, or have not broached, as is the case, the subject of Dewayne and their affair. I mean, really, don't I have a right, an obligation, to confront her and demand to know the details? How? Why? When? Where? What positions?

Well, that discussion never happened. At least it hasn't happened yet. Life is back to normal, i.e. she is a bitch at times, I'm a dick at times, but we generally get along and treat each other with kindness and respect. At least on my part. As far as our sex life is concerned, it's about normal. But as we all know, normal is a relative term.

So just to summarize, Abby and I are still living together, relatively happy, doing our own things, coming together, on occasion, intimately. Dewayne and Kim are still together, and things are looking up, but more on that later. Lara still has not contacted me and there is still a sense of sadness about that. But I've still not given up hope that she will reappear and that we can have a meaningful relationship in the future.

I'm not particularly hung up and linear thinking, as you know by now, so forgive me when I leave something out and get back to it later.

Many, many years ago, when I was on my great, and in my mind at least, profound and noble, search for the meaning of life, I read, among hundreds of other books ranging from the occult to Zen to Seth, Fritz Perl's 'In and Out the Garbage Pail' and the epilogue of the book was his poem which still haunts me, and it talks about his view of life, i.e. all the joys and sorrows, and he says that they will form a meaningful gestalt at his life's conclusion, and I hope they did for him, because he is dead now.

He was, by the way, the 'father of gestalt psychology'. My point is that all my ramblings, backward and forward in time, in and out of the lives of myself and Abby and Kim and Dewayne and Lara will, hopefully, form a meaning gestalt, at some point. And since gestalt is not something you might run across every day, here is the definition. Gestalt: 'unified whole'.

By the way, Fritz Perl was queer. A homo. A raging fag. At the time, when I was younger, that used to bother me. Male dick suckers in general bothered me. A lot. When I was young, and better looking, the motherfuckers used to hit on me, not that often, but on occasion, and I hated that. I was a raging homophobe.

So what changed, I hear you ask? Time, basically. And Frank. Frank, as you may remember is my best friend. My best gay friend. But since I don't have many friends at all, that's hardly relevant, i.e. that he is my best gay friend.

Societies do evolve. Hell, anal sex was about as perverted as you could get fifty years ago. And that was between a man and a woman. Sex between men was hideous. Fast forward to today. "Honey, do you want it up the ass, in your cunt, or down your throat?" is no doubt asked in millions of bedrooms across America every night. And being gay is no worse than being liberal, at least in most circles.

My fear of fags is gone. Thanks Frank. In fact, I hate to admit this, if Lara and I were together, or maybe even Abby and I, and we were with an extremely attractive couple and the ladies said they wanted to witness a little man on man action, since they would have no doubt already treated us to a little woman on woman action, and since it would only be fair to oblige them, I might, if I didn't have to kiss the guy, let him suck my dick. But I would have to have, without a doubt, my face buried in one of the lovely ladies cunts, and I would certainly be fantasizing about the other lady being the actual sucker. Damn, I can't believe I said that.
Chapter 28: Kim Keeps Talking

If you remember, Kim just surprised me by admitting that my statement about anger being cleansing just might have some merit. Granted, she didn't just say that anger was cleansing so she was forgiving Dewayne, and all was well in Pleasantville, but she did say she had never thought about it that way. Her stance was softening like butter out of the refrigerator. That's a pretty shitty metaphor, but it just came to me and I'm not going to take it out, sorry.

Now I was reverting back to my 'not interfering with her talking' mode. Better that way, I was thinking. Come on Kim, keep talking.

Kim finally said, "You know something, I think the worse thing about all of this is that he lied to me." Well, I wanted to point out that if he had asked permission, would that have been better? But I didn't. I also didn't just nod my head like some puppet fully ensconced in the system. I knew what my stance was, i.e. that open marriage was better, far better, than cheating and lying. And I swore a solemn oath, to myself of course, that I would work tirelessly to make this tragedy, in Kim's eyes only was this a tragedy I might point out, something of beauty for all of us involved. I'm so fucking noble.

"But Kim," I said, "most people do lie when they cheat," violating my gut instinct that I should not make light of her awful tragedy, but then again I was hoping that I might add just a bit of levity, or at least realism, into the situation. The gamble paid off, in spades. She smiled. That was nice.

I kind of cocked my head to the left, smiled just a bit, and continued. "Kim, this isn't the first time in the history of the world that someone has cheated." This was another gamble, but I was on a roll, so why not, I thought. "I know you're devastated" I said, immediately regretting using 'devastated' as soon as it came out, so I countered myself with "but, you know, it's not the end of the world for any of us."

Notice the us. I really wanted to include Abby and Dewayne in this discussion too, for many reasons. I kept going. "You still love Dwayne and I still love Abby." I almost included something like 'for the sake of the kids' but ours are grown and gone and she doesn't have any, and besides, that's a pretty lame way to deal with this, i.e. my trying to open up her mind and marriage, and then saying, in effect, it was wrong what the cheaters did, but we should overlook it for the sake of the gone and non-existent kids. Glad I didn't invoke the poor kids.

I kind of glanced at the clock, trying not to let her see me. Kind of like in the movie Klute, where Jane Fonda, the whore, glances at her watch, behind the back of the john on top of her. It's impolite to look at clocks in many situations.

It was nearing four pm, and Abby, even though she almost never comes home before four thirty, has on occasion, and remember that she does not know that Kim and I are having this soiree. So I said to Kim something to the effect that maybe we should just keep an open mind about all of this and keep in touch. She said ok and left.

That went pretty fucking well. Awesome, in fact. I was proud of myself.
Chapter 29: Racial Slurs

Why is black bad and white good?

As I said a long time back when telling you about Frank and me and our pot smoking escapades, we used a lot of racial slurs. The N word which even I can't say here. Cracker. White motherfucking devil. Those kinds of slurs. Along with cunt, whore, wop, fag, polak, or is it pollack? I know one is a fish and the other is a dirty, nasty person from Poland. What is a dirty sleazebag from America called? I don't honestly know, but I'm sure there is more than one term.

But given my limited ability to concentrate, let me stick with racial slurs and prejudice and racism in general now. I'm going to be jumping around here a bit due I have some pretty strong feelings about all of this, so look for the gestalt please.

When I was younger, in my twenties, looking for the meaning of life, several interesting things happened. First I took LSD. Three or four times. The first time was the most important and the other two or three were pretty much irrelevant except for the last one when I was working at a resort in the Pennsylvania mountains and I took something called blotter which was basically a small piece of LSD soaked paper, and I found out later it had some nasty impurities in it which made me have an overwhelming fear that I couldn't stop myself from jumping out of the window of my dorm room, which probably wouldn't have been so bad since it was only on the second floor and there was a soft grassy area under it.

But the first time it was something called windowpane and it was a small thing that looked like a piece of plastic but it melted in my mouth. I should be more accurate and say that ¼ of it melted in my mouth because that's all I took. It was given to me by a lovely girl, a girlfriend of sorts. I think we lasted about two to three weeks. She smelled as good as any woman I have ever been with, simply because she never used deodorant, preferring the natural way she smelled, and I definitely agreed.

Back to the point and it's that I took LSD and then sat in my bedroom of a very old Victorian house somewhere way up North, and I basically looked at the cover of an album by Gary McFarland called 'Slaves' for the next four hours and it changed my racial awareness forever.

The cover was a picture of a dirty and old black man's foot in chains. I have to tell you that I cried for most of those four hours. The tears and emotions just poured out. For four hours, I just thought one thing, and that was how can one person do that to another person? Something about the oneness of humanity just engulfed me. I haven't been the same person since.

I grew up in the rural South and even though my parents were not prejudiced and were progressive by the standards of the day, I received by racial education from my buddies at school.

Thank god, or goddess, or both, for Yankees coming down South and helping to change the racial climate. I know it's a lot more complicated than that, and I know slavery was big in the Northeast too, and I know people in the Northeast who are a whole lot more prejudiced than people in the South. But the South held on to its racial heritage longer. The good news is that Southerners are generally pretty nice people. And I think that when the history of the world is written, it will be shown that the South, by having had more slaves for longer, the races being forced to live side by side, combined with the general lack of hate and of a generally good mannered religious climate, produced a type of progress that will go into the gumbo and produce something for historians and humanitarians to chew on for quite a while.

So given my relative lack of prejudice (we are all prejudiced to some extent except for maybe mother Teresa and Gandhi) and given the fact that I was hanging out with a highly evolved individual, i.e. Frank, we both felt no guilt at all in taking on the norms of the day regarding the political correctness of using racial slurs in a creative manner.

Digression. The streets are littered with people who have done what Frank and I did. Take Randall Kennedy who wrote the book "Nigger, the Strange Career of a Troublesome Word." I can use the N word here because it was the title of his book. I read a synopsis of the book and it started by him telling some really awful, if you are politically correct, and damn funny, if you are post PC like Frank and I like to think we are, jokes. So I sent him an email telling him I thought he was dead on, and then I asked him if he was a cracker or a N, not knowing truly, and knowing that if he was offended, he was a hypocrite, and true to form, he sent back a very nice email and told me he was an African American who grew up the South. That was pretty cool.

If you're not thoroughly disgusted with me by now, I thank you. If you are, i.e. disgusted, then I've failed to make my case, and I will probably also fail to make my case with Kim about open marriage, and I am probably doomed to tilting at windmills for the rest of my miserable life.

One more thing I just thought about and it probably won't sway anyone who thinks I'm a disgusting arrogant piece of shit racist, but it's on my mind so here it is.

There was an episode of that TV show, I forgot the name of it, about a family that drove around the country because the dad had lost his job and they were poor. Poor but proud. So anyway the kids were always having a hard time due they had to change schools a lot and one of the boys, I'm guessing about eleven years old, was in a new school and he saw two black boys doing a high five and calling each other 'N', and he filed that away in his unprejudiced brain and later pulled it back out when he saw one of the boys alone and tried to befriend him with a high five and "hey N." You can guess how the shit flew. Very good and thought provoking show, it was.
Chapter 30: The Girl Who Gave Me LSD and Something Else

I wasn't going to do this, i.e. introduce a new character, but I'm not going to name her, and she won't come up again I'm pretty sure, so you don't have to try and remember her, and there's just one point I want to make about her. She was about twenty, and going to a very fancy girl's school up North, and how I ended up there is way too complicated. I wasn't going to school there, already having graduated from another college, but I was there none the less and I had, basically, another girlfriend at that fancy college, and I was content with her, but she was away for a break and this other girl was there and a bunch of us went out drinking one night and it just happened.

And then it kept happening for about two weeks until she told me one night that she had slept with her old boyfriend the previous night and I flipped out because I considered her my girlfriend which, in retrospect, was absurd because I was the cheater and I was accusing her of cheating on me with her boyfriend.

It all seemed so clear to me at the time and I was terribly aggrieved and I carried that hurt with me for a long time and now that hurt seems like the stupidest emotion I have ever had, because if I had been in my open marriage, or open relationship mode that I'm currently in, it would have been a huge amount of fun and lust. I fucking blew it.

Anyway, she did give me LSD which changed my world. She also introduced me to the sublime joy of inserting my nose into her fresh from the shower, fresh being in the past twelve hours or so but not chemically de-odorized, armpits, to breathe in her essence, as I fucked her.

Here's what you need to ask yourself. Why did goddess give women scent glands if not for men, or other women to enjoy? And I'm not just talking armpits, as you can well imagine. Unfortunately, Abby is not of the same mindset, seeing the need to totally de-odorize herself, despite my many admonitions, so I am left to try and dig deep into my sensual memory banks and go back to those eventful two weeks to get my armpit fix, which I seem to need. Often.
Chapter 31: Some Random Thoughts

When I was trying to figure out how long to make this diatribe, which of course this story is, i.e. one long diatribe, I did some minimal research, and I do mean minimal, because I just don't like rules and conventions, and the more research I did, I kept hearing about formatting and a lot of extraneous bullshit, so I zeroed in on number of pages and decided that about two hundred would be ideal. That seemed like a lot when I started, but the mother fuckers, i.e. pages, are just flowing out now and I'm pretty sure when I reach that goal, I'll be more than a little sad because I'm getting more than a little pleasure remembering days past. Reference the armpits.

And if there are those out there who care to think about it and are astute enough to analyze the style of writing, you're probably going to detect a very large difference in the early pages and the later ones, and that's due, in large part, to the fact that I am giving up any sense of self respect as I move forward so you're definitely seeing more of the real me later on, which may not be that good of a thing.

I figure that none of my friends or family will ever read this, so I have nothing to fear about just throwing out my sickest and most secret desires. And anyway, I'm not a child molester or a crook or a wife beater, and my perversions are not illegal, so at least I'm not risking jail time.

But back to pages and the fact that I figured out, pretty early on, that if you do a lot of chapter breaks, then each break basically adds a page due two pages on either side of the chapter are cut in half, on average. So right now, for example, I'm on page seventy three in my computer but add thirty one chapter breaks, so I'm really up to one hundred and four, so I'm over half done. It seems like cheating, but maybe that's the norm. And in my defense, as I said, at least I think I said, I've been reading those chick lit books and I really like the chapter breaks because it's easy to pick back up again after a break of a few days.

I just nullified everything I said in the previous paragraph by doing a little more research, which I wish I hadn't done, and that research tells me that many people read things like this using e-readers and each e-reader formats pages differently according to their own standards and page thirty seven, for example, in one e-reader may be forty five in another. Damn.

There is nothing worse than having to go back and read page after page again to try and get back in synch with the story. And since my story is really not a story but just a bunch of random rants, mostly, maybe this diatribe will be easy to digest. Hell, if you miss a few of the rants, it's no big deal. Actually it's no big deal if you miss all of the rants, i.e. the whole fucking story, which is pretty depressing, because it means, quite clearly, that my life is not worth all that much, if at all, in the great scheme of things.

I do that a lot, i.e. just take a break from the normal flow of things and think random thoughts. It helps get through the days.
Chapter 32: The Super Brain Theory

Many years ago I solved a problem that had nagged at me for over twenty years. Basically it's what I call the Buddhist paradox.

In my quest to understand the nature of reality and unlock the mysteries of the universe and save mankind in the process, I read all the mystical, metaphysical, paranormal, psychological, and philosophical stuff that I could find and wrap my brain around.

Keep in mind this was pre internet which is a really relevant issue. People growing up today have no idea what it is like to be in a non internet environment. If you were on great and noble quests like mine, you had to actually seek out and go to libraries and book stores, many of which did not have what you were looking for. I don't mean to belabor the point, but it took years and years to actually find the information. Anybody embarking on a similar quest today can do it in a fraction of the time, alas. But I know in my heart that my quest was harder and therefore more significant. At least I think so.

So anyway the quest is done, I've achieved my personal goals, but mankind is still fucked.

Back to the paradox. In my readings of Zen and Buddhist literature, I found it more than a little interesting that these guys say that seeking worldly pleasures is the root cause of all human suffering.

Just an aside. Actually two asides. I never, until now, thought about it, but all the Zen and Buddhist writers were male. Also, I'm not sure of the distinction between Zen and Buddhism and Zen Buddhism. I probably once knew, but I've forgotten and I'm not going to go back and try and get it straight. All I really know is that all of these guys are incredibly wise and evolved and compassionate and insightful and that's all I need to know.

Back to the point. The paradox. How can it be that human beings, genetically designed for pleasure to survive and procreate by either evolution or god or goddess or the big bang or whatever, cause their own misery by acting on the very impulses that are coded in their DNA? That, to me, is the Buddhist paradox.

If these Buddhist guys are as smart as I think they are, then they must be right in that seeking pleasure is the root cause of suffering. But then god or whomever or whatever must have fucked up by giving us pleasure receptors in the first place.

So I carried that seeming conflict with me for over twenty years and then one day, I had the answer. It was just there.

Afuckingmazing, I thought.

At the same time that I got the answer, and it was one simple answer I assure you, I got an announcement of the super brain's existence. Just like that. I swear to you.

Do you remember when you were in school and they said in science class something to the effect that scientists can only find a function for 5% of the human brain? All the things that we do regarding moving, eating, digesting, fucking, and so on can be traced to just a small portion of the brain. And all of the biochemical reactions that keep us going are done on a cellular or organ level.

So what the fuck does the other 95% of the brain do? Well, let me clear up that mystery that has eluded science since the dawn of time.

That part of the brain is the super brain. We all have one. Everybody. Even really seemingly stupid people. Even really bad people. Hitler had one. Too bad the motherfucker didn't listen to his super brain.

Think of the super brain as a really, really, really smart friend. I mean so smart that he/she amazes you with what comes out of his/her mouth. And also realize that the super brain is totally compassionate and enlightened. Now for the kicker. The super brain is hard wired to YOU. It knows everything you know. All those dark little secrets that you thought were hidden from the world. Wrong. But, don't worry, the super brain is not judgmental. It's there to help you work through those issues, not to condemn you for them.

One more attribute to the super brain. It works 24/7, so every minute of every day it's working on solving problems you give it.

There are three main keys to tapping into this largess.

One, knowing of its existence. That's done. I just told you about it. You're one third of the way there.

Two, knowing how to program it. This is incredibly easy. All you've got to do is think of something you want it to work on. You can actually think it, or if you are like me and talk to yourself, just go ahead and say it out loud, remembering, of course, that anyone actually hearing you might report you to someone that they think might be able to help you fit better into society.

Three, hearing the results. This is the tricky one and takes some practice. Most people, I think, pretty much disregard random thoughts that pop into their heads. Say for example, you are walking down the street and suddenly you get a notion, for lack of a better word, to take the road to the left. How many people do that? Very few I think because we usually have a plan when we are walking and random turns are not part of that plan.

But maybe the super brain, knowing you and knowing, perhaps, what lies ahead down that path, or least knowing that something different lies down that path, and knowing that you need to become more random, and thus more creative, in your approach to life, is telling you that you should turn left. It doesn't insist and give you a crushing headache or some other affliction if you don't, which it could by the way if it wanted to, but it doesn't work that way. It merely suggests. And that suggestion is the super brain in action.

In the case of the Buddhist paradox, it was not just some suggestion. It was a very clear answer to the problem. Not a word by word sentence. It was non verbal. It just basically planted the solution in my conscious brain. That wonderful aha moment. The epiphany. It was just fucking there and it was so fucking obvious. And it took the super brain twenty plus years, working 24/7. But maybe not. Maybe it took a micro second and then it took me, George, being the simple minded person that I am, twenty plus years to hear it.
Chapter 33: Using the Super Brain to Try and Nail Kim

Ok back to the real world. The conscious world. The world of pleasure and sin and woe. Since I know of the super brain's existence and since I know that it is not judgmental, and since I know that my super brain has helped me to discard antiquated societal restrictions, cheating on your spouse for example, I decide that the super brain should be directed to figure out how to get inside Kim, literally. I know that sounds crass, and shallow, but fuck it. That's who and what I am. And besides, it's not as though only me would be having orgasms, if the super brain and I are successful.

It's not as though I actually say to the super brain, "super brain, let's figure out the best strategy to get Kim out of her angry stage and gradually try and get her to embrace that cheating is an antiquated concept, and having different sexual partners, as long as both people in the marriage agree, can be a constructive and mutually pleasurable adventure."

It's really more like I'm thinking all of that, including a lot more, like making sure Abby is on board for example, and then taking those thoughts and letting the super brain be aware of them, which is kind of moot anyway, because the super brain is already aware of all of that, and then this is the part that is hard to explain in words because all of this is a non verbal conversation with the super brain. It just kind of happens. I'm not sure if I'm directing the super brain, or maybe the super brain has taken control and it just lets me think that I'm in control. It doesn't really matter though who is in control, as long as the objective is attained, i.e. giving Kim the best licking of her life.
Chapter 34: More on Me and Abby

Abby and I are kind of back into the old routine with one major exception. I'm constantly curious about where she is. It's not like I follow her or check her email. Well, full disclosure here, I do check her email on occasion. Daily.

Now before you get all bent out of shape, especially you members of the sisterhood, know this. She many times asks me to check her email. Maybe not many times, but once that I remember. I can't actually remember the circumstances, but I'm sure, pretty sure at least, that she asked me to check it. But more to the point, she checks it at home and leaves the computer on, so I can see it daily.

Now when I say I check it, I mean that I just see who it is from, since it's sitting right there on the screen, on the table, in our condo, where she has left it on. I mean if she had something to hide, don't you think she would turn the damn thing off, or at least move to another program? I've learned that if I actually click on the email, it turns from black to gray, and that's a dead giveaway that I have read it, and she chastised me for that once, rather severely, so I never click on the actual email, just reading the header line and who it's from.

Who's to say she doesn't have another email account that she is more careful with, closing it after reading and sending secret love and lust letters to Dewayne and god knows who else, and she uses the email program that she leaves open as a decoy to throw me off? That is possible, but I think not because she's just not that energetic, I think, regarding subterfuge. She doesn't need to be.

I've pretty much convinced myself that her affair with Dewayne started out, as I mentioned, after a bike ride, and they probably just fucked and/or sucked/licked a few more times, without coming close to the torrid love affair that Lara and I had, which is a very good thing because Abby, with her black and white thing deeply ensconced in her psyche, might just have talked to some of the sisters and they might just have convinced her that Dewayne is a saint and I'm a piece of shit, and then she might have left me for him.

But I think that problem is solved now with him married to Kim, and if I can just convince her not to go down the tired trail of the wounded spouse and all that it entails, we may be home free.

I kind of got distracted by the email thing, but that's ok because there's really not a story there. Same with her cell phone which she leaves sitting around charging which gives me the opportunity to check on dialed and received and missed calls. Don't you think she'd not leave it around if she had something to hide?

Don't give me too much shit about this. I'm not going around checking on her with the idea of collecting evidence for a divorce case for god's sake. Truth be known, I'm secretly hoping to find evidence that she is calling or emailing Dewayne, which means she is still fucking him which would mean that my pursuit of Kim is legitimate, and obviously necessary, for her and me.

Just to take stock here and now, Abby and I are still together, nothing has really changed, Kim and Dewayne are still married, and I have no idea how it's going between them, I'm still working with the super brain, or it's working with me to try and come up with the best plan to move Kim in the appropriate direction given her situation.

I just had a thought. I wonder if I should engage Dewayne in some sort of dialogue. You know, man to man. It's obvious that Abby is not going to talk to me about it, as she has no sense that she really did anything wrong, which is good on many levels, actually very damn good on all levels because it moves her toward becoming polyamorous, if she can just get beyond the nun and society induced bullshit mindset that says you can't love two people at once. Good luck on that one, the little man says to me. Also, I'm not sure how to proceed with Kim, because it just doesn't feel like I've made much progress even though I'm probably not giving myself enough credit for what I have already accomplished in my half hour meeting with her.

So man to man with Dewayne? It just doesn't feel right. I mean, how are these things supposed to go. Me demanding that he stop fucking Abby, when in fact, I want him to resume, assuming of course that he has stopped. Do you just go to the man who is fucking your wife and lay the cards on the table, straight, as in "I know you and Abby are fucking because Kim told us all so, and that's perfectly ok with me, in fact I love the idea, and I hope you continue, or resume if you have discontinued, and I hope you can convince Abby, or maybe help me convince her if you think that might be more effective, that I really like the idea, even though that might sound strange, at first at least, and that I'd like to hear all the details of your sexual encounters, if that's ok with you of course, and finally I'd like to start fucking and/or licking your beautiful wife Kim, keeping in mind that you and her might want to set some limits, which is why I threw in the licking option if that's, perhaps, how you personally might want to have a say in the process."

I know that was a long sentence, but I just couldn't find a way to break it and it was rolling along quite nicely, I think.

Wonder what Dewayne would make of that sentence beyond the obvious of probably being annoyed at the length of it. If he's a man's man, and I have no way to know that or not given my limited time with him, he might, no he would, think I'm some fucking crazy man, and he would, no doubt, be having an aha moment that Abby was right when she told him I was a fruitcake and that was part of the reason she was fucking him instead of me. That and his much larger dick, obviously.
Chapter 35: I Call Dewayne

Sometimes you just have to wing it. When you have no earthly idea how to move forward, you just have to get in there and mix things up and hope that when the dust settles, you're still in one piece and the gods are still smiling on you.

Count them. Tired phrases. There are six tired phrases in the paragraph above. Six. I bet you didn't see them until I pointed it out. In fact I didn't catch them until number four, and then I just added numbers five and six for effect.

The point is that I'm just at a loss as to how to approach Dewayne, mainly because I do think he's a man's man and he won't react well to anything I say. If it were Frank, my fag friend, and if he wasn't a fag, or maybe if he was bisexual, and if he was doing Abby, we would have no problem at all because he knows what I think about sex and sexuality, and he's basically on the same page sexually as I am, keeping in mind the significant difference that he does men and I do Abby. On occasion. Rare occasion. Me doing Abby, that is.

I called Dewayne. But I hung up before the connection was even made. Well, I really hung up before I dialed the last digit lest I fuck up and do the whole number and then didn't disconnect it fast enough and he sees with caller ID that it's coming from our house.

I know. I shouldn't have even entertained the idea of calling him because there is almost no possibility that we are on the same page about the matter of him having intercourse with my wife. And I know the script that I've been programmed to play and we all know that I'm not going to play that script, and Dewayne, no doubt, expects me to play it, and if I don't, he is not going to know how to react, and when people are blindsided with something totally unexpected, they tend to react badly, and reacting badly is not what I want, especially from a man's man.
Chapter 36: More on Home Life with a Major Digression

I'm sorry that these chapters just keep getting shorter and shorter and I swear it's not an attempt to just squeeze more pages out of this story, it's just how the information is flowing at this point, which is very fast, and I'm thinking it's almost like automatic writing. I just had a flash. Maybe it's akin to Abby and her brain to mouth switch which I like in the off position, i.e. no censorship interfering with what's really on her mind. So maybe it's good that emotions and ideas are just flowing from my psyche onto the computer screen with no thought about cleaning things up or trying to look good to anyone, which has never been my strong suit anyway.

This is going to be a significant digression because it's important to me. It involves saving the planet and I really want at least one human being to understand what's behind my actions.

To set the scene, Abby used to do my wash. Washing and ironing that is. Then one day, out of the blue, when the kids were growing up, and she thought they were old enough to do their own wash, she just kind of flipped out and told us all to do our own laundry. That was pretty awesome and I respected her for that, basically telling us all that she was doing too much, which she was, and telling the kids they needed to be more responsible.

I truly don't think I was miffed at all. I guess I never really thought much about the great equation that all couples face regarding duties and who does what. I was working under the old model of the man who breaks his ass to bring home the bacon, for me, and broccoli for Abby, and the housework and kid raising was her realm. I know what you are thinking and please don't go there because Abby has already, thousands of times, and I'm as well educated, now, as any American male about the necessity of making sure that a stay at home mom, which she was at that time, is appreciated and spared the full burden of housework, which by the way, I truly believe is every bit as important as bringing home the groceries.

So, I settled into a routine in which I did my laundry on Saturday mornings and then ironed my pants and shirts on Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning. The only thing I minded about the whole process was the fact that it took about an hour to iron, and Abby, without fail, would criticize my ironing. No, I never said "if you don't like the way I do it, do it yourself." Well, maybe a few times I said that.

She never did iron my clothes again, and she continued to criticize my efforts. Thinking back just now, maybe that was the beginning of our problems. Maybe I should have drawn a line in the sand. Maybe her lack of respect for me, which she vehemently denies, and I find myself seeing signs of everywhere I look, stems from the fact that I was such a pussy about giving in to the laundry deal.

Ok, fast forward about three or four years from the ironing capitulation. My outlook on life had changed. First I started wearing shorts year round. Every day. Even in the winter, which created some stares from random strangers on very cold days when I'm out walking at four am, which I do every day for two hours, but that's not the point here, and I'm not even sure why I mentioned it, except for the fact that the automatic writing has taken control and who am I to question that?

Wearing shorts kind of changed me from a 'I don't really concern myself about my clothes' mode to a 'I don't give a rat's ass what anyone thinks about what I wear because it's clean and besides, it's what is in your heart and soul that counts and not how you look'. You can guess what's coming, for sure. Now I don't iron my clothes. I put on a clean, unironed shirt daily, and I feel good that I'm doing my part to save the world by lightening up on the electricity use. Which brings me to nuclear energy, but let's save that for later.

That's a pretty fucking significant digression and I'm sorry for that. But it was important. To me at least.

Oops, I forgot about the party and the un-ironed shirt, which should be added here because it's important and doesn't really belong anywhere else.

Abby and I went to a party thrown by two of the prominent people in the community. This isn't a very prominent community, so being prominent in an un-prominent community is really no big deal, but to one of the ladies throwing the party, it was a big deal. She always wears fancy clothes and a big hat at Easter and she is some big wig in the local Catholic Church.

When I was growing up and we went to the Presbyterian Church, there was a preacher and a choir and that was it. Now when Abby and I go to the Catholic Church, twice each year, on Easter and Christmas Eve, there seems to be more and more people up there every year and the priest does less and less, or so it seems to me. Abby tells me those are lay people and I really don't know what lay means, but it's really not my business so I just observe it all. So anyway, this lady is one of the most prominent lay people in this church in this not very prominent town, but she takes her job seriously.

Back to the party and I was there wearing my clean un-ironed shirt and shorts, which by the way I wear 365 days a year except on leap years when it's 366 day, and this lady, came over to me, and it was obvious that she had had a few too many drinks, and she just kind of looked me over up and down, and then said "Just what kind of statement are you trying to make?." She actually said this twice, with a clear emphasis on statement, and a huge amount of overall disdain.

I kind of like her husband who was standing about ten feet away, and I think he might have been somewhat embarrassed by what she was doing, but maybe not, but since I thought he might be and since he's a decent guy, I didn't tell the bitch what I was thinking which was, "Lady, we're taking down mountains for coal to burn for electricity which ruins the atmosphere and we're cracking atoms which creates particles that can kill all living things for tens of thousands of years, and my not ironing is a small, granted very small, way of trying to help stop this madness. And if you look at the larger picture, there are so many more serious and egregious things happening in the world than a man walking around with an un-ironed shirt. So get a grip, take a chill pill, lighten up on the booze, and leave me the fuck alone."

Abby would not have been pleased if I said anything approaching that.

I know I keep digressing and digressing from the digression and I'm sorry but here is one final thought regarding ironing or not. And besides, just think of this saga as a metaphor on life, and not an end in itself. Like someone once said, "life is a journey, not a destination." And this saga being a journey, I'm not particularly concerned with the speed, so slowing it down with digressions is not a bad thing, in my mind at least.

At some point, some really famous Hollywood figure is going to start wearing obviously un-ironed clothes and then someone like Oprah is going to ask him or her why, and they will give her something like my spiel above, not giving me credit of course, and they will be respected for taking that stance, and then they will be copied by their millions of fans, and then everybody will stop ironing and that look will become fashionable.

At that point, I'll have to make a decision as to whether to step up and try and claim credit for starting this new fashion craze, perhaps even suing the star for stealing my idea in the first place. But, no one will believe me, alas.

Along those same lines, I remember when I was young and us hippies wore faded and ragged jeans because we didn't have money to replace them and now the ragged and faded look are all the rage and people pay megabucks for someone to fuck up their jeans before they even buy them. So being on the cutting edge of a fashion, as I have been, with faded and fucked up jeans and un-ironed shirts, has done me no good at all.

Home life is pretty normal right now and I like it that way. I like all except the sleeping thing. Fortunately, it's about to get better because it's late October and the leaves are falling, but more significantly, it's getting colder, and Abby, having gone to college in Vermont, loves to sleep with the window open. I call it a window, but it's really a sliding glass door, but it's the only thing that opens in the condo, besides the front door, and nobody really talks about opening a door at night.

Talking about sleeping with an open window conjures up romance and back to nature and all sorts of cool things, so that's why we say 'we sleep with the window open', even though, technically it's a door. And the good thing is that Abby who is loathe to get near me in bed, all of the summer and most of the spring and fall, just kind of snuggles up to me, obviously for the warmth only, but it's still nice. I wish we lived in Siberia.

The normal existence that I referred to above consists of us just doing our own thing in the morning, her swimming or running depending on the day, and me walking, every day, four to six am, two full hours, about six miles, never failing, even in the rain and sleet and snow.

We meet for breakfast but not really. When I get back from my daily six mile, two hour, every day walk, she is eating her breakfast, except on Tuesday and Thursday, when she swims and then goes from the pool to school, where she teaches. On the other days of the week, I come in after my two hour six mile walk and take a shower, put on one of my clean, un-ironed shirts and shorts and sit down for a light breakfast.
Chapter 37: Abby's Lust and an Apology

First the apology regarding the significantly long digression about the ironing. Sorry.

Now the good stuff about Abby's lust.

I gave you those mundane, boring details about our daily routines for a reason. To show you that we live a pretty normal, boring existence, which points out, or should point out, that even boring mundane existences can be the springboard for lusty sex filled encounters.

Not seeing my logic here? Well, here's how it plays out, in my mind at least. Abby has raised three kids, almost single handedly, as I admitted, grudgingly, earlier. Now she carries on a normal, productive life, teaching kids which is about as noble a profession as there is, and she still has time, and more importantly, the inclination, to have an affair. That's pretty awesome.

The other point here is that Abby cares enough about her lust to risk something.

I'm trying to be fair to her here. I think I always try to be fair to her, by the way.

But I'm also trying to be clear. And being clear, sometimes, sounds critical, which in fact it is. As I've said to her, probably too many times here, and definitely too many times in real life, that if she would just be a little, no, a lot, more critical of her thinking process regarding things as black or white, and see some shades of gray, then my life, her life, our lives, would be heaven on earth. That's an exaggeration, but it would still seem like heaven on earth compared to what we have now.

Here's my take on our respective libidos and how they interact, or not, and how that impacts our relationship and lives.

I'm certain that everyone thinks their libido is normal. Why shouldn't they. It's all they know from a personal perspective. And when two people get together with libidos that are about the same, it works well. And if they are far apart, i.e. the libidos, accommodation must be made if the relationship is going to last.

Here's where it gets tricky. Very tricky. This is going to sound like a very radical statement. At least it seems radical to me. To Abby it would sound insane, if I dared mention it to her, which we all know, will never happen.

I think that Abby and my libidos are about on par.

So what the fuck's the problem?

Well, here's how it plays out, in real life, in our bedroom, in our bed, every day and every night. This is our reality.

Abby doesn't think that lust is her right. Those fucking asshole perverted nuns. She thinks than men are more lustful than women. She knows that for a fact. You could give her mountains of credible evidence to the contrary, documented by experts in the field of human psychology, questioning thousands of people, over decades, and she would reject it. Abby never lets facts get in the way of her beliefs. Never.

She also knows that I have a higher libido than she does. It's obvious. I'm a man after all. And she knows that if she were to follow her lust and want to have sex more than or even approaching my level of desire, she would be guilty of something. She's not sure of what. But that's beside the point.

Enter Dewayne. Enter indeed. He shows up, pays attention to her, her lust rises to the surface, as it should, as it does in every breathing human being, she is overwhelmed by it, she succumbs, and then the shit thinking kicks in.

Fucking nuns.

Here's the shit thinking. In a nutshell.

She has done something wrong. She knows that. The nuns warned her. But, what she has done wrong is not clear. To her. At this point.

She is conflicted because she likes Dewayne. As a friend. As a fellow bike rider. As a fellow athlete. And she really liked the sex. Yes indeed.

So somebody has to be blamed. Because something was done wrong. That's clear. Black and white.

The wheels of her mind are spinning. This is not some sort of devious, lazy 'blame the dog for the broken vase' routine. This is truly deep thought. I'm not being sarcastic here. This is trying to make sense out of a situation that just doesn't make any sense. She enjoyed fucking Dewayne, that's a given. Lustiness leading to cheating is wrong. That's a given. Cheating is wrong. That's a maybe.

Enter George, figurative speaking, unfortunately. Abby, as all wives do, has some serious issues with him. I.e. me. The hoarding. The demands for more touching. Requests actually, in any objective person's view, but demands, none the less, to her, which trumps all else. So she's moving in the right direction, she knows instinctively. George is also not that great a communicator. And he leaves little crumbs in the kitchen.

She knows that people have affairs. She knows women have not been empowered for that long, historically, and that they need to fight for their rights. She knows that she is capable of living on her own, even though she chose to have a traditional family and raise kids. She likes the direction this internal discussion is going. She knows there would be life after George. Go girl, she thinks and almost says out loud.

Soon, the issue is not her affair, or her sucking and fucking and getting licked by Dewayne. It's about women's rights and abusive husbands. Hoarding is abusive she thinks. All those fucking crumbs.

So she's completed the process and she's tired of thinking but it was worth it and she's satisfied.

No, she's not going to divorce or leave George. That's silly. But she is going to continue to fight for her rights. She has to.

The notion that her lust and her libido are somehow repressed, except with Dewayne, would be just a George-made fantasy which she would dismiss in a micro second, if George had the balls to bring it up. And I don't.
Chapter 38: A breather

That was a struggle. Getting all that out about Abby and her libido being repressed and her inability to even consider it. I even had to go take a walk before I began it. A short one compared to the two hour six mile walk I do 365 days a year. And 366 days on leap years. The walk cleared my head and gave me some energy to get all that down.

But now it's all said and in the computer and we can move on.

Isn't it a wonder that only fifty percent of marriages end in divorce? Seems like it should approach one hundred percent with shit like this, the libido issue, in our case, looming over everything. Every night. Except November through February, when it's cold. And also, I forgot, in July when we are at the summer house.

So now that I've so cleverly diagnosed the problem, how do I/we move toward the solution?

A digression. I read once, I think it was in the book, 'Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus' that one of the main differences between men and women is how they address problems. Basically a man sees the problem, looks for a solution, finds the solution and implements it. Women, on the other hand, see a problem, look for a solution, find the solution but then they need to talk about it for a certain amount of time before implementing it, which may or may not be a better approach. The problem, of the problem, is that men and women don't know how the other gender thinks, and that creates a new problem.

End of digression. That was a short one.

Ok, so I know the problem and I already know the solution, i.e. open marriage, and now all I have to do is figure out a way of implementing it.

Well, not so fast. I have to also make sure that Abby knows there is a problem. That might not have a solution.

I've also got to make sure Kim doesn't do anything foolish like divorcing Dewayne, thus opening the door for Abby to reconsider her 'not leaving George' mandate. At least I think that is her mandate.
Chapter 39: Some Random Thoughts about Lust

I hope I'm not sounding like some lust filled dirty old man who thinks about nothing but sex all day and all night.

Let's take a trip through my day. Today for example. After my two hour six mile walk I went to the gym. I hate to admit it, but today's walk, and then again next Tuesday is/will be, only one hour and thirty five minutes. That means that two days a week I am twenty five minutes short of what I am so proud of, i.e. my two hour six mile walk. I'm only proud of this because Abby is so damn athletic and in such good shape, having done two half ironmen and tons of shorter triathlons, and looks about twenty years younger than her biological age, i.e. forty eight. So I'm proud that at least I keep myself in decent shape with my daily two hour six mile walk.

Anyway, back to the twenty five minute shortfall. I am not cheating because I shoot a hundred free throws after lifting weights for ten minutes, and that takes twenty five minutes, and since I miss a lot of the free throws and the ball goes careening all over the place and I have to run to get it, I count those twenty five minutes as walking time because the net average of standing and shooting and then running after the ball certainly balances out to the same as walking, I think. I'm compelled to count things like this. It's not healthy, I know, but I can't stop it.

Back to the day. Back to the lust.

As I was walking into the gym at about 5:40 am, my favorite little co-ed was right in front of me, which was very fortunate indeed for me, because she is tall and thin and has one of the finest butts on the face of the earth and she always wears some really skimpy shorts, no doubt for my, and other men's and maybe women's pleasure. She has two pairs of shorts that have writing on them and one says 'pink' and one says 'rip it', both of which, I think, are pretty awesome slogans to be displayed on her beautiful ass.

So I look, briefly. I lust. I imagine how she might taste. And then I go and lift weights, knowing, for absolute certain, she would no more fuck me than she would fuck a priest.

Ok, that's about all the lust I have from then until I come home at night, have cocktail hour with Abby, looking at her lustfully while she sips her beer, not wanting her to know I am lusting after her because of reasons I have so painfully and honestly laid out, and then I go to bed and wait for her to snuggle, wishing it was later in the year.

No wait. I wrote the above yesterday and then went home and went out on the small deck of our condo, fifth floor, top floor, of the high rise, at least it's a high rise in this small college town. I was in my chair, waiting for Abby to return from her walk so we could have cocktail hour, which is really cocktail quarter hour these days, not that we don't like to spend time together, but when she has finished her beer, she's ready for dinner. And there I was sitting, looking down, and then I remembered my evening lust, before Abby sits down, and actually after she sits down too, and that lust is directed toward the lovely young coeds who walk and run downtown, in incredibly skimpy and sexy outfits, that time of the day.

Now I ask you. Honestly. Am I just a miserable old horny man? Or am I dealing with my natural lust in the best way that I can?

Here's my take on my lust and lust in general.

Lust is good. Lust is natural. Lust can't be turned off. You can attempt to turn it off, but it will backfire. Look at Jimmy Swaggert. Look at Jim Baaker.

What you should do with it, in my opinion, is just observe it. Treat it like a friend. When it comes, be thankful. Be thankful you are a human. Follow it as far as you can without interfering with other people or your own life.

Look at it this way. If you are lusting after someone and then go follow them home and peep in their window, or worse, you are not only fucked up, you are risking your freedom, and you are perverting natural lust. But if you simply go with the lust as far as acknowledging your feelings and then letting it go, that's a winner.

I guess it's time to let you know the answer to the Buddhist paradox, not that I was withholding it, but I just forgot about it and since it's immediately relevant to this discussion, here it is.

Remember the paradox, i.e. earthly pleasures, such as lust, are hard wired into the very core of what makes us human, and are necessary for the perpetuation of the species. But, according to the Buddhists, the pursuit of them is what causes human misery, and giving up the desires is the only path to nirvana, which seems to be a pretty awesome place or state of mind, so they say, and I tend to believe Buddhists.

Ok back now to the lovely lady with pink sprawled out across her perfect ass, well actually sprawled across the tiny shorts she wears on that perfect ass. I lust for her when I see her. It's brief. It's natural. It's harmless. But, here is a very important distinction, and the answer to the paradox.

Suppose, one fine day, she walks up to me, as unlikely as that might seem, and asks me to go have coffee with her, and after I almost have the big one, i.e. a massive heart attack, and after I stammer out a yes, and after we have coffee, and after she makes it clear she wants to fuck me, and after I fuck her, and while I'm lying there, with her, both of us naked, of course, and I'm admiring, from a very close distance I might add, her perfect ass, then I have that aha moment and realize that the answer to the paradox is so fucking simple that I can't believe it took the super brain twenty plus years, or, as I said before, it took me twenty plus years to hear the answer to the problem that the super brain solved in a micro second.

Sorry, again, for that long sentence. Must be the coffee I had this morning.

The answer, succinctly, if I'm capable of succinctness, is that it's not the lust that is the problem. Not at all. The lust is good and natural. The problem arises, and the misery follows, in the pursuit of the lust.

Huge distinction here. Massive, gigantic, enormous, humongous distinction between lust and pursuit of lust. They are not even in the same universe, i.e. lust and pursuit of lust.

It's totally ok to lust after Miss pink. It's also totally ok to fuck her, in that unlikely event as described above. It's just not ok, in any sense, in any way, in any manner, to pursue that lust.

Now don't start picking apart my argument by saying that men always pursue women and so on. Yes they do and that's ok too. But this is a different scenario altogether where I am old enough to be her grandfather, even though she is of legal age, and I have Abby, and Miss Rip It probably has a boyfriend, and all other sorts of complications. So pursuing her, by me, at my age, at our various stages in life and relationships, would cause me misery, mostly because it ain't gonna happen, until cows fall from the sky, and that's not something a sane man would bet on or hold his breath for.

But, as I said before, if the cows start falling, there is nothing wrong, in my newly created 'open marriage' 'anything goes' 'still love and respect the spouse' mode, with fucking the shit out of the lovely creature. I wouldn't pass up that chance of a lifetime, and I certainly wouldn't be filled with some sort of guilt because Abby and the boyfriend have been doing the same thing. For a while. A long while, probably. Hopefully.

And if it's not obvious already, I did not get the answer to the Buddhist paradox after fucking that lovely coed. I was just doing a theoretical scenario in which the answer could have come in that splendid circumstance. But as we all know life just doesn't work like that. If it did there would be no bad deaths. We would all die just after having made love to the most beautiful and exciting person on the planet.

One more example to nail shut the coffin on the Buddhist paradox answer, since, in my simple mind, redundancy always helps.

Suppose you like chocolate ice cream. You are at home one summer night and you look in the freezer and the chocolate ice cream is gone. Abby, the bitch, ate it all last night when you were asleep. Shit.

Two choices now. Eat the coffee ice cream, which is there and which you like just as well, usually, but not tonight of course, because the chocolate is gone, and we all know that we always want what we can't have the most.

Second choice. Get in the car, drive to the grocery store, wait in a line that's a mile long because it's the time of the day when every fucking college student is buying just one thing, and that's mostly a six pack of beer, and you know how long it takes since they all have bonus cards, which they forgot, of course, every fucking one of them forgot, and the cashier has to enter their phone numbers instead, and they can't remember whether they used their cell phone or land line number when they filled out the application for the bonus card, and it takes you a good twenty minutes to get checked out, and by that time the ice cream if soft, and when you get home, it's almost liquid, because it's summer, so you have to wait at least an hour for it to get harder in your freezer, and even then, it's way softer than you like it, and then when you sit down to enjoy it, you don't, and you wish you had eaten the mother fucking coffee ice cream in the first place.

Lesson in life. Listen to the Buddhists. If there is chocolate ice cream in the freezer, at home, when you want it, eat it. If not, simply eat the coffee ice cream. Enjoy it. Become one with it.

Lesson in life part two. Listen to George. Lust after the lady in pink. For a moment, or maybe two or even three. Then go on your way and wish her well in life and thank her, silently of course, for giving you something to lust after. But, if she asks you to have a cup of coffee, look heavenward, thank goddess, silently or even out loud in this case, and then ask her, quickly, "your car or mine?"
Chapter 40: I'm Glad; a Very Short Chapter

I'm glad that the paradox has been solved, to my satisfaction, by my super brain, and I'm glad I got the explanation out of my head, into the computer, for someone else to see and ponder on, because at some point, maybe sooner than later, I'm going to move to another dimension, i.e. die, and I'd like to leave something profound behind, and even if it's not that profound to most people, or to anyone else even, at least it seems profound to me, right now, and that's all that counts.

And I'm glad I was able to weave the chocolate ice cream and pink lady into the explanation because those are both important to me, in different ways, of course.
Chapter 41: Our Anniversary

Today is our anniversary. Abby and me. We were married twenty four years ago today. I was scared shitless. My best friend at the time, Thomas, that's his last name by the way, because in college we called everyone by their last name because we thought that was cool, and I stopped at a bar and I had three gin and tonics to calm myself down. I don't remember if he had any, but I don't think so because he was driving, and he really didn't and probably still doesn't drink much at all, although I'm not sure about now because I haven't seen him in about fifteen years, which is a shame because I really liked him.

I was told that I wouldn't have to repeat the vows, just saying "I do," but that turned out to be a lie, a white lie, Abby would later claim, because I don't like public speaking, and this was about as public as it gets, in your own wedding, but I was there, stuck in the situation with no real alternative other than walking out, and Abby, no doubt knew that wasn't very likely, which is why she told me, very clearly, on many occasions, that I would only have to say "I do" a few times, when she knew very well that was a lie. Excuse me, a white lie.

I should have known, right then, that my life was going to take some strange and sometimes unwelcome twists and turns. But I was young and in love and it was too late at that point, so I repeated the vows, as best I could, and I was so fucking glad when it was over, and to this day, I can't wrap my brain around how much women enjoy and need weddings and how much men hate and fear them and would rather not do them. But they, the men, do them anyway, mostly.

Our life together has been an adventure. I don't often sit back and reflect on our time together, but on our anniversary, I do. I guess my overwhelming emotion toward her, is gratitude. Having a beautiful and funny and lustful, well sometimes lustful, and intelligent lady willing to spend her life with me is totally mind blowing. I'm a lucky man. Happy anniversary baby. I love you.

Abby and I usually celebrate our anniversary on a weekend, so even though it was a few days ago, we celebrated last night. We went to a larger city that isn't too far from where we live and got a nice hotel and had a nice dinner. It was very pleasant. When we were having cocktail hour before dinner, in the hotel room, drinking a very nice zinfandel from Northern California that I brought with me because there was no fucking way I was going to pay hotel prices for wine, she told me to turn off the TV which was good, but not unusual, and I did and we drank the wine and I asked her to do me a big favor and she said what and I said to please not get emotional at dinner which she can do.

She said OK and she kept her word and there was hardly any negativity coming from her at all. Nothing bad about her in laws, i.e. my family, no bashing of my friends, which was nice, no general bashing of men, which was really nice, no 'go girls' when talking about people we know or not and the woman and the man break up and Abby is always convinced the man is wrong because the tree fell in the woods. All in all, a pleasant dinner. A little boring, but pleasant. I'm having one of those afterglow feelings, regarding the night out and the dinner. We didn't fuck, but she would have, I know, but I wanted her to want it, not just to do it. Guess I still have a lot of work to do.

It reminded me of how we used to be and how we used to treat each other and I thought about how relationships change, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse, and I was thankful we were still married and I was thankful we were still civil to each other, mostly.

It's easy to find fault with anyone if you look for it. I think it was a Buddhist saying that I remember, or maybe Zen, or both, but it went like this, "a fool sees the spec in his neighbor's eye, but doesn't see the log in his own." And that kind of nicely sums it up. I try not to be too critical of Abby, because she's a really good person with a whole lot of good traits, but I can't just give her a pass when she does or says something totally outrageous. Outrageous in my opinion. But she does the same to me, three or four times more often, it seems to me, but I'm sure she sees it another way.

But somehow the whole fucking thing works, which is amazing, and is also why I'm trying to push it to the next level, I.e. open marriage, because she has already opened the fucking thing, and that has a double meaning, and now it's my turn to try something new, or at the very least, hear about her exploits in much greater detail.
Chapter 42: The Party

Invitations these days are mostly by email, as I'm sure you know. So Abby got it. Actually I got it first, not that I was being nosey, it's just that she leaves her email program running and it's sitting there on the kitchen table, and I happened to walk by, with no intention, mind you, of reading anything, but there it was, so I read it. I just saw the header line and it said party and it was from Dewayne.

Now I'm not stupid and I know that Dewayne isn't going to invite Abby to a private party and fuck her.

I couldn't wait for Abby to get home and read her email. When she got home, she said "hi honey," which she always does, and in her voice, I can usually tell if she had a good or bad day. It, i.e. her voice, sounded ok, so I knew her day was ok. Not good or bad, just ok.

When she finally got around to reading the email invitation, she tried to be coy about it. At least it sounded coy to me. "We got invited to a party at Dewayne and Kimberly's," she said, with no detectable emotion. "Hmm" I said. I didn't want to sound too excited, which was kind of stupid really, because how was she to know that I would be excited, like I was, about how maybe we would go and she would slip off into a back bedroom when the party was going strongly, and no doubt, at least in my mind, give old Dewayne a quick blow job.

Abby was probably trying to sound me out because we have not, to this day, discussed in any significant or meaningful detail, the encounter, her affair, her sex life outside of our marriage, or anything even close to the above.

I'm pretty sure she wanted to go to the party, for the blow job, of course, or maybe just to see how things were going with Dewayne and Kimberly. Kim to me, Kimberly to Abby, just to set it straight.

So she accepted, without ever really asking me, and we went, and here's what went down. I like that. What went down. Kind of makes me sound like a happening person, which of course, I'm not.

On the night of the party, Abby seemed to be taking longer than usual to get ready, and it was interesting that she had her toe nails done that day, which makes no sense since she never wears shoes with her toes exposed, but maybe it just made her feel sexy or better or both.

I have to admit that she looked pretty damned good. Of course, I was wearing one of my clean but wrinkled shirts, hoping to find someone that I could tell about my save the word perspective. I never did.

When we got there, there were about thirty or forty people there already which was good, because the last thing I wanted was for us to arrive first and have some sort of awkward conversation with the newlyweds.

There's one thing about Dewayne that I don't like. Actually it's a thing about Abby and Dewayne that I don't like. It's like some sort of athletic bonding mode where they get into talking about their latest ride and how many miles it was or how fast or who was hurting and a lot of other crap that I don't give a shit about, but I usually have no choice other than to sit and listen.

And then Abby is always oohing and aahing about who is the most physically fit, which I'm sure, is a direct poke in the eye to me, because even though I'm in decent shape, even under the norm in body-mass index scale, yes I look it up often, I'm not Mr. fucking athlete who does an ironman once a month.

While we're on the subject and while I'm venting, I want to say, point blank, with no hesitation, that when I see Dewayne in one of those tight fitting, overpriced, ridiculous looking bike outfits, I wonder what Abby sees in him. Seriously. He's going bald, much faster than I am, even though he is younger, he's not svelte by any stretch of the imagination, and he's pretty damn cocky.

However, as we know now, he's probably fucked her more times in the last year than I have, which wouldn't have to be a lot, so he must be doing something right.

So the little athletic group is doing their talking-laughing thing and I'm wandering out to the kitchen to see what there is to eat, and, as usual, there are way too many veggie dips and there's not enough meat.

I wish, that at least once, there would be a party, and that someone like Lara would be there and we would begin to connect like Lara and I did for those thirty seven wonderful days, and we would talk, not about biking, but maybe politics, or green energy, or, better yet, about something related to society and its conventions and how they are changing. Something meaningful. Meaningful to me at least. Dream on George.

Abby is either in a sloshing down the wine mood, or not, when we go to parties. When it's sloshing down the wine time for her, I don't, i.e. slosh down the wine, because I have to drive home, and that's ok, but the part that I don't like, when she is in her sloshing down the wine mode, is that she also gets into one of her everybody she likes and everything they do is perfect modes and that really means that everybody I like and everything that they and/or I do, is shit. You think I'm exaggerating, I know you do. But I'm not.

Tonight was not a sloshing down the wine night, for Abby, and I'm not sure why, but I was kind of glad in a way, because then I wouldn't have to endure the perfect friends bullshit.

While I was looking for something edible, which wasn't easy given all the veggie shit on the table, and Abby and her cadre were whipping themselves into a bike riding saga frenzy, Kim wandered in to the kitchen. I kind of looked down at the food, hoping someone else would come in, quickly, because I was pretty certain that Kim didn't come in to tell me she was opening up to the concept of open marriage. She looked at me with a very kind face and said, "Are you doing ok?"

That was huge. I was reading that on many levels as you can guess, and the overall gist that I got, and I do think my radar was working well at least on this occasion, was that she was saying, in effect, that she was empathizing with me about not being one of the happy go lucky jocks. Then she added, "They really like to go on about their rides, don't they?"

Striking the conciliatory tone that I often do, I say "Well at least it keeps them in good shape and busy." Busy indeed, I thought but didn't say, as the image of Abby quickly blowing Dewayne floated through my brain.

Kim smiled and then I asked her if she did much riding and swimming and running and she said a little running but not much else, so I said something to the effect that opposites attract and maybe it was good that husbands and wives had different interests. She just kind of nodded but she was still smiling and then she said that she forgave Dewayne and she asked me if I forgave Abby, and I suddenly was very glad that Abby was not sloshing down the wine because I suddenly was in a sloshing down the wine mood myself and I asked Kim if she had any real wine glasses because all that were out were plastic and I hate drinking wine from them.

She got me one and I asked her if she wanted some too, so she got another real glass out of the cupboard and I immediately felt like grabbing her arm and marching into the living room, showing everyone, especially Abby, that I had someone to talk to, and also showing Dewayne that I had acquired one of the real wine glasses despite his attempt not to share them with his guests which, by the way, I thought was crass and cheap, even though I have done it several times myself.

But instead, Kim and I stayed in the kitchen and just small talked a bit about our tastes in wine and I was getting to like her because she was kind of low key and I thought that I still wanted to fuck her, but maybe more, I wanted to get to know her. She had a really nice air about her because she was indeed beautiful but didn't seem to be focused on it in the way that some, or maybe most, beautiful people are, i.e. that they are so fucking desirable that everyone wants them and you need to take a fucking number just to talk to them, and the line is very long.

I asked her if she wanted to go into the living room and she said sure and I read a lot into the sure. We went in and sat on a couch about twenty feet away from the athletes. No one seemed to notice us, but as I had predicted, it kind of became obvious that first Dewayne, who seems to notice everything I was learning, and then Abby, were shooting us fleeting glances and I was hearing their inner thoughts loud and clear, and I knew they were both thinking that something was going on with the two of us, and indeed there was, at least in my mind. I was hoping that they were going to start having trouble concentrating on their fucking biking stories, and I was listening to see if Abby's cackles which is what I call her laughs, were staying at the same fevered pitch or not, and I was extremely pleased that I couldn't hear them anymore.

Then I just turned off the observing Abby and Dewayne switch and started concentrating on Kim, trying to take in her essence emotionally and otherwise. I still hadn't answered her question about forgiving Abby, and I weighed the options. But I stopped weighing after number one, knowing it was the only option, but I still had no clue as to how to proceed in my attempt to let her know, with absolute clarity, that I was one hundred percent happy about her husband fucking my wife and that I wanted to fuck her, knowing of course that she may not feel the same way about either issue.

I'm not real good about being subtle some times, as Abby constantly has let me know over the years, on many occasions, but I'm not as stupid as she thinks I am. My lack of subtly usually is deliberate. It's not that I don't know that I offend people sometimes; it's just that I don't care. And in reality I almost never offend people. I just offend institutions that need offending, in my view. So I don't mind saying that all politicians are crooked, because I am right, but Abby might get bent out of shape when I say that because someone who is on a local school board might be within ear shot and she considers them politicians but I don't.

I'm kind of getting off track here. What I'm trying to get clear is that I don't mind talking about something like the taboo against using racial slurs and how I think that it is ridiculous because it's just a surface issue and has nothing to do with what's in a person's heart and soul. So now that I'm sitting here with Kim, wondering how I should approach my goals, I'm hearing the little man in my brain telling me that Abby is going to be pissed if I start spouting off about open marriage, and then I think how hypocritical that would be for her since she is the one who has already opened the marriage by fucking Dewayne.

But I'm in a no win situation, I know, and then I decide that I have to just try and get into an us with Kim similar to the us that Lara and I created, and just leave Abby out of the whole thing, for now at least. Which means there's going to have to be some subterfuge which I really abhor. Subterfuge in the respect that I'm going to have to just talk chitty chatty things at this event and probably subsequent events with Kim when Abby is around, and then, when she isn't, try to get emotionally close to Kim, which is contrary to my normal modus operandi of just opening my mouth and saying what I think is important, despite that everybody else is talking about their fucking bike rides.

I was starting to sense that I was on the right path. Abby was not going to play a part in this. At least not from my angle. And by the way, I just had a flash that it was pretty damn bold of Abby and Dewayne to just be there laughing and talking and carrying on about the fucking bike rides, like nothing had happened, after they had cheated on Kim and me. Another flash hit me broadside and it was that Abby probably didn't give a rat's ass if I forgave her or not, because as we have discussed, it wasn't her fucking fault in the first place, so my forgiving her was ridiculous because she had done nothing wrong. I loved her for that, if indeed that was how she views things, and I knew it was. My Abby.

So Kim and I were sitting there talking and it felt good talking to her and it really felt good that Abby was not cackling, loudly, any more, which meant that she was paying attention to me, which she rarely does, even though in this case she was paying attention to me for the wrong reason, i.e. because she was probably thinking that Kim and I were talking about her, which we weren't. The right reason for her to pay attention to me, by the way, would be that I was interesting or good looking, or very wise, or very funny, or very insightful, but that almost never happens, so I guess I should just be grateful that she was paying attention to me at all, even if for the wrong reason.

There was enough background noise even without Abby's cackling, that anything Kim and I said probably wouldn't be heard by anyone, so I was clearly able to say about anything to her that I wanted to say. However I was still unclear how to proceed because if I started trying to get into the open marriage format, it would take a while, and if we were half way through it, for example, and then Abby or Dewayne or both of them meandered over, I'd have to quickly cut it off by changing the subject abruptly, which I am quite capable of doing, but I wasn't so sure about Kim, so I didn't get into it.

I asked Kim, "How is married life," just to make some small talk and then realized that almost anything I said about married life or relationships or Dewayne or Abby might bring her some emotional pain. But what else was there to talk about?

She just answered, "fine," but then there was a pause, and then she added "so far." And we both smiled and I asked her if she wanted some more wine and she said "definitely." Definitely was a good word at this point because I interpreted it to mean a few things including that she was enjoying talking to me even though there wasn't much talking going on, and also that she needed to have some more wine to loosen up because maybe she wanted to talk about the situation.

I went to the kitchen to get the wine, and I got it, and when I turned around, I almost dropped both glasses because Abby was standing there almost blocking my path and she had this weird look on her face and I read that look immediately.

It was a combination of jealousy (i.e. she saw me talking to Kim), a touch of pride believe it or not (proud of the fact that her husband, i.e. me, was still attractive to other women, which made me feel good), a tiny bit of fear (i.e. that I might actually do something with Kim), and there was the final ingredient, which I liked best, and it was something to the effect that she would like to see me in action with another woman. She has said that, by the way, on more than one occasion, when pressed, by me, trying to get her to open up about her sexual desires.

I liked the look on her face, and I acknowledged it, in a very subtle way, by just kind of giving her a half smile, while moving kind of around her, and walking back to Kim, leaving her standing there. Alone. That felt good. Real fucking good.

There was really not much Abby could have done, at that point. I was hoping she would go back to the bike Nazis, her pride damaged just a bit, worried about us a bit. She did at least go back to them, but I was only speculating on how she was feeling. However I did get my answer about how she was feeling later that night. And it was a good answer. No, it was a spectacular answer.

By the way, Abby wanted to leave shortly after she cornered me in the kitchen, and since we always leave when Abby wants to, we did.

Sometimes when you are working on a project or a goal, things happen at a snail's pace, and other times they move along rapidly. In either scenario, you often get a breakthrough and it seems that it was really worth the effort. Abby's answer, or really my answer, was one of those breakthrough moments.

It wasn't actually an answer in the traditional sense. It was more a series of actions and words and feelings that came over a period of time. Certainly not an aha moment. Not a vivid epiphany by any stretch of the imagination.

To put it simply, Abby seemed to be communicating to me that she thought I was interested in Kim, and she was ok with that. It's not quite that simple, but that's about as close as I can put it.
Chapter 43: Abby Being Nice to Me

I'm pretty easy to please. Ribs on the grill. A nice bottle of zinfandel. Cash Cab on TV. Abby on her couch, me on mine. I truly can't imagine anything much better than that. Maybe I'm just not very imaginative. But I think it's more than that. I think I've learned, over the years, to just focus on what is in front of me and appreciate it. I'm thankful for that. Not for the zin or ribs or Cash Cab. Thankful instead that I can appreciate those things along with having Abby with me, not needing anything more.

So when those things are there and Abby is there and actually nice to me, I feel blessed. Kind of like Lou Gehrig in that famous video reel saying he was the luckiest man alive even though he had already been, I'm pretty sure, diagnosed with ALS. That's a hell of a good attitude and impossible to fake. Some people just know how to focus on the good in life. Unfortunately Abby is not one of those people.

I'm not picking on her. She would agree with me on this point. In fact, she does agree when I point it out, which is often.

We were having an argument the other day and she said something to the effect that it was my job to get her out of her bad moods. OK. I accept that job. Just don't give me so much grief when I try.

It's nice getting along with her. When she's not in her women are better than men shit, she's fun to be with. We're comfortable together. I wouldn't trade her for the most beautiful woman on the planet. To me, she is the most beautiful woman on the planet.

Last night we had a mini argument. She likes to finish my sentences. She set a record last night in the time it took from when I ended my thought and when she responded. Notice I didn't say 'ended my sentence' but rather said 'ended my thought' which comes sooner if you think about it. You can usually pretty much tell what a person is going to say before they end a sentence because the thought is already out there in the first part of the sentence. So good old Abby rarely waits for the end of the sentence, because she thinks she knows what I am going to say, which will probably be wrong in her mind, so why, she thinks, should she wait for me to finish either.

The record Abby set, i.e. the time between when I ended the thought and when she responded, could probably not even be measured by the guys who keep the official time. The Atomic clock. It was that short. We were talking about a new computer that she was going to buy. No, I'm going to buy it, I forgot. This is a combined anniversary, birthday, and Christmas present for her since it is kind of expensive and we are not doing that great, financially, at the moment. OK, but not great. Financially.

I know I'm being cheap here, and annoying, combining holidays with one present, but it's a nice computer, that she wanted.

Back to the mini argument which consisted of her telling me about what she wanted, etc. etc. and I was going to say, "I'll ask Russ if he can get you a discount because his son works for Apple," but as soon as I hit Russ, the 'no time elapsed' response came flying at me.

She knew that I was going to say, "I'll ask Russ what he thinks about the computer you want to buy." Even though that's not what I was going to say, she knew it was, in her mind, which is all that mattered.

She knew this because she also knew that Russ had given her bum advice on the previous computer that she bought. That's not true, by the way. He did come over, after she had already bought the shitty computer to show her how to transfer pictures from a camera to the shitty computer and he brought his wife's shitty computer which was exactly the same as Abby's shitty computer because he wasn't sure we had all the right cords, etc..

So Abby, in her way of reasoning, decided, after living with her admittedly shitty computer for three years, that Russ had told her to buy the shitty thing in the first place and there was no fucking way he was going to tell her to buy another shitty computer, so she had to nip that motherfucking thought before the sentence was out there. Beside, Russ was a man. So even if she got some of the minor details wrong, it hardly mattered.

She said I over reacted when I got mad at her for ending my sentence and I told her she can never admit she was wrong, so she admitted she was wrong because she thought she knew what I was going to say, and it wasn't, and then I admitted that I over reacted, only slightly I thought but didn't say, and we both pushed the reset button and finished cocktail hour and dinner and she ended up on my couch for a brief time, and that was good.
Chapter 44: Dewayne Asks Abby to Ride, Sort of

When the bike Nazis want to ride, they all communicate via email and facebook and when one sends a message, they all respond and then it goes back and forth until enough people create a quorum of bikers, and then they do it. Dewayne initiated the message with the following email. "Looks like cloudy later in the day Saturday, so does anybody want to do thirty or forty starting about 8am? This will be a slower pace and nobody will be dropped." They all know the lingo, and Abby is teaching me, which I really don't give a shit about, but I listen politely, because she likes it when I listen and I like it when she is nice to me, because I listen. See, I'm not as dumb as you might think.

Several people said "no," I know this because I was reading her email, after she reads it, so as not to change the black to gray thus letting her know I spy on her. Abby was the only positive response, so it looked like they had a bike date, which was fine by me, and I was wondering if Kim was reading Dewayne's email too.

That original email from Dewayne was on a Wednesday and at cocktail hour that night and again on Thursday and then on Friday, I made a point of asking Abby what she was going to do on the weekend, and she said she didn't really know the first two evenings, and then on Friday she said "riding' and I didn't say "with who" because I didn't want to press her.

When Saturday rolled around, and she was doing her 'get the bike and herself ready' ritual, which usually takes at least an hour, she told me she was riding and then I broached the subject, subtly I might add, "who all is coming?," and she said "just Dewayne" and my dick started moving. Upward. Well, really not upward because I had my shorts on. But there was definitely movement. And enlargement.

I was liking the fact that she didn't try to add a lot of qualifiers like nobody else was available or someone may join us at the last minute, or any of that shit. It was 'just Dewayne' and that was pretty cool and I loved her for just moving ahead with the fact that she and Dewayne were friends and fellow bike Nazis, of course she didn't use that term, and that they were going to continue to be friends and nobody, especially me, was going to do or say anything about it.

When she left I gave her my usual admonitions, i.e. I love you, be careful, have fun, etc. I should have added, make sure he uses a condom. But of course I didn't. And using a condom or not was really not any of my business.

She left about nine in the morning and I figured out she should be back by about eleven, or later, if they were, perchance, to engage in something other than biking. I just had a flash that I should have checked her bike odometer because I know about how fast she rides and could do the math. But it was too late for that. Damn. I'll try to remember next time, I thought.

Kim's call came at about eleven and I had just gotten back from the grocery store, since I buy the groceries on Saturday mornings. I actually like going to the grocery store, don't ask me why, and Abby hates it, so it works for both of us.

Kim said, "have you seen Dewayne," and I said no, because I hadn't, then I added, just to make sure she didn't think I was trying to mislead her once she knew that I knew they were together, "Abby went riding with him at about nine, so I'm guessing they'll be back before noon."

I could almost feel her surprise, or was it anger, in the pause, her pause, and then she said, "were they riding by themselves?," which of course they were, which I knew, but she obviously didn't, and that kind of made me sad for her, being just married and married to a guy who had already cheated on her, and now he was riding with the other cheater in the duo, i.e. my cheating wife, and he didn't tell his wife that he was alone with the other cheater, maybe thinking he could get away without her knowing.

Oops.

I said yes, they were alone and there was another long pause, and she just said ok and hung up.

Abby rolled in, literally, about noon and I again wished the fuck I had checked the odometer.

I asked her the usual questions, i.e. how was the ride, how many miles, how fast, how was Dewayne. Not that I gave a shit, about the first three at least, but she likes when I ask, which makes her nicer to me, sometimes, and sometimes is better than never.
Chapter 45: Who Told Who What and When

Recapping. Abby gets the email from Dewayne. I know because I read the email, furtively. Abby tells me about the cheater's ride, not using those exact words. It's redundant because I already know, but I don't tell her that I know. Kim calls. I tell her because I have no real choice. That brings us to the present.

Later on Saturday, Abby asks me if Kim called.

Now, this is a pretty important question if you think about it, and it reveals something potentially quite erotic. Let me lead you through my logic.

Abby and Dewayne have obviously spoken, somehow, by phone or email, i.e. the private email account I think/hope she has, or in person, after their ride.

Dewayne, cheater number one, has obviously gotten some indication that Kim knows they rode alone, and he's worried, and wants to have all the facts before he talks with Kim again, so he's contacted Abby, cheater number two, to find out from her if Kim has talked to me, and he's assuming that Abby can get that information from me about whether I have talked to Kim or not, without much of a problem, which leads me to believe that she, i.e. Abby, has told him, i.e. Dewayne, not to worry what I know or think.

This is all very clear to me. Crystal clear. I like trying to figure out what Abby and Dewayne are thinking and feeling, and here's my analysis, at this point.

Dewayne, being the man's man that he is, wants to have his cake and eat it too, literally. Why not fuck Abby as long as Kim doesn't find out? Isn't that the American way? Hell, isn't that the human way?

I'm fairly certain he thought I didn't know he was fucking her again, if indeed he was fucking her again, which I didn't know for sure at this point. He's probably like most men in thinking that as long as you get away with it without getting caught, the feelings of the husband were of absolutely no concern to him. At all. Fuck the husband, I'm sure was his internal mantra.

Abby was playing that game in her head that sex was mostly wrong, that cheating was wrong, that men were mostly wrong, that George was definitely wrong most of the time, but the sex thing sure felt good, but even better, by far, was the womanly empowerment it brought. Go girl, I envisioned, went through her brain, every time Dewayne made her toes curl, which indeed they do, when she cums.

We've got to be fair and keep in mind that they may have only been taking a ride. If we're really going to be fair, that's almost certainly the truth. The problem, of course, is that Dewayne doesn't practice total honesty. Most likely, he didn't want to have a fight with Kim about riding with his former fuck partner, so he simply chose the path of least resistance and didn't tell her. But now he was sweating bullets because he didn't want to outright lie to her, the aforementioned omission being bad but not as bad as a commission, and he needed to know if old George had spilled the beans to Kim. Thus his call or email to or meeting with Abby, which I surmised from her question to me if Kim had called me.

I told Abby that Kim had called and I had told her that yes indeed they were riding.

End of conversation. Me not wanting to let Abby know that I knew she and Dewayne had talked, somehow, and that I knew Dewayne was worried. And Abby not wanting me, I'm speculating here, to know there was anything amiss. Doesn't lying get complicated? It almost makes you want to be honest in all circumstances just to avoid the hassle of trying to remember what you told to who, and when.
Chapter 46: A Serious Aside

I wish I had it on tape. A lady came into my office and while she talked to one of our agents in another office, her five year old twin daughters wandered out and we had a conversation. God I love kids. So smart. So open. So creative.

One of them showed me a library card and she said she had snuck it from her mom because there were some library books at home and she didn't want her mom to take them back so she figured she couldn't without the card.

I asked how old they were, and they said five, and I told them I was fifty too and their eyes got real wide, and then I picked up on that and I said I might die at any time. So we, not me, but we, created this game where we picked out a way to die and then snapped our fingers and said "you're dead."

One of them said, "A shark bites you" then she snapped her fingers, paused very effectively, smiled knowingly, and then said, "You're dead." Then the other said "a car hits you" pause, snap, smile "you're dead." This all through their lack of front teeth, totally un-self conscious, grins. It was beautiful.

So the mom comes out of the other office and they are snapping their fingers and mom asks what's this about and they show her the game and the mom gives me a shit eating smile, sneering is more like it, and when I told them to have a good day, which I do to everyone leaving the office, she said sarcastically "yeah, we'll have a great day with them doing this."

I felt like saying to this bitch, you fucking asshole, these goddess like creatures are trying to teach you lessons in life about trusting and playing and living in the moment and you are so fucked up that you think you are the one teaching them something and you are even more fucked up in thinking that they are your possessions that you can control and mold into something that you think you missed in childhood. And no, bitch, I'm not trying to give these kids a fear of death, because they understand life and death on a far deeper level than you give them credit for.

Ok, that's harsh. On both sides. Hers and mine. Much more so on my side. I'm sorry. At least I only thought it and didn't say it.

Let's just say that kids are smarter, in the important ways, than we, as adults, are. By far. They are able to cut through the bullshit. We need to listen to them, not try and preach to them. And they don't belong to us. We are very lucky to have them with us for as long as they are willing to be with us, and that, by the way, is a direct reflection of how well we treat them, and I don't mean materially.

I just had to get that out. And I'm sorry again for calling the lady, in my mind, a bitch. She is probably a good mother. On reflection, she must be a great mother since the kids were so cool. My rant was directed toward society in general and not her specifically, I'm sure on reflection.

And I just figured something out. I just let the cat out of the bag. It's now pretty clear that I'm writing this at work. In between clients. In between kids and me playing games about death. While snapping our fingers.

I like mixing up serious and frivolous things.

Frivolous things like making a living, and serious things like playing games about death with kids.
Chapter 47: Back to After the Ride

Saturday nights are my favorite. No work the next day. I get to cook on the grill if I want. Abby and I might fuck. What could be better? Maybe watching Dewayne fuck Abby? Hmmm

The rest of the day was uneventful. No more mention of Kim's call. At cocktail hour Abby and I did our normal chit chat which included, by me, "how was the ride" which I had already asked her when she returned, but we have to fill up cocktail ¼ hour so we tend to repeat the same questions, and that's ok with both of us. Redundancy is soothing.

Abby didn't say much else about the ride. I didn't press.

Dinner was good. I cooked fish and broccoli and potatoes for her and burgers on the grill for me. Lots of wine, for me at least. Bed by 8pm. Good spooning because it's now November and the door is open and it's getting colder.

The next few days I kept looking for any sign that Kim's call had any effect on Abby, and I couldn't find any. Would love to be a fly on the wall in the Kim/Dewayne household.

Here we are at a critical, critical in my mind at least, juncture. The two cheaters are still friends, still riding together, and their respective spouses, i.e. Kim and me, have radically different takes on this, i.e. Kim hates it, presumably, and I love it. And Dewayne has to sneak around or at least be evasive about it, and good old Abby just carries on as normal.
Chapter 48: So what's the Big Deal?

Maybe it's how long I've been married, i.e. twenty four years. Maybe it's the fact that I'm pretty sure Abby likes me enough not to leave. Maybe it's the fact that I've discovered the erotic half of jealousy. Maybe it's a combination of all three.

But I just think that Abby fucking someone else is not a big deal. I mean it is a big deal in the sense that I'd prefer her not to go to a bar and fuck a different guy every night, but having a boyfriend on the side and doing him on occasion is fine with me. More than fine. And if that boy friend is married, so much the better for lots of reasons including the fact that he probably won't get so obsessed with Abby that he would leave his wife.

I know this may sound radical to a lot of people. It probably sounded radical to me when I was in my teens and twenties. But not anymore.

If you break it down logically, it works. It's when emotions get involved, that we tend to freak out.

Here's the logical side. My side. The right side, I might add.

Abby and I both had sex before marriage. We don't own each other's bodies. When we're not together, does it really involve me regarding what she is doing? Suppose she has a friend, let's call him Dewayne, and let's say they ride bikes together. Is that ok? Why not? It's not taking any time from the us that Abby and I are because I'm probably reading or walking anyway.

Moving it up a bit, suppose they decide to walk and hold hands. Not very likely, since he doesn't seem like the hand holding type, but just suppose. No problem with that either. Then suppose they want to kiss just a bit. Fine. Then moving on, how about him copping a feel of her small breasts. Sure. Hand job? Why not. Lick the kitty? No problem.

The point is simple. Simple to me at least. As long as what they are doing is mutually enjoyable and mutually respectful and as long as it doesn't materially interfere with Abby's and my time together, why not?

I'm on board. Abby is on board through her convoluted logic about the man vs woman thing. Dewayne's not thinking much about it, he's just getting what he can, which is what men generally do. The problem is Kim.

The most logical thing to do would be to try and convince Kim of the errors of her way of thinking. Another approach would be a man to man with Dewayne, but I just get the feeling he's not going to want to take the time and do the work to bring her around, and once he gets the message that I actually like him fucking Abby, which he would get if we had the man to man, then he's just going to want to maintain the status quo, i.e. nailing both women without telling Kim. The only change to the status quo would probably be that he would tell Abby to tell me to vacate the premises, i.e. our condo, when they were in the mood so they could fuck in private.

Since I didn't like either of those approaches, i.e. working on Kim, or having the man to man, I decided to drop back and punt.

I don't like to use the drop back and punt metaphor because it's overused and if you don't follow American football, it makes no sense. But I already said it, so I'll leave it in here. So I dropped back and punted after deciding that working with Kim or Dewayne was not the best way to go in getting things moving on my 'open up the marriage', actually marriages plural, gambit.

Abby. Yes, I was going to have to get Abby on board, and not in the hostile 'man vs women, George is wrong, go girl' stream of consciousness mode that she was using. Go girl was ok, in fact probably good, but not the other shit.

So how to get the wife to admit/agree that she liked fucking Dewayne, that it wasn't my fault that she was fucking him, that it was ok for me to fuck Kim or anybody else that might have an inclination, that she had lust in general, that lust was good not evil, and that the fucking asshole nuns who stole her lust should rot in hell?

That's a lot to hope for. But, hey, if you don't set your sights high, how are you going to accomplish anything worthwhile?

The path ahead is set. Bring Abby on board.
Chapter 49: Thinking of Lara, Not so Often and Not as Kindly

Remember Lara? My thirty seven day internet girlfriend. Well, my attitude toward her and us is changing, as I was afraid it might. I wanted so badly to build firewalls around her and what we had. It felt so real and so good and so uplifting and so erotic. And now it seems like a distant memory, and sometimes it almost seems unreal as in maybe I dreamed the whole thing up. Seriously.

I've always wondered what it was like to go insane. I mean do you know you are crazy but can't help acting and thinking that way? Or do you think you are sane and everyone who is saying that you are crazy is crazy instead?

I don't really think I'm crazy, but I have questioned, more than once, how I could have had what we had and then it just disappeared. Of the hundreds of possible scenarios, the 'I'm actually crazy and dreamed it all up' scenario has appeared in my brain more than a few times. I hate to admit that, because in admitting it, I am questioning my own sanity, and that can't be good.

I just wish I'd get an email from her letting me know she was real and not fiction. I know that's not going to happen, but I can still wish, can't I? Of course the ideal email would be a letter of sincere apology and an explanation as to why she had to go away, for a time, but now things have changed, and she would really like to try again. But at this point, I'd settle for something to let me know that she was real and not just a mental construct.

This is a short chapter because I've basically moved on, as painful as that is to say. If that changes, I'll let you know.

By the way, I mentioned when I first introduced you to Lara that I used to like Craig's List and that's where I met her. The reason for the used to is that every time I go there now and look at casual encounters, which is where I placed that initial ad, my mind seems to focus on Lara and how she might be looking there too and there are plenty of ads for men seeking women and then I think that she is answering them and fucking random strangers.

That's not what bothers me, i.e. fucking random strangers. It's the fact that she could have me and instead she is opting, presumably for just a guy with a hot cock. I know that sounds presumptuous of me to think that I would bring so much more to the table, or bed, but she told me in her own words how much I meant to her beyond sex. Do people just lie? Or do they really mean what they say and then change their minds? As you can see, I'm still not over her, even though I just said, two paragraphs above, that I was over her. And I still go to Craig's List. Hoping. Pretty pathetic, even in my own mind.
Chapter 50: The Discussion

I am wondering what to call the recent conversation that Abby and I had about Dewayne and open marriage. Discussion and conversation are both wrong because they imply a two way discourse, but this was one way. Me telling Abby what I thought.

You may wonder why I chose that format, i.e. the one way format. Well, I know Abby pretty well and I know that there are certain things she just won't talk about. She will listen, sometimes, if I lay out the groundwork carefully, if she is in the mood, and if she thinks the discourse will benefit her, which should tell you that it doesn't happen very often.

You would think that any man, having found out that his wife was sleeping with another man, would have some leverage. You might think that the wife would have some feelings about his damaged ego, some fears that he might actually file for divorce, or at least have some guilt. In Abby's case, none of this came into play, but I knew that ahead of time, so I didn't try to capitalize on any of it.

I told Abby that it would be good if I could tell her how I felt about 'the situation' and she said "ok," probably glad that I wasn't going to ask her to 'talk about it' which would mean that she would actually have to participate in the discussion, which I'm sure she didn't want to, and would most likely have refused to do, leaving her with only the burden to listen.

I launched into my diatribe about how life was complicated and marriage was a compromise and that I thought her lust was stolen by the fucking asshole nuns and that I was glad she had lust for Dewayne, but I'd prefer that she would share that lust with me on occasion, throwing in the fact that I had lust for her and even though it might be unconventional, at least in the circles that we normally hang out in, having a boyfriend in addition to your husband could be viewed as a form of empowerment. Go girl. I think she liked the go girl part, even though I didn't use those two words, because she would have thought, I'm sure, that I was being flippant or cynical, which I wasn't.

That's about the whole of it. No use muddying the waters, at this point, with the fairness factor about me being able, in our new arrangement, to fuck the shit out of Kim, on occasion, if she was interested, and if not, some other random lady. Keep it simple, I was telling myself. One thing at a time.

Over the course of the next few days, things just kind of stayed normal which was good. No mention of the discussion. No mention of Dewayne. No mention of Kim, No mention of the situation. Good cocktail hours. We were on the way.
Chapter 51: Kim Calls, Again

Remember that Kim called a while back looking for Dewayne and wondering if he was alone riding with Abby and I said yes and she said ok.

Fast forward a few weeks and I get a call from her, at home, at night, with Abby there, after cocktail hour, which was good because I had some alcohol in me. She said, "Can we talk," and I said sure, and I looked over to see if Abby was paying attention and she wasn't at first. Cash Cab was on TV.

I took the portable phone into the spare bedroom and sat on the bed, knowing that curious Abby would come in at some point to see who I was talking to.

Kim said she had just had a discussion with Dewayne and that he told her he loved her and was sorry she was upset and wouldn't fuck Abby again. Of course she used 'see' instead of 'fuck', but I knew she meant fuck.

I was waiting for the other shoe to drop as in 'but I told the bastard to pack his bags', which I really didn't want to hear, and it never came, which was good, but I sat there thinking that maybe Kim had more to say. But apparently not.

So I had to keep the conversation going, or at least I wanted to, so I said "are you ok with all of this?" There was a hesitation and then she said "It's water over the dam," and I thought she could also have correctly said 'water under the bridge' which kind of shows you my mind set, i.e. my mind was not really involved in this process because we were just dancing around the issue at hand.

Abby stuck her curious nose in the door and gave me that quizzical look meaning 'who is on the phone?' and I held my hand over the mouthpiece and said "Kim" trying to be cool and nonchalant and a little self righteous and Abby looked a little bothered and annoyed and surprised all at once. She shut the door and walked out and I was glad she was bothered and annoyed and surprised, so obviously I wanted to keep the conversation going as long as I could.

It was my turn with Kim since she indicated with her water analogy that she was willing to move forward and she probably wanted to hear what I thought since she had initiated the call. So I told her I was glad she was ok, even though she didn't really say she was ok. Then I said that Abby and I were doing fine, not wanting to say something trite and totally untrue about my being ok with the situation, because even though I was totally ok with it, she would not have understood what the ok meant, and in misinterpreting it, would have thought I had the same feelings about a cheating spouse, and since I of course did not, if I had said I was ok with it, it would have been deceitful. So by saying Abby and I were fine, it left the door open for a further discussion about fine and what that meant.

Sometimes I wish we could just mind meld with people, if they both agreed, and then all the emotions and nuances involved with them could be transmitted directly without having to translate those emotions into words and then transmit them to the other person with words and then have that person retranslate the words into their own emotions. So much is lost in the two translations I think.

If I could have mind melded with Kim, she would have known instantly all my feelings about Abby and how I adored her and wanted her to have lust and that I really didn't care that much for Dewayne, but that was irrelevant, and that I lusted after her, i.e. Kim, also and that we should all just take a chill pill and enjoy the ride on life's train.

I suddenly just said 'what the fuck'. To myself. I knew it was time to tell her how I felt and throw caution to the wind because I wasn't the bad guy here, not that there were any bag guys here, and I had nothing to fear.

So I said, basically, "Kim, I probably have a different perspective than you on this" and continued with "It's kind of hard to put into words, but let me try."

I was buying some time here and starting to regret that I had started down this road but there was no turning back now.

I suddenly remembered that we had already started this conversation in my condo and anything I said might just be a reiteration of that, but I had forgotten most of what I had said, so I just said 'what the fuck' to myself and continued.

I launched into my diatribe about marriages and infidelity and how high the percentages were for cheating and divorce and how expectations were just out of whack with reality and how there had to be a better model and that we all needed to just try and look at things practically instead of emotionally.

She listened, which was good. She didn't try and stop my monologue by saying that I was crazy and maybe I was responsible because Abby and I practiced some sort of sick perverted kind of marriage. I was halfway expecting that, by the way. More than halfway, truth be known.

I kept going on about other cultures with more relaxed views of sexuality and relationships, mentioning the French and even their liaisons, and she just kept on listening, and this was turning out better, much better, than I had imagined, so I asked her if she wanted to go out to dinner with me sometime, just kind of sneaking that into the conversation, subtly I hoped, and she said 'maybe' and I was thinking that I hoped she would not be wearing panties on our first date, which I realize might sound like a pretty bizarre thing to be thinking at this point in time, but hey, I'm a man.

I tell Kim I have enjoyed talking to her but I have to run and we say goodbye, and I can't wait to tell Abby that I have a date, which is really not true yet, but almost, with her boyfriend's wife.

Abby is sitting there on her couch watching Cash Cab, and she tries to be coy, which is impossible for her, and she asks me "how's Kim?" and I say "fine" and that's that. For the time being.

I'm not opposed to making Abby sweat a bit. It's not that I get pleasure out of making her miserable, but she is fucking another man, or at least has, and she blames me for making her do it, I think, and I'm just trying to get her to buy into the fact that she still has lust and that it's good.

And a little jealousy, on her part, might trigger something deep in her psyche and make her realize that it works both ways, although I do think that some of her beliefs are so strong and deeply embedded, that the possibility of seeing something outside of those beliefs is slim. And her belief that I am on the radical fringe with my mad ravings about open marriage totally trumps the reality that she is the one in the marriage humping someone outside of the marriage.
Chapter 52: Dewayne Calls

About a week after Kim called, Dewayne called. Called me. Not Abby. Again at night and again after cocktail hour which was good. He said, "So I hear you want to take my wife out to dinner." Since his tone was not particularly abrasive, and since he didn't raise his voice when he said 'my', and since he wasn't knocking down my door instead of calling me on the phone, I breathed a sigh of relief. I told him yeah I thought it would be good if Kim and I talked. I almost said that I hoped he didn't mind, but caught myself thinking that I was a total pussy for even thinking that.

He said that was cool, and I liked hearing that. Cool was a good word. A loaded word, but a good one. Loaded in the sense that it could mean a lot of things, but none of them included violence. Violence by him on me. That was cool.

Then I said maybe we should all get together and have dinner and he said cool again, and I thought that things were indeed moving in the right direction.

By the way, this conversation was in the kitchen, within earshot of Abby since I didn't really have time to get into the spare bedroom and I really didn't want to anyway because I had nothing to hide at this point.

Our cool conversation ended, amicably, and I went back to my couch, after refilling my wine glass, of course. Abby was dying to ask me what he had said, but she was also dying to be cool and coy and above the fray and all of that shit, so she didn't say anything.

For about ten seconds.

"So?" without about twenty o's trailing the s, she said glaring at me. Glaring is not the right word because that implies disdain and this was not one of Abby's disdainful moods.

There was a sly smile breaking out on her face. Abby loves dirt. Any kind of dirt. She loves to hear about affairs and who is fucking who. All from a safe distance of course. The fact that she was smack in the middle of this dirt seemed to be lost on her. It was as though it made absolutely no difference that she was the cause of, and the subject of, this particular dirt. Dirt was dirt and she wanted to hear about it. From me. About me and Kim having dinner and about all of us having dinner. She wanted the dirt, and she wanted it now.

I asked her if she wanted a glass of wine and she said sure, in a nice way, which signaled to me that this was going to be a pleasant conversation. It had all the earmarks of a pleasant conversation after all. Abby fucking Dewayne. Me taking Kim, wearing no panties, hopefully, to dinner. All of us going on a double date.

Do you ever get the feeling that you are just an actor in a movie and someone else has written the script? Well that's what I was feeling right now. And somehow, I must have already read the script because I knew the end, which was good, because it made it easier to get there. I knew, for example, that Abby was going to gradually embrace the open marriage model. I knew that she would eventually stop blaming me for her having to fuck Dewayne. She would never go so far as to actually see the absurdity of her present way of thinking, but she would morph into a frame of mind where fucking Dewayne and possibly other men and maybe even other women would be a natural thing for her.

Abby has a bad memory which is good. It means that she doesn't dwell on the past, mostly because she can't remember it. It's not so much that she can't remember things; it's more that she can't remember situations. Facts are not a problem for her. Events are. Now that I think about it a little, maybe she doesn't remember associations as well as I do. By associations I mean how people interact in certain situations. Maybe she doesn't remember them because she doesn't focus on the associations in the first place. I'll have to give this some more thought.

So, I'm predicting, or maybe I have already read the script, that Abby will totally forget how she and Dewayne got together and started screwing, and she will just move ahead with no guilt, which is good, and as if having a husband and a boyfriend are the most normal things in the world. Kind of like having a blue blouse and a black one too.

Another good thing is that Abby doesn't hold grudges. She may think I'm an asshole for doing certain things like hoarding or dropping crumbs, but if I do something really crazy, like get drunk and act like a fool, she doesn't bring it up time after time. Maybe that's because she has been cheating on me for twenty four years and doesn't want to rock the boat over a few crumbs, or a drunken episode.

I can't believe I just thought that about cheating for twenty four years. But I did. Interesting. Now my mind is going back and thinking that maybe the nuns never fucked her up. Maybe her lust was there all the time, just directed toward other men instead of me. Could I have been that unobservant? Could she have been that good a cheater? Surely not. Still, the thought is still swimming around up there. Anyway, no use to dwell on that, I tell myself.
Chapter 53: My First Date with Kim

I figured that if I was going to get the ball rolling, I'd better move on with the dinner date with Kim. To make things easier for all of us, I decided to take her to a restaurant in another town. I mean it might be kind of hard to explain why we're having a candle light dinner at a local restaurant if one of Abby or Dewayne's friends walked in. I decided to email her rather than call due I only had her land line number and not the cell number and I really didn't want to have to ask Dewayne, if he answered, if I could talk to his wife to ask her on a date, even though he already knew we were going to do it.

My email basically said "so Kim, would you like to go to dinner Saturday?" No use going into a lot of details, letting her know how big a deal this was to me, which it was, in case she had changed her frame of mind and thought the whole idea of her going to dinner with me was absurd, or even perverted, given the fact that we were both married and our spouses were screwing each other, or at least had been screwing each other.

Her response was, "Sure, pick me up at seven." I couldn't fucking believe that response. I sat there with my lower jaw in my lap. Did she really say that, I thought? And so quickly? No hesitation. I loved it. She was mine. I was already inside her.

Think about that response with me a bit. Take the 'sure'. Not maybe, or we'll see, or let's think about it, or some other mealy mouthed response. She was ready. Ready for me. Even if this was going to turn out to be just a revenge fuck on her part, I can live with that. I can live with that very well indeed. I don't need for her to fall in love with me. Hell, she doesn't even have to like me as long as she does me. I'll even settle for her laying there, on top of me, us both naked, she turns on the video cam, she looks directly into it and says, "Guess what Dewayne, his cock is bigger than yours and it's inside me." That would probably be a lie, the bit about the bigger cock I mean, not that I know for sure, but being the man's man that Dewayne seems to be, it seems likely. Maybe I should ask Abby.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here, which is pretty normal for me, especially when it involves sex.

The next part of Kim's response, i.e. 'pick me up at seven', was better than the 'sure'. Think about it for a moment. Here she was, a few weeks ago, in our condo, devastated, thinking her marriage was ruined, and now she was on the verge of embracing the open marriage format, even if it was only for revenge. I really didn't care if this was a revenge date or not. Actually I did care. I would prefer to think that she had somehow evolved her thinking in a short period of time to realize some of the finer points about how society had dictated to her a lifestyle that didn't allow expression of her sexuality. But I knew that wasn't very likely and her real reason for going was most likely to show Dewayne she could fuck strangers just as well as he could, and that was ok with me. Not perfect, but very ok. Especially since I was the stranger.

So I picked her up at seven. I pretty much knew she wouldn't be ready. I pretty much knew that she wanted to give Dewayne a show. Which she did. A very nice show indeed.

I rang the door bell and I heard her yelling to Dewayne, "Can you get the door hon? It's probably my date." Awesome, I think.

Dewayne answers the door, says to come in, and then goes back to watch TV. Football. Or maybe it was a bike race. Then Kim calls again from the bathroom, "Hi George, I'll just be a few minutes. Hon, can you get George a drink, please?" I loved that. A lot.

So Dewayne goes to get me a drink. Cabernet. I sit down with my Cab. Dewayne has a beer. Something cheap.

Kim comes out and she looks spectacular. Really Spectacular. Dewayne's face gets kind of ashen. Not much blood up there.

Kim does a cute little twirl in her new skirt. Bought with Dewayne's hard earned money I hoped. I'm trying to see as far up it as I can. Dewayne notices. He frowns. Kim says, "Do you like it George? I got it for our date." Major emphasis on 'date'.

"Don't wait up for us hon. I have no idea when we'll be back," Kim taunts. Major emphasis on 'no'. She gives him a peck, on his cheek. No lip action. We leave. I'm guessing Dewayne's cock is about as hard as mine.

I opened the door of my car for Kim and looked back at the house and saw Dewayne quickly moving away from the window where he had been watching us. Too bad because Kim moved over next to me and gave me a long and very wet kiss. I looked back at the house, after I caught my breath, and there was old Dewayne back at the window. I gave him a quick wave. He looked sick. Very sick.

I won't bore you with the details of the date, other than to say that the show, at her house, was the best part, unfortunately. But you know something; first dates can be like that. I was thinking that this was a dry run for some later very wet action. When we got back, I walked her to the door and we kissed again. Long and wet. Then she kind of moved her thigh against my crotch, for show I was thinking. Dewayne's show. I wonder which window he was watching us from.

When I got home, Abby was still awake, which was unusual, but I was expecting it. She said, "How was dinner?" I said fine. She said "How's Kim?" I said fine and went to bed. Ten minutes later she climbed into the bed. Naked. Stark fucking naked.
Chapter 54: Morality and Obscenity, a Digressive Chapter

I know I've already digressed about morality but I feel like doing it again. Hopefully I won't repeat myself, too much.

I was thinking the other day about morality and obscenity. In reality, I think about them all of the time. Morality is a human construct. Nature doesn't do morality. However nature isn't amoral. Exactly the opposite. There is no cruelty in nature. Destruction yes, but not cruelty. And the destruction is creative, for nature. Mankind can be cruel. Nature doesn't need to or seem to want to be cruel.

Why am I thinking about this? Well, I grew up being taught a lot about morality. Manmade morality. A lot of it was good. Don't kill. Good. Don't steal. Good. Don't lie. Good. Basically don't fuck over other people or other people's things. All good.

Then we got to sex. And that's where the bad teaching started. Why did we as humans relegate one of the most basic and beautiful and erotic and, I might add necessary, human activities to the gutter? Maybe it was fear. Maybe our ancient forefathers and foremothers saw the powerful magic that existed in lust, and thought it had to be subjugated. Tame the beast. Shackle it before it consumes us all.

So they gave us morality. Sexual morality. And in the process, they forgot to give us Natural morality. So chop down the mountains for coal, and in the process destroy streams and rivers, lay waste to vast areas for resources, build power plants that can ruin vast areas for tens of thousands of years if something goes wrong, but don't have sex with the neighbor's wife.

How about obscenity. So it's obscene to see a picture of a naked body but not obscene to turn a vast and beautiful waterway into a cesspool? Or how about it being obscene to say fuck or shit or asshole, but totally ok to make millions or billions of dollars by selling tobacco to kids knowing full well they will get mouth and throat and lung cancer down the road?

Come on humanity, we can do much, much better than that sort of thinking.
Chapter 55: Dewayne Stops By

Sorry about the last chapter. It's not really a part of this saga. Or maybe it is. Maybe it's the most important part of this story. I'm not clear on that yet. I'll get back to you when I am. Clear that is. On this.

Dewayne stopped by. Tuesday night. Three nights after my date with Kim. Guess who were on their respective couches? Yep, me and Abby. Watching CC. Abby goes to the door. Opens it. Dewayne strides in. Says hello to me. Abby is beaming. He sits on her couch. She gets him a beer. An expensive one. Next time I'm going to get the beer.

The little man in my brain is screaming at me. How did Dewayne get in the building, he is taunting me. Holy shit. He's right. The little man is right. The doors lock at six PM and it's about seven PM. You have to know the security code to get in. How does Dewayne know it? He's been here before! Ok, calm down George. Even though you know, now, for sure, that he's been up here, you don't have proof that he has actually fucked Abby in our bed. I wonder if they did it on my side of the bed or hers.

George has kind of an alpha wolf look on his face. He's the man. The man's man. And he's glad to be here. In Abby's condo. Not our condo, Abby's condo. He knows he's welcome. I'm just a fixture to him. A piece of furniture. Not much more. And he's glad I'm there.

I've never seen Abby grin quite so widely. She's loving this. Every fucking second of it. She tells me to get her a glass of chardonnay. Notice I said tell. No asking at this juncture. And notice she said chardonnay, not wine. She knows that I'll have to open a good one because all the bulk wine is Chenin Blanc. And she knows I'll have to open a new one when she is only going to have one glass and then the wine will not be as fresh tomorrow. She knows that. Very, very well. And she loves it. And she adds, just for effect, "Get Dewayne a Blue Moon." Not a beer. A Blue fucking Moon, which costs about twice as much. A fact I know because I buy Blue Moon for her, every Saturday when I go grocery shopping, while she rides her bike. With Dewayne.

I get her fucking chardonnay, pouring her a full glass for two reasons. I could be petty and pour a small glass, but why not take the high road and seem to be magnanimous, when in fact it's simply that whatever is left in the bottle, which I will have to drink tomorrow, will be shitty anyway. The other reason is that Abby is already at her limit of one beer for the day, and a big glass of wine will send her way over the limit and her mouth will get very loose and something interesting could happen.

I bring the chardonnay to her and the Blue Moon to Dewayne. "Thanks sweetie," she says. She never calls me sweetie. I notice she and Dewayne are a lot closer on the couch than we ever are. No thanks from the alpha wolf for his Blue fucking Moon.

I make a decision. An important one. I get up, go to the kitchen, dump my cheap bulk wine down the drain, the cheap wine I drink because I like to drink a lot, and I can't really afford the good chardonnay every night. I pour myself a glass. A full glass. Of the chardonnay. I feel much better.

I come back and sit on my couch. Is it my imagination, or are they even closer now? Damn, I wish I would have made a mental note of where the outside of each one on their bodies were, so I could be sure now by comparing that with where they are now. A lost opportunity, I thought.

They are talking. To each other. About bikes. Geez.

"So what time do you want to start Saturday?" Abby asks Dewayne.

Start what, I thought.

"Nine?" Dewayne asks.

"Perfect," Abby says.

You would have had to hear her enunciation of 'perfect' to know how loaded that answer was. The 'per' was like a cat purring. Truly. The 'fect' was inflected and, if I had to use a metaphor, I'd say it shot out of her mouth like an arrow leaves a bow, sailing toward its target, i.e. me. It was nicely truncated, I might add.

Once their date had been set, they started jabbering about the route and the weather and the fact that most, if not all, of the riding pack would be out of town, which seemed to please them to no end, for reasons I can only guess.

I noticed that Abby seemed to be in one of her touchy feely modes which only happens with me when we have been separated for a few weeks and then only lasts about twenty four hours, at most. But here she was, kind of slapping him, on his thigh, every sentence or so. And remember her rant about not being touchy feely? I sure do.

She was pretty much gulping her chardonnay. My chardonnay actually since I buy it, but no matter. When she finished it, she kind of waved the empty glass in my direction. No 'please'. Not even a 'get me another'. Just a wave.

About that time Dewayne got into the act and waved, similarly, his empty expensive beer bottle too. I took the empty glass and bottle and went to the kitchen, this time making a very clear mental note of their exact positions on the couch.

I come back in and give them their libations. No word of thanks from either. And they had moved closer.

The phone rings. I get it. It's Kim. I say, "Hi Kim." Loudly.

They both look startled. For just a micro second. Almost on cue they go back to the bike riding shit. Her hand on his thigh. Often.

I'm talking to Kim. "Yeah he's here, you want to talk to him?" "No" she says which they can't hear but when I say "cool," after a short pause, they know.

They know that she most likely said "No, I called to talk to you."

This actually is pretty cool. Abby on her couch, in her condo, scrunched up against her married boyfriend, groping his thigh, drinking her chardonnay. And me, talking to my married girlfriend, my married already wet kissed girlfriend, sitting on my couch, in Abby's condo, drinking my, oh wait, Abby's chardonnay. And it was only Tuesday night.

Abby is starting to repeat herself now, which is a sure sign she is way over her limit. I've been talking to Kim, telling her that I, too, enjoyed our date, using the word date, not dinner. That got Dewayne's attention but not Abby due to her condition.

At this point, Abby says she has to get some sleep. I was on board with that because we had already come pretty far down the open marriage road for one night and there was no use pushing it. Abby was setting the pace here and that was fine by me. Dewayne looked disappointed, but what could he do? Abby got up, handed me her wine glass, like I was the fucking butler, which indeed I was. Then she leaned over and gave Dewayne a peck on the cheek, which was the equivalent of at least a blow job for any other woman, if you truly knew how little affection Abby has ever shown in public, at least when I was there to witness it. The little man was screaming, but I was tired and anxious to get to bed, so I told him to get back to me the next day, which he did.

Dewayne leaves. Abby goes to bed. I go to bed. We spoon. It's cold out and the door is open. I'm grateful even though I know she is only using me for warmth.
Chapter 56: The Weekend

Abby needed some aspirin Wednesday morning and then not much happened the rest of the week. Friday night at cocktail hour we chit chatted and asked each other about what we were doing for the weekend and she said "riding." She didn't say riding with Dewayne because she wasn't in the sassy 'try and make me jealous' mode she had been in on Tuesday night.

The little man did get back to me on Wednesday, by the way. He had been screaming to me about Abby's public display of affection when she was fondling Dewayne's thigh, very close to his crotch, and then the off the Richter scale kiss, which might have seemed like an innocent peck on the cheek to most people, but to me, knowing Abby for twenty four years, it was definitely, without doubt, a get down on her knees blow job, with a swallow, and a slurp for effect.

So the little man was saying, and he may be right, since he often is, that maybe I really don't know Abby as well as I think that I do, which would be pretty damn awesome.

Saturday arrived, and after her usual preparations, when Abby was ready to leave, she came over to kiss me goodbye, which she always does, and which I always appreciate, I noticed something different. It was perfume. Wait a minute. She never wears perfume for a bike ride. Are you kidding me? And then I remembered that her shower this morning was a pretty long one. I remember because I wanted to take one after my walk and I had to wait because even though we have two showers, she has the bigger one by the way, we only have one water heater.

I've never figured out why she showers before she goes out and rides thirty or forty miles. Maybe now I have the answer.

She left and I called Kim. Yeah, I know this was kind of bold and a little sneaky on my part, but what the hell. I was pretty sure Dewayne had already left since they were meeting, I thought, at a place where the pack usually meets, which is further from his house than our condo.

Kim answered and seemed surprised to hear from me. I was hoping it was just surprise and that she wasn't annoyed. I asked her if Dewayne and Abby were riding, acting like Abby had not told me. Kim said yes they were riding and asked me what I was doing and I told her I was going to the grocery store. I didn't tell her that Abby had already given me her list, of things she wanted, since she does her own cooking and I do mine. I didn't want it to seem that Abby went out and played when I was shopping, which was indeed the case, at least on Saturday mornings, because that might look bad on my resume for Kim, so I didn't mention the list, and the fact that I shop for her every Saturday morning, hoping that it would seem like a casual run to the grocery store.

Then I just had a thought that maybe Abby told Dewayne everything about our marriage, maybe even in a condescending way, including the fact that she sends me to the store while she rides, with him. Then, of course, I went further down than road and thought about what she tells him about the intimate details of our sexual life, and I thought that couldn't be much, since there wasn't much sexually, at least in my eyes, but realizing that in her eyes it was probably way, way too much.

Kim asked me which grocery store and I told her and she said she'd meet me there in half an hour. That was pretty cool because she didn't ask if I could be there in half an hour or even if I'd like to meet her there at all. It was almost as if she was telling me to be there in half an hour, even though I was probably going to be there anyway, but I sure liked the fact that she told me to be there, which she did, kind of.

I was starting to like this lady. She was spontaneous but it was more than that. I kept hearing the little man saying that she was using me or some such shit, but I know he's not always right, and even if he was right, in this case, I didn't mind being used, by Kim at least. Then I wondered how far she might take the 'using me' thing. All the way I hoped.

I took a very quick shower. You never know. Then I got to the store, strategically, in exactly half an hour. I went to the movie rental box where I get movies for Abby and me on Saturdays or Sundays since the local movie theatre closed a while back and now we sit on our couches and watch the rented movies instead. It felt a little like cheating, being there, waiting for another woman, but that thought quickly disappeared as I saw Kim walk in, looking very hot.

She came over to me and gave me a kiss, smack on the lips, right there in our local grocery store, in a small town I might add, and even though there was no tongue, it was still incredibly sexy and I felt like a cheater and that felt good, given the fact that my wife already was.

She asked me what movie I was getting and I told her I usually got romantic comedies because that was what we both liked. She said she liked them too and I said, rather boldly I must say, that maybe we, meaning Kim and I, should watch one together sometime and she said, "When?" Holy shit, I thought, this woman is moving in the right direction and fast and suddenly I didn't give a shit what her reasons were. Use me all you want, I almost said out loud.

I said that Abby has a class on Wednesday nights and Kim said "what time" and I said "six" and she said she'd be there at six fifteen.

Was this really happening? Maybe she was like Lara. Maybe I had already gone insane and was dreaming up these lovely ladies and injecting them into my real life as real people even though they were imaginary. I reached out, on instinct, to touch her, and she looked at me, and I said that I had to make sure she was real, and she totally understood what I was saying, and she laughed and said, "you're going to find out how real I am," and then it was my turn and I said "when?."

We walked around the store and she put a few things in my cart since she didn't have one herself and I thought that was cute, us sharing a shopping cart, and then I realized that I was very glad it was early because most of our friends are late sleepers and wouldn't be there to see us on a shopping date, and then I thought that I was going to have to get over this paranoid kind of thinking real soon if indeed our marriages, plural, were going to open up and intertwine, not always in the bedroom.

In the parking lot, after she had put her small bag of groceries in her car, she turned to me and gave me another one of her famous, by now at least, very wet kisses and told me she'd see me Wednesday, and I said "perfect," trying to imitate Abby's rendition of perfect, but I was too busy thinking about the kiss to get it anywhere close.

When I got home, I unloaded the groceries, strategically placing all the items I bought for Abby in the specific place I always do, hoping to get at least a 'thanks', or maybe some deeper appreciation, but that's usually a waste of time, but I do it anyway. Except for the stuff that has to go in the refrigerator, and I try to place that in the front so she can see that there too.

Abby got home a little later, running for the bathroom, as she usually does, after a long ride and then came out, saw the groceries, and said "thanks honey" which was nice and I was glad I went to the trouble, but then I felt a sudden, but very short lived, pang of guilt, thinking about that delicious kiss from Kim while I was supposed to be only shopping for Abby.

I asked her how her ride was and she gave me the details, as she always does regarding miles, miles per hour, the route, how many wild animals she saw (this time it was a wild goat that some guy told her had been loose for at least a year), and things like that. I asked who rode and she said just Dewayne and I suddenly felt stupid for having that pang of guilt that I just had.

She showered, for a longer time than usual, came out and got some lunch and then asked me what I had been doing, and I said grocery store, office, etc. etc. as I usually do, and then I told her I saw Kim at the store, leaving out the part about me calling her and her telling me to meet her there and the kiss. Oh, I also forgot to tell her about the upcoming date with Kim, at our condo, Wednesday night while she would be at class. It's terrible how forgetful I have been lately.
Chapter 57: BBQ, or Taking a Break from Kim and Dewayne for a Bit

Being as forgetful as I am, lately, about certain things, I can't remember if I told you how I like Saturday nights, but now I think that I have because I remember saying something about grilling, which brings up an important technical point, and that is the difference between grilling and barbecue.

To be clear, down South, where we live, barbeque, BBQ for short, is only a noun. Barbecue is a word. Barbequing is not. BBQ is a product. It can be either pork or beef, and it has to be smoked, not grilled, which means that the meat is cooked slowly by the smoke and not by direct heat as in grilling. There is no such thing as barbecue chicken, which makes no sense since BBQ is noun. Chicken done on a grill is either grilled or smoked depending on how it is cooked.

And the greatest bastardization of the English language, bar none, is when someone says they are going to barbecue hamburgers. You can grill hamburgers, but you can't barbeque them. In fact you cannot barbeque anything at all, because barbeque is a product, not a process. Please get yourself clear on this, if you aren't already. It is important. Very important if you ever plan on visiting or living in the South.

I just had to put all that down about BBQ because when Abby and I go North and visit the relatives, we're always being invited over for barbecued chicken, which, of course, as I have made clear, I hope, is really grilled chicken with BBQ sauce applied to it, either during grilling, the best, or afterward which is also good, but not as.

It's usually pretty easy for me to keep my mouth shut about the distinctions regarding the chicken for two reasons. Number one is that I appreciate being invited over because the food is good, despite what they call it, and it's fun to hang out with Abby's brothers and sisters and her mom, who is pretty cool for her age, and all of the cousins. They all like to drink and say fuck this and fuck that, even with the little kids around, as I told you before.

The second reason I keep my mouth shut about the whole BBQ thing is that Abby thinks I'm pretty much of an oddball, which may be true, and she likes me to just talk about football or the stock market, or even politics. Talking about BBQ being only a noun, at least down South, makes me, in her eyes, a total idiot and probably makes her think she should have married a guy from the North would just talk about football, the stock market, or politics. Or better yet be married to a football player, a stock broker, or a politician, all of whom would no doubt make more money than I do.

But when the relatives call and ask us to come over and we say 'sure what can we bring', they usually say 'some wine', which we already knew, but then they say the thing that drives me insane and I almost always have to correct them, when we get there, after we have eaten, even though I know Abby will hate it when I say it, but some things just can't go unchallenged.

Are you ready for this? I'm having trouble even saying it because it's so egregious. They actually say, "it's going to be simple, were just going to barbecue some hamburgers."

Holy shit.

Haven't they learned by now, after twenty four years of me telling them, that you can't barbeque anything, much less hamburgers? I guess not. And in reality, I've probably only been telling them for about ten years, because it took me quite a while to get comfortable enough with her family to just join in the mayhem and say anything and everything that comes to mind, which kind of makes me wonder why Abby thinks I'm such an oddball or idiot when I do my BBQ diatribe, since everyone else is also saying oddball and idiotic things.

But maybe that's because I don't understand totally, yet, even after twenty four years, the Northern culture, or at least her family's Northern culture and what types of 'anything goes' discussions are allowed at these gatherings.

At least I'm smart enough to keep my mouth shut about my time and super brain theories. And I have never mentioned to anyone in her family that I spent a good four years reading a lot of the Seth material, but I draw the line and hiding the Seth books when her family comes to the house. Not that they would probably notice them anyway because they are usually on the porch drinking wine and besides, before they come over, Abby makes a point of cleaning things up which includes moving any offending material. And offending means anything that I might be reading.

This sure has turned into a long discussion about BBQ and grilling and chicken and hamburgers, but it does help paint at least a partial picture of Abby's family, all of whom I like a lot, and that's important in painting the true and whole picture of Abby, which, of course, I'm trying to do because she is not only my wife and a beautiful person, she is also complex and that complexity makes her even more beautiful and to understand the complexity, as much as anyone can, leads to a better appreciation of how beautiful she actually is.

I guess I should have made at least one chapter break in all of this, but it all seems to be related and there didn't seem to be a real clear place to break it. That being said let me move away from BBQ, for good, I hear you cry, and move on to Abby's family and the intimidation factor and how I overcame it and why I think that her family's dynamic is healthy, mentally, generally, even given the outward appearance of chaos and total mayhem. OK, finally a chapter break.
Chapter 58: Abby's Family

I kind of like the way this discussion is flowing and the way it seems to have a mind of its own. I'm the one typing the keys, but I don't seem to be doing any thinking in the whole process.

So anyway, as I said, Abby has a large family with lots of sisters and brothers, and her mother is still alive but not her dad. When we first met, twenty five years ago, at a summer resort in the Northeast, where she was a waitress and I was a wine steward, she kind of tried to warn me about them, when, I guess, she realized that our summer romance might just be a little more long lasting, which turned out to be a good guess.

I was probably too busy paying attention to her to hear her warnings, and that was probably a good thing, because I didn't have to dread meeting them. Now don't get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing amiss with her family. It's just that they are like a group of drunken sailors in port after a year at sea, on occasion. Many occasions. Most occasions.

Maybe it's just the difference between the South and the North. Down South we just kind of dance around issues and don't say bad things about other people, except under our breath. Up North, they just blurt it all out, and the language is, shall we say, uncensored.

Coming from the South and being plopped right in the middle of this, on Thanksgiving, before we were married, was, to say the very least, a shock. But thank god they are generous with the booze, so I just started drinking and it all got better. Very quickly.

One aside here is that now I always make a lot of mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving because, on that first visit, at Thanksgiving, I happened to be the unlucky person who was to the left of the mashed potato bowl, which got passed to the right, and by the time it got to me, it was so totally empty, it looked clean.

Now, I have to tell you that of all the holidays we have, I love Thanksgiving the best, well almost the best, and the reason is the mashed potatoes served with the dinner. Having a Thanksgiving dinner without mashed potatoes is on the same plane as having BBQ without sauce. I know I promised not to talk about BBQ any more, and I'm sorry, but I couldn't think of a better analogy.

After the trauma of the dinner with no mashed potatoes, which still haunts me today, after a quarter of a century, I shit you not, things got better as we all drank more.

I soon learned that the key to being around Abby's family was to just drink a lot and say whatever you thought, which was hard at times, not because of any intimidation factor, but rather because there were so many of them trying to say what they thought, and it was hard to get a break in the conversation long enough to say something.

One of the main things that Abby and I discuss, i.e. fight about, is families. Hers and mine. In her black and white world, her family is perfect and mine is shit. I'm not being totally fair here, but almost. It's not really that my family is shit in her eyes. It's just that they are different from hers, and that makes them suspect.

In my more measured perspective, seeing the shades of gray that I do, much better than Abby I should say, I can see the best of each family and try to play to the strengths of each. Now I know that sounds terribly arrogant and perhaps even self righteous, but I have to take my own side, sometimes, don't I? I'm not a total pussy, and when I'm right I have to admit it. Right?

So seeing those shades of gray that I do, when I'm up North I act a whole lot differently than I do down south. Believing that the strength of Abby's family is in its chaotic nature, and holding back and acting with Southern gentility just doesn't seem appropriate, I drink and cuss and say bad things about every public official who I can think of, and I don't take myself seriously, and I generally have one hell of a good time up there.
Chapter 59: Back Down South

I'm not trying to turn this into a reenactment of the civil war. Excuse me, I meant to say 'the war of Northern aggression' as they say down here. I love a lot of things about the South, BBQ being near the top of the list.

If you've never gone to some mountain store, way back in the middle of fucking nowhere, on a warm summer Saturday night, and sat on a rock or a stump, because it's outside and there are no chairs unless you bring them, and I always forget, and listen to a blue grass band made up of some really sketchy, sketchy to Abby at least, mountain folk, you haven't really heard music at all. I don't care if you've been to Carnegie fucking Hall, you haven't heard music this good.

In addition to BBQ and bluegrass, I like the Southern black folk a lot. Now I know you are going to pick me apart for being politically incorrect and prejudiced and insensitive and all of that shit. And there may be an element of all of that in me. I plead totally and absolutely guilty to not being politically correct. Hang me for that. But I plead totally innocent to having any bigotry or hatred in my heart, and if I seem insensitive, then so be it, because I'm not.

Back to the Southern black folk, and why I like them and why I'm not stereotyping them at all, even though it may seem that I am. I'm a Southern cracker. A white devil. I can't help that. I was born white. But my soul is a lot darker. And darker is good to me.

The blacks in the South have withstood terrible things. Can you possibly imagine a bunch of white thugs breaking into your shack, taking out your brother or uncle or father or cousin, and hanging him? Just take a minute to think about that. Stop reading. Close this book or turn off your e-reader. Maybe for five minutes. Just spend five minutes of your entire life, an infinitesimally small portion of it, i.e. your life, putting yourself in that position.

Think about your family, currently. Think about a bunch of thugs breaking in and taking someone and killing them. Then think about the absolutely brutal, inhuman, unbelievable, undeniable fact that there is absolutely nothing you can do or could have done to save them. They won't be punished. Even though everyone knows who did it. Including the whole legal establishment. The sheriff knows. The judge knows. The whole fucking town knows and no fucking body is going to do a fucking thing about it.

The holocaust was a terrible thing. An unbelievable thing. An unforgiveable thing. But so was the treatment of blacks in the South. Not on as grand a scale in numbers, but try telling that to the family that lost a father because some motherfucking idiot of a human being said he saw the N look at a white woman in a lustful way.

That's what I hate about the South. Its past. Not all of its past, but that part in spades. And any race that can endure that treatment and come out on top with love in their hearts, wins my vote as to a place at the very top of the thing we call humanity.

So yeah, I love the Southern black folk, and I would bet that most of them would forgive me for being politically incorrect and look past my choice of words and see what is in my heart and soul, because I know for a fact, they are very capable of and willing to do just that.

I think one of the best things that ever happened to the South was the influx of people from outside. They brought new ideas and new ways of seeing and doing things, and they brought, most importantly, the unwillingness to allow certain things to be perpetuated.

Lest you think I am condemning the South and its heritage and everything in its past, remember this is George, not Abby, and I'm quite capable of seeing the whole picture in shades of gray. I could have chosen to leave the South at any time, but I've spent the best part of my life here, and I love it, generally. But that doesn't mean I'm going to keep my mouth shut when I see something I don't like.

Perhaps hanging out with Abby's family has been good for me in that respect, i.e. calling a spade a spade, even if that metaphor might not be the best one to use because I just remembered that spade was a racial slur too, but since I've delved deeply, and probably dangerously, into the miasma of race, I guess I'll leave it here, in this sentence, knowing that I sometimes give ammunition to my enemies, but then again, I really don't accept the concept of enemies in the first place, but I'll save that for another chapter, and besides, this sentence is getting ridiculously long.

Now that I've totally exposed myself as an insensitive prejudiced bigoted bastard, in some people's eyes I am guessing, but not in my own, let me tell you what else I like about the South.

Fried Okra. Fried chicken. Fried catfish. Grits.

So up North, people think that grits are some part of some animal's innards, apparently. Abby's mother came down South right after we were married and living in marital bliss, as all couples do for a short period of time, before they start getting on each other's nerves and then either learn to live with what they perceive are each other's short comings, or they embrace and learn to love the differences, or thirdly, move toward divorce.

Abby and her mom and I were having a Southern breakfast, and the mom got a plate with eggs and bacon, both of which she wanted, and grits, which she didn't, but in most places that serve Southern breakfasts, they are included, and basically free, so most places don't ask you if you want grits or not, because they assume you do since they are free and most of their customers are from the South and love grits.

So her mom kind of just looked at them and ate around them, and then after breakfast, when it was clear she wasn't going to eat them, I asked her "don't you like grits?," knowing full well that she didn't, and she said "is that was sliding on my plate, getting closer and closer to my eggs?"

Abby and her mom laughed, but I didn't because it was a waste of good grits, which are just ground corn and nothing else I might add. Up North they call the same thing polenta and go crazy over it and pay high prices in fancy restaurants for it. But somehow is has some Southern stigma to it, and many Northerners won't eat grits, or fried okra, both of which happen to be outstanding, for fear of becoming Southern or something like that, I'm guessing.

As you can see, I'm conflicted in my relationship to the South, loving most parts and hating a few parts, mostly past parts regarding racial relations, but also the god awful humidity and heat in the summer, but since we have a summer home in the Northeast, that hate of the heat and humidity is pretty much a thing of the past. So to sum up this lengthy and maybe superfluous diatribe, the South is a good place to live, since it is shedding the part of its past that was horrendous, while retaining those parts that are historic and good.
Chapter 60: Giving it a Rest

I'm pretty sure Abby has never used the word 'pontificating'; not because she is not well read, but simply because she doesn't use esoteric words like pontificating in her normal conversations. With me at least. However, I'm almost certain that she thinks that I pontificate a lot, and I do, and she hates it when I do, so I try and not do it around her, which is probably why I'm doing it a lot here, because she is not listening to me now.

I just looked up the definition of the word, as I sometimes do, to make sure I am using the right word, since I usually don't use esoteric words either, and I was right because it fits exactly what Abby, no doubt, thinks I am doing when I am talking about something like grits, or BBQ, or racial slurs, and probably open marriage.

Here is what I found, 'pontificating: to speak in a pompous or dogmatic manner', and I have to admit, that pretty much fits what I am doing, as bad as it sounds to me, here, right now.

When I break things down, and do analyses of them, like my pontification about grits, I'm continually coming to the conclusion that Abby is more right than wrong, which leads me to believe that maybe I'm more wrong than right about a variety of things. It's dangerous when you tread in these waters of self analysis. Egos are a fragile thing. Ripping them apart and throwing them away with the morning trash is ill advised, take it from me. So I think I'll give it a rest for while, i.e. the analyses. Not the pontifications. I like those too much.
Chapter 61: The Tri, the Internet, and the Ever so Cool Dewayne

Yesterday was the tri. Triathlon for those of you not in the know. Dewayne was in it. His first. Abby was watching it. On the net. The internet. Not actually watching it, but watching the progress. One thing I learned, by the way, was his age, since they list the athlete's ages. He is thirty fucking five. Thirteen years younger than Abby. Of course that makes her two things, both of which send certain sensations to the part of my body just below the waist.

First, she is a cougar, which must make Dewayne her cub. Next she is a MILF, and once again, for those of you uninitiated in the current world of dating, that translates into mother I'd like to fuck. Both terms seem to indicate that there are more than a few men who prefer their women with some miles on them, which makes a lot of sense when you do the appropriate analysis, which of course I have, many, many times. Those men who prefer older women, I know because I've read this on the net, which we all know means that it is absolutely true, prefer them mostly because these older women want to get right to the point, i.e. fucking or sucking or licking, without all of the bullshit courtship that most younger women expect and seem to need.

On the other hand, younger women who prefer older men prefer them mainly for their knowledge and general lack of needing to get right to the point. These older men have probably figured out, by the time they are older, that the best way to get inside a woman's panties, if indeed she is wearing any, is to appear not to want to get into her panties, as paradoxical as that may sound.

They, the young women, are pretty much used to men groping and grabbing and feeling, and they, the young women, have learned to defend the territory, as it were, and then when the older men are more restrained or polite, or just plain smart, and they, the older men, are not groping and grabbing and feeling, then they, the younger women, start feeling either special or somewhat frustrated, or both, and then they want the older men more, because it probably seems to them, i.e. the younger women, that they are not as attractive as they had been to the younger men, so they open up, literally, quickly and easily.

It's good that there probably is a balance between all of this so that older men and older women can still get laid, by younger women and younger men but for very different reasons. Which brings us back to Abby and her cub Dewayne and what they see and need in each other.

Dewayne is a pretty simple read, I think, in that he's a man's man and men's men not only need to get laid, they fucking deserve to get laid. So they survey the landscape, look for someone they see as attractive, which in this case was Abby in spades for Dewayne, and then they do a quick analysis. Probably a very quick one in Dewayne's case, not that he is stupid by any means and therefore incapable of doing a more thorough analysis, but rather that since he deserves it, there isn't much of an analysis to do in the first place.

In most cases, the pursuer does an analysis of the pursued and measures the likelihood of success and the possible complications, and then decides to pursue or not. In this case, Dewayne must have determined the likelihood of success as being high, and he was right, as we have learned, and the complications not all that significant, which he has gotten wrong, not because I was likely to bother him, that part he got right, but the thing with Kim was probably not expected by him, most likely because he thought he wouldn't get caught.

Abby on the other hand, being the pursued probably gave it little or no thought until that exact moment when he slid his hand under her racing outfit and felt her tits, or perhaps instead when he just moved his face close to hers and kissed her and slid his tongue into her waiting, and willing I might add, mouth.

At that exact moment she had to make a monumental decision, unless of course, she had already made the decision and was just waiting for the hand or tongue.

Another possibility is that she has had a lot of practice with this sort of thing over the past quarter century, and there was no decision to make in the first place.

I just had to look back to see where I came from, because I think I got way off track because this was interesting and getting me hot thinking about Dewayne and Abby in that first microsecond of passion, and now I remember that this started when I was thinking about Abby being a cougar or a MILF, both of which sound fantastic in my book, even though I'm not the cub, but in actuality I prefer the role of the husband being married to the cougar or MILF anyway.

We have established that Abby is much older than Dewayne, but it works for both of them and that's all that is important.

Abby kept hitting the refresh button on her computer, probably a few hundred times during the day, and ooo'd and aaa'd every time she saw a new posting of his times, and at the end of the day, when one of his friends, or maybe Kim, ironically, posted his picture at the finish line, she, I swear to you, probably had a mini orgasm, as she said, very loudly and very lustfully, I was certain "he looks GREAT, just GREAT."

I went to look at the picture and he looked pretty shitty to me, but what do I know about men and their attractiveness to women or other men, and of course, the after the tri, worn out, sweaty, beleaguered look was probably a part of the turn on for a fellow tri-athlete too, in a weird way I thought.

However, I was in my playing it cool mode, which really was more accurately a get Abby hot and since Dewayne wasn't in our condo right then maybe Abby will fuck me by default mode. It did work by the way, I am pleased to report, and I was honored to be able to lick the kitty for two, yes two, big O's, which Dewayne, I'm talking to you now, were much larger than the mini one she had looking at your picture. So there, Mr. fucking tri-athlete.

To be fair, which you know by now that I am, if he had been there, in our condo, and Abby could have had him, right after the race, even though she prefers a freshly showered body, in this case the sweat would have been an aphrodisiac, her orgasms would have been heard on the street, five floors down. And I know it would have been many more than two O's, and I know penetration and injection of his bodily fluids would have been accomplished, in some or multiple orifices.

But I was still proud that my tongue was allowed in the secret, and I might add, tasty place and that it served her purpose, better than Dewayne's picture. So there, again, asshole.

Dewayne finished about half way through the field, and didn't place in his age group, and didn't win any trophies or any money or any recognition, so I can't for the life of me see why it was such a big fucking deal in Abby's eyes. But it was. And that's pretty hot, because she is my fucking wife, even if she is also fucking you Dewayne, and I get to sleep with her every night, even if, alas, she only touches me when it's cold out and we leave the door open, which I make sure we always do.
Chapter 62: The Hero Returns

You've got to love any tight knit group that basically likes to get together and accomplish something and then spend the next five years relishing in that accomplishment, no matter how trivial it might be in the great scheme of things.

This chapter is going to sound convoluted and may be confusing at times, but the gestalt will be there, at the end, so please be patient.

When I married Abby, I was even more of a tree hugger, save the world maniac than I am now. I still am one, for sure, wanting to compost the kitchen scraps, for example, which is hard since we don't have a yard or a garden any more, but I still try. And I wash out plastic bags, which drives Abby insane, "It's just a fucking plastic bag and only costs a fraction of a cent," she rails, which is not true, as I've done the math and they are several cents each, and besides, they are made from petroleum which must be extracted at an environmental cost, and if everyone washed them out and used them multiple times, it would help, somewhat.

If I had married an earth mother, which is a sixties term for a tree hugger, she probably would have respected me a lot more than Abby does, but we probably would have lived a pretty dull life, constantly respecting each other, patting each other on the back for saving the world, and would in reality have not saved the world, at all, unfortunately.

I'm not sure about the fucking and sucking, and even if it was more frequent, it probably would have been nowhere near as lustful. Respectful does not equate to lustful. Respectful fucking almost sounds like an oxymoron, now that I think about it.

So I'm glad I married Abby, and her disrespectful lustiness, even if shared with Dewayne, and maybe others or even many others, is a far better thing, I think, than plentiful respectful fucking, which we would have, no doubt, in my imaginary marriage to earth mom, have called 'love making'.

The hero returned from the tri and the hero worship was abundant, day after day after day with numerous emails circulated among the tight knit group, and our cocktail hour conversations had one and only one theme which you have already guessed, so after the pleasantries of how was your day and how is your mother and did you hear from any of the kids, the inevitable "I can't believe how good Dewayne did," with all the attendant smiles and looks of lust, surfaced and dominated the cocktail hour conversation.

Just an aside, but during those hero worshiping days and weeks, our cocktail hour ballooned from the minimum fifteen minutes that we mutually agreed on a long time ago to almost one half hour, simply because that much time was needed to get all of Abby's gushing and lust for the hero out.

My going along with the hero worship mode was working. Working very well indeed. I'd morphed from barely being able to tolerate it, when the bitch talked about biking and her biking friends and the hero from the tri, to actually stoking the fires of Abby's infatuations. I was kind of proud of myself for figuring this whole thing out. And when I just called her a bitch, that was a playful use of the term. She is a bitch, but not a bad bitch. There is a difference. At least in my mind.

So Abby went on and on and on about how proud she was of Dewayne and how great he did, I just smiled and asked those few questions that kept her lubricated, so to speak, in her praise of him. Dewayne, that is. My rival. Sort of. Her lover. Definitely.

Since I was married to Abby and not earth mother, I was learning that I needed to morph and save the world on my own time and hero worship with Abby, or at least participate in the hero worship, by simply listening, nodding on occasion, and better yet, asking strategic questions, even though I knew the answers because they had been asked, strategically, by me, many times before, but of course Abby with her strategic memory had forgotten I had asked them, or more likely didn't give a shit because answering them was vibrating a certain part of her anatomy internally. And since I was in the default mode of being the available licker, to keep Abby vibrating down there was in my best interests.

Which brings us to the conclusion, and hopefully a meaningful gestalt, of this chapter, with the very obvious observation and conclusion that if you are married and your spouse is not particularly amorous toward you, but is amorous toward another person, it would be in your best interests to stoke the fires of that passion, tossing aside any jealousy, because, you as the default fuck, will most likely get laid, or be allowed to lick, significantly more often if your spouse is being made wet by anyone. So throw away any remaining dignity you may have left, and jump into the game and play it well and thank the extraneous lover for the part he or she plays in your happiness.
Chapter 63: The Bike, and Money in General

I've read that after sex and in-laws, money is the third reason for most disagreements in a marriage, and I'd have to say that is about right for us too.

In our marriage, it works like this. My salary goes to pay all of our expenses and Abby gets to use her money for things she wants to spend it on. Of course, I'm being overly simplistic, but that's pretty close. When I was making about three times what I am making now, that was fine, but now Abby is making more than me, and it's not quite as fine.

I sometimes think a lot of my angst about Abby and perhaps my feeling that she doesn't give me as much respect as I seem to crave, started about the time my salary started going south. It's long and complicated but probably mirrors a lot of people's stories about innovation and changing job markets, but suffice it to say that I didn't make all the best career choices or investment decisions. But does anyone? Shit, if I knew then what I know now, Warren Buffett would be working for me. In my defense, I have paid all of the expenses over the years, have never been unemployed, and our standard of living is quite comfortable.

Fast backward to about three weeks ago, at cocktail hour, when Abby said she was intimidated by Edith, which she often says, because Edith is a super woman on the bike. Also Edith has a new custom made bike, and Abby is probably jealous. So Abby announced that at some point she was going to treat herself, once in her lifetime she said, to a custom made bike. I kind of filed that away in my mind due mainly to the 'at some point' which I assumed might be ten years, when presumably we had more money, or perhaps one of my long shot investments awoke from the dead.

I also thought a custom made bike would cost a little more that an off the shelf bike, which by the way, in case you aren't aware, is hardly 'off the shelf' in reality.

I thought I needed to try and get comfortable with a ball park number on the cost so I asked Abby. Not how much her new, in the future, far into the future I am hoping, bike would cost, because asking Abby what any fucking thing cost that she paid for is an absolute no-no since it is her money, keeping in mind that all of my money goes to boring and trivial things like mortgages, insurance, taxes, cars, braces, tuition, and minor things like that. So instead I asked strategically how much Edith paid for her bike, saying something like "was it about two thousand?" hoping it was, even though I am appalled that bikes could possibly cost that much because you can get a decent used car that will run for years, with minor upkeep, for that much money.

When I heard, "oh no," from her with that well known, by me, inflection, with the h and the o at end of each word going on and on and on for about then seconds each, meaning, of course, that I was so ridiculously low as to be stupid, I knew I was fucked, even though, in Abby's convoluted, to me, logic, it was her fucking money anyway, not mine.

Long story short, the motherfucker will cost at least five thousand dollars, of Abby's money, and I better not react to that even in any slight way like raising an eyebrow a tenth of a millimeter, or the sex life that I thought was paltry before, will seem like heaven in retrospect.

So back to money and fights and disagreements about it. I'll just make a suggestion to couples based on a lot of years of disagreements and angst in general and say this in all sincerity. Integrate your money at the beginning and don't think of it as yours versus theirs. You are getting married to hopefully spend a lifetime together and that's going to take a huge amount of compromise and negotiation.

And the good news is, and I'm speaking to the men here, as you get older, the need for toys diminishes; at least it seems to based on my experience and the experience of my friends. My few friends. And if you are fair in looking at the totality of the situation, you will probably find that your wife spends her money, and I know I'm contradicting myself now but you know what I'm saying, on things for the home and the kids, and sometimes you, and you should try and derive the same or greater pleasure observing her spending that money, as you did when you were spending it on you and your toys.

So grow up, suck it up, realize you have no choice, and don't argue about something that is just going to take a lot of energy, make you miserable in the process, and leave you frustrated because there is nothing you can do about it anyway.
Chapter 64: An Obvious Irony

It's hard for me to overlook ironies. I'm not sure why. I'm not sure I want to know why. It's just that they are there. In your face. Waiting for you to discover them. And then to reveal them, at first to yourself, and then maybe to others, if anyone wants to hear about them, which in my case at least, is not very many people, if at all.

The obvious irony here, although not by far the only one, is that Abby, in deciding to fuck at least one other man, has opened up a closed marriage that was probably stagnating in certain respects, probably in many respects, even though she, i.e. Abby, is the one who was, or thought she was, in favor of traditional marriages.

The other obvious irony intertwined in this whole play, or at least it seems like a play at times, that I'm living in, is that I am tremendously jealous that Dewayne is fucking my wife, with no doubt a bigger dick, and she is enjoying it, i.e. the fucking, and the bigger dick, much more and probably more often with him than with me, and the jealousy is acting as a tremendous stimulant to me.

As I said previously, my very thorough and astute analysis led me to the conclusion that jealousy has two sides and once you climb the difficult mountain of jealousy and reach the top and descend down the other sweet side and see the beauty there, you know that shooting or strangling the wife and/or the lover is not only a bad idea because it gives you the exact opposite of what you want, i.e. they are dead so you can't have them, not to mention that you are in jail, you know that you are missing out on one of lust's greatest moments. If that's not an irony, i.e. seeing, or at least hearing about, the one you love get fucked by someone else and loving it, then ironies don't exist.
Chapter 65: Gay Marriage

A digression here about gay marriage. Abby is for it. Enthusiastically for it. Adamantly for it. Over the top for it. This became obvious to me about a year ago or maybe it was two years ago when the debate was raging in our state. Raging is too strong a word, actually, because we are a conservative Southern state. Being discussed is more like it. And it was actually raging in a lot of other more progressive states. I know I shouldn't have used the word progressive because it implies that our state isn't, but if I'm going to make a point, which I want to do, about social progress, and if I truly believe that tolerance, of all kinds, is progressive, then I have to use it.

Abby and I never really talked about homosexuality, except to the extent that we did in sharing fantasies regarding each other with the same gender in a sexual mode, which seems, from my reading but not actual experience, to be a universal aphrodisiac.

She admitted that she would like to see a man do me, two ways, which are pretty obvious, and I of course, told her that I'd like to see a lot of doing between her and another woman or multiples of women, or men.

Back to the Abby's strong support of gay marriage and my surprise at hearing about it. I'm not sure how it came up, but when it did, probably from watching the news together and seeing something about it there, it was clear that she wanted to proclaim, to all who would hear, that she is totally, absolutely, without a doubt in favor of it and it's normal and natural and everyone who thinks otherwise should be shot.

She says that a lot about people being shot. She's not serious of course.

I'm still curious why she is so adamant about it, but I like the fact that she is. Maybe she's channeling all of her 'out of the box' ideas and thoughts into one area, where they can be expressed in a way that is not out of the box. Gay marriage has become a legitimate debate and being for it in no way, in most circles, paints anyone as being much of a rebel at all. Open marriage, which she is involved in, but not in favor of, as we know, is still pretty much of a fringe culture, and opening up to someone about it, especially telling them she is practicing it, would be something Abby just can't, at this point, do or even contemplate doing, even though, ironically she is doing it, with Dewayne.
Chapter 66: An Admission

This is difficult and a little bit embarrassing, so let me lead into it slowly, for my sake.

On a daily basis, I'm a pretty normal person. Normal in the sense that I don't go around talking about my wife fucking other men. Sure, I go around thinking and fantasizing about it, but I don't just go up to friends or even random strangers and say "hey, would you like to hear about my wife's boyfriends?"

So when I'm disclosing all of this information here, it's ok because no one is watching me or listening to me, at least right now, here, as I type this. What happens later is not my concern, I hope.

The problem arises in switching my mind from the fantasy mode to the reality mode, and I don't mean the reality mode as in telling strangers or friends on the street, I mean instead the reality mode of typing, here, now. I know this may not be making a lot of sense.

It's kind of like getting into the mood of doing something. Warming up. Focusing. Shifting gears. I'm searching for the right analogy but it's not coming to me so I'm going to take a walk and see it that helps. By the way, speaking of walking, I did my two hour, six mile walk this morning, as usual.

Back from walking. It's really beautiful out. I love the fall. Cold nights and cool sunny days.

Back to the problem. The problem of having two different mind sets and switching between them. When I sit down to type all of this that I'm typing, a lot of things are going through my mind. Once I get going, the thinking mind just basically shuts down and something else takes over. I'm not sure what is happening, but since I'm on a need to know basis, it doesn't matter. I'm just sort of watching the keys, since I cheated when I was in high school taking typing and looked at the keys, so now, probably for the rest of my life, I'm doomed to have to look at the keys instead of knowing instinctively where they are, which I would be able to do if I hadn't been a cheater. Lesson learned, too late. Don't cheat. At least in typing class.

If you're seeing a lot of extraneous stuff before I get to the meat of the issues, it's probably the shifting of mindset mechanism going on. Getting warmed up for the important dialogue. Maybe it's akin to the prep work in a kitchen before you get started cooking. Not much fun but necessary.

Then once this energy starts flowing, the angst starts flowing out. If I had to choose one word to describe my life with Abby, I'd have to choose angst. The angst of the middle aged man.

I went to the online dictionary for a definition and here it is and it fits pretty well: 'Angst: often confused with anxiety, is a transcendent emotion in that it combines the unbearable anguish of life with the hopes of overcoming this seemingly impossible situation. Without the important element of hope, then the emotion is anxiety, not angst.'

That makes me feel better, and I'm glad that I have angst and not anxiety. The key is the hope. The hope, maybe, that one day Abby will understand me and respect me and fuck me more. Dream on, George.

Now something has happened and the ice is broken and I have shifted to my secret mode that I normally don't let out of the bag, except when I'm drunk, like that time I asked the perfect stranger if she wanted to have anal sex.

So you see the problem and the dilemma, hopefully, i.e. having an inner, secret, fantasy world and a normal boring exterior mindset that I, and most likely most people, present to the public, and switching between the two.

I feel this chapter was pretty much a waste and is about as shitty as I have done so far, but at least it got me warmed up and now I'm on a roll and the three fingers that I use typing are working overtime, as I cheat and look at the keyboard, and the energy is flowing and I'm dying to talk to anyone, anyone who will listen about my beautiful wife Abby and her sexual exploits, even if they don't involve me. Well truly, 'even' if is the wrong word. Substitute especially for even.
Chapter 67: Juices Are Flowing

I guess the shitty chapter served the purpose and getting the juices, creative and sexual, flowing. Wouldn't it be great if there was no bifurcation of the brain and that the creative and sexual energies were right there, near the surface, ready to come out at a moment's notice, or even on the surface instead of being buried under layers of guilt and shame and societally imposed restrictions?

But, alas, I'm a victim of my society and times, and I'm apparently not evolved enough or smart enough to have moved to a place where I can just start typing about Abby doing other men, without first warming up with a lot of extraneous and superfluous bullshit.

Now that I'm in the mode, so to speak, let me tell you about Abby's date. Date is really not the right word due he didn't come calling, as they say down here. They met at a local bar. Dewayne was still riding the hero's bandwagon, and Abby was the main cheerleader. Kim was, I was pretty sure, about as sick of this crap as I was, so she didn't want to go to the bar, as I found out from Abby, later. Abby didn't use the term 'sick of this crap' because to her, it wasn't crap at all. She merely said that Kim wasn't there, when we talked about the date, the next day, and of course, she didn't call it a date, even though Dewayne texted her to come, needing some more cheerleading no doubt.

Remember Edith? The lady who I got into somewhat of a pissing contest over her joking about chopping off a man's dick. Well I never pegged her as really my friend, and maybe I'm misinterpreting what she did as a friendly act, but for lack of other obvious reasons, that is just what I did, i.e. think of it as a friendly act, when she emailed me this the day after the date, "Mark, I feel kind of uncomfortable sending this to you, but I think you should know that Dewayne and Abby were acting toward each other in a manner that suggested something is going on between them." Duh, I thought.

But I kind of appreciated the friendly gesture, if indeed it was friendly, and at that point, I couldn't think of any other reason. Remember that her husband cheated on her and she kicked his ass to the curb, and I've always felt that was a mistake due they had a lot in common and she could have, more creatively, used that stray fuck on his part as a means of opening their marriage and they both could have lived happily ever after, so to speak. But kick she did, and now I'm hoping she doesn't end up like a lot of other ladies, and men perhaps, i.e. old and bitter and lonely.

I started thinking that maybe her email was simply a means of commiserating with a fellow victim of a cheating spouse, her not knowing, at this point at least, that I liked the cheating. Then I thought that maybe Abby had done something mean to her in the past and this was simple revenge. Or maybe Dewayne had refused her overtures, she being lonely and prone to overtures, and this was the best way to fuck him, since he wouldn't fuck her. Finally, I even entertained the notion, or better yet, fantasy that she wanted to fuck me and this was the way to open a dialog and then she would offer herself to me as z revenge fuck to avenge the cheating whore-bitch Abby's meanness to her, in the past.

A choice had to be made as to whether I would try to bring Edith on board or not about my mind set regarding the deliciousness of having my wife do other men, knowing full well that she rejected the opportunity to open her own marriage, when she had the chance, and her deep rooted bitter feelings and emotions could burst to the surface like a volcano, and who knows what havoc that would reap.

On the other hand, I wasn't going to play the wounded spouse role and commiserate with her about how shitty life and marriage are, and how cheaters should have their dicks, or in this case, pussies reprimanded in a very harsh manner.

I took the middle ground, as I mostly do, and responded with "thanks Edith, good info, I'll think about it before I do or say anything," letting her know that I wasn't going to do anything rash, thus trying to signal to her that I was above the fray, hoping she would somehow interpret this as a nice blend of confidence, wisdom, and maturity, trying to hedge my bets of course, because Edith was still a pretty hot woman and I wouldn't be averse to a future sexual tryst with her.

If Edith witnessed the inappropriate behavior between Abby and Dewayne, then other people did too, I was guessing, but because they are a tight knit group, and because I'm not part of that group, it seemed pretty obvious to me that I wasn't going to get a flurry of phone calls or emails like the one Edith sent me. I was right.

Abby didn't say anything about her almost fucking Dewayne on the bar stool, as Edith had reported, not quite as graphically in her email to me, when she came home. She just said a bunch of people were there and Kim wasn't. She also didn't say that Dewayne had texted her to come, but I knew, of course, because she leaves her phone laying around, and I just happen to see the message as I was walking by and it was plugged in to charge, and I just happened to pick it up and see if it was fully charged and maybe my fingers slipped to the 'messages' area.
Chapter 68: Do I Want Kim or Edith More?

This whole scenario was taking some interesting twists and turns and I just decided to kind of imagine that I was on a raft in a river with no motor and no paddle and the best course of action was just to lay back and relax and enjoy the ride.

I wasn't really thinking along the lines of pursuing Edith because she's not totally my type, but she is pretty and if I was reading the signals anywhere near right, she might want some action, and since Abby had already participated in some action, why the fuck shouldn't I?

On the other hand, Kim was much more my type, and if I fucked Edith, it would get out, presumably, because Edith is part of the tight knit group, even though she betrayed two of them in the email to me, for reasons still unknown. But if Edith and I started fucking, or even did it once, someone somehow would know and then Dewayne would know and then Dewayne could and definitely would use the fact that Abby's husband, i.e. me, was cheating on her as some sort of sick excuse to Kim to defend his fucking Abby, if that ever came up again.

I know it sounds convoluted, but Dewayne isn't stupid and we know he is sneaky, so he could concoct a scenario that he was simply consoling poor Abby, whose hubby cheated on her, and it just happened. I.e. his fucking Abby, not mentioning to Kim that I fucked Edith a long fucking time after he did Abby.

The point is that if I fucked Edith, my second choice, then I might as well walk away from Kim, my first choice, because Dewayne would no doubt do his level best to paint me to Kim as a liar and a cheater and 'no good for you', although he wouldn't dare use 'no good for you', because that would imply that he thought she might cheat on him with me, and he didn't want to signal that to her, mostly because he knew very well that if he let her know that her cheating on him would hurt him, she would do it in a New York minute, since he had already hurt her. But the liar and cheater part would be ok for him to use, for sure.

And if the motherfucker had half a brain, he'd realize that Kim cheating on him would be the best thing in the world, because he could then fuck Abby, and presumably other fine ladies with no guilt, but he had obviously not even begun climbing the proverbial mountain of jealousy, and was most likely in the mindset that Kim was his possession and not a woman who needed other men, like me, for example.

I know I just contradicted myself by saying that Dewayne was smart in one paragraph and then saying he had only half a brain. Well, both are true actually. He's smart in that he knows how to play to the ladies, Abby for sure, to get between their legs and that does require some thought and planning.

However, it hasn't dawned on him that cheating and sneaking are a pretty piss poor way to live and there is a much better alternative called open marriage. He may have a bigger dick, but I'm definitely more evolved, societally speaking, not that this fact gets me laid any more. In fact it's just the opposite, I have to admit. Which makes me question a lot of things. It also depresses me. Greatly.

I made my choice, after all of my analysis, which was extensive and thorough, I assure you, that Kim was the first choice, but just to hedge my bets, as any careful person would do, I decided to continue the conversation with Edith, partly because I wanted her, no a needed her, to feed me lurid details regarding the inappropriate behavior that she had witnessed between Dewayne and Abby, and also because I could easily back off from fucking her, even if we came close to the brink, if things turned out well in my quest to enter Kim's inner sanctum. Little did I know, at that time, that this was a dangerous course of action.
Chapter 69: Players

Now don't get me wrong. I wasn't in any way going to try and become some sort of a player, even though I'm not clear what that term means. I suspect it means someone who is like a playboy used to be and now we have playgirls too and it's easier to use a non gender specific term like player. I think that must be the case now that I think about it. But calling me a playboy or player is about like calling a mouse a man. Not quite that bad, but just about.

I'm not a player, mostly, because I don't know how to, never having been taught by my buddies, assuming that is who teaches one to be a player. Or maybe it's just genetic and you are either a player or not at birth, even though it doesn't manifest itself until puberty or later. Suffice it to say that I was scared shitless of women from an early age. And scared shitless is a gross understatement.

I really don't like public speaking, I have panic attacks driving over bridges and through tunnels, but those pale in comparison as to how I was in the close presence of women. I'm not going to go into some deep analysis as to the cause of this fear, because it would take a lot of time and also, it's mostly gone by now. Notice the mostly. It still raises its ugly head on occasion, but with some concentration, some rational thought, and a good bit of alcohol, I can usually chase it away. Not for good mind you, but on a case by case basis.

So, not being a player, by any stretch of the imagination, how was I planning to go after Kim and Edith with any hope of getting one, or either, of them to spread their legs for me?

Deception. Clear and simple.

In Kim's case, it wasn't total deception, I rationalized. There were other elements involved. Like sympathy. And empathy. Things like that. I felt better about that. If you dilute deception down far enough, it becomes irrelevant.
Chapter 70: Edith Sends another Email

I wasn't expecting an email so soon in response to my response to her, but it came shortly thereafter and said, "George, I probably shouldn't have sent that original email because it's not my business. It's just that it brought back memories and I reacted too quickly without thinking. Would you please just forget that I sent it?"

I like when people say 'forget I said it', or in this case, 'sent it'. Kind of like walking up to a really muscular guy with a lot of rings on his fingers and chains around his neck, and he is with a lot of similar looking dudes and he has a stunning wife with some really revealing clothes on, and you can see her nipples and pussy lips under them and you walk right up to this mean mean motherfucker and say, "your fucking woman is so hot that I'd like to stick my dick in all three of her holes, one right after another, and if you're a good boy, I might even let you watch."

And then right after saying that, very quickly indeed, certainly before he has time to digest this, you follow with "forget what I just said" expecting him to do just that and keep on walking right past you as if you never said anything.

Come on Edith, you just can't say something and then say forget it and have them negate each other. Geez.

I had to come up with a clever way to let Edith know that she was off the hook, so to speak, about spilling the beans to me, which of course, she didn't. My clever and creative response to her was, "Edith, don't sweat it. I totally understand and it's forgotten. Take care."

I think my response accomplished a good bit. First, I let her know that I was pretty cool about the whole situation. I liked playing that role, and as we know, I was definitely cool about the situation, but not in the way she thought. Next I let her know, with the 'understand' that I was indeed in sympathy for her plight regarding the cheating husband that she kicked to the curb, even though I was lying through my teeth on that one. Then with the 'It's forgotten' lying bullshit by me, the liar, I let her know that she had committed no sin. And then the 'take care' was a nice final touch, in my opinion, letting her know that I was a pretty cool dude to be taking all of this obvious heartache, caused by my cheating bitch wife, in stride.

It's a little scary how I've morphed into a lying mother fucker in so short a time. Of course I compound this by lying to myself that these lies are not really lies, but just different ways of looking at circumstances, and anyway, my intentions are, in this case, to help Edith understand the errors of her ways in kicking the hubby out and helping her morph, with my subtle guidance of course, into a more open and liberated human being, to the point where she would actually love her husband so much that she would want him to fully explore his sensuality no matter where that led him, and besides, if she disregarded her learned responses and gave up her fears of abandonment, she might just enjoy watching him fuck the shit out of some bimbo. Not to mention that his fucking someone else would, no doubt, lead her into her own sexual liaisons, one of which might be me.

So now that I'm clear that my lies are not technically lies, and even if they are, it's irrelevant because my intentions are so noble, I decided that I needed to arrange a meeting, face to face, with Edith.
Chapter 71: Edith and Me at the Bar

Then I had one of those aha moments. The bar that Abby and Dewayne go to, along with the bike Nazis is a fun place and they have good and cheap beer and I can walk home if, excuse me, when, I get drunk. So why not go when Abby asks me if I want to, which she does, always, knowing that I always refuse because the tight knit group sickens me, or more accurately makes me want to be part of them? Abby would probably shit in her pants if I said 'yes', because that would presumably fuck up her inappropriate time with Dewayne.

So the plan was set into motion. Next time the wife did her cursory and dismissive "honey, I'm going to meet the group for a drink, care to join us?" I was going to shock the shit out of her by saying, "good idea honey, I haven't seen the group in a month of Sundays and I'd really like to congratulate Dewayne on the tri."

Saturday night approached and Abby was prepping for her night out, alone, I know she was thinking. Little did she know I was prepping too and as she came over to kiss me goodbye, as I was sitting on my couch, and asked me if I wanted to go with her, which she always does, knowing I will say no, I sprung my response on her and I wish you could have seen her face.

There was silence as we rode the elevator down the high rise, all five floors, to the main floor and not a word was said as we walked the two blocks to the bar, and as I suspected, once we entered, she had composed herself enough to tell me to get her a beer. She looked for the tight knit group, which was all there, and then moved to the furthest possible place away from where I eventually sat. I so love my Abby.

Kim and Dewayne were there, sitting next to each other at the big table that the group usually commandeered every Saturday. Edith was at the bar, where I sat. Abby was sitting across from Dewayne and Kim. Quite a happy little group I thought.

I asked Edith how she was and she said fine and we both sat there with our backs to the bar so we could talk to the group at the table. I was within hollering distance of Dewayne, so I said congratulations, gritting my teeth, for the tri and he said thanks, and I noticed Abby kind of glaring at me, still annoyed, I was sure, that I had actually accepted her insincere invitation.

Edith and I had a pretty good view of Kim and Abby and Dewayne because our bar stools were higher than the chairs at the table, and I think we were both happy to be watching the three of them. I was happy because I wanted to see and hear what they would all say, and Edith was happy, I think, because she knew that I had let her off the hook regarding being the one who told me about the inappropriate behavior the last time they were all there.

Not much was happening at first until we all started drinking beer and getting a little loose. I asked Edith "how's life?" to try and get a conversation going and she said "decent" and then I said "been on any dates?" knowing full well that she would correct me because dating is such an antiquated term and she was liberated, and besides dating is something that conventional people do and she is far from conventional.

Just as I predicted, she said "dates?" looking at me like I was a total idiot. I kind of smiled, acknowledging her consternation, and then I said, "well whatever they call it nowadays when men and women get together with the intent of having some sort of sexual liaison" and she smiled and said, "oh that."

Edith and I talk like that at bars, when we drink, and there is always kind of an undercurrent of sensuality in the conversation, initiated, always, by me, but picked up on and expanded on by her, always. I like the fact that she doesn't get offended by any of this talk, and I suspect the reason she doesn't is that I've never hit on her or made any references or suggestion as to anything sexual between us. It's always about her and her lovers or me and mine, which of course are hypothetical. Well, they were hypothetical until Lara, and still are technically since I only know Lara from the computer. I briefly considered telling Edith about Lara, but decided against it because she would just think I was bullshitting her anyway.

I kind of moved close to Edith so no one else would hear, and say to her, "notice any inappropriate behavior over there?" kind of nodding in the direction of the table and she looked a tad shocked for just a second and then said, "no, but I'm watching for it," and that little exchange kind of cleared the air even further about me not being able to forget that she said it in the email, and at the same time signaling to her that I wasn't going to tell anyone she told me, so it was our little secret, for now.

After a few beers and some other meaningless talk, I made a decision to level, totally, with Edith, about everything, for several reasons, alcohol being the most important as it had loosened up my libido and my tongue. The other reason was that Edith and I did have a certain rapport that transcended the normal male to female interaction mode.

Usually when men and women are together, one on one, there is always some sensuality going on, at least on some level. I always felt it with Edith and I suspect she did with me, because we had kissed once, many years ago at our big house, when we still lived there, at a dinner party in an upstairs bedroom where we both found ourselves unexpectedly, I can't remember why, and it was a nice sloppy wet kiss, mutually administered.

But now we just kind of bantered back and forth about sex and sexuality, but never between us, which was good, because it kept us both from moving it to the next level which would have complicated things, mostly for me and not for her, since she was divorced and could do anything she wanted.

I know this is getting to be confusing, or already is very confusing because I talked earlier about how I might want to fuck Edith, when I was talking about wanting to fuck Kim, never mentioning the kiss and our sexual chats, and now I'm basically trying to paint our relationship as platonic, almost like we are buddies or bar friends. Well, life is complicated and does not come in neat little packages and all of the emotions and feelings that I have toward Edith, as mentioned before and now here, are true, at least at the time I revealed them. And you have to throw into this already complicated mix the fact that she has some latent hostility toward all men, in my analysis, as reported earlier in the 'cut off his dick' episode.

Back to the bar with Edith and me in conspiracy to watch Dewayne and Abby to see if anything happens, and me to additionally watch Kim to see how she was reacting to being at the same table with her husband and the cheater whore who seduced him. I'm not sure there was a place on earth right now that I'd rather be.

As we were watching, I was doing my usual with Edith, i.e. trying to get her to talk about her sexuality and sensuality and lust with no intention of trying to seduce her, mainly because I don't know how to seduce a woman, but also because she was my second choice after Kim, and finally Edith was not seduceable in the traditional sense, I was pretty sure.

So I said, "I know you don't date in the traditional sense, since you are a modern woman, but have you been with any men in the biblical sense recently?" I could get away with talking to Edith that way, because we had established, over the years, the boundaries in our conversations, and those were none.

Even given her apparent hostility toward at least some men, due no doubt to her cheating husband, and her inability, at this time at least to consider any creative alternatives to a traditional marriage even though she was far from traditional in most aspects of her life, she seemed to like me and be willing to engage with me in sexual banter, for reasons that remain a mystery to me.

She told me that she had been on a few dates, yes she used that word, go figure, but they hadn't produced any meaningful sexuality and, of course, I asked her to define meaningful, and she said penetration and I asked if the kitty had been attended to orally or manually, and she said yes, and I said which, and she said orally, and I felt a rise in my pants, and I said hmmm. Fairly typical night with Edith.

Dewayne got up to get a beer, and Abby moved her chair back to let him out since he was in the back of the table and as he moved past her, facing her, his crotch was at about her face level, his back blocking the view from Kim, but not from Edith and me.

What happened next was one of those things that you see in a movie when the director wants to imprint on your brain something and it is so well staged that you don't know it's staged.

Someone was directing this play, I was convinced, as I saw Abby kind of pucker her lips and blow a kiss at Dewayne's crotch as it moved about three inches from her mouth, thinking no one saw her.

Wrong.

Edith and I shifted our eyes toward each other and then quickly away and the mutual telepathic message we both sent to each other was "did you see what I saw?" and then the mutual response was, again telepathically, "yes."

Just to make sure I'm being clear on this point, let me say it again. Abby, my dear unfaithful wife, who has been unfaithful with the hero tri-athlete Dewayne, just had Dewayne's cock, covered alas, pass about three inches from her hungry mouth, a mouth that his cock is obviously intimately familiar with, and Abby, thinking back fondly, no doubt, about how wonderful it was to have that lovely cock in her mouth and down her throat, blew it a kiss.

I turned back around to face the bar with my back to the harlot, and Edith followed suit, setting us up to have a conversation about the cock to mouth incident we had just witnessed. I said, out loud this time, "did you see that?" meaning of course Abby's blowing a kiss to her boyfriend's cock, and Edith said simply "yes," which set me up perfectly for the discussion I was about to launch.

"Ok Edith" I said, "I've got to tell you all I know about this." She kind of cocked her head just a bit and told the bartender to bring us two more beers.

This is pretty much what I said to her, not verbatim, but real close.

"So Edith, I've known you for a long time and what I like best about you is that you are not the typical female. I know we had that brief spat when you joked about chopping off a guy's cock, but that's about the only time I have disagreed with you, and I still think you should consider the possibility that you were wrong, but even if you don't and you think I'm wrong, that's ok because it's only a minor disagreement, in my eyes at least."

"Anyway, I just thought of another area of disagreement and that's that you think if a man cheats on his wife, he should be kicked out immediately, at least I think that's how you feel, but I'm making assumptions here and I wish I hadn't gone down that path but I did so I have to deal with it. Please be patient with me and forgiving since I'm just trying to be honest. If I say anything that is wrong or insulting, please don't hold it against me, at least not for a long time."

"I'm trying to let you know that I already knew that Abby was fucking Dewayne before you told me about the inappropriate behavior, and as you can see, it's a whole lot more inappropriate than you thought since they are actually fucking instead of what you saw here before, the last time you were all here."

"Now comes the interesting part because I've gone through a whole series of emotional shifts since I found out and basically, I don't mind it at all. In fact I like it and I know that if you were a typical female, you'd probably at this point be getting up and leaving because you would have concluded that I was a truly sick motherfucker, but being the atypical person that you are, which by the way, is a good and attractive thing on many levels, I'm thinking that I can tell you all of this and we can talk about it without jeopardizing our relationship which is more than just a friendship, in my opinion at least."

I paused because I was out of breath and I needed a drink and I also needed to know if she wanted to hear any more and she did because she said, "go on."

I've got to be honest. I didn't like the 'go on' because it almost sounded patronizing or something sinister as in 'I know you're fucked up, but I need a little more evidence, so keep talking and I will soon have it'.

But it was way too late to stop so I continued.

"I know this all may sound bizarre, but if you hear me out, you might understand my mind set better, if indeed you care to understand my mind set at all?"

She said "sure" which sounded much better than 'go on', which I had probably read too much into anyway, because how could she go from a patronizing or even menacing 'go on' to a pretty nice 'sure' in about fifteen seconds? So I was either wrong about 'go on' being bad or 'sure' being good. They were both probably neutral, but given the hyper analytical mode that I was in, I was most likely attributing too much to both of them.

"Edith, do you remember when we kissed at my house about fifteen lifetimes ago," I said, and she said "yes" and I tried very hard to read her face but I couldn't, but the fact that she remembered and said yes without hesitation, and that she didn't correct me with 'you mean when you kissed me?', left me feeling kind of strange, in a nice way.

"Well, ever since that night, I've kind of thought of you differently, not that what I thought of you was bad before the kiss, but afterward I thought there was this connection between us that I couldn't and still can't explain, and I feel that I don't want to fuck it up and I'm hoping that this conversation is not going to fuck it up and I don't think that it will. I felt really bad the other time we were here and we had a disagreement and you probably don't remember this part, but I reached out to touch your hand after that, which is what I do with Abby and she always reaches out to meet my touch, and you didn't and I found myself in this weird mindset of thinking you didn't forgive me, not that I needed forgiving because I honestly don't think I did anything wrong, but still I wish you would have met my touch, but maybe that's not how you do things."

I was just letting the words flow out now, not trying to control them or direct them figuring that the super brain knew what it was doing, since I was convinced that it was in control.

I continued with "I'm getting a little off track, but I did want to throw that out there because nothing like that has ever happened between us and it felt weird."

She reached her hand out and touched my hand, like I wish she would have done that night and she said "is that better?" And I said that I would have preferred a blow job but still I appreciated the touch.

I felt like our relationship was back on track.

"OK back on track," I said, "and now I've got to tell you my take on marriage and cheating and openness and sexuality and sensuality and lust and I just had a flash that it's way too complicated to do here and now and I think we should continue this discussion later, and besides, we have some serious observing to do."

She laughed, turned around in her bar stool, and so did I.

Nothing much was happening with the bike Nazis and I was getting tired and a little drunk, so I thought it would be good to stumble home before I said something inappropriate, which I didn't really do much anymore, but you never know.

I learned a long time ago that I should never say to Abby, "it's getting late, should we head home?" So I just said to her, "I'm tired, see you later." She said "ok" and then I told Edith "it's been real" and I left.

I admit it. I'm not very good at bars. Not good at all. Because I like to talk about important things. Chit chat drives me fucking nuts, so I just don't do it. And then when I get going on important things, like my marriage and my wife, and her boyfriend, with a willing listener like Edith, I just cut off the conversation with some limp excuse because I think it just can't be accomplished in the time allotted for it.

Bars are for picking up people. Or getting drunk. They are not for solving the world's or my personal problems. God, I wanted to fuck Edith right then. But I was walking home.

Abby came home a while later and we spooned because it was cold and the door was open. I was glad she came home. Not sure what I expected since Dewayne was now married and Kim probably, or most likely, expected him to come home too.
Chapter 72: Typical Sunday

I felt pretty good about telling Edith all that I had told her, even the next morning when I was sober. Edith, even though she was a member of the tight knit bike group, was not some sort of chatty woman. Not to denigrate chatty women, because there are chatty men too, who feel compelled to tell everybody everything about their life right down to what they had for breakfast. At least I hoped Edith was not a chatty woman. And anyway, in this convoluted and complex saga that was developing, rapidly, even if someone knew about my desires for an open marriage, the fact that my wife was already doing it would no doubt also come to the surface, taking the heat off of me for having some sort of perceived weird notions about conventional marriage.

Also, I was getting to the point in my life, pretty rapidly, that I wanted to merge the inner man and the outer man, so that I had one identity and one persona so that I didn't have to be careful around certain people about what I said and did. That reminds me of a co-ed at the local University who started a BDSM bulletin board about five years ago and was openly into that lifestyle, using her real name, and I know this from doing an online search on BDSM and the University.

I wrote her an email and told her she had balls doing that and she wrote back that that was one of the best compliments she had ever gotten, so we were both happy. I thought then that she was going about life in the right manner, not pretending to be someone she wasn't and allowing her inner desires to rise to the surface with no shame and no compulsion to hide them. I wish I had her balls.

The next day, Sunday, I didn't confront Abby about her almost giving Dewayne a blow job right there in the middle of the bar in front of dozens of people, including me. And she didn't broach the subject either, so we had a good Sunday.

I like Sundays too because I can grill out, if I haven't already done it on Saturday. Of course I could grill out both days, but it's a pain and also it's illegal, because charcoal grills are not allowed on decks in the city limits, and you know that I refuse to use gas, or you should know, based on my BBQ diatribe.

I also like Sundays because I get to read the newspaper. Not that I can't on other days of the week, but the Sunday paper has the college football scores and I like to see who has lost. That probably says a lot about me, i.e. I like to see who lost instead of who won. And isn't it interesting that every tiny college in America is now a University, but we don't read about University football, do we?

So I take my two hour six mile walk, buy the Sunday paper, and come home to have my half toasted bagel with half of the half buttered and the other half of the half with cream cheese. Also some grapes, and Abby has made coffee. On Sundays she always asks if I want coffee and I say yes and she brings it over to me where I am sitting on my couch. That's pretty nice of her, and I'm sure she has to balance her sense of being an independent non-subservient liberated woman with doing this non-independent, subservient, non-liberated act, i.e. waiting on her husband. But I'm guessing that in her brain, somewhere, there is a little woman, like my little man, who tells her that doing something nice for her man, once in a while, like once a week at most, is not compromising her individuality all that much. And who the fuck is going to know, I know she is thinking.

I read about the losing teams, read the local news which is mostly about who killed who and who died in car crashes, read the obituaries looking for anyone I knew, and eat my half bagel. Abby eats her breakfast at the kitchen table checking her email, as she always does, and listens to me, occasionally, as I read anything of interest in the paper to her, as she doesn't like to actually read it, but likes to hear about the news.

Abby usually goes for a bike ride with one of her girlfriends, or so she tells me, on Sundays after breakfast and I go to the office to catch up. It also gives me a chance to check out my emails from one of the several dating sites I subscribe to, but those are almost always empty. Why the fuck did I say almost? Sometimes a wave of nostalgia sweeps over me remembering the day Lara answered my ad and my thirty seven days of bliss with her.

Sunday afternoons consist of me cooking something on the grill or inside such as roasted chicken, or maybe a pot roast when the weather is cold. I also coordinate Abby's dinner, which I like to do for her, and which she is genuinely appreciate of, not in the blow job appreciation sense of course, but in the sense that she tells me "honey, this is the best fish I have ever had." And that's usually enough for me.

While I'm making our dinners, which we generally eat on our respective couches, hers about an hour before mine because I like to drink more than she does and once I start eating, the drinking stops, so I wait a while before I eat. We watch one or two movies that I have rented from one of those kiosks in town. We used to go to the local movie theater until it closed down. I liked that. So did Abby. It was dirty and grungy but it was two dollars and it was close and the movies were pretty current. It took me about a year to start to like the rentals better, but now we both do because we have more choice as to what to see and I get to fool around in the kitchen cooking, even though Abby gets a little annoyed when I put the movie on pause, which I do on occasion as I slowly do prep work in the kitchen, but she doesn't usually say anything because, after all, I am cooking her dinner. And when it's done I bring it to her on her couch, along with a towel and big glass of ice water, and salt which she uses a lot of. I also usually bring her fresh cut lemon to squeeze over her broccoli and fish, and I warm up her plate with the steam from the broccoli, then dry it, so that everything stays warmer.

Regarding movies, Abby likes romantic comedies and I like action movies and science fiction, and documentaries, so obviously, we watch romantic comedies exclusively.

On Sunday, we have an amended five o'clock rule for cocktail hour, so it's at four thirty and I pause the movie for this, and this pause is just fine with Abby.

I've usually cleaned all the dishes I used in cooking and also Abby's dinner dishes, but I do leave my dinner dishes in the sink after eating because I've had a few glasses of wine by then, and I have decided that breaking any dishes would not be worth the risk, and Abby must agree because she does them without complaining, even though I have told her on many occasions that I will do them in the morning, but that's not possible for her, i.e. leaving dirty dishes in the sink overnight.

I just wanted to show you how ordinary our lives are, in most respects. I don't consider ordinary anything but good. Predictable is good. Boring, but good.
Chapter 73: Kim Changes Her Mind and Edith Wants to Walk

I was still staring at the email from Kim when Edith called. This was a crisis moment. In the first place, Edith never calls. She called once and left a very generic message for Abby and me on the recorder to meet the group at the bar on Saturday night. But this time it was a call for me alone. And live, not a message on the recorder.

Shit. I had to close the mental door on Kim's email, which has just devastated me. I definitely couldn't deal with two serious situations at the same time.

"Hi Edith," I said.

She was telling me that we should take a walk which was strange. Absurd in fact. This woman rides her bike a hundred miles for fun. She never walks. What's this walking shit about? Had I pissed her off in the bar the other night? I hardly remember what I said. Oh shit, I really needed to work on drinking less and remembering more. And what's the 'should' shit? Should didn't sound good at all. 'Would you like to take a walk' would have been ok, except for the fact that she doesn't walk. She obviously was pissed about something. Damn. I couldn't refuse this so I tried to delay it with "sure, just let me know when."

And she said "now."

I was fucked.

After I told her I could meet her in an hour, which she was barely ok with, wanting to make it sooner, I shifted back to Kim's email.

Vague and painful memories of Lara and the inglorious end to our thirty seven day affair, internet affair to be exact, flooded my brain. Damn, this was a fucked up day for sure.

Kim's email simply said, "We can't see each other again."

No sorry. No reason. No sympathy. No empathy. Just hard fucking reality, leaving me to figure this out. Just like Lara. Not quite really because Lara just disappeared. At least Kim told me she was fucking me over.

Ok George, get a grip. It's only going to take you ten minutes to get to the park to meet Edith, so you've got fifty minutes to figure the Kim thing out. No wait, you can still be figuring on the drive so you've got a full sixty minutes. No wait. You've got to take a shower. Just in case. That's five minutes. But wait, you can figure in the shower. That gives you a full sixty minutes less the five minutes you've already blown trying to get a grip. So much for getting a grip.

Somehow I knew this was going to be a bad day. Do you ever get those feelings? I truly think the moon plays a role. My funkiest days are about seven to five days before a full moon. I don't really think about it, but if I have some really strange or bad days in a row, then the moon thought pops into my brain and I make a mental note that it must be about six days before the full moon, and then when I'm walking in the morning on my two hour six mile walk, about a week after the bad days, there is the full fucking moon, and I know I'm right about its influence, on me, at least.

I made a mental note that in about seven days, I'd see the full moon.

So as I was taking my 'just in case Edith wanted to fuck' shower, I was thinking about the absurdity of thinking that Edith might want to fuck me. Hardly. She was on the female warpath, and that's a dangerous place to be, i.e. on the other side of a female on the warpath. I'm not being a sexist here because I know it's just as unpleasant for a female to be on the other side of a man on a male warpath.

I really needed to do two things at once and that's to try and deal with the Kim situation, or lack thereof to be accurate. But more immediate was Edith and what she wanted and what I had said to her in the bar, which was kind of fuzzy. I'm pretty sure I told her about knowing about Abby and Dewayne and that I was more than ok with it. But I think I went a little too far and got personal and said something about the kiss we had done about a few lifetimes ago, and there was some memory of her remembering it, and there was a memory of me wanting to fuck her right there in the bar, perhaps on the same table where Dewayne and Abby were going at it, but I doubt seriously I shared that image with Edith, but I couldn't be one hundred percent sure, which worried me. Fuck fuck fuck.

After the just in case shower, I tried to shut down the brain and get into some Zen, calm, serene state of mind. In reality, I found myself shaking, which I do on occasion, but not often fortunately, and I just wanted to crawl in my bed and pull the covers over my head. Moments like these make me long for the boring day Abby and I had on Sunday.

When I got to the park, Edith was waiting in her car which was bad. I checked the clock in the car since I don't wear a watch or have a cell phone with a clock in it. I don't wear a watch because I'm not into time all that much, and I don't have a cell phone because I don't want to be available all the time, not that anyone would call me anyway, truth be known. It had only been about fifty minutes since the call, so I knew Edith was anxious to lay it on me, and I knew what she was going to lay on me wasn't her body, alas.

We both said hello and I made some not so funny remark about her being a super athlete and walking must be boring and she responded with "well, walking might be boring but not with you," and I had a feeling that the poles had shifted and all that I had been dreading was wrong, one hundred fucking percent wrong, and now I was dreading what the little man was telling me, and I knew in my heart he was right, that Edith had fallen in love with me and this was our coming out walk.

Now don't get me wrong. Saying that someone had fallen in love with me is not something I say every week or even every month or year. In fact, I've only said it once and that was before I even met Abby, and it really wasn't me who said it. It was a lady way back in time. Way way fucking back and I don't even want to recount the details here because I didn't love her but we did have sex and she fell in love with me and told me in a letter that she loved me and it shocked the shit out of me and made me incredibly uncomfortable and I responded with a limp dick pussy ass letter telling her I thought she was confusing friendship with love or some such idiotic embarrassing dribble, and what I should have said is that I was flattered but I didn't love her, and then she would have had some finality, as cruel as it was.

The little man, listening to this mental conversation, as he always does, is telling me, right now, if you are thinking finality is better, then Lara first, and now Kim did you a huge favor, and I tell this little annoying idiot man to shut up, knowing he is right, and also knowing that he also heard that he is right since he knows all I know and then some.

So how in the hell did I leap from Edith's response about walking with me not being boring to the realization that she was madly in love with me? I don't have a fucking clue, but it was as clear as day. No doubt about it. I knew exactly how this conversation was going to play out. In fact I even knew my responses. It was amazing. A time warp. It was all there clear in my mind and I was experiencing the past with the lady who loved me and I didn't love her back, the present with Edith there, and the future as I was telling Edith everything I knew and felt. Every fucking thing, even though I knew that by telling her everything, she would love me more, and that that would be a very bad thing.

Then I remembered what I had read in the Seth Material, which you should read by the way, about alternate presents and alternate futures and even alternate pasts, and how you could create all three, and I thanked Seth, and I plotted out the alternate future for Edith and me, and that didn't involve love or even sex, for which I was incredibly relieved, at least about the love part.

Speaking of love, maybe you remember that I said that Lara had taught me, or maybe it's more accurate to say that I learned with Lara, that love is expansive and not limited. I learned that you could love two people at the same time, which shouldn't have been some great revelation in the first place. You can love your parents and all of your kids and your spouse at the same time. I think that we are just culturally indoctrinated to believe that you can't love two people romantically at the same time, and I'm here to tell you, point blank, with no reservations, with goddess as my witness, that you can. I fucking did. And it felt good and it didn't feel dirty or weird or anything approaching negative. And most of all it didn't feel selfish, which if you think about it, is incredibly important, because it meant that I didn't feel any sense of ownership of either woman. On the contrary, I felt that I was lucky to have them both, as lovers, in entirely different situations, and they were free to pursue other lovers.

All that being said, even though love is expansive, I think that I, at least, have limits. I'm not sure what those limits are yet because this is all so new to me. But if Abby, for example, wanted to eliminate our boring but comforting Sunday routine altogether to go and fuck other men or women on that day, and if she didn't want to create a new and comforting time together, I'd be upset. So caring for, and spending comforting time with, the primary partner is necessary, in my world. If Abby falls in love with another person, if she hasn't already, I'm ready to deal with that in a positive way. But if that love eclipses our love and supplants it, that's not ok. Sundays are ours.

Even though I didn't say it in advance, that was a digression about love, and the only reason I brought it up was because I didn't and I can't love Edith, although I think I could love Kim, for reasons that I can't clearly define even to myself, and I needed to find the right path to take with Edith, that didn't involve love.

I knew enough about her and her past, to know that we would not work together well in a love format. We definitely could have some awesome sex, with lots of mutual O's and sweaty and delicious nights, but the afterglow, for lack of a better word, would just not be there. I'm certain of that, and it's not a negative reflection on either one of us.

In one of my many email love letters to Lara, I told her that it dawned on me that I really didn't think I could fuck her if she didn't love the earth, which may seem like a strange thing to say, but it was in the midst of our great love affair, and I fell in love with the whole person, not just the body.

And I know, for sure, that I'm not being consistent about love and fucking and probably a lot of other things. I know that I say I want to fuck Kim and I don't even know her and what her environmental policy is, and then I make what might seem like a crackpot statement that I wouldn't have fucked Lara if she wasn't an environmentalist. I realize how crazy this all sounds, but I am just kind of throwing thoughts and emotions out there as they come to me and as I perceive they were in the past, and I'm fairly certain there is a certain consistency in the seeming inconsistencies. The hoped for gestalt.

And not to belabor this line of reasoning, but when I say I want to fuck Kim, that's the dick talking more so than the soul, and as we moved in that direction, which appears to not be the case, then maybe the emotions would kick in and they would trump the dick.
Chapter 74: The Walk and Talk

Since I've convinced myself that I have to create an alternate to the 'Edith falls in love with me, and I can't reciprocate' future, I think the best course is to tell her point blank that I love Abby, I like the idea of an open marriage, but I'm not ready to open up my side just yet, which is mostly true. Perhaps that will soften the blow when she tells me she loves me and I just can't love or fuck her. Well, I can't love her.

Life has a way of humbling all of us at times. In my case, most of the time, and in some of those cases, the humbling is a welcome relief. That was definitely the case, when I listened to Edith, expecting her declarations of love, and heard instead that she thought I was fucking crazy, and that it wasn't fair to Abby for me to make her fuck other men for my pleasure.

Obviously the woman in her had triumphed over reason and our friendship, at least I thought it was friendship but was now doubting it big time, and she was on the warpath, in ways I could not have imagined just an hour ago, and she wanted to make it clear that she was going to expose me to the tight knit group as the asshole that I was, if I didn't back off and just let Abby have the friends she wanted, even if they were males.

I knew I was fucked. I knew that opening up to her in the bar, with alcohol clouding my focus, was a bad idea. This lady was unpredictable. I suddenly felt sorry for her estranged husband. The cheater. Maybe he had to cheat. Maybe she locked her legs to him long ago. And I truly didn't get the bit about first me being an asshole for making Abby fuck Dewayne, and then not letting let her have male friends. That just didn't make any fucking sense at all.

I was amazed at myself and how quickly my attitude toward another human being could change in so short a time. I filed that away for further analysis, but something in me was saying that Edith hadn't changed in an hour, but my perception of her had changed, and that was definitely something I needed to work on.
Chapter 75: Sinking Fast

I'm not sure how I got to this point. My dear wife Abby is fucking another man, and now I'm being accused of making her fuck the idiot for my pleasure? Am I going insane here? And not only that, but the idiot's wife, who was, just a few days ago, giving me very graphic signals that she was going to do the big number with me, has suddenly dumped me. Damn moon is definitely in my bad phase.

It's of no use, I tell myself, to try and convince Edith of the error of her ways because she's a scorned woman and they can be very hostile to men, which really is unfair, because only their husband and not all men fucked them over, but in my limited experience, they usually don't make that tiny distinction. She's also much smarter than I am, and any arguments that I might make, she would crush, along with my ego, so no way am I going to argue with her.

I'm left with trying to figure out why Kim dumped me so quickly. Not that we really had a relationship in the traditional sense. But come on, we talked about licking the kitty. Almost. How much more intimate can you get without actually licking it?

I emailed back to Kim regarding her 'We can't see each other again' email. I say "ok I accept that and I don't want to interfere in your life, but can you tell me why?"

I was just going to respond with 'ok' but that was lame and created no continuity and expectation of a response from her, which I desperately wanted. Then I thought about telling her how much I wanted her, but that seemed too melodramatic and maybe even clinging or, god forbid, desperate, which I've learned, is the absolute best way to send a woman away from you at warp speed.

I also considered trying to tell her succinctly, as this was email, about my thoughts about open marriage and the advantages of openness and honesty versus cheating, and on and on, but then I remembered how Edith turned my openness back on me and used it to potentially crucify me in front of the tight knit group, and I dropped that idea very quickly. In the final analysis, I was content with my original response, but the point was moot because I had already sent the email.

I was in one of those moods to sit and wait for a response, so I did, for about half an hour, and when it didn't come back, my mind flashed back to those desperate days after Lara disappeared and my increasingly frantic, and, yes I admit it, finally desperate emails to her. Thinking about that gave me a major headache and so I decided to take a walk.
Chapter 76: Kim Responds

I got back from my walk and had an email from Kim but I didn't read it immediately. I was thinking how nice it would have been to have had a final email from Lara explaining why she had to disappear, and then I could have had some closure. Of course, it may have been a really nasty email telling me that I was a total asshole, but, and I haven't said this before, the last email from Lara was at about ten PM and she was having dinner with her parents, and she had already had eleven orgasms, yes eleven, that day, and was trying to break her record of fourteen, and they were all while thinking of us together. Does that sound like someone who is about to pull the plug on a relationship, which she did right then and there with that last email?

I finally screwed up the courage to read Kim's email and it said, "George, there is something I have to tell you and you're probably not going to like it in one sense but you will like it in another."

Well not only did that leave me hanging, it left me hanging as to how long I'd be hanging. So I sent back, "so do you want to tell me here by email or in person or on the phone?"

No answer for two days.

Shit.

Another Lara.

Maybe I should just forget women. Or all women except Abby, and maybe even forget about having any meaningful relationship with her except for the spooning. And the coffee on Sunday mornings.

Finally, after two agonizing days, I got a call from Kim and she wanted to take a walk. Wait a minute. Another one of those walks? Is it possible that Edith and Kim are in contact and they somehow know that I'm vulnerable on walks, even though I don't think that I am?

Alright, what the fuck do I have to lose except my self-respect, which is long gone anyway.

I agree and we meet and I am treated to probably the most interesting and disturbing, both at the same time, dialogue I have ever heard in my adult life, at least regarding relationships, mine in particular.

Time for an aside. A digression. About relationships and the world in general and gratitude. I try very hard to be grateful every day. And these days, it doesn't take much effort. Not that my life is all that wonderful. But in perspective, it really is. Wonderful that is.

I guess I not only see the glass as half full, I see water as a wonderful invention that gives life to all people on the planet and all of us people are brothers and sisters, and why the fuck do we try and kill each other? So you have someone, i.e. me, who is grateful for life and the mountains and lakes and rivers, but not content to sit back and stay quiet when other people fuck up my world. "That's a lot of shit to see in a glass of water" Abby would say, I'm guessing, if she ever heard that.

So the point of the digression is this. So Edith hates me. So Lara dumped me. So Kim not only dumped me, but she's about to lay some very heavy shit on me. So what the fuck? I'm alive. I get to spoon with Abby. In the winter. I've got both chocolate and coffee ice cream in the freezer. I get to grill on the weekends. How could life get any better? Anything that Kim lays on me is going to roll right off my back because of my philosophy of life. I am a Zen master. Bring it on, bitch.
Chapter 77: Or so I Thought

It occurs to me, now, way too late, that there is a substantial difference in developing a philosophy of life from reading a few books from the masters, and in spending your life in a monastery, actually practicing that philosophy. Maybe akin to the difference in thinking about training for a triathlon and actually training and doing one. I hate using that analogy because of Dewayne, but it fits and it's right there in my brain, so what the hell.

Kim and I go for the walk at the same place where Edith cut off my balls, and since Edith already did it once, maybe it will be less painful this time.

Kim seems intense and worried at the same time, and that makes me tense and worried and a whole lot more.

Kim says she has something to admit and that sounds like a bad start.

She hesitates but then just kind of blurts it all out, "Dewayne and Abby weren't having an affair."

Ok, so the words came out of her mouth, they caused vibrations in the air, they travelled a few feet, they hit my ear drums, they vibrated into my brain, my brain understood very clearly what they meant, and then everything stopped. Stopped making sense. For me.

Suppose someone came up to you and said, the sun just went to nova, i.e. the motherfucker exploded, and you have a short time left to live because the super hot blast, a million billion fucking degrees worth of blast, will tear you into imperceptible particles, if particle is the right word, and that will be in exactly eight minutes. How do you respond to that?

Do you sit there and start thinking about the credibility of the person giving you the information? That could be wasted time. Or do you start to think about if you really have eight minutes or will the super hot blast start to heat up the air in front of it and so on and so on, and the eight minute rule is really wrong. And if it's wrong, do you have six minutes. Or five. Or do you start to think about if your consciousness will survive the blast, and if so, what's it going to feel like without a physical body? Or maybe you just sit down on the closest park bench, assuming you are in a park and there are benches and they have space available, and think that this is just going to be a new experience and you're going to just try and get into that experience with all of your senses. Until all those senses get fried to a crisp, the little man reminds you.

That's kind of what and how I was thinking, not quite but close enough, when Kim told me that every waking thought and emotion that I had had in the past several months was based on erroneous information.

My first thought was that I had wasted a good bit of time. Time thinking about Abby and Dewayne and their cheating and my lust about their cheating, which wasn't cheating, so does that nullify the lust? Probably not since it's already occurred, I.e. the lust, but it certainly nullifies future lust, at least as regards to them.

Then I started thinking about the whole concept of open marriage which was brought to my attention before I knew about their non cheating, which I was told and truly believed was real cheating. So now I felt a lot guiltier about having my affair with Lara than I previously felt, because I previously thought that Abby and Dewayne were doing each other before I met Lara.

Then I moved forward in the tedious thought process that I seem compelled to go through, that my whole analysis regarding open marriage and the benefits of it as opposed to cheating was suspect. But I quickly dismissed that as rubbish and the whole argument for open marriage remained valid, even though irrelevant in my own particular circumstances.

Moving on, I tried to quickly assess the damage that I might have caused my primary relationship with Abby, and then I thought that I hadn't done any damage because things were pretty routine between us since the encounter.

The encounter popped up in my consciousness and I thought what the fuck was that all about, and how could that have not been true, or true perhaps only in Kim's mind, but then why the fuck didn't Dewayne or Abby deny it then or later?

All of this was giving me a massive headache and I thought that I needed to take a walk, and then I realized that I was already on a walk. A walk with Kim. My old girlfriend. My old girlfriend who was now telling me that she could not let me lick the kitty anymore, even though I had only licked it theoretically, because her cheating jock husband, wasn't a cheater after all, and she was taking him back into her life, even though she never kicked him out, and she was probably glad she didn't kick him out because he had never fucked my wife.

I was pretty much through with the quick analysis. I usually do a quick analysis and then a more thorough analysis and sometimes even a painstaking analysis when time permits which is mostly on my two hour, six mile walk that I do every day, three hundred and sixty five days a year except on leap years when it's three hundred and sixty six.

At this point, I was exhausted, mentally. Kim was still there and we were walking and I would bet that my total analysis, the quick first one, took all of about two nanoseconds, which is pretty damn quick, but it seemed like an hour, at least.

That reminds me of Einstein's simple explanation of relativity for people like me who don't have, nearly, the mental capacity to begin to understand even the most fundamental part of his theory. He said that when your hand is on a hot stove, seconds seems like minutes, but when you are sitting with a pretty girl, hours seem like minutes. I really like what I read about Einstein because, besides being so incredibly smart, he also seemed to possess a fundamental understanding of what it is to be human.

The only beef I have with him is that he helped to develop nuclear bombs and I would have thought he would have understood how flawed mankind is and that handing that kind of weapon to mankind was akin to giving a five year old a loaded gun, except much worse because the five year old might kill himself but the bomb could kill millions. But then again maybe he did figure that out and also figured that if the good guys, i.e. us, didn't do it first, then the japs or the Nazis would wipe us out before we killed them.

So virtually no time had passed between when Kim told me she made a slight mistake and when I realized that no time had passed even though I had done a pretty decent first analysis in that 'no time gone by' gap.

I started wondering what Kim was thinking and feeling and if she had any regrets about the encounter and the accusations and how she had totally and irrevocably fucked up my life and potentially my marriage.

My answer to myself, about what she might be thinking and feeling was that she didn't give a rat's ass, not because she is a bad and unfeeling person, but rather because, in her mind, I was of course speculating here, she had just made a simple mistake, and anything done after that mistake was not really relevant.

And by her mistake, I'm not talking about the encounter or the accusations, I'm talking about Kim thinking that her only mistake was in misperceiving the relationship between the idiot and my lovely wife and anything that followed was a natural reaction to that misperception and therefore meant nothing. In her eyes. Actually in my eyes, thinking about what she was thinking.

I do that sometimes. I think about what another person is thinking and then project that thought back on the person I'm thinking about then I start to believe that they are really thinking that, when in reality, it may not be. In this case, I think it was true though.

Since I knew, or thought I knew, that Kim wasn't going to be taking any responsibility for anything that happened after her unintentional and trivial mistake, it made no sense for me to try and obtain any empathy from her for my subsequent plight.

What made sense to me, at this point, was to find out what information Kim had before the encounter and why it was invalid now. Then the little man said that maybe the new information was invalid and that, of course invalidated the supposedly invalid information, making the original information valid.

Still with me? So if the little man was correct in his assumptions, then Abby and Dewayne are still cheaters, we may have another, more serious encounter, and things are back to normal, meaning prior to Kim's just uttered statement. That would be good, but if so, I wanted that to be the final version, because my brain was beyond its limits in trying to go down the various paths. I wanted simplicity. I wanted my wife to be a cheater, but if not, I wanted to know for sure, that she wasn't.
Chapter 78: Kim's Information

So, what could have possible triggered Kim to think they were cheating in the first place, and more importantly, what could have triggered the rejection of the original trigger?

Getting into the mind of a woman is a difficult if not impossible task if you are a man. A straight man. Like me. I'm sure it's the same for women getting into a man's mind, but I suspect they don't try very often because they have all the power in relationships so why should they try to understand us in the first place? They don't need to, because they control us.

I once knew a guy who was an assistant basketball coach and he was very good looking, not that I was noticing mind you, but it was so obvious. To me. A straight guy. I can only imagine how attractive he was to women. And gay men. He once said something that has stuck with me ever since and it was a theory of his, but I'm sure he doesn't look at it as a theory but rather as a fact. I first considered it a theory, but having tested it so many times and having found it infallible, I'll grant, now, after about a decade of testing, that it is indeed fact and not theory.

It's just four words. His fact. It was said in reference to a situation, the facts of which are long forgotten by me, where a man basically risked and eventually gave up everything for a woman. He, the coach, in reference to this situation simply shook his head, in a knowing way, because it was his fact, and said "the power of pussy."

I've found that he was spot on. I read the papers and watch the news casts and look around and the evidence is overwhelming. Men risk and sometimes give up everything to get laid. Everything. Wealth. Families. Kids. Prestige. Power. Everything for a piece of pussy. That's a damn powerful thing that women have.

I think that was a necessary and prudent digression about the power of pussy because it underlies and colors everything that is happening in this saga.

Everything.

So when I tell you that Kim just basically glossed over the situation like it was a misunderstanding at a drive in restaurant and they had given her hamburgers with ketchup instead of mustard, which she had asked for, and when she had realized it and told them and they had cheerfully replaced them with ones with mustard and everyone was happy, you can begin to realize how the power of pussy comes into play.

Even though Kim had set into motion, with her womanly suspicions, which were in fact based on nothing a sane person would have considered credible, but she being a woman and a newlywed and in love with her husband considered rock hard evidence, a series of events that would change my life forever, I forgave her. Instantly. The fucking power of pussy.

How can you be mad at a woman, a spectacularly lovely woman, who had no evil intentions, no malice in her heart, who had just put together a few threads of innocuous behavior, between friends, Abby and Dewayne, biking buddies, members of a tight knit group, and blew it into a full fledged affair in her mind?

I forgave her and I still wanted to lick her kitty, even though I knew I never would, now, after the affair that had brought us close to that act at least in my mind, had turned out to be a non affair, thus negating her need for revenge, which I finally admitted, was probably her motivation for her letting me do it. And when I say letting me do it, we all know that's my take on this theoretical licking situation.

After forgiving her, which consisted of me just listening and not reacting negatively, she got in her car and headed home, no doubt to Dewayne where some serious licking would probably occur, now that he was out of the dog house where he never really belonged, it appears.

And I was heading back home, to my Abby, with the knowledge that she had been true to me, it seems, at least in this case, and that all my suspicions had been just that. And even the mouth to crotch kiss that I saw could be explained as perhaps a wince as she was moving out of Dewayne's way. And Edith's 'yes' when I asked her if she had seen the blowing crotch kiss could be re interpreted as 'yes I saw them with her face close to his crotch, but what's the big deal there?'.

And finally, Edith's letting me know about the inappropriate behavior could have been merely a woman's sixth sense gone awry by a scorned woman with her radar set so high that it goes off when a man just looks at a woman.
Chapter 79: Rethinking Open Marriage? Not

I like it when young people question everything. It's healthy. It's necessary. We don't want them to live our lives, do we? Don't we want them to stake out their own territory and write their own scripts about love and life? How boring would it be if they followed in our footsteps? Social change depends on their willingness to try new ways of dealing with things, casting out the old and tired but keeping those aspects of the past that are valuable and time tested.

Marriage is a good institution. But it needs some tweaking. I say let the young people tweak it. If they want to live the traditional life, let them. If they want to explore new avenues, let them.

Open marriage has been practiced, probably, from the very beginning. We just don't read about it on a daily basis. And we definitely don't talk about it. Maybe we should.

I'm now stuck in a peculiar place. I was convinced that Abby had opened our marriage, and after I got over the jealousy, I was on board. Big time. And then I found out that she wasn't doing Dewayne. So do I now go back and rethink the whole concept of open marriage? I don't think so. I've gone beyond the jealousy and found a sweet lust that exists on the other side.

What confounded me at first, when I found out that the two cheaters weren't, was why didn't they deny it? Why did Dewayne allow Kim to drag him to our condo in the first place? Why didn't they both stand up and say 'wait a minute'.

I think it must be like the politician who finally has the balls, sometime in the future, who, when asked by some reporter, "did you fuck so and so?," not in those words exactly, obviously, says to the reporter, "you know something, I want to be your publicly elected official, but what I do in my private life regarding my sexual life is of no concern to you or anyone else."

Abby and Dewayne must have been on the same page about that. They must have thought that their relationship, their friendship, was theirs and not Kim's and not my business. And defending that friendship was not their obligation and they were just not going to play that game.

So in a weird way, Abby really did open our marriage. Not sexually, at least not with Dewayne, but probably in a more profound way. She was basically saying that she is her own person and she can do what she chooses, and being married is not a sentence that she has to serve under me and my rules.
Chapter 80: The Really, Really Bad Dream

I'm not clear if dreams are real or not. I mean, they appear to be fantasy because you wake up and they are just memories and the real world as you know it returns. But maybe it's like the Buddhist or Zen koan I once read. Here is a description of it found online"

"In the third or fourth century BC, the Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi dreams he is a butterfly -- so vividly that when he wakes, he wonders if he may in fact be one. In that case, he reasons, at this moment I must be dreaming that I am a man, which would make me a butterfly all along."

Two points here. First, can you believe that people were actually thinking about that shit twenty five fucking hundred years ago? Second, are we absolutely sure that dreams are not real?

So back to the really bad dream and what I think it meant and how I hope to god it wasn't and isn't real, even on some other plane where I don't spend much time at all.

I was on some sort of amusement park ride which was about fifty stories in the air and that was ok, even though I don't like heights, because I was strapped in very tightly and even though it started swinging out over open skies, I was still ok and not very frightened. Suddenly I was in a bedroom of a very large old house and nobody else was there. I was disoriented and thought I might be dead so I decided to find a mirror thinking that if I saw my reflection in the mirror I would still be alive.

I found a mirror and saw myself and figured I was alive, which was good but I was still not totally right mentally. Then I found myself back in the house, having left apparently for some time, as you will see below, with no solid memory of what I had done or where I had been. All of Abby's brothers and sisters were either at the house for some sort of family reunion or were on the way.

One of the in-laws married to one of Abby's brothers was looking at my credit card bill which showed some charges, during my unexplained absence, that that I didn't remember charging. One of them was for $50 and said simply date. It was starting to come back to me that I had gone to a city and then I had a real bad feeling that I had hooked up with a pro and now that one of the in-laws had just announced that fact to about three of the other members of the family, I knew Abby was going to find out, and I felt pretty sick.

Next I was across the table from the pro, who I think was a woman, but I wasn't certain, sadly, and she, if indeed it was a she, weighed about two hundred and ninety pounds and had one half of a front tooth missing and I felt sad for her about that but I understood that she was in a rough profession and those things happen.

Then she started telling me about her really mean husband and all the really bad things that he had said about me and it suddenly dawned on me that the $50 for the date was just the beginning and I would be paying a whole lot more to call off the husband from generally beating the shit out of me, if indeed the husband even existed in the first place, but I knew I wasn't about to question that because the pro could do a whole lot of damage to me herself, or himself, whichever was the case.

Then she or he brought out some pictures of us together in compromising positions, and I didn't want to look too closely. Mostly because I wanted to keep assuming that she was a she.

I had a flash that the $50 charge for the date was because, in the negotiation process, which I am assuming is how these things work, I was trying to get the most bang for the buck, so to speak, as I generally do, and the pro knew full well that the $50 was just the opening price and the shakedown which was now occurring was where the real meat was. And she/he was right because I would have paid anything to get the fuck out of there, right then.

The elements and setting for the dream came from real life, as they almost always do for me. I had gone to my mother's house earlier in the day and looked at some old photographs, thus the photos of me and the pro. We are going to a relative of Abby's house for Thanksgiving and that was the impetus for the old house where I found myself. And Abby and I, that same day, had watched a movie with a woman who had a really bad motherfucker of a husband, so we know where the pro's real life, excuse me, dream life, husband image came from.

I'm thinking that the whole point of the dream was a warning to me. I have never paid for sex and don't ever intend to, no matter how little I get on the home front. I don't judge people who pay or get paid, but it's just not something I want to engage in. And after this dream, I know I never will.

However what worries me is that I do like to drink, and in the dream I must have been pretty plastered to go to bed with a woman, that woman, I hope she was a woman, who outweighed me by a factor of two.

So maybe in addition to a warning about not paying for sex, it was a warning to lighten up on the drinking, which I will consider. After cocktail hour. Which is in about an hour. Or maybe I should wait until after Thanksgiving, which is only a few weeks away anyway. Oh hell, I need a good New Year's resolution.

I'm going to have to think about my relationship with the pro in the dream and see if there is a deeper meaning and warning about open marriage in general. I will say that I have learned that I only want to have sex with someone I love, and that includes only Abby and Lara right now. I think that is a major evolution in my thinking and emoting and I'm very glad about that.

Maybe the dream is the super brain trying to reinforce that way of thinking and it wanted me to know what it felt like in real time instead of just giving the information verbally, as in "George, don't fuck around with anyone other than Abby and maybe Lara for now," which would have been probably just dismissed by me as a random thought if given that way. But the god awful reality of the dream and what it felt like to be in that position of feeling like I had actually had sex with that person and then had to face the consequences was truly horrible. I'm so thankful it was only a dream.
Chapter 81: Some Apologies

When I was awake from about two to about three am last night, which is par for the course because of the noise from the drunk students as they leave the bars which close at two am, I thought that it was mean of me to have used Jim Baaker and Jimmy Swygert in the context that I did way before, implying that they are bad people.

I really didn't mean it that way. I meant that they had most likely not correctly dealt with natural lust in a creative way and it, the lust, came back and bit them in the ass, as it is prone to do, and at least in Jim Baaker's case, he seems to have hooked up with a pretty hot looking woman who I believe was a drug addict come clean, and if so, that's a pretty happy ending to a bad situation, for both of them.

And even though Tammy Faye Baaker is not my type as I prefer a more natural look with less makeup, I hope she is having a good life and I also hope Jimmy Swygert is doing well too. Also the pro he was with in those black and white pictures that brought him down from his pious mountain. He needed bringing down, and I would bet you he would agree with me about that. I hope the pro is having a good life, too.

I hope I've made all the necessary apologies. And they are sincere. Truly. I hate to be uncharitable to, or about, anyone. Except people who deserve it.
Chapter 82: Wrapping This All in a Nice Neat Bundle

Don't you just love kids who love fairy tales with the 'happy ever after' endings? They are so trusting and so pure that they truly believe that life is wonderful and everything turns out well in the end, no matter what the odds. And the good news is that it does, for them, at that stage of life. They gradually get older and more jaded and life throws them some curve balls, but they learn to duck and move and eventually create a reality that suits them, and if they are lucky enough to retain some of their childlike qualities of trust and unquestioned love, they become truly spectacular human beings.

My theory is that everything is good and the only problem is seeing that good. I know that leaves a whole lot of apparent bad shit out of the equation, but isn't the bad shit necessary to see the good? I mean we have to weave our way through life, but as we do, isn't it better to focus on people who are happy and kind and thoughtful, rather than the really bad motherfuckers who would cut our throats for a few dollars?

When I look back on the past few months, I see only good.

Lara was good. She was a magnificent lady who took me to the top of a really beautiful mountain and showed me sights that I could never have imagined without her. She must have had a good reason to disappear and maybe someday I'll know. But if not, it's ok.

Edith is a good lady with a few issues that I see but I'm seeing the speck in her eye and not the log in mine. And our interactions were sexy and creative and I hope they can continue. And I truly hope she softens her position about men and finds a good man and that they will dance into the sunset together happily and lovingly.

Dewayne was not guilty as charged and he's a man's man and Abby likes him and that's all I need to know.

Kim is an amazingly sexy lady with a spontaneity that makes her even more so. If Dewayne and Abby ever take it to the next level, she's mine, for sure.

Abby is Abby. A total enigma to me even after twenty four years. A beautiful, lusty, funny, independent mystery. I will never possess her and that's the best part. She is free to do as she pleases in life, as every person should be, and she chooses to be with me, which is almost unbelievable.

She felt absolutely no obligation to try and explain Kim's wild allegations because she knows that she is free to see who she wants whenever she wants, even though it sent me on a four month saga into the unknown.

Even if I only get her partial attention, even if I only get to spoon with her in winter, even if she prefers to talk to Dewayne at the bar, that is enough for me.

I told Abby in that love letter I wrote to her on Valentines that choosing to spend a lifetime with a person was an incredible gift to that person. Think about it for a minute. Telling someone that you love them enough to give them the gift of you for a lifetime is about as awesome a gift as there is. Thanks for that gift Abby.
Chapter 83: The End, for Now

I think I'll end this here. I hadn't really thought about an ending because things just don't really have an ending in my way of thinking, even though they might appear to. The super brain actually gave me the ending a few days ago. I carried it around a few days before jotting it down. It was clear and complete, but all in one big lump and when I tapped into it, it just kind of unwound, in a linear format, and also in time. Weird, but nice, how that happens.

My life has been, up to this point, an interesting voyage and I have no reason to think that it will be any other way from this point forward. I'm going to just keep observing, analyzing, wondering, enjoying, learning, and lusting because those things are built into my DNA.

I will continue to rail against things that I consider wrong and inhumane, knowing full well that what I do and say will make absolutely no difference in the great scheme of things and nothing will change because of my thoughts or actions. That may sound depressing and futile, but somehow it isn't. To me at least.

I've still got a lot of work to do regarding relationships, specifically mine with Abby, and I don't think I'll ever totally understand her, or any other woman for that matter. But that's the fun of it. And I do consider it fun, in case you haven't picked up on that by now.

I hate giving advice because most people don't want it and probably don't need it, and who am I to give it anyway?

But I just can't help with a little suggestion and that is to treat your spouse or life partner or even your partial life partner with respect and dignity, and try, very hard, to cherish and enjoy the differences between the two of you instead of trying to mold that person into a clone of you, which if you could, which I assure you, you can't, it would make for a very boring and unproductive relationship.

Thanks for staying with me throughout all of this, and I hope it wasn't too boring or confusing. I'm not really sure why I wrote all of this. I stopped asking why about a lot of things over the years. The why just kind of gets in the way.

That's my story up to this point. If anything terribly interesting or profound occurs from this point forward, I'll let you know.

I thought about doing one of those dedication things in the beginning of the book, i.e. 'Dedicated to Abby, blah blah blah blah blah' but that would be totally redundant. The dedication is the story, and the story is the dedication.
