Maybe it was me. I could play that alpha role, but there was something missing. I felt like a fraud, waiting for a girl like Nadine to see right through me and call me out. No, it was way more serious than that. I wanted to be called out. I needed to be called out. In the back of my mind, I found myself wondering … wondering about how I felt so much closer to my sexual destiny playing kinky games with Kristen than I had since. In some bizarre way, that felt more normal to me, more right, than anything that followed.
But then … things changed again. And in a very, very big way.
Chapter 15
Fast forward three more years, and now you’re practically reading this as a type. I’m thirty-two.
I’m sure you’ll be surprised to know that as I type, Beth is in the next room, sleeping on the bed. Yes, that’s right. Beth from high school. We’re together. Not only that, but we’re married. Before you start to choke on this fairy tale ending, let me throw a bit of cold water on it. This is Beth’s second marriage. She has a goatee-sporting pain in the ass of an ex-husband we both have to deal with now. I don’t know if I should be happy or pissed that he is such a bad parent. He only takes Beth’s daughter Allie twice a month. Allie is four years old now, old enough to feel the sting of her father’s absence. I try to pick up the slack but Allie has yet to call me “Dad,” nor would I want her to. She is finally comfortable letting me walk her to the bus stop when Beth has to work early.
You may wonder how I managed to get Beth to fall in love with me, and if I did, why I’m writing this book. Well, the falling in love part I owe to Kristen. Kristen sparked me into trying to excel in my life. She scared the shit out of me, in a very good way. She made me realize that I needed a triumph. Call it over-compensation if you want. I prefer to think of it as a fierce push toward excellence.
I needed to work on my skills, not only in the bedroom but in life. By the time I ran into Beth again, I was not only a teacher but a published author on urban school planning. I was not a gym rat anymore, but I still stayed in shape. And it didn’t hurt that Allie took to me immediately. I wasn't rich, but I had moved on from the public schools and taken more lucrative private school positions. I managed to bank the difference and I was in a pretty good position financially. On some level I must have realized that in my case, to be considered "husband material", I needed to have my financial shit together. I suppose it didn't hurt that Beth was coming off a marriage of emotional deprivation. There are different ways the sexual spark can be extinguished—emotional neglect is one I had not considered. Beth’s ex-husband was great at getting women into bed but not as good at keeping them. Of course, I had the opposite problem.
Beth and I met at one of my speaking gigs - in New York City of all places. She surprised me afterward and was clearly impressed by what I had accomplished since I left her house in shame almost fifteen years earlier. I think maybe that determination not to be defined by my shortcomings was what turned her on the most. I took the judgment she and her sister placed on me, and on some fundamental level, I had not let it define me.
I suppose there was some luck involved too maybe there always is; I had only recently moved to Boston and she was only two hours away in Hartford. Two hours might not have been viable for a new relationship, but with our history, it was nothing for me to drive down and see her every few Fridays. The dates added up.
I know it probably sounds odd that she would be so attracted to me after our prior misadventures. All I can tell you is that we had both changed. If I had evolved, she had softened. I guess she you could say she had been humbled by her own difficulties. But if I had to pick one thing, it was probably seeing me speak in front of a audience, working the room with authority and showing absolutely no sign of the self-esteem crisis she had inflicted for better and for worse. And yeah, I knew how to take care of her. Fuck it; we loved each other, simple as that, and no stopping it either. Timing is everything. I’ll grant you that, but six months of dating was all it took.
And no, I didn’t hold back on the sex. On our third date, things got hot and heavy and I made my move.
“God damn, you know how to eat a pussy!” was a line that told me I might just have a chance with Beth the second time around.
I didn’t ask her how I compared with her former lovers and no, we never talked about our adolescent incidents. I brought it up once in the interest of brutal honesty, and she said, “Jason, I was young then. I was young.” Then she wrapped her brown arms around me and kissed me into another place.
We were married at the grand old age of thirty-one. By then I had ditched my bachelor pad in Boston and we had bought in on a new place in suburban Connecticut. It wasn’t a big wedding but that didn’t matter one iota. She was the girl of my dreams and I would have married her in a garage. As it was, we married at the foot of Pike’s Peak in Colorado Springs. When she read her own vows, she started trembling so much that her friend Kim had to hold her steady. It was hard for me to fathom how she could love me that much.
To be honest I’ve never felt worthy of that kind of love. As much as I’ve fought for a better life, a part of me feels like I don’t deserve it. Like I wouldn’t mind jumping over the ledge to remind myself about the darkness. The darkness I’m afraid I’ll always be drawn to. I’ll always wonder if that isn’t the purpose of these nastier sex dreams. To cover the darkness up. To orgasm me into numbness, or into the next day.
But then I am a married man and I can afford a few idle thoughts after a long day. And on the good days, the snoring brown goddess you’re lucky to call your wife has her arms wrapped almost too tight around you. Those nights you sleep like a pardoned criminal. And the questions can wait.
But when I turned thirty-two, I found myself typing this story. I don’t know what started the outpouring. I guess it was when I noticed Beth and I weren’t having sex every night anymore. The passion was still there, but she wasn’t ripping my clothes off when I got home from work either. I’m not sure these are the right fires to stoke, but burn they do. And so I write.
It was about this time she started travelling more for work. There was a legitimate reason. Her company was opening a new office in Philadelphia and she was needed for corporate training. It was too far away for her to come home all the time, though she tried to get back whenever she could, because Allie wasn’t comfortable staying with me alone for more than a couple of nights.. I wasn’t the only one who slept better when Beth was around.
I could have sworn that after one of Beth’s trips, she had a happy smile on her face that seemed to imply a deep sexual satisfaction. I had not seen that look on a girl’s face in a long time; I felt my gut churning. I resisted the urge to check Beth’s email or go through her purse.
That’s when I had to admit it: I haven’t been one hundred percent honest with Beth. She had written off our youthful misadventures as just that. Whereas for me, those brutal erotics had worked their way into the core of my sexual identity. Winning my dream girl’s heart got in the way of a lesson I had already learned: don’t hold your secrets back.
I had realized my dream, and somehow that dream felt far more important than my fetishes. Not to mention being a different kind of father to Allie, in my own way. A way that would have its ups and downs, but still … I could sense a different kind of joy building. Beth could see it too, like the day she blurted out: “You’re going to make a seriously great father!” after watching me patiently teaching Allie how to tie her Angry Birds shoelaces through her indignant tears.
Also: I trusted Beth. Trusted her one hundred percent. I knew deep down she would never cheat on me, ever. Despite how Kristen warned me. A part of me wanted her to cheat. Heck, I even hoped she had, as terrible as that sounds. But I didn’t speak of it. Things were still too good. We didn’t have that daily passion, but a couple times a week we found a way to have some fun. And I always made her cum, of that there was no question. Beyond the sex was the closeness. We were always good to each other. I never felt her withholdin
g. If anything I was the one with secrets.
And yet … the doubt. Or was it a fetish, something I could never shake? The thing is, I only wanted it to happen if she did. If Beth was with another man only to get me off, it wouldn’t do a thing for me. But if one day she woke up, realized she was sexually famished, went out and got her brains fucked out—well there was nothing I craved more. That craving was becoming so intense I couldn’t think of it in terms of good or bad. It felt like fate. The cruel, intense perfection of it made my knees weak. And here’s the worst part: I think it would get me off even if it ultimately caused harm to the relationship.
So I decided to write. Maybe putting all this down would clear my head.
But then I made a mistake.
I gave her my old laptop. I did delete my story from the laptop, but one day the old laptop broke again. I was in a rush, so I let her borrow my new one.
Life got crazy. Allie got in trouble in school for fighting over an iPad of all things. Events got blurry. It never occurred to me that Dropbox would automatically upload this file to the new machine.
But it did.
A few weeks later, Allie’s school crisis behind us, I got the old laptop fixed. Meanwhile, I was back on the new machine. Back to this story, unsure of where it should go next.
Then Beth read it. I’m assuming she read every damning word. I do know that she made it to the end.
She’s sleeping behind me, but I don’t need her confession.
I might as well end the story here.
No, I’ll let her end it. Because she typed it right into the story.
Because I know I didn’t write this.
And I’m sitting here reading it now, reading what she wrote over and over again, trying to parse the meanings, realizing she must have read this book pretty damn carefully if she knew to put the most important lines in italics, just like I did.
And as I type in the glow of the bedroom desk, while she sleeps soundly only eight feet away from me, I can’t think of another way to end the book.
Maybe there’s a better way. But these are the cards I have been dealt, and I’m honestly not sure what the next move is. I’m not sure the next move is mine.
Because this is what she wrote:
Be very careful what you wish for.
* * *
Alex Hathaway, the author of From Housewife to Cuckoldress: How I Took Sexual Control of a Marriage in Crisis, is fascinated by the erotic power of sexual taboos and the adventures that can be had by exploring them. An author whose relationships have evolved from vanilla to anything but, Alex has a particular interest in writing about cuckolding and the unconventional sexual fulfillment it can provide.
You can find Alex on the Web at:
alexcuckoldstories.fannypress.com.
The Education of a Cuckold Page 17