by Ben Boswell
I got up and walked down the hall. The kids’ room was quiet. I crept down the stairs. All the lights were out. I began to get a little freaked out. In the foyer, I grabbed an umbrella from the stand. Somehow I felt better with a “weapon” in my hand.
I noticed a light flickering from the family room, but no sound. Was Rachel watching TV with the volume down?
As I peered in, I got the jolt of a lifetime. She was sitting in front of the computer, headphones covering her ears, her nightgown bunched around her waist as she vigorously rubbed her pussy.
I’d never seen Rachel masturbate before. It was insanely hot. She was entranced, staring at the screen, her lips pursed apart, her tongue flicking out periodically. As I looked closer I saw that she was not just rubbing herself, but also sliding her finger in and out of her pussy.
It struck me suddenly. She was Skypeing with Jack. Even though she’d quit her job, she was still cheating on me. I was heartbroken at the realization, though I could feel my cock throbbing with excitement. Jesus, did I really like the idea of her being with Jack?
I needed to see him. Needed to see the image that had Rachel so hot.
I edged into the room slowly, keeping to the shadows along the wall. I needn’t have worried. She was so mesmerized that I could probably have walked in playing the tambourine without her noticing.
I looked at the screen again and gaped in shock. She wasn’t Skypeing with Jack. She wasn’t communicating with anyone. She was watching porn. And not “women’s porn,” nothing romantic, not “couples’ porn.”
No, what she was watching was hardcore even by my standards. There was a woman, bound, her hands cuffed behind her back. She was on her knees, her face jammed into a sofa. A guy with a huge cock was ramming her pussy roughly from behind. They were both covered in sweat. Every few moments the man would roughly strike the woman, spanking her ass, battering her tits, slapping her face.
Rachel was staring, rapt, frigging herself with ever-increasing intensity as the action on the screen ramped up. Then sudden I saw Rachel shudder, her body convulsing in waves.
She slumped in the chair, sighing loudly, her eyes still glued to the screen. She continued to rub her pussy, slowing now.
I backed out of the room quickly and jumped back into bed. A few minutes later she returned, padding silently. She climbed into bed as cautiously as possible.
I pretended to be asleep, but I was still hard. The image of Rachel playing with herself ran through my head, as did snippets of the porn she’d been watching. It might have been my imagination, but I thought I could feel the heat radiating from her body, smell her sweat and excitement.
CHAPTER SIX
In therapy we’d moved on from listing reasons for us to stay together to exploring how we communicated.
“Do you feel Max listens to you?” Michelle asked Rachel.
Rachel nodded. “Usually. I mean, I know I’m sometimes needy and he’s humoring me.”
“What do you think, Max?” Michelle redirected.
“I guess. I mean, yeah. Look we’ve been together for a decade. I don’t hang on her every word anymore.”
I looked over at Rachel. She nodded.
“And I think that is okay,” Rachel said. “I’m not under the illusion that everything that comes out of my mouth is of earth-shattering importance.”
“But?” Michelle prompted.
Rachel hesitated, thinking. “But... but nothing. No, I get it. I know what you’re hinting it. The idea that Max takes me for granted, ignores me...”
“I don’t,” I snapped defensively.
Rachel reached out and put her hand on my forearm. “Slow down.”
She turned back to Michelle, “He really doesn’t. I wish it were that simple, you know? I wish he were a crappy, self-involved, indifferent husband. That would make it easy. But he isn’t. That’s not it. I didn’t... Max didn’t push me into... Jack’s arms by being emotionally distant.”
“So what did happen?” I asked. “Why?”
Rachel looked at me sadly. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? Or you don’t want to say?” Michelle pressed.
“I don’t know,” Rachel replied.
It was only hours later that it occurred to me how ambiguous an answer that was.
-----
We had just finished another crappy bout of love-making. I’d managed to come this time, but only by giving my mind free reign. I finally blew my load as I imagined Jack taking Rachel from behind, fucking her up the ass, and coming on her face.
It was fucked up. The only way I could get a hardon, achieve an orgasm, was to conjure up a picture of my wife being manhandled, abused, humiliated by her lover.
“Mmmm, that was nice,” she sighed.
“Yeah... actually, Rachel, no. It was fucking awful.”
I gasped as I said it. Holy shit, had I really just said that out loud?
Rachel seemed equally shocked. “What did you say?”
Her tone was a weird mixture of disbelief, anger, and, I think, relief.
I sighed, swallowed hard. “Oh, come on Rach. You’ve been faking it for weeks.”
“No... I...”
“It’s not going to get better if we keep lying about it.”
“I’m not lying...”
I sighed. “Forget it.”
For a while we just lay there, side-by-side, naked, post-coital and yet it felt as if we were separated by a fence a mile high.
“Do you want me to leave?” she asked finally.
“Is that what you want? Has Jack invited you to move in with him?”
“Fuck you,” she hissed. She reached over and slammed me repeatedly with her forearm across my chest. “Fuck you, Max! Fuck you! Fuck you!”
She finally stopped.
“That fucking hurt,” I said softly.
“It’s not what I want,” she said. “It’s what you want. I want to try to make this work. But you hate me.”
“No, don’t deny it,” she snapped as I took a breath to speak. “I just don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to make this better. We spend all our time in therapy talking about what we want, about fucking trust, about the kids. But the truth is, you hate me, and you don’t want this to work.”
“You’re blaming me again.”
“What do you want me to say, Max? I’m a fucking whore. I let my boss play with my cunt. I jerked him off. I sucked his cock. It was the biggest fucking mistake of my life.”
“It wasn’t one mistake.”
She sighed. “Jesus Christ, Max. No, it wasn’t. It happened a bunch of times. What the fuck does it matter if he fingered me once or ten times? Who cares how many times I jerked him off? Is that it, Max? Three handjobs you can forgive? Five you can’t?”
“No, it’s not that. Fuck Rachel, I just don’t know how I can trust you.”
“You want me to wear a tracking chip, like our fucking dog?”
I sighed. “Again, I’m the unreasonable one?”
She paused and then took a deep breath. “Max, look, I love you. I’m so sorry. But I don’t know that I am strong enough to do this. You’re right to be angry. And I guess you’re right not to trust me. But if that’s that, then that’s it, and we’re just killing time. Delaying the inevitable.”
“That’s not what I want,” I replied firmly. It wasn’t. “I just don’t know how to get back to where we need to be.”
“You’re going to need to trust me... but it’s more than that. You’re going to need to find me sexually desirable again. To see me as something other than a piece of spoiled fruit.”
“Jesus, Rachel, I don’t...”
“Fuck Max, you want to be honest or not? You’re disgusted with me. You’ve just been fucking me to drop a load. You don’t think I can sense that I am nothing more than a blow-up doll to you right now? You expect me to come when you make me feel like nothing but a convenient hole?”
She sighed. “Whatever. If that is what you need, I can do that. It is my penance.
But I don’t know if that is what you need. And I don’t want to keep doing this if you can never again trust me.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Penance? I didn’t think members of the Tribe did that.”
“Oh sure,” she replied with a chuckle, “it always comes back to that. See, your grandma was right, you shouldn’t have married a Christ killer. Don’t worry, though. Yom Kippur is coming up. I’m sure there are some prayers I can say to make it all right.”
“Well, sure, but you’ll never wash away the taint of original sin.”
“That was Adam.”
“Yeah, but Eve, that whore, was behind it.”
She laughed. “See, you could have avoided all of this if you’d married a dude.”
“Don’t tempt me. Pizza, beer every night. Sports on the TV...”
“A dick in your mouth...”
“Well, you seem to like it...”
I held my breath. Too much?
She giggled. “Don’t knock it ‘til you try it.”
I laughed.
“Okay, so what do we do now?” she asked.
“I dunno. To tell you the truth, I just don’t know. But maybe this is what we should be talking about in therapy.”
-----
We sat down, the three of us, Rachel, Michelle, and me. At first it had felt like Michelle was between us, with Rachel and I farther apart. Then it had become an equilateral triangle. And now, somehow, it seemed like an isosceles triangle, with Rachel and I closer than either of us was to Michelle. The chairs hadn’t shifted. It was all about emotion.
“So, what shall we talk about today?” Michelle asked.
I looked at my wife. She looked at me. Neither of us spoke.
Finally, Rachel sighed. “Our sex life sucks.”
“Amen,” I said.
“Thanks, Max,” Rachel smirked at me.
I shrugged. “What?” But I was grinning as well.
Michelle suppressed a smile. “Okay, so, you two have started talking. And what have you figured out?”
Rachel jumped in. “An affair kills intimacy.”
“Yes,” Michelle replied. “But...”
Neither Rachel nor I filled the silence.
Michelle sighed. “Okay, so... you guys wanna keep talking about kids and jobs?”
“You giving up on us?” I asked
Michelle suppressed a smile. “Why would you say that?”
“Do these games really work?” Rachel asked.
Michelle fought harder, kept, barely, her poker face. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Neither Rachel nor I spoke.
Michelle broke the silence. “Why are you here?”
“We want to, um, fix things,” I replied.
Rachel nodded.
“Okay,” Michelle replied slowly, “so how about a little honesty?”
She turned toward Rachel. “Look, you and Max love each other, right?”
My wife nodded.
“You seem to have similar values. You support each other. You actually seem to communicate pretty well. It doesn’t seem like you were looking to sabotage the relationship.”
More nods.
“So, what did Jack give you that Max doesn’t?”
Rachel recoiled. She shook her head. “No. No. This isn’t his fault. He’s not... I didn’t... it’s not that.”
Michelle sighed. “Okay.”
Rachel flushed. “Fuck you. What the fuck do you know? This isn’t about Max. It’s about me. And just because you can’t help us, that doesn’t mean...”
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Michelle replied.
“No, you’re not. You get paid either way,” Rachel snapped.
Michelle shrugged. “Yes, I get paid by the hour. I admit it.”
“Then maybe we need someone else,” Rachel replied.
“Hold on,” I said softly. Both women looked at me.
I took a deep breath. “Rachel, I appreciate you wanting to protect me. But Michelle is right. He gave you something, met some need. What was it?”
“I dunno,” she muttered under her breath.
“You don’t know? Or you don’t want to say?” I pressed, repeating the question Michelle had asked weeks ago.
Rachel looked up at me through red-rimmed eyes. She began to speak, two, three times, but no words came out.
Michelle said, “Rachel, just because Jack provided something doesn’t mean that Max was falling short. It isn’t a competition between them. He’s just trying to understand what happened.”
I nodded. “It’s hard for me to trust you if I don’t understand what happened. And right now, I don’t understand it.”
Michelle continued, “And without trust, you won’t recover the intimacy.”
I put up my hand. “Okay, let’s not badger her,” I said. I didn’t want Rachel thinking we were teaming up on her.
“I... Jesus... this is so fucking hard.”
I knew better than to interrupt. I could tell she was working up to a difficult admission.
She sighed. She was wringing her hands, her eye in her lap.
“I was eighteen...” she began.
I looked up at Michelle who seemed equally surprised by this. After all, Rachel and I hadn’t even met until she was twenty-four.
“It was after graduation. I had gotten this internship, so I was supposed to be out all day. Which is why, I guess, my folks were willing to hire Tony to do some work around the house.
“He was an ex-con. There was this program, you know, to help these guys adjust to the outside world. My parents were good liberals and also, I guess, his salary was subsidized. So it was win-win.
“Well, anyway, I had thought my internship was for eight weeks, but it was just for four. But I didn’t tell my folks. I knew if they found out, they’d make me get another job, and you know, I just wanted to hang out for a few weeks before college. So in the morning, I’d get up, pretend to drive to ‘work,’ and then instead head over to a girlfriend’s house or whatever, get coffee, chill. Whatever.
“But then, one day, I decided to go home instead. I don’t know what I was really thinking. Tony was there, shirt off, working on the railing of the pool deck, which annoyed me because I wanted to sit out there, but didn’t feel comfortable with him there.
“It’s not like he was that scary, at first glance. He was short, barely taller than me, but without his shirt on I realized he was much more muscular than I had thought. He was covered in these nasty tattoos. He was also older, like in his thirties. Totally not my type, you know. But, well, I kept spying on him through the window resenting that he was keeping me away from my own pool.”
I could see where this was going, and found it oddly arousing. I still didn’t know what this had to do with Jack, but I wasn’t about to interrupt.
“So I put on my bikini and went out there. He was eying me. And I was so fucking... entitled... or something. It was like I was a fucking princess and that he’d never have the guts to approach me.”
She laughed darkly.
“That lasted, like, five seconds. He walked right up to me. He asked me what I was doing at home. I told him. What could he do? He asked me if my parents knew. I told him to fuck off.”
She paused.
“He grabbed my hair and shoved his hand down into my bikini bottom.”
She was breathing harder.
“I told him I’d tell my parents. He sneered, ‘go ahead.’ Then he... then he took me.”
Shit. “Oh God, Rachel, I’m so sorry,” I sighed.
Michelle jumped in as well, “Rachel, it wasn’t your fault. Many young women, too many, are victimized this way.”
Rachel was shaking her head. “No! Fuck! You two don’t understand a fucking thing. He didn’t assault me; I seduced him. I loved it,” she said furiously. “For a week that man… did things to me. He ordered me around. He used me as his plaything. And... I loved it.”
I looked at Michelle. She was staring open-mouthed
. It was as if she were out of her depth. She was a marriage counselor and suddenly we were in the realm of sexual trauma.
But we weren’t. Rachel wasn’t broken. She was embarrassed. She was looking at me, eyes red, but unwavering.
“Max, I have dark fantasies. I watch porn. And when I do, it is rough, dirty. I don’t want to see kissing, gentle caresses. I want to watch a dirty, cheap, slut being forced to service a man.”
I looked away. I knew. I’d seen it. But despite her admission, I didn’t mention it. I didn’t want to embarrass her further, or embarrass myself.
And now she was back in the present. “Being with Jack was like that time with Tony. God, he seemed to know just how to play me. Can you imagine how humiliating it was to have him molest me, bent over his desk, hearing people just outside the door? It was mortifying... and Jesus, Max, I’m so sorry. But it was so fucking hot.”
I stared at Rachel in shock. Who was this woman?
Happily, Michelle had recovered her equanimity. “Okay. Hold on.”
She looked at Rachel, “We all have sexual fetishes. As long as it doesn’t involve children or animals, there is nothing wrong with embracing your desires. You have been amazingly honest. I suspect Max wishes he’d heard about this earlier.”
I nodded.
“But,” Michelle continued, “you two can build on this if you want.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what that means.”
“That’s what you’re going to have to work on then.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The moment we left the therapist’s office we recoiled from those admissions. I think Rachel was too mortified to bring it up. I was, frankly, more than a little freaked out by the whole thing. We retreated back into those banalities that we’d been using to avoid talking about real issues.
The cat was out of the bag. Even though it was now roaming the house clawing at the furniture, we both seemed to want to pretend it wasn’t there. But I, for one, couldn’t stop thinking about what Rachel had said. She was obviously equally consumed.
We managed to go to bed that night without any uncomfortable interactions. The kids and household chores provided a welcome distraction. But the moment I closed my eyes, I drifted back to the therapist’s office. And from there to the pool deck.