by Eva Mazza
Had he failed? Frans was the one who had insisted on roping all the guys into the club. Lee could have prevented John from joining, but it would have caused a major rift in his group. As for his wife’s affair with Jen’s husband, that was beyond his control. John had finally seduced Frankie. It had only been a matter of time.
It was apparent that John had a sexual addiction. Lee felt that he had no choice but to expose his friend; maybe he would’ve chosen a different, more gentle approach if he hadn’t been fucking his wife. He hoped that this exposure would not cause too much collateral damage, impacting on Jen and her children, but he figured he had very little choice. It was the only way he knew to save Jen from John and herself, and to keep the promise he had made to Jen’s dying mother.
Twenty-two
Jen had left the house for the city long before she needed to. She wanted to get to her first appointment on time and she knew that the weekday traffic was hellish. She was also relieved not to have any contact with the man who had been posing as her faithful husband for the last twenty-four years.
She had hardly slept for mulling over John’s betrayal. She had spent most of the night joining the dots of Frankie and his adulterous relationship, chastising herself for being so naïve and blind.
She did not appreciate the spectacular scenery as she entered Cape Town. Majestic Table Mountain to her left and Cape Town’s already bustling harbour to her right went unnoticed as she negotiated her way through the traffic just before the N1 offramp into the Mother City. An irate motorist hooted at her for cutting in front of him. She raised her hand in apology. How stupid she was to have missed the signs! She would often come home to find Frankie ‘waiting’ for her when she had known that Jen would be out or would be home late. “I was in the area”, or “I forgot that you wouldn’t be home”, and “Don’t worry, John entertained me until you got back”, had become regular refrains when she found her friend in her home alone with her husband. John had always offered to walk Frankie to her car on the grounds that he needed to catch up with work in the cellar, and Frankie had always offered John a lift there, which, Jen remembered, he never declined. That’s exactly what happened, Jen concluded: they’d had sex in John’s office in the cellar. She must have parked her car on the other side of the cellar, hidden and unseen by trusting old me. Jen’s imagination started to play out different scenarios of their trysts, and her anger escalated.
She recalled how Frankie had often showed her sexy text messages “from her married lover” and realised now that they must have been from John. How cruel! It was bad enough that she had betrayed her with her husband, but to derive a thrill out of sharing his illicit texts with her was beyond comprehension. Why?
She was relieved to find an empty parking bay in Wale Street, the exact street where Sharon, the relationship counsellor, worked.
She ordered a strong espresso at the nearby Bean There, to kill time and to give her a kick after a restless night and very long drive. She then braced herself for the day that lay ahead.
Sharon was not a beautiful woman. Her features were hard and butch – hardened more by close-cropped, peroxided hair and minimal make-up. But what she lacked in looks, she made up for in style. Her tailored pantsuit was well fitted and expensive. Jen also recognised Sharon’s jewellery from fashion magazines: handcrafted, quirky bespoke pieces by Lisa Stanton, an up-and-coming local jeweller. Sharon exuded verve as she walked out to greet Jen and direct her to her consultation room.
Knowing that Claudia had met Sharon through Leonard, who always referred his clients to her, and vice versa, made Jen a little more at ease. Leonard was at the top of his game. If he trusted Sharon, then, surely, so could she.
The consultation room was warm and inviting, completely unexpected, given Jen’s initial impression of its occupant. There were three comfortable-looking armchairs positioned around an oval coffee table on which were placed a box of tissues, a water jug and three glasses.
Juxtaposing the warmth of the furniture was Sharon’s art selection. Two pieces in particular reminded Jen of the Facebook phenomenon Berlin ArtParasites’ haunting and thought-provoking art; in fact, they bordered on disturbing – an unusual choice for a space Jen assumed was supposed to bring tranquillity and resolution. One was of a male bust oozing blood from its eyes, the other of a woman hanging naked from a cross. At the far end of the room sat Sharon’s desk – a long and overbearing antique printer’s desk, burdened with piles of seemingly neglected folders and papers, a telephone, an Apple computer, as well as an open laptop and a glass vase with a print of Matisse’s Dance circling it, used as a container for stationary.
Feeling a little uncomfortable, Jen shifted in her chair and poured herself some water.
“Have you visited a psychologist before, Jen?”
Jen shook her head, then swallowed.
“Well, I’m not a psychologist, and if you’d ever been to one, you would know that I’m a tad unconventional,” Sharon said, while looking for a pen amongst the pile of stationary in the Matisse vase. Having found her Mont Blanc, she moved to one of the empty chairs and sat down, crossing her legs to prop the notepad she held in her right hand. “The burning question everybody is afraid to ask me is, what do I know about marriage and relationships? The answer to that would be: what does anybody really know about relationships, period? I’m not here to give you solutions. I’m here to help you on your journey to self-discovery, and to assist with unravelling and making sense of the truth, however painful.”
Sharon stopped mid-thought. “This sounds a bit like psycho-babble and I guess it is.” She threw her head back and began to laugh, showing perfect molars. “We counsellors can be very convincing because we confuse you with words.”
Jen wondered whether she could divulge anything to this strange woman.
“I’m a little unconventional, not only because I can be, but also because we’re working against time. We don’t have the luxury right now to thrash through months of analysis. We can do that later, through regular hourly sessions, either alone or with your husband, if you like, once you’ve made a decision as to what you want to do.”
“Do you mean whether I want to stay married or whether I want to divorce John?”
Sharon smiled. “Yes, to stay married, or file for divorce or separate. The choice is yours and you need to be sure that you have thought this through carefully. You also need to know that nothing is set in stone. You can change your mind, given that your husband is willing to concede.”
Jen listened carefully, trying to process her options.
“Claudia has briefed me as to why you’re here, but I want to know from you, Jen. Why are you here? What do you hope to achieve from seeing me?”
Jen felt her cheeks burn and her eyes start to fill. Sharon gestured towards the tissues, and Jen grabbed one, dabbing her eyes as she spoke. “Well, I caught my husband in the throes of oral sex with his wine rep.” She stopped, expecting to see shock on Sharon’s face.
Instead, Sharon said, “Were they performing oral sex on each other, or was John the only one being indulged?”
Mortified at Sharon’s candid question, she tried to explain. “He was, um, he was…”
“Go on?”
“She was giving him a blowjob.”
Sharon wrote something down in her notepad, then looked up. “Were you watching, or did you stop them?”
Jen shifted in her seat. What difference does it make?
“I was watching for a while. I was in shock. At first, I didn’t quite register that he was my husband.”
There was a long silence. “Can you remember what went through your head at that moment?”
“Honestly? Well, I was quite fascinated, actually, at how good Patty was at it. It looked as if she was actually enjoying herself. I remember thinking, so this is how it’s supposed to be done. And then I tried to scream at them, but really it was a whisper.”
“Don’t you engage in fellatio, Jen?”
Jen
looked down at her hands and noticed she’d been picking at her cuticles. “I don’t see how this has any relevance to what happened.”
“Maybe it doesn’t, but you never know. You just said it intrigued you that Patty was enjoying performing oral sex on your husband. Maybe this was a once-off indiscretion.”
Jen stood up abruptly. The nerve of this woman! She had her mind made up to leave, but Sharon stopped her with a raised, quizzical eyebrow and she sank back into her chair.
“I’m not trying to justify your husband’s actions, but he may just use the excuse that he was drunk; he was lured by this woman and was exceptionally tempted at the time because you never perform oral sex on him. It’s just about every married man’s mantra, isn’t it?”
Jen knew it sounded peevish, but she couldn’t help saying, “The women I know hate oral sex!”
“Which is every married woman’s mantra,” Sharon shot back.
Was this ‘counsellor’ trying to blame her for John’s infidelity?
Sharon chuckled. “See, I know. My poor ex couldn’t get my mouth near his dick and now he’s pissed off because being a lesbian requires the use of my mouth. Imagine how cheated he feels?”
Jen was stunned into silence and then she began to laugh hysterically. She wasn’t sure if it was because she was so emotionally and physically drained, but she needed some relief from this burden she had been carrying around with her since Saturday, maybe longer, she admitted.
Then Sharon joined in and they were unstoppable. When one of them tried to control herself, she was spurred on by the other, and the hysterics would start all over again. Jen hadn’t laughed like this in ages, and somehow this shared mirth brought Jen closer to Sharon. A sort of trust had been established.
Sharon got up from her chair and moved towards her desk. She picked up a pile of papers and a pencil and handed them to her client. “These are a series of questions I’d like you to answer. See it as part of my intake interview. It also allows you to reflect and it saves us time, time that we are lacking. Speaking of which, I would like to postpone your appointment this afternoon with Leonard to tomorrow. We’re going to need the whole day, if you don’t mind?”
“Should be fine, I have all day today and tomorrow.”
“After you’ve answered the questions, you can go for lunch. I believe you’re meeting Claudia at the little sandwich shop in Long Street? This will give me time to read through what you’ve written and to highlight the issues I think are relevant to today’s session.”
She gestured to Jen to follow her. Sharon led her into a little annex off the reception area. A table and a desk chair filled a portion of the room and against a wall was a long couch framed by four recognisable signed prints.
A sideboard held a coffee station, and Jen was told to help herself, “and there are biscuits if you’re feeling peckish”.
With that, Sharon walked out of the room, closing the door gently behind her, leaving Jen alone with her emotions, which came flooding back to her in an instant.
She poured tea into a cup and added the sugar and the milk while she worked through the questions.
The intake interview started with the usual information such as name, sex, identity number, date of birth, marital status and profession. Then followed a section regarding her children: their ages and sex and the relationship that she and her spouse had with each child. There was a question as to whether she felt their children had had any adverse effects on their marriage. She also had to write a brief paragraph on her past and her relationship with her parents. The next section was titled Spouse’s Details and Relationship Status. In this section, Jen filled out John’s name, his age, his occupation, how long they had been married and how long they had dated.
The questions became more personal and probing. Jen was required to state how many times a month, on average, they had intercourse; whether she was happy with this and whether she thought her husband was satisfied. She was also asked whether she enjoyed sexual relations with her husband, and if not, why not? Furthermore, did she think her husband enjoyed sexual relations with her? She had to indicate whether she engaged in any of the following: swinging, ménages à trois, bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism (BDSM); and, if so, was this a mutual decision or was there coercion? Jen breathed a sigh of relief. She felt normal. At least I can skip this section out.
This was followed by a subsection about her views on pornography and whether porn was used as a tool during sex.
John had tried early in their relationship to get her to watch porn with him, but she had to admit that pornography didn’t really appeal to her. There was always a sense of deviance to porn, which wasn’t to her taste, she wrote, adding that she was sure he watched pornography, as most men were wired that way. She then added a big question mark as if to ask, Am I right?
By this stage, Jen felt that she must be really dull in bed and wondered if these questions were geared to make her take ownership for John’s extramural romps, so she added that she enjoyed using props and performing role-play during sex; after all, she had bought that French maid’s outfit, and a nurse’s uniform, and crotchless panties in a bid to spice up their sex life.
Next, she was asked whether she had been faithful to her husband, followed by her definition of infidelity and whether both she and her husband subscribed to this view.
The final question in this section was whether she knew or believed her husband was faithful to her. She knew the answer to this question. That was why she was here. She wrote that she had caught her husband with his wine rep and had recently discovered his affair with her best friend. She included that there were many rumours about his philandering, which she had not wanted to believe but which nevertheless made her suspicious.
“List how this makes you feel.” She pressed the pencil hard into the paper: “BETRAYED, STUPID, ANGRY, UGLY, HUMILIATED, WORTHLESS”, and her last word was “FREE”.
Jen was washed out. She needed fresh air, and to escape from the confines of the room. She placed the pages in an envelope, sealed it and left it with the receptionist then walked the fourteen flights of stairs to the ground floor. After sitting the whole morning – probing, thinking, feeling, questioning – she was about to explode and needed to move!
Twenty-three
The sandwich shop on Long Street was bustling with lunchtime custom. All the trendy city slickers were standing or perched on stools around high tables laden with espressos, cappuccinos and other hot beverages, mouths crammed with designer sandwiches, seemingly difficult to eat yet expertly negotiated, while laughing, chatting and calling friends over to tables. Everyone seemed to be in a frenzy to eat and meet before going back to offices and desks providing them with work that could bring them one step closer to their goals and dreams.
This little place had crammed some of the most beautiful people into a small area, making it either a popular place for those who aspired to be trendy or daunting for those who thought that perhaps they didn’t belong.
Jen felt like one of the latter as she pushed her way through the throngs of people, hoping that Claudia had found them a table. Her imported linen dress was creased. Definitely pure linen. The plunging neckline revealed her cleavage and newly tanned décolletage on which her thong necklace rested, as if to point to where happiness could be found. Jen noticed a few businessmen glance appreciatively at her bust. Someone grabbed the back of her arm.
“Jen,” a man’s voice said, “is that you?”
She turned and looked into the eyes of a tall, well-built stranger. His broad shoulders were covered in a striped blue shirt, and a dark blue tie hung loosely around his neck. His hair was a curly mop of speckled grey and his reading glasses hid between the curls on his head. Tiny laugh lines framed his dark brown eyes and a Roman nose protruded handsomely from the middle of his face.
Jen recognised him. “I know you, but I can’t place you,” she said politely.
“It’s me, Myron!”
She hadn’t
seen Myron since high school, since his family had emigrated to Greece when she was in Grade Eleven. She remembered the adolescent crush she’d had on him. In fact, all the girls had been half in love with him, and she had been dizzyingly flattered when he had shown an interest in her. She had even made out with him at the school social. Myron was the first boy who had ever touched her breasts. That was a long time ago, and now she was looking into the eyes of a very handsome, middle-aged businessman.
“Well, blow me away! Myron! What are you doing here? I thought you were living in Greece.”
“I’ve been back for just over a year now. As you know, we took a huge knock in the recession. I could foresee that Greece would be teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, so I came back to find you. And look! Destiny has brought you here to the very coffee shop where I have lunch every day,” he teased, his dark eyes creasing endearingly at the sides. “You haven’t changed. You are as beautiful as ever.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Myron, I’ve aged. I’m on the cusp of fifty, and gravity and time have taken their toll, as would be expected. But thanks for the compliment.”
“You are like the good vintage wine your father has in his cellar, which gets better with age.”
“And you’re the cheese that goes with it,” she grinned.
He asked how her parents were, which was sweet of him, especially since they had forbidden her from seeing “that bloody Greek”. She had been distraught, but her dad had said that no Greek was going to gain his experience from his daughter and then dump her for a nice Greek girl. “I know how ‘these people’ operate and I will not have it!” he had shouted.