Body Of Research: An Experiment In Hotwifing

by Arnica Butler

  She continued squinting and waving her hand in front of her face. She was smiling, and the first sentiment I felt was an almost violent rage. A desire to slap her. How could she fucking laugh, the little bitch?

  And then, slowly, it dawned on me. The pieces started to come together... but not all together.

  Jen sucked in her breath. “Those are just for... well, not really research, because I can't use the data, but just...yeah, research. Basically. Oh my God. What did you think?” She grabbed a napkin and wiped her nose. Then she took another sip of wine, and then something made her laugh again. Meanwhile, I was staring in disbelief, torn apart by all of the emotions that had just gone belly-up and those that were re-ignited by this sudden twist.

  Which could all still be a lie, my suspicious, tin-foil hat mind reminded me.

  A careful, elaborate lie.

  My eyes narrowed.

  Jen looked at me incredulously, tears of laughter coming to her eyes. “Oh, fuck, Chris, what the hell were you actually thinking? My wife's just gone completely nuts and started fishing for every fucking guy in the tri-state area? I just, overnight, turned into some hu-gonjo slut.”

  She made a noise.

  Sipped her wine.

  I had to give her something: if she was putting on an act, she was a world-class actress. She hadn't missed a beat. She hadn't been nervous for a second.

  Except that small second.

  That stiffening of her spine.

  That moment of shock when I talked about the apps.

  Jen was looking at me now. Peering at me, actually, Tipping her head sideways. “Oh Jesus, Chris, you are serious. Really? Really?”

  She took another sip of her wine.

  “And why would I fucking give you my phone?” she asked the general audience of the kitchen appliances. She snorted again.

  Then she looked back to me. “You shit. Oh my god, I'm so stupid...that's why you wanted it, isn't it?”

  She looked confused now more than anything. “Updates my ass.” She started shaking her head. “What in the hell? What the hell even got you... I don't know... digging into my stuff to begin with?”

  The realization of how wrong I was was falling over me slowly. Dripping over me.

  Why had I been digging into my wife's phone?

  I hadn't thought of a good excuse for that. I had marched forward, because I had allowed myself to be convinced that she was hiding something from me, that she would be caught, that she would be the liar and never think to ask about how it came about that I looked into her phone. I hadn't expected this outcome at all.

  Hence, I had no plan.

  And the truth? Well, that wasn't going to get me very far, was it?

  I have this sort of private fantasy, honey, that you are fucking other men. I enjoy thinking about it, I like to imagine it in high-definition, glorious detail. And so when a shred of evidence came my way, I allowed myself to indulge in what you scientists would call a confirmation bias, and let my imagination run away to some really dirty places...

  “Chris?” she repeated.

  My thoughts, drifting along as they were, stopped cold.

  “What about that app, DB, DeBauch-ery? You have messages on there,” I said, accusatorily.

  Jen opened her mouth.

  Oh, now she was indignant.

  Now she was pissed.

  “I can not!” she said.

  (As in: “I can not believe what a shit you are.”)

  But she did have messages.

  She had exchanged messages.

  I had seen them.

  “I saw your messages,” I said.

  She folded her arms over her chest. “Uh huh.”

  I opened my eyes wider to indicate she needed to explain further.

  “Oh for fuck's sake. Get my phone. Let's just go through it together, shall we?”

  I stormed off in the direction of the office while she got up and poured herself another glass of wine. “I cannot fucking believe this shit,” she muttered, in a voice that was supposed to be “under her breath,” but was definitely audible enough for me to hear.

  I stormed to the office, and dug under the papers for the phone. All of the competing feelings inside of me were now brought front and center – the feelings I had tried to submerge, the hidden feelings I had tried to keep stashed. The effect was both intoxicating and sickening. I felt like I was moving in slow motion.

  I came back with the phone in my hand, my blood pressure so high I could hear my pulse, watery and low, in my head.

  Jen opened the phone, expertly, and swept her fingers over it. “Okay,” she said. “This one? DeBauch...God, what a stupid name...is that the one you're talking about?” Her voice was pretty high-pitched now. She looked up from the phone and glared at me. “What did you see, exactly?”

  “You... have messages. Messages in there.” I pointed at the phone, and then I suddenly got mad again, feeling indignant. What the fuck was I simpering about? I wasn't the one who had flirted with someone else on online dating apps.

  “Yeah,” I said, agreeing with myself. “What the fuck, Jen? You're the one sending messages to guys, you're the one with a hundred profiles on fucking dating apps. So don't get snotty with me about it. You owe me an explanation.”

  Jen's eyes went black with rage. “And I fucking gave you one!” she snapped. “Didn't I? This is all just shit I'm doing for.. for this stupid project. God!” She threw her hands up in exasperation and growled the last word. “What the hell is so hard to understand about that?”

  “Right. For research. Sure. Tell me how that works, Jen.”

  Her eyes were furious as she stared at me, her mouth open.

  Then I thought I saw a flicker of amusement.

  She twisted the phone in her hand. “You total ass. This is all happening because you haven't been listening to a word I fucking say about my research.”

  This particular statement pierced through the blind rage I was experiencing.

  Another thing about Jen: she's like a high-powered attorney once she decides she's right about something and you're going to be prosecuted for it.

  Crucified is more the word. As an academic, she's pretty quick to gather up evidence and present it to you, along with your ass. But right now there was another kind of storm brewing in her mind.

  “No?” she said. “Do you deny it?”

  “Straw man!” I yelled helplessly. It was the only logical fallacy I could remember the name of, and it worked half the time.

  “Wrong fallacy,” Jen said, calmly and cooly. “So let me ask you something. What is it I'm researching, Chris?”

  The hammer came down.

  I was in a corner now. It was true, this was not a conversation about her research, but it obviously had something to do with it, or she wouldn't have had that smug little grin on her face.

  I grasped at straws inside my mind. “This is about why my wife is messaging men on a dating app, Jen,” I said, but my bluster was gone. Something about the smugness of her smile was making me feel a little less certain of myself. That, and the fact that I couldn't remember what the fuck she was researching.

  Jen twisted the phone playfully. “Huh,” she said. “All this time, and I've told you about my research how many times, and you can't think of it at all?”

  I opened my mouth. “It's... look, I can't describe it, Jen, in exact detail. But that isn't what we're talking about -”

  Jen let out a sharp laugh. “Okay, enough. Stop it. Here, let me give you a clue: There is a reason that I am talking about my research, a propos of this conversation about dating apps.”

  “Dating apps” was delivered to me with an acidic hiss and a venomous look.

  Oh yes.

  Now I remembered.

  Shit.

  Jen exploded. She held her arms up to either side of her. She was smiling, but she was pretty pissed.

  “How could you sit there and listen to me all this time, and not hear a word I was saying? You're such an ass
.”

  It was all coming back to me now. The numerous nights that Jen had discussed her research with me.

  The numerous times I had zoned out as she went into great detail explaining statistical tools I knew nothing about and did not understand, or into great detail about the ethical guidelines and the changes that had been made to them as a result of...

  Whatever. I did not remember the details, only that she had given them to me and I had zoned out.

  But I had certainly listened long enough to know that the topic of Jen's research, generally speaking, in broad terms, was something to do with dating apps.

  Still. I could barely see why that meant she had to personally use them.

  And then I remembered the new underwear I had found in her drawers.

  So all this stuff went through my mind like an arrow – well, shrapnel is maybe a better word – and I blurted out, incoherently:

  “But what about all your new underwear?!”

  Jen narrowed her eyes.

  There was along pause while she stared at me in utter disbelief. “Seriously?” she said, finally. She shook her head. “I bought some new underwear. Do you ever do that, Chris? Think: 'oh, I don't want to wear five-year-old underwear?' and buy some new?”

  She stood up again and walked over to the still-empty wine glass to pour some for me. She handed it to me as if it were a medication I needed to take. Wordlessly.

  Like, drink the fucking wine Chris, before I'll say another word to you.

  I gulped my wine, and she finished hers, staring at me suspiciously.

  “I didn't forget your research,” I said, and I felt like I was flailing again. “I mean... I did, I forgot it while I was.. looking at these, but I mean... I didn't... I remember it now. It's not like I was never listening.”

  Jen folded her arms. “How in the hell could it not have jogged your memory a little, when you saw Tinder on my phone? I mean, Tinder? Chris? Seriously?”

  “You're still flirting on that other one..that...what is it? DeBauch. That isn't Tinder. That's an app for married people.”

  My voice ended up sounding more hurt than I meant for it to.

  Jen's face softened. “It's just research,” she said. “I am sure I mentioned it.”

  Her voice went very soft, very low, and I caught the red flush on her face.

  The feeling that went through me was weird. I had been feeling a slow spiral of disappointment since the moment it had dawned on me that this was all part of Jen's research. Like a deflating balloon.

  And now, now that my wife was looking down at the floor and blushing with her inability to tell even – perhaps? - the whitest of lies, I felt...

  Hopeful.

  Hopeful that maybe there was a chance that her explanation was not as airtight as it seemed. That she had actually been up to something.

  Fuck.

  What a demented man I was.

  “You didn't mention it,” I said, suddenly brave. “You didn't mention it at all.”

  Jen looked at the floor for a moment longer. Then her eyes snapped up to look at me. “No, it's true. It was... like I said, super-unethical. I was trying to speed something up, take shortcuts, I don't know... I backed out of it after I did it and -”

  “How long ago was that?” I snapped.

  But I wasn't snapping like an angry dog. I was a hungry dog. I wanted to hear her confession, a confession that she maybe had started this all out as research, and then gotten carried away...

  Jen rolled her eyes. “Okay... a while. It's just...” her voice trailed off.

  And then she suddenly looked at me with another flash of anger. “And what's all this about my new underwear? I mean, what is that? Why are you digging though all of my stuff anyway?!”

  My mind raced.

  “Don't try to change the subject,” I said sternly.

  “Oh, I think that is the subject. I think it's very much the fucking subject.”

  “You and your dating apps are the subject!”

  “Explained. Now what are you doing going through my underwear?”

  I lifted my hands and let them collapse in exasperation.

  “And why... like, you did this last night, didn't you? So why the...” Jen was thinking.

  I could see her circling the truth – whatever that was – like a hawk. Coming lower and lower, her vision getting clearer all the time. She had, in this time, poured us both another glass of wine.

  And then she looked to the side, swirled her glass, and said, in a very low voice:

  “Does this have anything to do with your porn?”

  My entire body stopped moving. Like I had been hit with a cryogenic freeze. My heart stopped, my breath stopped, my brain even froze up. I was just there: unmoving, unthinking Chris.

  And then my ice-cold, adrenaline-infused heart began to knock at my chest.

  “Huh?” I said, stupidly.

  Jen took another large swig of wine. “Man,” she said. “I'm a little tipsy. So that's why I can ask you straight-up. I've sort of... come across some of your porn sites. And I was like, what the hell is this? So then, I did some research.” She smiled at my stunned expression. “You know me. I love research.”

  My mouth flapped a few times.

  “What.. what are you talking about?” I said.

  Jen gave me a strange shrug. “Watching naughty wives, or whatever. Hotwives. You know? I found it on your computer.”

  I was slowly shaking my head.

  “I never said anything about it because I figured, like... it's your business,” she continued, as though we were talking about some misplaced shoes.

  “What?!” I whisper-yelled.

  “I wasn't snooping,” Jen was quick to say. “I just... okay, the first time I wasn't snooping.”

  I drank a big gulp of the wine she had poured me.

  Then another.

  We looked at each other across the counter.

  And then we laughed.

  “Truce?” Jen said. “About the snooping, anyway?”

  I nodded.

  Cautiously.

  I was still pretty shocked by my wife at this point. Nothing about the way she was behaving was predictable.

  Yet, I realized at the same time, I had never really bothered to predict what she would do if she ever found out about my fantasy. So could I even say this was unexpected? I had never thought this far ahead.

  “So... you thought I was cheating on you. Because of the apps and the underwear.”

  I nodded. It seemed pretty silly now.

  Jen snorted and sort of rolled her eyes. “I'd like to think you think I'm smarter than that,” she said, just before swallowing another swig of wine. She set the glass down. “And you kind of liked it?”

  I nodded again.

  “Because of the... porn, or whatever.”

  Again, I nodded.

  “Huh,” Jen said.

  She was pretty lit. Her cheeks had an unusual flush to them, and her dark eyes were consumed by her dilated pupils, giving her a half-vacant, half-juvenile appearance, especially in the dim light of the living room. A smile played across her lips.

  It was an unexpected reaction. Again. I looked at her, more confused than anything.

  She swirled her wine again. Then she gave the wine an almost surprised look. “Wow,” she said. “I've had a lot.”

  This was an opportunity, I realized. An opportunity to get out of this conversation with my dignity intact, and hopefully after that Jen would go to bed, sleep on it, and not want to bring it up again. I stood up. “Well,” I said, “we should probably get to bed.”

  “No, hang on,” Jen said quickly. Her voice was silly, friendly. She tugged on my arm. “No, you can't just... say all that and then...”

  Man, she was really loaded. She moved her hand along my arm, though, sending a shiver traveling down my forearm and directly to my spine, where it quivered through the length of my body. The arousal that I had been feeling all night intensified, and I sank back onto
the stool.

  Jen took out her phone. She held it between her four fingers and her thumb, and spun it carelessly. “So... you're saying it's kind of a turn-on? Like, if you thought it was real?”

  Her words sent what felt like liquid nitrogen through my veins. I froze. My heart stopped.

  I mean:

  This was the conversation I always wanted to have.

  She started walking into the living room. She looked behind her to beckon me to follow her. I did.

  Jen's sweatshirt was draped seductively off the shoulder. I stared at her skin, unable to formulate a response.

  She stopped twirling the phone. “Is it my profiles you liked?”

  She collapsed on the couch.

  Her question was serious. She was looking at me. Looking at me not with her inquisitive scientific face, which is what I might have expected, but a different kind curiosity.

  “Chris?”

  I willed my mouth to move. After all, I had to say something.

  “I, uh... well, it's... yeah, it's kind of hot. You know, your pictures are... hot. And it was sort of...”

  I sounded, I realized, a bit like a moron. I sank onto the smaller couch.

  “Huh,” Jen repeated.

  “Okay,” I said, rubbing my palms over my knees. “Well, then, I'm -” I was going to make another dash for bed, but Jen leaned toward me and put her arm on mine.

  “Do you mind if I confess something?” she said. Her eyes were wet and excited, dark and dilated and sexual. She sucked in her breath, while I thought to myself about whether I minded if my wife confessed something while we were on the topic of my getting turned on by her dating apps.

  She looked over at me. She had a smile on her face that told me she was going to “confess” no matter what. “Okay... don't get mad. At least, I hope you don't get mad, but I figure since you said all this... whatever it is... anyway, okay, here goes:”

  She sucked in her breath again, while I imagined myself jumping on top of the lid of my head to keep my impatience from boiling over, grabbing her, and shaking her while screaming: “What?! What, dammit?! Just spit it out!”

  “Okay... “she said, and another long, torturous pause.

  “I kind of, like, it sort of... turned me on, you know, too? Like, not so much thinking about cheating on you, or anything like that, but just...thinking about like, I don't know, having to go out and flirt with some guy... She stopped, and looked away. Then she added, “In the name of science, of course.”