But it was actually Jackson, showing up at my house to take me to a party for the first time as his guest (we still hadn’t gone out on the town much). It was a 1920s party, and he was dressed to the nines, with blinking red suspenders. I’m not even sure they wore suspenders in the ’20s, but he looked awesome.
Jackson waited in the living room while I rustled through closets for an outfit. I managed to rustle up an old school Tango-style dance outfit. That probably wasn’t the twenties either, but it had a classic look. When I came downstairs, Jackson produced some rose petals and gently tacked them to my blouse. And with that gesture, he flipped the switch.
It wasn’t just that he thought to bring flowers. It was the way he gently put them on, with that sweet look on his face that betrayed his respect. He was my lover, and he was my protector. He had me. Jackson grabbed my hand and led me to his car.
“Wait!”
I pulled him to me, kissing him as hard as I’ve ever kissed anyone. It was less romantic than possessive. I knew right then, pulling him to me in my front yard, that he was my future husband. Daniel and I were done. I called him and broke up the very next day.
I had girlfriends who looked down upon sexual fulfillment as the basis of my marriage, but I could see their jealousy also. I could see their faces flush when I got off Jackson’s lap in a crowded bar, his trousers unable to conceal his big swollen penis.
All I know is that when things aren’t going well with your spouse, having someone who can fuck you into another universe isn’t a bad thing. In Jackson’s case, he’s also a really good guy. No, I don’t love him quite the way I loved Daniel, but replacing that tenderness is an animal fascination that never fully resolves itself. And raising a child with Jackson, we are bound together.
If my pairing with Daniel was more enlightened, my marriage with Jackson goes back to a time when men were men and women were women, but with some important distinctions. Such as: he has never laid a hand on me in anger.
It took me seven more years of marriage to realize just how good I have it. Finding a husband who is as powerful a lover as he is a wonderful father and provider … that’s damn near impossible. I know that because of all the girlfriends who have sobbed into cheap daiquiris and spilled the stories of their marriages to me.
But as good as I have it, and as good as I still get it, Jackson and I have our share of problems. Serious problems. Sexy problems, but problems that can wreck a marriage nonetheless. And may yet wreck mine. But that’s what I have to confess to you.
In truth, I could see the seeds of those problems from the beginning. Jackson, well, he was a little too perfect, I guess you could say.
Chapter 4
It all started during that first summer, when I was still spending so much time horizontally with Jackson, trying to keep my emotional thread with Daniel in Toronto after our weekend of bad sex. It was one of those miraculous days in bed with Jackson. I woke up flat on my back, in a sexual nether zone between asleep and awake.
Jackson had fucked me out of my mind; my legs were jelly. I hit the snooze alarm to postpone my white collar reckoning, but I didn’t think I could get up anyway. Cashing in a sick day was a distinct possibility. I always enjoy the quiet times after Jackson leaves for work. He runs a landscaping franchise and always has his guys up early, terrorizing neighborhoods with 7 a.m. weed-whackers.
“Just don’t take a job on my street,” I jokingly warn him. If there’s one thing I’m not, it’s not a morning person. Espresso is not a luxury in my household.
Anyhow, I was lying in bed, daydreaming about anything to block out the chaotic project I had to corral in a couple of hours. I could feel the post-orgasmic relaxation deep in my body, as if I’d been given a full body massage from the inside out.
My god, he’s a good lay, I thought as I spread a bit wider under the covers. And he’s all mine, was my next thought. But then I caught myself:
He’s not yours. You’ve told him you’re engaged. Whatever he does on his own time is … his business.
That thought displeased me greatly.
He’s not all yours.
Suddenly, that seemed like a very dark possibility. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized the truth of it. He’s not all yours, no—and it gets worse:
Other women are as wet for him as you are; those sluts must be constantly plotting to get him between their legs.
I started touching myself compulsively, thinking about Jackson landscaping his way through the day.
He tried to conceal his bulge with baggy pants, but it was often a losing battle. I could just imagine horny housewives stealing glances at him doing manly things in their backyards, his big soft penis pushing arrogantly down his pant leg. Ironically, given his landscaping trade, Jackson was a “shower,” not a grower. Perhaps that was good for business, but it made me crazy.
The contrast between the stale sex weekend with Daniel and Jackson’s electric performances made me rethink my college days. I worked my fingers teasingly into my pussy as I thought back to a dude named Linwood.
Linwood was the last guy I’d dated who was as sexually talented as Jackson—or at least in the same universe of stud. Linwood had to fight women off continuously; I was starting to fear the same was true of Jackson. Linwood—and yes, his nickname was “The Wood”—was a guitarist who knew how to play a woman as well as he could his guitar.
My friends and I were having a lot of sex in college, but not necessarily a lot of good sex. Linwood changed all that. He was that rare guy where the reality exceeded the fantasy. You’d see him on stage in some cramped college bar, jammed up front to get a glimpse of whatever was packing in his thrift shop plaid, and you’d think, “He must be too stoned to really deliver the goods.” But he was not. Linwood could grind, and word got around. I thought that was hilarious at the time. But as I got more emotionally attached, “hilarious” was not the word that came to mind.
Linwood and I dated for a few months. I wasn’t serious about him, but his inability to stay faithful did eventually get under my skin. Linwood did his best, but he could only fight them off for so long. Linwood was charming and sheepish when caught in a lie, shrugging his shoulders as if to say, It’s not my fault I was gifted with an exceptionally nice penis, a long tongue, and silky hips.
I didn’t appreciate his flings, but on some level that’s all he and I were having: one big fling. So despite the occasional indignation, I put up with Linwood’s infidelities, until the day I came home from a failed midterm and found him nailing my roommate to her mattress. My roommate was ultra-competitive with me, and that was a line I wasn’t willing to cross—or have crossed. I gave Linwood the boot.
My roommate at the time—I guess we all have a roommate named Jessica at some point in college—was apologetic.
“He’s just so much … better than my boyfriend,” she admitted. Jessica’s boyfriend was an uptight pre-law guy, a classic case of fast-forwarding into adulthood and missing out on the wild years he could have had. Things were tense between Jessica and me for a while, but she had that Southern drawl and honest regret. We eventually mended fences and we’re in touch to this day.
After a few years of mediocre sexual encounters post-college, my feelings of betrayal toward Linwood started to fade in favor of an appreciation of the deep pleasure he had given my body. He was the first man who could take me to levels of physical ecstasy beyond what I could achieve with my own fingers. I suppose I resented him for that; it gnawed at my notion of female independence.
So I was lying in bed contemplating the dilemma of Linwood, and now, Jackson. As I casually rubbed myself, and soon much less casually, I started thinking about those women—no, those fucking sluts—who must be homing in on Jackson. We had not been out in public much, so for now, these rampant thoughts were more in the realm of foreboding/red hot fantasies.
Jackson’s not the most handsome guy, but he’s big and strong and wonderfully indifferent. He doesn’t speak often, but hi
s silence gives him a charisma of its own. He sucks the air from a room. Unlike most guys, Jackson has that quiet swagger that says, “I can get sex whenever I want.” That natural sexual authority is so uncommon in a man. When you run into it, your pussy does some crazy things.
After the breakup with Daniel, Jackson and I went out in public much more often. My worst fears were confirmed. Women came on to him a lot, regardless of how closely I stood watch. And many seemed to have a history. Jackson’s phone became a fascination for me. I would make him hand it over constantly. Some of the texts I found were shocking. I had no idea girls could act this way.
Here are just a few of the text messages that popped up on Jackson’s phone that fall, all from different women:
Bring that big dick over here NOWWWWW!!!! Oh—Kelly says hi. Hee hee.
I hate you! You ruined my pussy. Can you ruin me again? He is gone till Monday.
And, the kicker:
I have three hours till the babysitter has to leave. Please, I need to feel you inside me.
From September to December alone, I made Jackson flush hand-scrawled numbers of five women down the toilet. I made him save the numbers in his wallet until I flushed them down, so there would be no secrets between us.
Unlike most promiscuous (heterosexual) men, it was all about repeat customers with Jackson. It never failed. I’d leave him alone at a bar while talking with some friends. I’d cast a glance to check on him and he’d be oozing confidence, like a cobra relaxing in the sun. The women would glom onto him like honeybees. Ugh!
Yes, on some level it turned me on to know I had what they wanted. As Courtney Love once sang, “I want to be the girl with the most cake.” But I can’t emphasize enough what a trust issue this was between us.
About nine months into the monogamous phase of our relationship, the issue faded. Surprising even myself, I found I was less interested in what Jackson was texting. Not that I wasn’t possessive—I was the one to press him on our engagement. When he’d get back from a day of landscaping, I’d joke, “Where’s my ring?” As if he’d had time to go ring shopping with his overalls on.
One day, he did show up with a ring, and yeah, in his overalls without a shirt. Before Jackson proposed, we had a surprising conversation. He told me that while he loved me as much as he’d ever loved anyone, he’d always had trouble staying faithful.
The conversation bothered me. It resembled the typical male bullshit you can see on Jerry Springer Monday through Friday: he couldn’t always resist the advances, and in his past relationships, his girlfriends didn’t understand his needs. They didn’t get that his feelings for them were unwavering, even when he crossed a sexual line with someone else. Jackson told me he would try, but he couldn’t make any promises.
He wasn’t putting that ring on my finger until I was okay with that. The way he said it was so firm, so decisive. It really shocked me that he could put it out there with so much indifference. As if he could accept me walking out on him over this. For a day, I was really pissed. And he didn’t get any sex from me for a weekend, either.
But somehow, the storm passed. I would have dumped any other guy over that. But with Jackson, I really don’t know. Maybe I was too in love to care. Maybe I thought I could change him, or that if I took care of his needs well enough, he wouldn’t stray. I just knew I wasn’t giving him up. And Jackson … he was one patient son of a bitch, as if he knew he would eventually wear me down. God, that made me crazy!
Chapter 5
Over the next few months, things got even better between us and the problem faded. I had no doubt he was monogamous during that time. I told myself, “If you give him the best sex in the world, he’ll never cheat.” But the change ran deeper.
Jackson continued to prove himself again and again. A guys’ night out was just that. If I called him and insisted he come home, he did. And not smelling of some skank either (if you haven’t figured it out yet, I don’t really believe in calling girls sluts and skanks. I just can’t help myself when they are after my Jackson). He never seemed irritated by my controlling binges.
Jackson did it: he smoothed my rough edges. So I told him to put a ring on my finger. And he did, muddy knees on the kitchen floor, looking like a Chippendales reject. And it worked. It worked for a long time. We raised a little girl together, and for a couple of those years, he was the primary caregiver. He’d earned it.
During Chelsea’s first two years, we got out of the house so infrequently, I actually came to enjoy it when other girls gave Jackson a bit of flirty attention. It spiced things up a tad during a time when we really needed it. But in the end, something always nagged at me. I couldn’t put it into words. It wasn’t a lack of trust. I was missing something fundamental.
There was a clue I was missing that would come back to haunt me.
The trust issue came back a bit at age thirty-one—eight years in. That was Chelsea in third grade, and us with more time on our hands. At first we took full advantage, with morning sex we never used to have time for, but arguments came more often as well.
Jackson was expanding his landscaping business into a new town. That meant less time near his home and more in the field. His commute to the new town near Burlington had more traffic and required a longer drive; I saw him less. I suppose my own work had something to do with it. I was stuck on a tough project. Maybe it was my over-active imagination, but it did seem like Jackson would call me a bit more often with a last minute delay at work or a change of plans.
The little things added up. For the first time, our sex life wasn’t as good. We even saw a therapist. I’m not convinced he helped us that much, but it did force us to talk. The therapist (a man) seemed to have a small crush on Jackson, which added a comic element to the whole ordeal.
A year later, things were pretty much back on track. It didn’t hurt that I was back in the gym. I had sprained my knee the previous year playing softball, of all things, and had packed on some pounds. When the weight came off and my muscle tone improved, so did my confidence. My controlling boss had temporarily given up on trying to force a role I didn’t want on me, and who knows, maybe six weeks of marriage-counseling helped too.
This was part of our cycle. I’d get used to Jackson but then I would see him as new again, as the force of nature he was. Or he would melt me with a kind or casually amazing gesture, such as suggesting an unofficial “take your daughter to work” day or letting her drive the tractor as she squealed with glee.
I suppose that’s why I never saw it coming. I guess I will always be mad that I missed some hints—especially since Jackson pretty much warned me from day one, as humiliating as that is to admit.
An odd coincidence brought everything to a head. I was working from home that week, in between gigs, only dropping by the office when I had to. I had a friend, Alicia, who I used to know well. She’d been on my mind. Jackson had even done some landscaping for her a year ago. Alicia was a blonde bombshell disguised as a suburban housewife, but she was rigorously faithful to her husband. It was a marriage I did not understand. Alicia was not broke; her family had sold an organic juice business to Whole Foods.
Her husband Brad reminded me a lot of Daniel. Devoted, for sure, but well, I just never picked up on any chemistry between Alicia and Brad. Lots of affection, but not many sparks.
I eventually wound up as a bridesmaid at her wedding. Sometime after that, we had a minor falling out over something too ridiculous to ’fess up to now.
Anyhow, I had been contemplating making peace with Alicia. Enough time had passed. I had been thinking about her ever since Jackson got a landscaping gig on her property. I’m not sure if Alicia was trying to make amends with me by hiring Jackson, but it got me reconsidering our stupid girl-feud.
I’ll never know why I was compelled to do this, but one day, after cashing in a sick day so I could take Chelsea to an eye appointment, I made up a lunch for Jackson and his crew. For the first time in my history as a housewife, I decided to surprise my husba
nd with a hot meal.
Pulling into the driveway, I saw Jackson’s truck. No sign of him or his crew. I peeked around the ivy-lined fence. Nothing out back, either. But the glass patio door was open. Suspicious, I invited myself in. Two melting drinks on the tea table, iced teas barely touched.
And then I heard it. It sounded like a woman in distress. Banging sounds, yells. Heart pounding, I thought about calling 911. But where the fuck was Jackson? Cellphone in hand, finger on the emergency button, I moved quickly down the hallway toward the noise.
As I headed for the ruckus, I realized those noises sounded a lot more ecstatic than distressed. Still, I told myself, Alicia might be in trouble; I needed to see what I needed to see. One more corner on padded carpet, and I peeked around the bedroom door, which was wide open.
The scene was everything I’d never wanted to see. Alicia was bouncing up and down on Jackson, riding him in a frenzy. It was only later I would look back on this scene as sexy, her blonde hair caked in sweat, gripping the headboard so hard that it slammed against the wall.
Alicia spotted me in the bedroom mirror and her eyes popped, but that bitch didn’t even have the courtesy to stop fucking. She was too far gone; nothing was going to stop her from riding it out. Jackson, who has a GPS-like sense of where I am in the world, whipped his head around. His eyes were sorrowful and conflicted, but he didn’t try to stop Alicia; she was doing most of the fucking anyhow. I guess Jackson figured the damage was done. Alicia might as well cum for thirty more seconds.
I was so shocked by this absurdity that it took me a while to notice the most shocking thing. In the farthest corner of the room, in the shade of the curtains, Alicia’s husband Brad was sitting in a folding chair, and while he was basically fully clothed, he was frantically jerking himself off. I was overwhelmed and a bit repulsed.
My Husband's Adventures Page 2