I'll advance to the point where Sunny and I had been married more than twenty years. Suzie had two kids and still no official husband. Jerry Junior had graduated from the academy and was serving as a flight logistics officer at MacDill in Florida. Martin was in his sophomore year at a local university. Anna was in fifth grade and Amanda was in the third.
I can only say it like this. A breakdown in a marriage begins kind of the same way my disease began: unnoticed.
Sunny and I had always enjoyed our intimacy. Sure, there were times when our lives were certainly in the way, and it sometimes affected us both simultaneously, so we were still in balance. There were a few times we went a month without enjoying each other in bed, but it was usually out of necessity.
Sometimes she'd had a rough day at work, or something was weighing on her mind, and she didn't feel like getting worked up, but we could often ease a rough day with a little pampering, and the pampering would sometimes end with the warmth extending into the bedroom. To me, at least, there's no better stress relief than to have my wife ease my tension with tender affection, conversation, commiseration, and maybe a little passion. Endorphins do amazing things.
When the lack of attention began happening frequently enough I became conscious of it, I did what all thoughtful husbands who happen to be data-minded do. I started tracking it. Of course now, in hindsight, the fact I felt the need to tabulate our sex life should have been a red flag. It became one later, but not initially.
I kept a secure file on my phone. It was a simple text file consisting of rows with four columns. Column one was a date, column two had the heading M/H, and column three was labeled 0/1.
A line might read 5/30 M 0, which meant, on May 30, I (M stood for ME) initiated, and 0 meant FALSE, as in, I was turned down. The final one indicated how severe the rejection was. A one in that column was a minor one, like "Sorry, I'm not feeling well. I'll feel better tomorrow." Higher numbers were used for stronger declines.
One of the bigger instances was on a Friday morning just a few weeks into the new year. Sunny was in the kitchen packing lunches for the girls while my daughters sat at the table eating cereal. I'd had a fitful sleep because I was suffering jet lag from a long business trip from which I'd just returned. I knew Sunny hadn't slept well either, so I walked up behind her and tried to massage her shoulders.
She tensed as if I'd startled her. She shook her shoulders vigorously out of my hands and said, "Damn it, Gary! Get off of me!"
One of my girls dropped her spoon. It clattered off the table and onto the tiled floor. I looked at them and their faces showed concern at the outburst. They stared at their mother and me, confused.
"Okay. I'm sorry," I said as I backed away, waving my hands in surrender. "Send the girls outside when they're done. I'll drive them to school today."
I collected the girls' backpacks and put them in my truck. I sat in the driver's seat thinking while the heater warmed the cab. I unlocked my phone. Even though my attempt at comforting my wife a few minutes earlier was not even close to an attempt at getting her into bed with me, I added her latest rebuff to the file as a seven in the fourth column. It was, by far, the strongest rejection of
any
form of physical touch.
I worked late that day. Well, I take that back. I barely worked at all. I locked myself in my office and transferred my file into Excel. I don't know why, because the text file was as clear as a bell by itself. I stared at the numbers.
I stayed late because I had little motivation to go home.
My self-confidence and self-esteem plummeted to indescribable lows. I tried multiple times to talk with my wife about it, but it would often backfire into a furious rant about something completely unrelated. I suspected the arguments had to be diversions, and I had no clue what to do. She exhibited emotional turmoil but refused any help.
Samantha had her parents to talk with when I was behaving horribly with my health problems right after we were married. She even had my mother to talk with about things after hers took her own life. My parents had passed away a few years prior to this time, and I had only one person I trusted who I could talk to.
I'd worked with a particular person in my department for about a decade or so. Her name was Liv. We worked together frequently, and we got along well. We were really good friends. We'd even been labeled as work-spouses by some of our peers, but the term carried more baggage than it needed to. Her office was right next to mine.
We were assigned a particularly challenging task to figure out a way to correct, or at least mitigate, a problem involving excessive vibration of two machine tools which had recently been installed in a plant in Seattle. The machines would begin to oscillate until the vibration tolerance hit limits, then the machines, and sometimes others nearby, would throw their safeties and shut down. The odd thing about it was the problem only occurred when both tools were operating simultaneously. The oscillation was carrying through their mounts into the floor. The movement was imperceptible to the operators around them, but not to the precision sensors.
I was looking forward to the trip, both professionally and personally. I figured I could use a week away from the challenges at home, and I couldn't think of another person with whom I'd prefer to travel.
Some people are high maintenance when traveling. Everything has to go just right. Lunches and dinners have to be at such-and-such a time with this-or-that particular meal preference. I swear, the next time someone who doesn't have Celiac disease hems and haws about dining anywhere that serves foods containing gluten, I'm going to dump a bag of wheat flour on them. Spending more than a few days traveling with such an individual is mentally draining.
Not Liv, though. She was the most low-key, easy-going, come-what-may person. Her willingness to bend and flex to a situation was relaxing to anyone who was the same as me, so I always favored her company over many others.
We were to fly to Phoenix, where the manufacturer of the tools was located, to meet with their own engineers. We collected tons of data and "recipes" to simulate in their dynamics lab. Liv and I met at the airport for a Sunday afternoon flight, so we'd be able to get into the lab as soon as they opened for business on Monday.
The first thing which struck me was what she was wearing. Liv had always dressed comfortably and conservatively at work because the company had a casual dress code. Bluejeans and sport shirts were common if not favored among both genders.
I have to tell you this for context. Liv was an attractive woman. She looked great in jeans. She really did. She was, to put it lightly, a head-turner.
When I saw her at the airport, though, I kinda lost my breath a little. She was wearing snug khaki pants and an equally snug white golf shirt. It wasn't particularly unusual, but what struck me was her underwear. Yes, her underwear. It struck me because I could
see
it, quite freaking clearly, through her clothing.
I'm sure every conscientious woman in the world probably deliberates about what goes with what. I'd been asked so many times by Samantha, "Can you see my undies through these pants?" or whatever, to know women think about what is visible when and where and try to avoid inadvertent displays of their undergarments.
I'm sure as all damned hell I'd never seen anything on
any
woman like what I saw on Liv that afternoon. Sure, I might have noticed a hint of a panty line, the shoulder strap or band of a bra, or whatever before, and never gave it much thought.
But no. That wasn't it. I saw, as obvious as the sun is on a clear day, the rose petal print of her bra through her shirt.
She walked up to me and punched me lightly on the shoulder.
"Hey there,
Gar
, you ready to go rock the southwest so we can rock the northwest?"
"
Absotively
and
posilutely
," I answered.
