No sex. Sorry.
I've been told I have a nasty tongue when I'm upset. Don't believe it! I'm a pussycat.
I waited impatiently as she showered.
When I walked into our house, I'd caught her lying on the settee alongside Assface, naked and covered in sweat and other bodily fluids, and an expression that said all too clearly "I've just had an orgasm!"
I'm not an ogre or a muscle-bound moron, but when I'd looped his tee-shirt over his head and twisted it at his throat, tightening it until he could only just breathe; I think he might have disagreed. He most certainly agreed that leaving my flat, with only the tee-shirt that was wound around his neck, was a good idea. When after five minutes he knocked and asked for his clothes, phone and car keys, the look on my face had made him agree to leave once again. Whimpering he asked if he could call a taxi. I gave him his phone and let him make the call, then took it back. For a moment I thought he was going to argue and I twisted the tee-shirt once more, as the idiot hadn't even removed it from around his throat, which essentially meant he'd stood around in the passageway buck naked. It was then that he decided that running away was perhaps a better idea after all. He was learning. Maybe I looked more like an ogre than I remembered from shaving that morning. Either way, it was going to be fun thinking of him trying to get into a taxi dressed only in a tee-shirt that wouldn't even cover the family jewels, and then explain how he had 'forgotten' his wallet. Not my problem. He'd probably sneak back the next day to get them. I didn't care. I had his information.
The dining table showed the remnants of a meal and wine glasses with just dregs in them. It was obvious where the foreplay had started. More puzzling was the pizza box. I checked it and found a Meatilicious intact within it. My favourite. So Assface got wined and dined and I got a warmed up pizza. Nice classy touch, Susan! Second best in that as well.
I wandered through the lounge and kitchen, wondering how the hell she had thought I wouldn't notice the remains of their feast.
I'm an actor, and I had a contract to play Iago in Othello for three weeks that summer. It was a local production and I was really enjoying playing up the villainous, lying schemer and plotter seven nights a week and a Saturday matinee. In the play, Iago is passed over for promotion by his captain, Othello - and schemes with his more successful rival Cassio - who in turn wants Othello's wife, Desdemona. Iago engineers the murder of Cassio, by convincingly whispering to his boss that Cassio is cuckolding him with Desdemona, which then leads to further jealous rage and the murder of Othello's blameless wife.
One of Shakespeare's classics, it's been done a million times, but I had enjoyed playing the villain rather than the lord who thought himself betrayed and cuckolded by his wife to the point of murdering her - mostly so that I wouldn't have to spend an hour after the final curtain trying to get what looked like black boot polish off my face. I would leave that to the leading man.
Now I could have played the role of Othello without any need for acting. I too felt like murdering my wife. She knew all too well how I felt about being faithful, after she had held my hand after my long-term girlfriend Eileen had betrayed me in our last year at college. Susan had been my shoulder to lean on while I pissed and moaned about women in general and Eileen in particular. That had slowly morphed into being my constant companion, girlfriend and finally wife when we both got our first pay cheques.
I didn't start out as an actor - actually getting a job as a bank clerk with dreams of becoming a financier - and in fact I had never even thought about it until a friend convinced me to try amateur dramatics. I fell in love with it immediately. That led on to a bit part in a television series which led to further small parts and a mildly fond farewell to banking. Now, I was back on stage for a three week run before taking up a moderate role as a newly arrived detective in a long-running police drama.
I knew the whole of Othello backwards, so during the daytime, I'd been trying to get myself into the role of a detective for the police series instead. Therefore while Susan showered, I investigated the crime scene.
The dinner, obviously cooked and served by my wife for her lover, couldn't have finished that long before - ascertained by dipping a little finger into the gravy boat and feeling the warmth. The pizza was still vaguely warm, so that probably arrived at about the same time. I wasn't worried about the pizza itself, I'd lived on those during college, and still enjoyed one now and again at the theatre, on the television set, or at home.
So why would my wife of just eighteen months leave the detritus of their meal on the table and be lying naked with her lover when she knew I would be home at a certain time. Admittedly, I sometimes hung around for ten minutes to enjoy the buzz of a good performance with the other actors, but I was always home by ten o'clock. And even if I had stayed later at the theatre, those ten minutes weren't really enough to get Assface out of the flat and clear up sufficiently that I wouldn't at least suspect something.
Was she deliberately trying to flaunt her disloyalty in front of me? Was this an exit affair before she moved on, trying out someone new she could move in with? What else could it be? What the hell was she telling me by rubbing it in my face?
Inside, I felt destroyed. She, of all people, knew how Eileen's betrayal had completely wrecked me, my first love's face a mask of horror as she peered up at me over Cassidy's shoulder in the back of his car, his bare arse jogging up and down like it was on springs. Susan had been so reluctant to alert me to that betrayal, but she did know how in the end it had almost caused me to give up college altogether. And now she did this to me in turn? Bitch! Spiteful, nasty, lying, cheating bitch!
My stomach was boiling, and I cast around for something to fix on besides my horror and despair at her actions. I saw the microwave flicking at me and realised she had flipped the power switch on the wall. Desperate for something ... anything to think of, I reprogrammed the correct time into it. It wouldn't make any difference; we never pre-programmed it to start at a certain time, but it was something to do.
How could the two most important women in my life both betray me the way they had? Was it me? Was I so worthless that I wasn't deserving of loyalty, fidelity, the least respect from any woman? Any woman at all? Was I such a loser, a bad lover, a poor provider? I had to know!
I got a tot of brandy, and forced myself to settle into the sole armchair. She could sit on the couch - the sludgy mess on it was her responsibility and she would have to face me while sitting on it, or knowing that both of us recognized it was right there next to her.
It took quite a while before the shower finally shut off, and I spent the time trying to settle into a role. I didn't want her to see how successful her attempt to destroy me had been.
She entered with her white towelling robe wrapped around her, and a towel-turban on her head. She hesitated when she looked at the sofa before sitting down, but then ignored the streaks of pale fluid and sat down on top of it. Perhaps she hoped I hadn't noticed it. Good luck with that!
"How long?" I had decided on the role of a sophisticated, urbane country gentleman confronting his wife after some sort of ball. Surprising myself, I sniggered inwardly at the appropriateness of the last part of that.
"Honey, it was just the once, I promise you. It was just a silly mistake that I made. I'd had a little too much wine, or perhaps he slipped something into it. I wasn't myself..."
"So who were you? Because it certainly looked like you were a cheating slut. Was that the part you were playing?"
She flushed. It wasn't pretty. It made her face look blotchy, which surprised me. I had always thought her effortlessly pretty under every circumstance. But then I'd never called her a cheat or a slut before.
"Please don't call me a slut. I'm not one of those."
"Perhaps you could convince me." I remembered the pizza and something popped into my mind. "After all, this is the third time you've ordered pizza for me in the last two weeks. And always served them reheated. I could tell."
"I, er... pizza?" she stammered.
"Oh do keep up, dear." Urbane gentleman. Remember the role! "Yes, pizza. It's glaringly obvious that you order pizza for me when you want to cook for your gentleman callers. Care to tell me why they get cooked for while I get takeaways?"
"Not callers!" she protested. "Just one. Just this once."
"And we're back to the pizzas."
"No, it wasn't-"
"Yes it was. Don't be a silly goose, my dear." Urbane, I thought. Be urbane! "And don't think I'm some idiot. You may have got away with your carnal affairs during our marriage until now. But the clues are all there."
"Honey, it was just a mistake..."
"No, you meant 'it was just mistakes.' You forgot the 's' on that word."
She sighed dramatically, and for a moment I was whisked back to my time on stage. Was I in one of those overacted dramas of amateur theatre?
"He had pictures. He was going to show them to you, unless I..."
She broke off as I laughed. I don't think she expected that.
"He took incriminating pictures? Which time?"
