How "lucky" am I?
That question used to be rhetorical. It needed no answer. Of course I was lucky. I had a lot to be thankful for.
I have a gorgeous wife that is every bit my complement. I had two healthy kids that were great students. I owned my own company that is small but productive. Yep, I'm very lucky indeed. The question needs no answering.
Of course, like everything in life, the truth of that question is not as simple as I once thought. Most people think of truth and lying as black and white entities of each other. The ying to the yang. Either something is true or it isn't. Right?
Recent events have shaken my faith is what truth really is. On a Richter scale, I've been hit with a 9.9 and my buildings are nothing more than a pile of steel, glass, and rubble. Today's truth doesn't match yesterday's truth. What was once a reason to feel like the luckiest man on earth is now a clue to how stupid I really was. I feel like Lois Lane who just found out that her mild mannered Clark Kent is really the man of her dreams. The question that she has to ask herself at that epiphanic moment is, "With all of the clues staring me in the face, how can a smart person like me be so STUPID?"
You see, truth is simply a matter of perception. Anyone who has seen The Matrix can understand where I'm coming from (if you understand The Matrix). To paraphrase Morpheus from the movie, "Reality is just electrical impulses interpreted by the brain." What you perceive reality to be is in fact YOUR reality. The earth was flat until it was proven that it wasn't. Man could not fly until the Wright Brothers changed the truth into something different.
If you think that all women are cheating whores, but you only go after cheating whores, then you are correct. On the flip side, if you think that you have a loving wife because everything that she does is what you expect a loving wife to do, then you would be correct also. That is, until you found something that changes your truth. And like that, my point emerges.
But before we dive headfirst into my tale of lying, cheating, manipulative, no good cunts, I feel that we need to explore how we got to where we are.
My wife Melony is 5'6" of what could be described by the cliché, "Lady in the streets, freak in the bed". She is what I call classy sexy. She wears clothes that shows off her "yoga body", but never shows you any more skin than is decent. Her blouses never show an inappropriate amount of cleavage, but they shape themselves to her full breasts and let you know that they are in fact spectacular. Her dresses always reach her knees, but they cling to her bottom half and present a round derriere. Her make-up is never heavy. In fact, she does it so delicately that you don't even notice she is wearing it.
Besides being a beauty, she's everything that I'm not. She's patience to my impatience. She's practical to my sometimes impulsive behavior. She knows when to apply pressure to get me focused and when to back off and let me figure it out. In 16 years of marriage, she has become so intertwined into me that I honestly feel that she knows me better than I know myself.
That may be how she was able to keep up the façade for so long. She knew me so well that she was able to manipulate my truth. Like the Twilight Zone, she was in charge of everything that I saw and heard. She made me believe what she wanted me to believe.
My son, Alex, is 15 and is in his sophomore year of High School. He stands at 6'1" and is built like a truck. He's a running back, no let me make that correction, THE running back for the State Champion Seaford High Blue Jays football team. Tackling him is like trying to wrestle a bull to the ground. He'd broken just about every running record the school had, and a lot of the state records. We have newspaper clipping of his heroics saved in a scrap book. His trophies litter his bedroom. I even got out of a couple of speeding tickets because the cops recognized him in the passenger seat and wanted to let us know that they were fans. Yep, he's THAT good. In case you didn't notice, I'm very proud of my son.
My daughter is the complete opposite. Alexis, who's also 15, is just like her mother (for those of you wondering, yes Alex and Alexis are fraternal twins). She is like Melony's clone as far looks were concerned. They also share similar demeanors. Alexis is very even tempered and graceful. She doesn't get excited much, but she's rarely in a bad mood. She always wore a smile on her face, but it was more like the smile was just who she was and not because she was always happy.
Alexis, like her brother, excelled in high school. But where he excelled at the sports part of things, she bloomed as far as grades were concerned. Things came easily to her. She wasn't a book worm or anything like that. She was just naturally smart. She remembered everything. If you told her to do something a week ago and gave her specific instructions, she would be able to follow them to a T. She differed from her brother in this regard. If you didn't write it in a playbook, you could forget Alex remembering anything.
That is my family. That's my truth. Until it all changed.
I've considered myself lucky in general, but I also have specific reasons why. For one, I was never really great at school. Yes I was decent. I graduated high school and went to college, but I was not what anyone would call a scholar. I was, however, good at fixing things. While I was not extremely book smart, I had a knack for figuring out how something was supposed to work. If you know how something is supposed to work, when it is broken you can figure out how to fix it.
I do have to pause here to laugh at the utter irony of that last paragraph in relation to my life. I'm good at figuring out how something is supposed to work and how to fix it when it is broken. Yet everything around me has been broken from the beginning AND I NEVER NOTICED. But I digress. Back to the story.
Since I had this 'talent' I naturally migrated toward the technical field. I studied computers in college. Computer engineering to be exact. While I was awesome at bringing dead electronics back to life, I sucked at math. I was HORRIBLE. This is how I met Melony.
She was a tutor. She was also a senior while I was just a sophomore. Yes, she's two years older than me. It shouldn't seem strange, but people usually automatically think that she is younger than me. They get that surprised look on their face when they realize that it was she who robbed the cradle. It could be because she does in fact look younger than me, but it is also because our brains are preprogrammed to think that in a marriage the man is always a few years older than the woman. Kind of like how if we hear about a doctor saving a life, we assume that the doctor is a man.
Anyways, she was my saving grace in math. To say that I liked her would be a gross understatement. I can honestly say that I loved her from the moment she introduced herself. Unfortunately for me, I was no Casanova. I wasn't tall or great looking. I wasn't a smooth talker around the ladies. I was just your average guy.
While I was completely infatuated with her, she barely noticed me as nothing more than another person to tutor. We didn't talk about our interests or anything special. We didn't really talk about anything other than math.
To her, I was another guy. To me, she was EVERYTHING. Her voice was soft, but also kind of raspy. It almost sounded like she whispered everything that she said. Her hair and her perfume drove me crazy. Her hands were always soft when they touched mine's. She was so sexy!
When she tutored me, I would always try to keep space between us. I did this because of how crazy she drove me. Innocently enough though, she would scoot close to me to show me what she needed me to see.
It took a little while to be able to concentrate enough to learn from her. It wasn't until she suggested that I should try another tutor because I wasn't learning that I buckled down and focused. When my grades started improving, she became my go-to math guru.
Over the course of that term, I did get to know her. Though she never really talked about herself, I put information together. She had a best friend named Tasha. They were ALWAYS together. They went to parties together. They shared an apartment. They were practically joined at the hip.
Tasha was the opposite of Melony. She was very opinionated and made no qualms about letting you know EXACTLY how she felt. She swore like a sailor. She was tall, lanky, and kind of awkward which contrasted Melony's graceful persona. Still, they worked.
I noticed that Melony did date some of the athletes. She wasn't the team slut, but I could definitely pick out a type of guy that she was into. Not really anything out of the ordinary. Tall, good-looking, athletic-body. Basically everything that I wasn't.
She did indeed date these guys, but not long enough to be in a relationship. She would be seen with a guy for about a week or two, and then it would be as if she never met him. She would be single for a good month or two, then start the process over with another guy. I couldn't tell you if she fucked them or not. I do know that she left a few broken hearts in her wake.
I was under no illusion that we would be together. While I practically worshiped her, I knew enough to not be creepy and come on to her. She made no indication that she was interested in me that way. Hell, we were barely acquaintances.
It wasn't until we had to have a tutor session at her apartment that I was raised up a notch. No we didn't fall into bed and become lovers, but I think that was the time she started to look at me as a friend. Or at least someone that she was slightly fond of.
When I finally graced the doorway of her two bedroom apartment that she shared with her roommate, I felt like I was entering the inner sanctum of another culture. I looked around and took in my surroundings. I have to admit, I almost laughed out loud.
I don't know if you've seen Batman Forever with Val Kilmer, Jim Carrey, and Tommy Lee Jones. If you have, then maybe you'll remember the scene in which the Riddler breaks into Two-face's secret lair. Two-face had two girlfriends. One of them is Drew Barrymore made to look like a house and garden version of Marilyn Monroe, and the other is a dominatrix from hell. His lair, like his ladies, is also decorated to be complete opposites. One half looks like it was done by Martha Stewart and the other half looks like a Goth teen's place of Satan worshipping.
I said all that to say that this was the impression that I got when I entered the apartment for the first time. I could honestly tell which stuff was Melony's and which stuff was Tasha's. While not as obtuse as the movie scene I described, it was fairly obvious.
Melony was very neat and organized. Her stuff was orderly and arranged for maximum convenience. Tasha was not. Though not a slob, there was no order to Tasha's world. The first place that she put her things was where they stayed until she needed them again.
Tasha was out on this evening, so Melony and I had a quiet evening of studying. Things remained the status quo of our times in the Library until a fairly drunk Tasha came home. She wasn't falling down or stumbling, but she was very obnoxious and loud.
My first up close impression of Tasha was not favorable. I instantly didn't like her. She was like a cheese grater rubbing against your skin. I'm almost certain that she felt the same about me.
She went into this long tirade about the double standards of men. She was complaining that a man can fuck any woman he wants and be considered a "player" but if a woman does it then she's a "whore". It was all form of control so that the man can do what he wanted and keep the female subdued.
