"Going inside this place is beneath your dignity."
My wife shook her head, "Same to you! But we have to go."
"If it's weird, we're leaving. I'm definitely not going to touch the merchandise...but we always wanted to try this, right? But if it's weird, we're leaving."
"Yes, that's our universal rule. That's why we drove separate from them."
The gist of us: Jon and Rachel. married with one kid. Both pushing 36. I looked like I was pushing 36, my wife looked like a timeless 29 year old. Skinny but with great, great tits. Great legs. Beaming green eyes and long blondish-brown hair down to her shoulders that sloped across her chest. Smart as a whip. Very reserved, enjoyed crochet and basket weaving (seriously), never liked R-rated movies, became legitimately panicked if I forgot to wear my seatbelt. In summary, not the type of person to walk into a place like this. At least, not until recently.
We were parked outside of a large metal building off of a highway outside of town, about to enter into our first "swinger's club." My wife's childhood friend of thirty years, Sally, was talked into "trying" the place by her god-awful horrible husband, Thad. My wife told me she was terrified of the thought that Sally would go to this place on her own without a third-party escort. Somehow, we were dragged into their awful marriage.
How bad was Thad? I don't know...a lot of times I thought it was my own weird prejudice against the guy. He had a thin, little beard, a "chin strap," and a tiny goatee that made me want to punch him in the face. Sometimes he wore a creepy earring, sometimes he didn't. He worked out, but didn't eat right, so he was a weird mix of muscular and fat, with a little gut that just made him look...odd. I wasn't in amazing shape myself, so I don't know where I had room to criticize. Whenever he spoke to me, he talked forever about things that interested him, but didn't interest me at all.
Sports and investment banking were all the man could think about. He literally talked about nothing else. He was so bull-headed and single minded, he never veered away from those two subjects. While I was (currently) only a high school teacher, I had a masters in musical philosophy and nearly completed my doctorate before I met my wife. Listening to him drone on and on about the same topics made me feel like I'd lost my station in life. And even if you tried to reply to something Thad said, he would just keep talking over you. After eight years of marriage, and eight years of Thad, I could hardly stand the guy for longer than twenty minutes.
And then, to top it off, he had an affair. He dicked some bimbo stripper that liked to hang around him and his other slimy investment banker friends. Not just once either...he even railed her on their living room couch at home...and got caught on their security camera. Sally forgave him, and everytime we saw the couple, they'd say some fluffer insanity about "forgiveness" and "healing" just to let us know that Thad fucked someone else and Sally let him get away with it. They were all about "renewal" and "reclaiming" their love, and they blabbed about it over dinner parties like new-age idiots. I think my wife was blind to just how off-the-planet Sally had become.
What probably bothered me the most is that my wife's disdain for him never matched my own. Sure, she acknowledged his overall douchiness, but she always capped off any given insult or criticism with something nice. Such as "He's not so bad" or "I understand why she married him."
"Really?" I reacted once, "Why did she marry him? Sally is an attractive person, she's a catch, ya know?"
She took a long moment to respond.
"He's tall. Tall is important. His job means he'll always have money. His hair hasn't totally fallen out. And he's got a really, really strong commitment to his goals and getting what he wants. You can see it in his eyes and in the way he talks. He has a deep focus. There's something about him..."
I was about to retort and go off on him again, when she spat out a disclaimer:
"But I don't see that. I think she does. But you're right, honey. Thad is a dud."
Before we walked into the club, I felt a lingering dread that she was at least a tiny bit attracted to him. But...there's no way she'd put her friendship with Sally on the line, and I doubt Thad would do anything either. This was just a morbid curiosity on our part, and my wife irrationally stepping outside her comfort zone in a way only a childhood friend could make her.
This weirdness, this blind dependency on Sally, had been a growing issue with my wife. I was an educated man, and I consider myself open minded (here I was, about to enter a swinger's club, after all), but lately she and Sally had been on an absolutely insufferable "independent woman" kick. I call it this, because, every single time I offered to do something for my wife, she launched into some diatribe about her rights as a woman.
Something about her relationship with Sally, extending back to childhood, caused my wife to defer to her at a base, primordial level. Once Sally started asserting she was "free" and "didn't need a man" to do anything for her, my wife followed suit, chirping like an angry bird anytime a member of the male gender did so much as offer to pass her the ketchup. Then the 2016 presidential election rolled around and she went apoplectic. Crying in hysterical fits that Hillary lost, how it was pure injustice, so on and so forth. She really acted like it was the end of the world.
That's when the fringe articles started cropping up on her iPad. Things beyond your typical "I am woman, hear me roar" type stuff. Stuff about the male patriarchy, how men conspire against women, the idea that childrearing was a curse. I even saw her treating our son differently. Not in over the top, easily discernible ways, but rather with low-level passive aggression and pettiness. She was impatient in helping him put on his socks, answering his questions...downright nasty to him if he made simple childish mistakes or cried. There was something going on with her...and I just learned to stay the hell out of the way. Would I ever point out the ludicrousness of a woman like Sally going on a feminism bent after she let her husband get away with banging a stripper? No, of course not. Not unless I wanted my head ripped off. After all, I had to be "civilized."
--
"Ground rules...we leave if it's weird."
She nodded, "Right."
We exited the car and started walking into the creepy metal building when I nudged her on the elbow.
"Hey listen....if a guy makes you uncomfortable," I said, trying to be a little chivalrous, "I'll get him off of you. I'm not going to let anything bad happen to you in there."
I was a little surprised by her sour face.
"Uhm, I'm a grown woman and I can handle myself in these circumstances, ok? In these new, dangerous times that we live in, I'm not letting you nurse some damsel-in-distress thing. Not like I'd ever let some guy put me in a situation like that anyways. You really need to work harder on respecting me, Jon."
I physically leered back. Wow. My wife was as meek and as kind as they come. Her reaction was downright vicious given her nature. This was somehow really, really important to her.
I threw a hand up, "Fine, fine. I didn't mean to offend. I'm sorry."
