It’s Only Once a Month

The news hit me like a ton of bricks and then I felt a burning pain in my gut. I asked George to repeat what he had just said and it hurt just as much the second time he said it as it did the first.

"Buddy Payne is divorcing Sandy," he said.

My husband Alex and I were sitting in the club lounge with our friends Diane and George Russell, sipping cocktails before dinner. Buddy and Sandy had been our friends for years. The news of their divorce came as a shock.

Buddy was a salesman working with my husband and George on a team of about a dozen salesmen who sold special business machines. It was a tough competitive business and there was a fair amount of turnover in the sales force. Only half a dozen guys including our husbands were long-term members of the sales team.

"What happened?" I asked. "They were a happy couple."

"It's not a pretty story," George said. "In fact it's downright ugly. There's a sex angle!"

"Go ahead George," Alex said. "We're all grown-ups."

"Somebody," George said, "sent Buddy a video and he has no idea who sent it. It was a video of Sandy fucking some guy. Sandy's face was clear but the guy's face never showed up. The shots were dated starting six or seven years ago and spliced together. They all showed Sandy having orgasms. She's a screamer and talks dirty and ... well ... I'm told that the thing was pretty graphic – real ugly."

My belly cramped and I thought I was gonna throw up. Shit! I thought. What a hell of a way for a husband to find out about an unfaithful wife. Watching as she screamed with one orgasm after another over a period of years fuckin some guy he didn't even know.

"Buddy took one look at the video and took it directly to a divorce lawyer. I understand there'll be a quiet out of court settlement."

"Who took the video?" I asked. "Did Sandy know she was being photographed? Did she ... "

George interrupted, "I don't know Sharon. Buddy doesn't know and he doesn't care. The scenes were shot in what were obviously different motel rooms over a period of years."

George kept on talking but my mind tuned him out as I thanked the good Lord for the happy marriage I had enjoyed with Alex for almost twenty years. What happened to Buddy would never happen to my Alex! I wouldn't let it happen.

I was not very good company for the remainder of the evening and the next morning the first thing I did was to call Sandy. After swearing me to secrecy she told me the story. It made my belly ache as she explained it.

Eight years ago the supervisor of sales, Clark Harris, stopped by her house one afternoon with a stack of papers. It was complicated but the bottom line was that Buddy had forged Clark's name on several forms approving maintenance contracts to be included in the regular sales price of some business machines.

Ordinarily the customer paid extra for the maintenance contract. However, it had been common practice for salesmen to get Clark to sign off on including the maintenance contract with the sale price if that was what was needed to make a tough sale. But these papers showed that Buddy was doing it without Clark's permission, forging his signature. He had a sales quota to make.

"I think a lot of guys were doing the same thing all the time when sales got tough," Sandy said. "It was routine to do that when Clark was not around."

She was right, of course. It was no big deal even though it was technically wrong. All the guys did it.

Sandy continued, "But Clark had picked out Buddy for a special reason."

"What reason was that?" I asked, although I already knew the answer.

"He wanted to fuck me," Sandy said.

"He smiled a friendly smile and said, 'Its only once a month Sandy.' And I had to do it or he was gonna fire Buddy. He had enough paper work with forged signatures to do that."

"What happened?" I asked.

"He fucked me all afternoon and he's been fuckin me once a month from then on for the past eight years."

"Then why did he send the video to Buddy?" I asked.

"Well you know that three months ago Clark was promoted to a Vice-President's job and he was no longer Buddy's supervisor. I figured he wouldn't be in a position to ... well you know. He came by my house as usual two months ago and I told him that I wasn't gonna fuck him any more. He told me I'd regret it. I still had no idea about the videos."

"He was right," she continued. "I regret not fucking him. After all it was only once a month and after eight years it got pretty routine. Not wham bam thank you mam ... I mean ... he always took his time and brought me off. It wasn't really all that bad."

I thought about what she said. You don't have to love a man to cum I guess if he fucks you long enough. Even an asshole like Clark Harris!

"How did he get the videos?" I asked.

"I have no idea," she said. "He usually had a brief case. Maybe he had a camera hidden in there."

It was a chilling story. I just stood there with the phone in my hand, almost shaking and my gut was killing me. Clark Harris was a bastard! He'd even selected the scenes that showed Sandy having orgasms to send to her husband! What husband could watch that without breaking down?

Questions flooded through my head. Why didn't Clark just show Sandy the video. It was like he was trying to make a point – send a message. Send a message to whom? Oh shit, I thought!

"Have you tried to explain this to Buddy?"

"Buddy won't even talk to me," she sobbed. "He moved out."

She said goodbye and I stood there with the phone in my hand. Clark Harris was an asshole. Short, overweight, always sweating a lot and wearing cheap men's aftershave to try to cover it up and poor Sandy fucked him for eight years.

After I got off the phone with Sandy I called my brother who practiced law and was pretty good at it. I told him Sandy's story in confidence. Yes he said, what Clark had done was against the law but it was not so simple. It was he-said-she-said and Sandy had said nothing for all those years.

If there was another wife involved maybe. But would another wife jeopardize her marriage by coming forward and testifying that she was fuckin some guy because he threatened to fire her husband?

He was right. After talking to my brother about it, this was not by any means an easy case and it was gonna be dirty no matter how it was done. My brother thought it couldn't be done without a second wife willing to testify that Clark had done the same thing to her.

I called Diane to get her fix on the situation. She had already talked to Sandy. There seemed to be very little that we could do to help that poor girl. I needed a drink. I didn't usually drink in the afternoon but I went over to Diane's house and she broke out the Glenlivet. We drank it on the rocks.

"Clark Harris is a bastard!" Diane said.

"He is. But would you fuck him once a month to save George's job?" I asked.

She didn't say no. She just looked out at the patio behind the house and thought for a minute, then turned back and looked at me.

"Those were tough times back then," she said. "We had just paid off the second mortgage and we were barely making the payments on the first. We were living well but had absolutely nothing to spare. And in oh-eight it got even worse. If George had lost his job we'd probably have lost the house in oh-eight and ... well ... shit! It's MONEY isn't it? You're asking me if I'd fuck for money! That's what whores do!"

"Yeah," I said. "That's what whores do. But it's not like the bastard's handing you a roll of bills. It may be the same thing but I feel somehow it's different. You don't think it's the same do you?"

"NO IT'S NOT," Diane shouted at me. "It's not the same thing to spread your legs to save your family as it is to spread 'em to get a wad of cash. It's different! You and Alex were in the same financial situation as George and me. Would you have fucked that bastard to save your house?"

"It's different for men and women," I said. "It shouldn't be but it is. "You fucked a few guys in college just like I did. We thought nothing of it. We didn't see ourselves as whores. We were just living life like everybody else looking for husbands."

"But you get married and all of a sudden the guys can go to strip clubs with other guys and grab a stripper's ass and we all laugh about it but let a wife do something like that and it's a scandal."

Diane got up and poured another big splash of Glenlivet into her glass. Then she looked at me and I nodded and she poured one for me. We were getting drunk. And I wanted to!

She sat down and took a big sip of her drink and said, "We can talk philosophy all we want but there's no way that your husband or my husband or Sandy's husband is gonna believe it's okay for their wife to fuck some guy once a month for eight years. They can fuck their secretary but YOU can't fuck their boss. Not even to save their job or your house. Not for ANY reason!"

Diane continued, "But there's something we haven't talked about. Why did the bastard destroy Sandy's life? Why not just show her the video and threaten to send it to her husband?"

"I've thought about that," I said. "Maybe there was only one video – the one with Sandy in it. What do you think?"

"Maybe. But who's gonna take that chance. One video or more than one, I think he was sending a message," Diane said.

"A message to whom?"

"A message to the gal – or more likely the gals – he's still fucking," Diane said.

I felt my gut grip again. Shit! This could get ugly.

"Tell me more," I said.

"Times were tough eight years ago in our business," she said. "A lot of competition from overseas. More than one guy might have had to cut a corner to make a sale. Actually I think all of them probably did the same thing. That bastard Clark picked out which wives he wanted to fuck and hit on them. All the same way as Sandy!"

What she said made a lot of sense.

"And now?" I asked.

"And now he's just sent a message to the ones he wants to keep. A message that says keep on spreadin your legs bitch or this could happen to you. And Sharon, if I know women, they're gonna keep on spreading their legs for that bastard! And after what they've seen happen to poor Sandy they're gonna pump their asses for him better than ever before."

My gut griped me again. She's right I thought. She's exactly right! There's really no choice! Every gal is gonna keep on fuckin him and pump her ass harder and feel damn lucky he didn't send a video to HER husband. And she'll smile at him! And be nice to him! And prance around naked in spikes. And tell the chubby little bastard what a good fuck he is. Shit! Repulsive!

"Remember Sharon," Diane said, "It's not their houses they're saving now. It's their marriages! That bastard is gonna have more user-friendly pussy than he can handle."

I closed my eyes, thinking. Yeah she was right! He had each bitch in a cage – like a trained animal. An animal trained to fuck and suck on command. Trained to ignore his body odor and that damned cheap aftershave. It turned my stomach!

The I asked softly, almost to myself, "Who all is he fuckin do you think?"

"Honey, neither one of us wants to think about that list," Diane said. "But it's pretty damned obvious isn't it."

Yeah, I thought. She's sure as hell right about that. I asked myself who's been on the sales team for the past eight years? Neither Diane nor I want that question asked or even thought about.

A month or so later, I tried to reach Sandy by phone but her phone had been disconnected. I got word that she had gone back to her mother's place and I decided not to bother her there.

The months went by and I heard very little about Sandy and Buddy. All my months had four weeks and started on Thursday afternoon. I kept on doing what I had to do, just like before, because I had to do it – and do it with a smile. My life went on exactly as it had before but I lived in fear, waiting for another shoe to drop.

Then late one afternoon I got a call from Diane.

"Did you hear about that bastard Clark Harris?"

"What about him?" I asked.

"He's in intensive care at St. Mary's," she said. "Heart attack. Bad one!"

"It couldn't happen to a nicer guy," I said and then bit my tongue. You don't talk that way about anyone, even a bastard like Clark Harris.

"Guess where he had his heart attack," Diane said.

"Where?" I asked.

"That cheap motel out near the Interstate exit for Sam's Club," she said.

"Yeah, I know the one," I said my mind flashing back to the ugly rooms and remembering how I always stopped off at Sam's on the way home to get that delicious New Zealand lamb that my husband loved.

"He had checked in with a woman around noon but he was alone when the 911 people got there."

"Is he ... I mean how's he doing?" I asked.

"He's not doing well. You and I both know what he was doing when his heart gave out," she said. "We'll just have to wait and see I guess."

And we waited. He was in intensive care for a long time. Almost died Diane said. Had more than one cardiac arrest and he was saved only by resuscitation several times. Had a pacemaker put in. Diane kept up with his condition through a friend of hers who was a nursing supervisor at the hospital.

A few weeks later Alex and I were at the club having drinks with Diane and George and we did not, of course, talk about Clark Harris. But when Diane and I went to the powder room she told me how he was doing.

"He's in cardiac rehab and barely able to get around. One consultant has raised the question of a heart transplant. That bastard is not gonna be fuckin anybody for a very long time – then she chuckled – not even only once a month."

"Have you heard about Sandy?" I asked.

"She's still at her mother's. Of course Buddy is still working with George and Alex but I haven't heard them say anything special about him. I've tried not to ask. The whole subject makes me uncomfortable ... well ... you know."

"Yeah I know. Me too. I wish there were something we could do to help Sandy," I said.

"Honey, Sandy's husband is a man. He's just like the man you're married to and the man I'm married to. They will risk their lives defending their country or protecting their families. They will rush into a burning building to carry injured people out. They will break their backs working to support what their wives hold dear. But they can't stand the truth about what their wives will do for them under pressure. That's just the way the world works honey. You and I can't change it. All we can do is learn to live with it."