The male ego is more fragile than a raw egg dropped from 40 stories up. But when an egg hits the ground, you know there is just one possible result: innards get splattered all over the place. However, with the male ego, who can say what will happen when broken, bruised or bent.
I had always thought that if my wife ever cheated on me I would go psycho and become the wild man of our cave ancestry yore. What happened instead, was I wimped out, becoming a sodden, defeated shell of the man I once thought I was.
My wife is a so-so specimen. Not gorgeous, but pretty in her own right. She has dark, straight hair falling to her shoulder blades that she most often keeps in a bun. She's 5 foot two with piercing dark eyes, slimly built with pert hips and 32C breasts. She dresses professionally but acts saucy and freely expresses herself, especially on the dance floor. Our home life is good and the sex frequent and adequate. She is no bombshell in bed, and neither am I, but we do go at it with gusto and enthusiasm more nights a week than not. I would say the only problem we had in our marriage was money.
We married right out of college, fully intent on starting a family and living the American dream. I found work right away as a mid-level executive in a factory just outside Chicago. We decided she would stay home and do her best to get pregnant. Well, the pregnancy didn't come, but the bills did. A year into our marriage she decided to go to work to make ends meet. Well, for the first year after that, things were tight, then we caught up and it has been smooth sailing ever since.
At least so I thought.
It was the week of our fifth wedding anniversary. I had a big weekend planned for us out of town. I had just cancelled that weekend right after cleaning out my desk.
The economy slowed down. Factory orders plummeted and jobs were cut. Mine included. I stooped at a bar that noon. Blew twenty bucks of my severance check, and headed home in the middle of the day for the first time in my marriage.
When I pulled up to our two-story, four bedroom, aluminum sided house in the burbs, I found my wife's car in the driveway. Not pulled into the garage, mind you, just in the drive. I ended up parking on the curb and hoping this wasn't garbage collection day so I wouldn't be ticketed. You think weird things when you've had a few to drink.
I didn't really think it odd that my wife was home. She often took her lunch break at the house so she wouldn't have to spend money eating out. But when I entered the house, she wasn't in the kitchen. I figured maybe she was taking a quick nap so I tiptoed quietly up the stairs so as not to wake her.
I needn't have worried.
Our bedroom door was standing open and she was in bed all right. But so was this dumpy middle-aged clod. He was pounding up and down between her spread legs, puffing like he was in a marathon. My wife was just lying there, staring at the ceiling, while he rutted in her, groped greedily at one breast and slobbered all over the other.
I stood just outside the doorway in stunned silence. Perhaps my drink-doused brain was slow on the uptake or maybe I was just stunned that my delightful Becky would prefer this out-of-shape old man to me, but I didn't charge into the room and kill the guy like I'd always imagined I would.
I backed slowly away from the door as his puffing grew into groans and a sudden loud grunt escaped his lips. He then collapsed on my wife and seconds later she pushed him off and he rolled onto his back.
I slipped quietly into the next bedroom.
They talked in muffled tones for a few minutes while he got dressed. I don't know why, but to this day, more vividly that anything else, I can hear in my head the sound of his pants zipper being pulled up. For some reason, that sound revolted me more than anything else and has caused me traumatic flashbacks sometimes when I'm zipping my own pants.
I heard footsteps pass the bedroom and head down the steps. The front door opened, then closed. I peeked out the bedroom window and saw a suited man leave our yard, head across and slightly down the street, get into a parked car and leave.
"You can come out now," I heard my wife's voice from the hallway. I jumped and spun around to find my wife in the doorway wearing only a bathrobe, her arms crossed defiantly across her chest.
"You knew I was here?" was all I could think to say.
"Heard your car pull up."
"Oh. And you didn't try to hide what you were doing?"
"Why?"
O.K. That stumped me. Not the response I expected. What response HAD I expected? I mean, what does one say when caught red handed cheating. I must say she was handling it with grace. If the roll had been reversed, I probably would have been stuttering and stammering. Come to think of it, I was stuttering and stammering. It was time to take charge. I was right, she was wrong. Why did I feel like a kid caught with his hands in the cookie jar?
"Who was that guy," I demanded.
"Does it matter?" she sighed, taking back control of the situation. "I'm sorry you had to see that."
"What? What?" I stammered. "You're sorry I had to see that? See that? What about being sorry you DID that!"
She moved her hands to her hips and just glared at me with those piercing eyes.
"Grow up and join the real world, Robert," she yelled, turned her back on me and went back into our bedroom.
I stood there open-mouthed a few seconds before catching myself and rushing behind her. She had already dropped her robe and was stepping into her skirt.
"What are you doing?"
"Getting dressed so that I can get back to work before my lunch hour ends."