Hi, my name is Brace Draper and I'm 27 years old. I am married to a pretty and vivacious woman named Shelly Draper who is just a year younger at 26. We have been married for five and a quarter years so just kind of starting out. Every marriage has challenges. I want to tell you of a time when our marriage almost ended up down the drain.
I was reading an interesting article online about how all the new data gathered from the various science satellites in orbit has made us rethink what we "knew" about the cosmos. I found it almost comical that we have this image about things - books and university lectures are prepared to teach people theories that become the "truth". New information comes along and we throw out the "truth" and new "truths" are presented. Former experts lose favor and new experts emerge.
Anyway, I was reading this article and reflecting on our amazing universe when my wife of five years walked into the living room and announced with some assertiveness that she was going on a date with a male co-worker this Friday. This out of the blue, out of character and completely out of her mind.
Her body language -- one hand on the hip, and a facial expression that said, "I'm expecting an argument but my mind is made up", sent my mind reeling. Now, Shelly likes a good argument. Her logic may be flawed, sometimes, in my opinion, but I have been beaten down by her persistence to her way of thinking on many occasions. She generally won't let up until she wins and she wins a lot. But, our arguments have never been about anything as critical or as fraught with danger as this subject could become. What to do?
She rattled on...
"This does not mean I don't love you and it should not affect how we relate to one another but I find I just want to explore my sexuality, experience new people and expand my horizons. Now, I know that this may upset you and make you feel hurt but you need to know that I will always come back to you and be your wife forever. This will in no way affect US. WE are forever. We are an amazing team and I know that in the long run, this may make us stronger and, who knows, maybe I will learn some tricks that we can share to enhance our play time in the bedroom."
I sat there passively trying not to blow up while my mind flashed through a bunch of responses: Strangulation? Beat her to a bloody pulp? Threaten divorce? Threaten bloody pulp? (Yes, bloody pulp did weigh high on my list.) Weeping and gnashing of teeth? Gnashing of HER Teeth (there's that bloody pulp again). Just leave? Argue, argue, argue?
As her scripted speech (I was sure this was scripted, practiced and that she may have had some help writing the script) wound down, the thought occurred to me that this changed the game -- OUR game! That meant that new rules had to be established. How do I make her see my point of view?
Out of that thought came an old memory of reading about Tom Sawyer and white washing a fence. In that story by Mark Twain, Tom made a dreaded job appear appealing to his friends and got them to do his work by changing their perception of it. Perception! Perception IS reality!
That changed everything. Armed with this new realization, I looked away in deep contemplation and got wide eyed and smiled with excited acceptance. "This is great! That is a great idea. This Friday, you say? Wow! I never thought of that as a possibility. Okay, let's do this."
Shelly appeared a bit thrown off by my acceptance and scowled a little in her surprise at my reaction. She recovered and stammered, "Oh, ahhh cool. I'm, I'm glad you agree. This is better than I expected. I thought you'd be mad. Good, I guess we're good." Her smile appeared but she still seemed a bit taken aback.
I stood up and grabbed her upper arms and smiled broadly and looked her in the eyes. "No, this is great news. I'm excited and relieved. There is a sweet gal I've run into a few times at the gym who has made it clear that she has the HOTS for me. I have gently shot her down telling her I was married and wasn't up for fooling around but this just opens the door to all kinds of possibilities! I can't wait to talk to her and let her know we are open for some fun! Thank you, thank you!"
I almost laughed at the shocked expression and sudden draining of color of Shelly's face. I strode off to the kitchen mostly to hide my snicker and spoke over my shoulder, "I'm getting a soda water, you want anything?"
"Ahhh, no, no thanks", came the rasping reply. I could hear the hesitation and confusion in her voice. (This was way better than beating her to a pulp and I wouldn't even get jail time!)
I stood in front of the wall calendar and in sort of a stage murmur I voiced a plan. "Let's see, tomorrow is Wednesday, she usually comes early on Wednesday. I'll have to leave for the gym early so I can talk to her first thing. I hope she still is hot for me and hasn't moved on. ... See if she's available this Friday. Damn! I hope so! This could be soooo hot! Love those perky tits of hers! I'm gonna bang the hell out of her. Yes, this is too good! ... Gotta gather up my gym stuff and get it in my car. I should probably use some good after shave to get her fired up! Friday, baby! You and me!! Ohhhh, yeahhhh!" I drank my soda and stared at the calendar but in reality I was paying more attention to my peripheral view of Shelly and watched her scowling at me.
Not going to plan, bitch? She never said a word but her breathing and her demeanor said she was not pleased. This was not in the script. Good!
I went back to the couch and pretended to continue reading the article but could not concentrate on even a line of print. I focused more on Shelly and her obvious discomfort without actually looking at her. I hope she was wondering what to say. I'm sure the arguments she was expecting from me were playing in her head as words to use against me. In reality though how do you voice them without sounding like a total hypocrite? Let her fucking struggle with that!
After a bit she sighed heavily and said, "I'm tired, I think I'll go to bed. You going to be coming up soon, Brace?".
"Yeah. I think I'll finish this article and be up in about half an hour. Night, night, Shelly."
She gave me a quick kiss and turned towards the stairs leading to our master suite. She twisted her head around to face me and said, "I love you, Brace." There was a lot of heavy emotion in that statement. I felt a lot of deep pain, frustration and sadness. This was a major cross roads for us and many of the paths forward were not going to be happy ones.
As I sat there, I played back, in my mind, the last couple of weeks. I tended to take Shelly at her word and have probably let a lot of stuff go by without being suspicious. Guess it's time to get suspicious! In review I couldn't think of any overt clues that said she was cheating... except. Wait!
Phone calls and texts. A few recent phone calls were carried out in whispered tones and taken in out of the way corners of our house. If I asked about them she said they were from her sister and were private. She was entitled to her privacy. I didn't question that but actually that was new. Usually calls to and from her sister were taken while we sat together and never seemed to be "private". She would often talk to me about them afterwards. Imparting family news and silly occurrences that would make us both laugh. No secrets until the last couple of weeks. Texts. She seemed to be getting more texts that would make her smile or even chuckle quietly. Time to do some research.
While Shelly was readying herself for bed in the bathroom, I went to our computer and looked up our cell phone call records. In the past two weeks I noted four calls and six texts to her phone from a number I didn't recognize coming in evening hours. Just to be sure I looked up her sister's number in my contacts and verified that it wasn't her cell number. I wrote down the number and on a whim, tried looking it up on line. The name Jason Masden was associated with that number and the teaser information gave his address. He resides in our town. I wrote down his address then went to Shelly's employer website and logged into her company account. Shelly works for Marple Brothers Engineering and Design as a supervisor in the Human Resource Department. Mostly dealing with time management -- tracking vacation, sick days, personal days, etc. She has access to the company employee database and I have helped her do specialized searches when a phone number or email needed to be tracked down. It took me only a second to find that ol' Jason worked at Marple and had just started there seven months ago. That was all I really needed to know.
He was calling and texting my wife and he certainly wasn't her sister. Our marriage future was now standing on thin ice and if I found out she had already cheated with him we were indeed history. I logged into her email account (I felt a bit better that her password had not changed). There were no emails from Jason but when I did a search of his name in email texts there were a few emails where he was prominently mentioned. It seems a woman named Darcy Sellars was informing Shelly that Jason was asking about her and asking for personal information. Darcy let Shelly know that Jason thought that my wife was hot and wanted to "hook up" with her.
Darcy thought Jason was cute and was encouraging Shelly to "play" with him. Emails back and forth gave a running commentary on the flirting and Darcy keep pressuring Shelly to take it all to the inevitable conclusion. Shelly stated that she hadn't agreed to sex with him but Darcy was pushing her to "go for it". This weekend was to be the first "date" and see where it went from there.
Fuck.
I puttered around gathering up my gym apparel (making enough noise to make it apparent what I was doing) and put it in my car for tomorrow. I would go to the gym but more for show than anything else. I readied for bed and had a fitful night of sleep thinking about our future.
The next morning, Wednesday, I got up early and sort of hummed along "happily" to get to the gym. Let her guess what I was up to. I did my gym session without talking much to anyone and went to work as usual. I tried, unsuccessfully, not to think about next steps at home but was able to function effectively and earned my pay. At the end of the day I traveled home but still didn't have a clear view of my next steps or where Shelly and I stood.
I arrived home from work and pulled into our garage. Shelly's car was already there and I placed my hand on the hood to find it was still pretty warm so she had just gotten home shortly before me. I paused at the door to the kitchen, took a deep breath and prepared myself to continue my new acting role. I opened the door with a flourish, smiled and greeted my wife with a "Hey, Babe!" and proceeded towards the bedroom while removing my tie and suit jacket. I stated over my shoulder as I mounted the stairs, "Say, Shelly. Can we talk a bit about this weekend? I think we should set some mutual rules moving forward so we are on the same page."
Shelly responded, "Yes, I think we have to talk. I already ordered Chinese to be delivered. I hope that works for you." Her voice sounded shaky, like she was off-balance. It was going to be an interesting night, peppered with pit falls. I could already sense the tension -- mine and hers.
On my return to the kitchen, now dressed in jeans and a t-shirt I noted that the food had been delivered and we started filling plates from the little cardboard containers. As we worked, I started in. "Since you've had some time to think and plan about this weekend and I've just learned about our new dynamic, I sketched some notes and even did a flow chart. (chuckling) Yes, you can take the boy out of programming but you can't take the programming out of the boy."
"To make sure we don't start getting on each others nerves and cause us to want to kill each other, I jotted down some rules that I would like to discuss, work through and reach mutual agreement on. I just think it's the smartest approach going forward. I don't want our extra-marital activities to ruin us."
