Revelations

II: A follow Up

This is my continuation of 'alex_lover's story "Revelations'. I felt that it needed some closure. I got his permission to continue; so here is my version of what happened that fateful morning after he read the emails. If you haven't I strongly recommend you read alex_lover's first three chapters before digging into this.

My thanks to my editor Barney R for his help in making this story more readable.

carvohi

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Well hello, my name is, or it was, Victor Brown, and until not long ago I thought I was a happily married man. I won't go into a lot of detail about how my once happy marriage became a horrible nightmare. You can get all that by reading alex_lover.

What I'm here to tell you is how my life changed and ultimately ended as a result of my soon to be ex-wife's sordid love affair with her former boss. I'll pick up roughly where alex_lover left off.

I was in the kitchen about to have what was most likely my last cup of coffee with Vanessa. Vanessa by now everyone knows was my wife of thirty years.

I hadn't been sure if she'd actually ended her love affair with her boss after we moved from Dallas to Houston so I went to work and dug around on the Internet. I broke into her computer and found years of email messages between her and this guy Harry Wolman, her one time boss. They'd been corresponding for years after we moved, and I have a good idea those electronic messages were only the tip of the iceberg. I felt right up to his demise they'd been secretly meeting. I have no concrete proof of that; it's not relevant now anyway.

We sat in the kitchen and we talked, or actually she talked and I listened. I knew we were history, I was history. It was just a matter of me getting all my ducks in line. Still there are parts of our conversation that ring vividly in my ear.

She started with the same bullshit, "Victor I can't tell you how sorry I am. You're the great love of my life. Harry ... well ... he was just ..."

I remember my reply, "Yeah, I know. Harry was just this great fuck."

And she said, "No it wasn't like that, it was ..."

I interrupted her again, "Oh, I know, true love; like the meeting of kindred spirits."

That's when she finally admitted it, "I felt sorry for him. He was sick. We became soul mates."

I shut that off, "And I was the roommate."

She tried to fix it, "No I mean ..."

I smiled, "Coffee's good," then I got up to leave.

She followed me. She cried and begged and whined, but it was a waste of time. She told me she loved me, she'd make it up to me, she was sure I'd understand if I only listened. But she'd made her decision nearly ten years ago when she decided to give away our marriage to a man who had the morals of an alley cat. I mean it was all electronically preserved. There wasn't a damn thing she could say or lie about that could change anything. She'd been whoring around. She'd been playing the pig while I'd been home being the loyal husband. She'd betrayed everything our marriage, any marriage, was supposed to mean. I don't know how she thought I could get past that.

Shit, she'd said she was sorry, but I never quite got the apology thing right. I wasn't sure if she was sorry for breaking faith with me and our vows, or if she was just sorry she got caught. I can honestly say; when it came to bullshit, she had more moves than a checkerboard.

I'd watched her all red eyed and puffy faced pretending she was sorry. What a total waste of time!

I knew one thing. I had to take stock of the new situation. The emails hadn't changed much; they'd only made it worse. She kept saying there were all kinds of extenuating circumstances; he was sad, she felt sorry for him, the company needed him, he needed her. She never faced the fact nobody forced her to do it. I saw the videos; she was fucking him because she wanted to, she liked it, and what she did killed me.

She caught me again later that morning while I was moving what was left of my shit out of our bedroom. She had her story, and she was sticking to it, "Victor," she said, "he was dying inside. He was sad. He needed someone."

I tried to make her understand her affair with him wasn't about him; it was about her. I tried, I really tried to make her see, "Look, you've been living two fantasies, and you've lived them because it was fun. That's how you got your gratification. Look Vanessa, he was all fun and naughty sex. I was the other side, the down side. I was your responsibility; that's why all the fuss about my pills and stuff. I was your reasonable responsible compartment; your boss and your fucking was your happy go lucky compartment.

I tried to tell her I could never compete; I could never compete because I never knew there was a competition. I never knew she was living two separate lives.

I told her in a big way it was like hunting. The deer never knows it's the other team in a sport, and like the deer, I never saw it coming until it was too late. Now I'm splayed out in the field with my guts spewed all over the ground, and she can't understand why I don't think it's important. I mean like honey; it was such a small bullet! Now I'm dead, and she says it was only sex. Aw gee Bambi; it was only a forty caliber pellet! What's the fuss?

I told her it was the emails that finally threw me over the edge. I knew what they confirmed; she never really loved me. She'd vowed that Harry was her only 'mistake', but I sure couldn't believe that. We, or Vanessa for sure, made two children; one is now a thirty year old man and the other a twenty-eight year old woman. Their names are James and Karen and each is married with a child of their own. I told her, yeah, they're supposed to be mine, but how did I know, I mean how did I really know?

I mean I explained I still loved them, of course. I raised them didn't I? I was there for the flu, the tonsils, the emergency room, the parent-teacher conferences, all that. But did it make a difference? It does now, absolutely, it's just not the same. How did I know she wasn't fucking some guy while I was taking Karen's temperature when she had pneumonia?

Oh shit sure she cried. She vowed they were my kids. She only cheated on me with the one man.

I laughed at that. I asked her if she really expected me to believe anything she said. That only made her cry more, but I knew her tears were more for herself. She felt bad because she got caught, not because she ruined my life and our marriage.

Hell, I'm sixty years old. I'm not doing the DNA game. They can all do that after I'm gone.

What I do know is she cheated on me once so technically the kids could be anybody's. Shit, how do I know she wasn't fucking around on our wedding night? What's the difference now? I don't know and I don't care, not anymore.

So I had a thirty year phony marriage, and I might have raised somebody else's kids. I can't do anything about all that. I have to face the facts, and fact number one is my life has been a lie, one big fucking lie!

Remember what I said through alex_lover early on. A man has to move forward. I couldn't live in the past, I'm sixty years old. I could get pancreatic cancer and be dead in six months, or I could live another twenty years. Regardless, long term planning for me is a thing of the past. Add to that my final decision to be gone, I mean completely, totally, and utterly, irrevocably gone and very soon. I'll leave the grisly details, the post mortem to Vanessa.

It was time for me to take action. First I told Vanessa there would be no divorce. I didn't care what she did. I told her I'd be gone soon, and she could do what she wanted; maybe she could find some other chump or cuck. I just knew I wouldn't be around. With that done it was time to take inventory.

By inventory I mean what exactly did I have that was mine? Well there was money. I collected all the ready cash I could get my hands without touching any savings, retirement, or long term investments. This relatively small amount of money I set aside for my final act, my denouement.

You might think I sound depressed. Well I am depressed, but believe me I've got it all worked out. I'm depressed because of where I am. If I put myself away somewhere, I mean for good, once and for all, then my depression will simply dissolve. I'll be free! You know when you're gone you're gone.

OK money, what there was of it, out of the way; what did I have in terms of personal property. Well I had a ten year old chocolate Labrador Retriever Vanessa had bought me. It was a puppy when she got it, but she got it while she was seeing and fucking her hero. I loved the damn dog, but it represented what; it represented a payment, Chelsea was like a mercy fuck for a cuckold. I had to do something about the dog. I called a veterinarian and made the appropriate arrangements. They came and got her, and took her away.

Vanessa came home the night I took care of Chelsea and asked where the dog was. I told her the dog was never mine since you gave it to me while you were fucking the asshole. I told her the dog was gone. Vanessa couldn't believe it; her face got all white, she knew I loved that fucking dog. I did love the dog; I just couldn't keep it, not here, not now, not any more.

Chelsea was just a reminder of my whore wife. Vanessa cried a little bit; just a tear or two. The bitch knew the truth; she'd bought the fucking dog just to assuage her guilty conscience. Sure, she pretended to feel bad, but I knew the truth.

My favorite hobby is golf. I have a great set of clubs. Unfortunately, you guessed it, all but one or two of the clubs were gifts from Vanessa. I gave the clubs away. I got them appraised first; they were pretty expensive, I knew that, and I put the appraisal in a manila folder. Since I kept my clubs downstairs Vanessa didn't notice their absence right away. It didn't matter. I just didn't give a shit.

I went upstairs to our bedroom and rummaged around and found all our photo albums. I also found several dozen old VHS tapes and a bunch of DVDs all with Christmas shit, dance recital shit, little league stuff, and all kinds of other worthless crap happily married people accumulate so they can look back on their lives when they get old and grey. Well I was as grey as I was going to get. None of this shit was mine; it didn't matter to me anymore. How did I know they were my kids, and all the other stuff, the pictures and all only reminded me of when Vanessa was fucking Mr. Big Shot. Yeah, there she was smiling at me in all these pictures, while all the while she was giving away my heart and soul.

I loaded all this phony memorabilia up in six boxes and drove over to James's house. I sat down and showed him and his wife what I had. I told them I wanted them to have it. James said he couldn't take it since it was mine and his mom's. I told him if he didn't want it I was throwing the shit away. He told me to take it home and save it for when we could all look at it together at some later time. He didn't understand. I tried to explain there wouldn't be any later time.

I took the shit to my wife's daughter's and made her the same offer. She gave me the same answer.

On the way home I stopped behind a supermarket and dumped all the garbage that I thought had been my life in their dumpster. Nobody seemed to get it; my life, Vanessa's life, it was all just so much detritus, so much trash.

That night Vanessa got a call from Karen. Karen told Vanessa what I'd brought over. Vanessa asked me what I was doing. I told her I was getting rid of all the shit I had no stake in anymore. I told her it didn't mean anything to me since they probably weren't my kids anyway.

She asked me where I put the photos and the videos. I told her what I'd done with them. She got hysterical. I thought it was fucking funny. I asked the cheating bitch why she cared since she was busy fucking old Romeo while I was taking all the pictures and doing all the recording.

She said it wasn't like that.

I told her it was exactly like that. I saw the videos and pictures. I told her all her fuck pictures were her real life story. What we had was a sham.

She got mad and yelled at me. She ran all around the house wringing her hands and crying like she was going to find the shit. Inside I wanted to cry, but I covered it up, and laughed. She asked me which dumpster. I told her I didn't remember. She called James and Karen and the three of them spent the entire night going from supermarket to supermarket trying to find the shit. Well good luck!

She got back the next morning. She looked as grey as death. They never found anything.

I hoped she'd figured it out. All we ever had, all we ever did was a lie, but I don't think she got it.

I had other worthless shit I had to unload. I had a shit pot full of tools in the garage. I had several chain saws; a really expensive table saw Vanessa had bought me about twelve years ago. There were ratchet sets, rotary saws, automotive supplies, shovels, pitchforks, a riding lawnmower, a push mower, two weed whackers, a lawn rake, a spreader, and hundreds of other types of tools. I called a guy who ran an auction. He came, gave me a price, loaded the shit up, and drove away.

Just as he drove away Vanessa pulled up. It couldn't have worked better if I had timed it. I hadn't. She wanted to know what was going on. I told her since I was going to be gone soon I wouldn't need any of that shit. I gave her the check. She started crying again. She wanted to know what I was really doing. I told her I was making a clean break. I told her when I was done and gone any fake guilt she had she could throw out too. I told her she threw my life away the first time she took that bastard's dick in her mouth. I told her I hoped it tasted good; after all she'd paid for it.

She tried to grab me and hold me. She cried. I just stood there. I wanted to cry too, but it was too late for that. As my favorite musical group the Eagles once sang; 'I was already gone'.

Finally she just stood there on the driveway with one hand holding her forehead; her silent tears were just sort of dripping down to the macadam. Her hair was a mess. I sort of wanted to hold her and comfort her. I couldn't do it. When I looked at her mouth, her face, all I saw was Wolman's dick. I hated her for what she'd done to me, to us, to what I thought we had.

I very politely told her, "Vanessa you've got to face the truth. You have intimacy issues. I suggest you take a plane, go to Wolman's grave site, and throw yourself on it. Maybe he'll reach up out of his box, through the dirt and massage your filthy cunt."

She sat down; right there on the asphalt and, all the while weeping sobbing, she whimpered, "I'm sorry I'm so sorry. I wished I'd never been born."

I smiled and answered, "Me too." I walked back in the house to start my next project.

There were still a few things left. Downstairs in my 'so called' man cave was a pretty nice collection of books, many of them first editions, a lot of them were books Vanessa had hunted down and gotten for me. One was a rare first edition she'd hunted down and found in Iceland. We'd made a vacation out of it. We went to Iceland and she bought me the book. I remembered we'd gone skiing, got lazy in a hot tub, and made what I thought was love. Boy was I stupid.

I called a book collector. She came and gave me a ridiculously low price. I took the check and stuffed it in the manila folder.

When I was a kid, and later in college I had been a volunteer fireman. When I got older I had to give the actual fireman thing up, but I'd started collecting vintage models of fire engines. I was sixty, and I had over thirty of these old model fire engines. Some of them were damn rare, and some were prohibitively expensive. One Vanessa had found and had paid over a thousand dollars for. She'd wrapped it up and given it to me for Christmas. That was just five years ago. Now when I looked at it all I saw was her lover's semen on her face. Once it had been a beautiful gift; now it was ugly to me.

You can be sure anything Vanessa ever bought me was like jaundice. Now everything I saw she ever got for me was like looking at maggots; maggots that were eating away my soul. I called a collector; got another cheesy price, and sold the whole collection. I stuffed that check in the folder with the other stuff.

Later when she got home Vanessa heard me downstairs. I was vacuuming up the now empty man cave when she came down. She started crying all over again. She didn't have to ask, but I told her fornicating ass anyway, "This was mostly shit you bought me or helped me get. I don't want it." I told her it was just too painful to look at.

She just sat there on the bottom step, put her head in her hands and cried. Her whole body just shook. She was like convulsed with these big sobs. I wondered what she expected; that I would thank her for killing me?

She begged me to stop selling and throwing away all the stuff that had mattered so much to the two of us. I told her since she threw away my heart none of this shit mattered anymore. I told her it was all hateful to me now. I told her all this stuff was just a bunch of guilt gifts. She'd bought them to ease her own conscience; they had nothing to do with love. I said if she'd ever loved me she wouldn't have sold herself to her fucking boss. I explained to her the least she could have done was tell me so I could leave her cheating ass and get on with my life, but fuck, I was sixty now, I was too old. I told her it was too late for me.

She begged me to think about what she called 'us'. I told her there was no 'us' only her because pretty soon I'd be gone, as in like nonexistent, as in dead. Of course she cried.

She wasn't looking too good. She was pale as shit, and I could tell she wasn't eating. Once I would have been all over her trying to comfort and love her. Not anymore. I felt awful, but I just couldn't bring myself to touch her, all I saw were her lascivious smiles on their damned DVDs.

I told her, "Yeah, after I'm gone, you can spend the rest of your life with your DVDs watching your dead lover fuck you." I kind of doubted that would happen; I told her she'd find another tool someplace.

She didn't know it, but every time I got rid of something I cried. It was like every gift, every piece of memorabilia, every memento, got its own private funeral. I hurt, I really hurt. I knew I was dead. I couldn't turn the page and start over. There were no new chapters. When I thought about turning the page all I saw were the words –'the end'.

I think that finally got her. I think that was when she realized what this was really all about. Think about it; what is the last thing somebody does just before they know they're going to die. They give everything away. Since I had no one I could honestly say cared about me or belonged to me; I figured it didn't matter who got the shit.

When I was a younger man in college I was too impecunious to be able to join a fraternity, but the frats played Sunday afternoon football. They played for money. It was down and dirty; three downs and you either scored a touchdown or punted. This one fraternity hired me and two of my best friends to play for them. I got paid in beer and free use of the upstairs rooms at the frat house.

One day we were playing, and on a kick off my best friend ran down field to make a tackle. By a fluke chance he got kicked in the head and was dead in twenty minutes. He was twenty when it happened. Now I was sixty; I'd lived three times as long as my best friend. I'd done shit he never got to do. His life had ended on a Sunday afternoon; mine ended on a similar Saturday, but I got an extra forty years, so who was I to complain. Yeah, a kid's foot killed my friend; a woman's cruelty killed me. What the fuck; when it's over it's over.