Saga of the Shrewd Wife

Absurdist. All characters are well beyond 18. These characters never lived or had being. They do not intentionally resemble any person living or dead. Apologies for the failure to post as intended. Had unforeseeable difficulties. There are 12,000 words in this part.

*****

MOVING RIGHT ALONG...

To the untutored eye, Sophie McPherson was unconsciously displaying her bush and sex slit to the mob in the courtroom.

With mixed emotions I watched as the woman with the angelic aura, who had been my wife for 27 years, sat smiling serenely and waving to friends. Sophie's skirt had ridden high on her thighs, her knees occasionally splayed.

And she wore no panties.

Tutored eyes saw shrewd calculation in the presentation of her pudendal cleft for communal enjoyment. This magnificent specimen of classical Northern European feminine beauty was exhibiting her mons Venus with reason and purpose.

I had not talked with my wife during the past four years. The Sophie I had known and loved for almost three decades had ceased to exist in my world. Consequently, I had convinced myself that I had come to her trial to satisfy errant curiosity.

"Sophie's enduring glamour equates whoring with wine making," said Beatrice Malone, who was sitting beside me. "Gifted old whores just get better with age."

Since Dr. Frank Malone had accompanied my wife and daughter into the "Pussy Campaigns," his wife and I had become close as survivors must. Ironically, Beatrice and I had been friends long before we met our spouses.

Yes! Beatrice had come to my bed after we both had completed the formalities of the divorce proceedings. Whether our spouses would ever permit the final decree remained to be seen.

Sitting there inspecting my wife's vagina along with Beatrice and more than 200 leering, snickering strangers should have been off putting. Instead of making me uncomfortable, however, seeing the captivating erotic orifice had the same effect as watching an ingeniously conceived commercial on television.

Though Sophie's "pussy" appealed to me only as pop culture curiosity, I found the conflicts interesting. I could not avoid juxtaposing our history as the exemplary Christocentric nuclear family and her ingeniously manufactured image as the paragon of success in whoring commerce.

As a wife, Sophie had unconsciously achieved all that nature allowed. She could not avoid being the most desirable woman in creation. Her sensuality, however, came from nature's endowment; and the "pussy hair" was Mother Nature's ingenious defining logo, a signal invitation to erotic delights.

Restoring her mons hair revealed that she had an eye for nuance that made a difference. At the time she shaved, I was still in the picture; and I had protested. I had commented that removing her hair left her sexually neutral.

Without the hair, I had contended, there was no erotic mystery, an essential in initiating civilized sex. Absent mons cover, her pelvic region was not distinguishable from her forehead.

Cultivating a new growth was a revealing decision providing a glimpse of her business acumen. Apparently, her motivational researchers had discovered the market value of silky blonde pubic hair.

Inconsequentially, I wondered if the Blonde of legends was launching a counter offensive. Had the Blonde as a genre decided to reclaim the pride and power lost in the culture wars past half century? I made a note. Could be a seminar question.

Until five years ago, Sophie fiercely had defended her ancestral taboos and mores. She had exemplified Christocentric propriety without equal. Often, she had defended her decision to become a poorly paid assistant district attorney with the confession that she was "holding the fort on core values."

At this moment, however, she sat in the chair of the accused and seemed oblivious of the fact that this court's judgment could send her to prison for 20 years. Furthermore, she had not denied that she systematically paid experts to create and promote her identity as the iconic universal whore.

Perhaps her lawyers could argue that Sophie had failed to meet the four-square definition of a panderer. They could not, however, deny that, on her thousands of billboards, she had flagrantly demanded that women "sell pussy by the illusion, dream or pound."

Globally, across the Great Plains and from the corners of the earth, Sophie McPherson's scrubbed, wholesome façade radiated her beauty from billboards and public posters. Her message: "Whore Beauty, the true essence of civilization."

Condom Delights Forever, LLC, had become a hallmark of the 21st Century cultural achievement. Ardent patrons called my wife's global business complex "Con Del," and religiously lived by her published "Articles For The Good Life." More to the point, Con Del marketed sex in all of its infinite guises.

When this court convened, all that Con Del represented would hang in the balance. These felony charges called into question the "reason for being" of Generation "X," Generation "Y" and The Millennials.

My wife savored the attention of the throng, ever radiating freshness and purity, changing her position theatrically, crossing and uncrossing her legs to attain the most perfect erotic up skirt effect. Sophie made the defendant's table her stage as she bared a nipple or opened her knees with the intent of flashing her pudendum.

In her best selling video, "Culture Classes," Sophie advocated "flashing 'P' for health and social effect." Her "Pudendum Personality Tours" sold out 12 months in advance.

Next to Gold Condoms, iridescent miniscule thongs were her most popular and profitable items, adding $100 to her global gross with each tick of the clock. Her award winning Vagina Calendars were coveted by galleries and collectors and could be obtained only as gifts from Sophie personally after purchase of a Gold Share.

At that moment, as we awaited the arrival of the judge, the prosecutors, bailiffs and court clerks had gathered around Sophie. She was demonstrating her artistry and technique in displaying her thong.

Having removed her thong from her purse and waved it for all to see, she had hiked her skirt and wiggled her naked butt before slowly pulling the thong up her legs and wedging the narrow strip of red silk into her cleft.

It was the same thumb sized vagina cover that her catalog listed at $189.95, ten dollars more if ordered in peppermint flavor.

Sophie was shrewd.

Pathetic more than ironic, the scene brought into relief the contradictions, paradoxes and absurdities plaguing the true believers toiling to maintain Western Civilization. Could it be that the only system of beliefs dedicated to classless freedom as a common denominator always would hang by an errant pussy hair?

Any adverse ruling by this judge would threaten the "Sexual Revolution." All of those 20th Century street battles won by existential nihilists since 1960 would be rendered naught.

My adult son and daughter, both doctoral candidates in prestigious fine arts graduate schools, sat apart from me across the aisle witnessing the opening day of their mother's trial. They were studiously Stoic. Their wooden faces had been awarded as symbols of academic commitment to the deconstruction of Jeffersonian America.

We had not spoken since Annie had made a joint venture of her classical piano and selling pussy for her mother. Standing idolized along side her mother as the world's second most revered woman had confirmed the material wisdom in her decision making. She adored Sophie, recreating her mother's image to perfection and meeting my objections with fierce defiance.

Fortunately, the kids could become insentient at will. They apparently reserved their aesthetic profundity for the narrow confines of their rehearsal chambers, classrooms and performance halls. Of course, I could only speculate about this from a distance.

Beatrice Malone, the ex-wife of Sophie's stud, had asked me to review the arcane charges with her. The freaky nature of the judicial progress to that moment had left everyone in somewhat of quandary. Federal courts did not hand out score cards.

Prosecutors had alleged that Sophie's billion-dollar sex business was in fact nothing more than "ill disguised pandering." The indictment charged that Sophie met the model law's descriptions of both a prostitute and manager of prostitutes.

Individually and as chairman of the board and CEO of Condom Delights Forever, LLC, Sophie and her associates had operated across state lines thereby violating The Mann Act, officially entitled The White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910. Subsidiary charges ranged from selling dope and money laundering to lying to an FBI agent.

Not of the least significance was the probability that an adverse ruling by this court could land many bus loads of pot growers in Oregon and California in federal prison. In effect the fundament of 21st Century's gross national product was puckering.

It was courtroom drama on the cutting edge. Every pot grower, pot head, crack head, opioid vendor and sex worker on The Pacific Rim had jammed into the courtroom. This mob was elitist, including all levels of the world's media and entertainment types.

Suddenly silence descended. We realized that the Judge had taken her seat on the bench. She lightly tapped her gavel and nodded toward the lead prosecutor.

PROSECUTOR: "During the past four years, Sophie McPherson has created a business of selling sex; and she has conspired to evade laws that criminalized both individual and corporate prostitution, Your Honor.

"And the state will offer evidence that Sophie McPherson, aided and abetted by Dr. Frank Malone and 19 unindicted coconspirators, was the global leader of whores. In this role, Your Honor, we allege that Sophie McPherson laundered illicitly gained profits from the sale of prohibited drugs.

"We will prove that at the time of the criminal violations, Sophie McPherson, a former prosecutor, was Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Condom Delights Forever, LLC, the incorporated illicit enterprise. We are ready with our case in chief, Your Honor."

JUDGE: "Is that your opening statement?"

PROSECUTOR: "Yes, Your Honor."

JUDGE: "Does the defense have an opening statement?"

DEFENSE: "We have a petition, Your Honor. We move that all charges be dismissed, Your Honor."

JUDGE: "Very well! Case dismissed! This court stands adjourned."

PROSECUTOR: "You can't do that."

JUDGE: "I just did."

Sophie was shrewd.

**********

OF WHORES AND THOSE

WHO CONSIDER WHORING A JOKE

(As it all began four years earlier. Retro scroll, please.)

Friday the 13th and it's 5:50 p.m. in the same kitchen where ten hours earlier Sophie McPherson had casually told her husband, Grant, that she was "going to get fucked this afternoon."

Shoulders only slightly sagging, Grant sat watching his wife, his face grimly set.

They were drinking coffee, and Sophie was smiling. The scene was exactly the same as ten hours earlier except that Grant McPherson held a manifold of legal sized documents. He asked tonelessly if she had fucked her other men that afternoon.

"Want to see?" Sophie asked coquettishly, arising as she lifted her skirt.

"I see they stole your thong," Grant said unemotionally. "Nice gangbangers you service."

"What's with the word pile?" the surprisingly insolent wife asked, gesturing toward the papers he held. All the while she continued to smile as if basking in the aftermath of victory.

"It's a plan for our future," he said as he arranged the papers.

"Dissolution of Marriage petition?" she asked, giggling discordantly. "You are wasting our time, my dear husband."

"Divorce would make it too easy for you," Grant said as he shoved the documents across the table and offered her a pen.

Revealing no emotion, he said, "Sign this."

"I don't want a divorce," she said. "I love you and my kids and my home more than life itself."

"Sign the damned agreement and live up to its provisions," he said, continuing to speak without intonation. "Or haul your skanky ass out the front door and never look back."

"According to this I must fuck three men each Friday night and three more the following Saturday night," she mumbled as she read, continuing to smile thinly. "What! I'm to bring home a $500 cashier's check from each man and deposit it in an account to pay college tuition?"

"Getting tested weekly for STD's and never bringing your studs to this house are also party of the program," Grant said, staring at his wife with a strange calculating intensity.

Now she was laughing uproariously.

Disconcerted in the extreme, Grant had begun to sense that his miscalculation could invite catastrophe. His assumptions about her reaction to his ridiculous ploy apparently had proved to be disastrously wrong.

Grant had been convinced that in the first instance she would rip the document into many pieces. By this time, according to one trend of his speculation, Sophie should be stomping her feet and screaming curses, accusing him of unforgivable disrespect.

This was not happening.

According to his knowledge of her, he had predicted that ultimately, after an obligatory tantrum or two, she would apologize sincerely and plead temporary insanity. He was ready to outline the steps to forgiveness, even at the price of being called a cuckold.

To Grant's engrossing horror, his wife had shrugged and accepted his burlesqued invitation. She would become a whore without foregoing status as a wife and mother.

Sophie signed the first document with a flourish of the pen. Then she appraised her husband wide eyed for a moment, shrugged and snorted derisively as she signed all nine sheets.

"There!" she said signing on the dotted lines and initialing all of the checked squares. Pushing the papers across the table toward him, she glanced at her watch. She gulped the last of her coffee and pushed the chair back urgently.

"Got to go!" she said huskily. "I'm going to be late."

Grant stared vacantly at the completed agreement. He was speechless as he watched her gathering her purse and keys. She opened her purse, checking to see that her cosmetics and cell phone were inside.

Lifting the condom box from her purse, she held up three fingers. He could see that only three of the twelve Trojans remained.

"It is a joke!" he shouted. "Tell me that this damned mess is a joke!"

"I'll be very late," she said as she strode through the hall to the garage. "Don't wait up."

Sophie was shrewd.

**********

IT'S 7:00 A.M. SATURDAY THE 14th

Chopin invaded my consciousness by the time my feet hit the floor in the guest room Saturday morning. Annie, my perfect daughter, was rehearsing for the day's gratuitous practice recital.

Annie would perform once more for a civic club. This event, however, would bring all of the service organizations together at the Commerce and Entrepreneurs' Union luncheon.

Ironically, her mother, Sophie, who had giggled and shrugged 24 hours earlier when I had called her a whore, would be the featured speaker. Neither Annie nor I could know that her mother's speech that day would change our lives forever.

My son, Buddy, would accompany his sister dutifully. But Buddy was an arranger who possibly would mature into a composer. Buddy was a music mechanic who could play any instrument in the symphony orchestra with competence; but his genius germinated in music theory.

Surprisingly, I awoke refreshed and ready for a day with my gifted offspring. They were to play a twin piano duet at the Leaders Day mixer. Buddy always chose an ambitious program for these affairs, today's effort consisting of the works of Beethoven and Chopin.

Inescapably, as my sleep dulled brain revived, my mind fastened on the next skirmish in my wife's preposterous "Pussy Wars." Essentially Sophie was waging war, an incredible assault on all my civilizing sensibilities.

At breakfast only 24 hours earlier, my petite spouse with the innocent blue eyes had announced casually that she had joined the "Pussy Brigade." She had blindsided me.

"Assistant District Attorney's do not parade in the streets with pussy hats on their heads," I had responded, completely unprepared for her declaration.

"I will participate in my first orgy today," she said unemotionally, carefully spreading strawberry jam on her bagel.

No mixed metaphors for my wife. Sophie, for 27 years the most brilliant, caring and reliable woman in the universe, had tossed the equivalent of a stun bomb.

"Grant, I'm going to get fucked this afternoon," she had said with the heedless nonchalance of a barroom stripper. "And I will be fucking other men in the future as the situation might apply."

Words flowing from her always symmetrically balanced intellect abruptly had assumed the character of madness as they dispersed into the air. Amazingly, there was no change in her poised demeanor or beautiful eyes.

These windows on the world through which she always had viewed life's great ironies gave no clues. For almost three decades, I could test my own perceptions through an evening of conversation with Sophie. Apparently, this bond had unbundled.

Sophie effectively had ended that incredible degree of harmonious existence. With one simple sentence she had triggered the avalanche of shock, doubt and fear that would smother the family.

"I'm going to get fucked this afternoon," she has said.

Preposterous! Absurd! Incredible! Had the world spun off into the black hole?

Then it dawned. Yesterday was Friday the 13th!

My wife had always been a prankster. She never humiliated anyone, but she was a born joker.

Obviously, Sophie had sprung an elaborate Friday the 13th joke on me. Yesterday had been Friday the 13th. Everyone had fun calling the 13th "bad luck day."

Wouldn't that explain my wife's mental aberration? She had been joking yesterday morning when she had looked me in the eye and casually had said, "Grant, I'm going to fuck other men."?

Sure! Now, that would explain everything. This morning she would be waiting in the kitchen sipping her coffee ready to say, "Fooled you. Had you going' didn't I?"

As I was soon to realize, that was a bogus euphoria. My brain began to function and my refined hubris returned. This was no joke.

Sophie had been as serious as a rattler aiming at a rancher's knee. Simultaneously and incongruously she had sworn that she loved her husband and children and would not agree to a divorce. But she intended to "fuck other men."

Complicating this scene, moreover, was the condemning fact that I had circumstantial evidence of an affair with a trusted friend and admired colleague. I'm damned if my wife wasn't going off the tracks in all directions at once.

As fate always decrees, marital tragedies float on unlimited subplots, some of them tangential. What about her betrayal with Dr. Frank Malone? She had been fucking the esteemed philosopher mathematician each Thursday while shopping and lunching Saturday afternoons with his wife, arguably her best friend.

Good Lord! Had I bookmarked that terrible message from the motel manager?

It seems that Sophie had left her cell phone in a motel room; and our land line's message machine had recorded the manager's dutiful call. Simplicity is the cheater's Nemesis, abiding the centuries of rational thought.

"You may claim you phone any time at the desk, Miz McPherson," the manager said. "And tell Dr. Malone he has a $112 credit to his account, and we apologize for the over charge of the room rate."

As an after thought, the unctuous voice reminded her and Frank of Thursday's reservation for Room 112. I had not ignored the inadvertent revelation of their corrupt behavior; but, obviously, I had failed to move quickly decisively.

Perhaps I had involuntarily sublimated the sleazy implications. But that was not my practice. Sublimation only confused the issues. Making the terrible only ludicrous instead of fatal has never preserved hope.