Saga Of The Shrewd Wife

They must have named this site "Literotica" for a reason.

If a piece of writing can be read literally, it is not literature.

(Pure fiction. Never knew anyone who resembled these characters. All descriptions of events and scenes are derived from common knowledge with no intent to identify or specify.)

ABSURDITY PERSONIFIED!

How it happened...

As I poured my wife's coffee that morning, she dropped her briefcase. Assorted business papers and personal items spilled and scattered over the kitchen floor.

Making a clownish effort, I grinned lasciviously as she squatted to begin retrieving the dispersed contents. I peeped between her legs and slid a hand under her dress.

She squealed in mock surprise as she seized my wrist and thrust my hand to the ultimate prize. Inadvertent sex would have started the day in perfect order under less foreboding conditions.

"Sorry, I can't be late this morning," she said, teasing me with her best seductive smile. "Let's get home early tonight."

As she squatted teetering on three-inch heels, we began to retrieve the items to be returned to her briefcase. I was making jokes about the corn chips, granola bars and mouthwash.

All possibly would have played out differently if she had not frantically shoved a small blue box behind her heel where the hem of her dress touched the floor. Her anxiety strangely deflated quickly, becoming a wooden defiance.

Trojans! Why was my wife carrying a box of 12 condoms in her briefcase? I had reason to suspect an affair, but a dozen rubbers raised the probabilities to an incredibly higher level.

It was suddenly a cold calculating instant frozen in time and space.

She met my eyes with a strange steady bead of an answering challenge. Fortunately, I was instantly numb and speechless.

My delayed response gave me a recovery interval during which I could find the switch for my brain and nervous system. Suppressing my instant anger was almost painful.

"Care to tell my what's going on?" I asked, pleased with my emotional control.

With artless efficiency my wife dropped her condoms into her briefcase and carefully snapped the lock. She regained her footing, smoothed her dress over her hips and affixed me with an inscrutable stare.

"I have a date for sex this afternoon," she said cryptically.

Sonia casually said that she intended to "fuck" other men. And I was being informed, not consulted.

"Fuck other men" was a contemporary metaphor for "stop the world and let my husband get off" if he doesn't want to watch. There was no need to ask. She knew my core beliefs.

She would be discreet. I would experience no change in our "wonderful relationship." Our marriage would gain in solidarity! I listened to her litany straight from the post modern woman's handbook.

My wife, Sonia McPherson, behavioral psychologist supreme, was assuring me, Grant McPherson, that I lived in the best of all possible worlds.

In no other era of history, she pontificated, had wives "enjoyed the freedom to fuck to their pussy's content with impunity." She actually belly laughed as she enunciated this nonsense.

Sophia had stuffed the last half of her toast into her mouth and gulped coffee as she quickly recovered her serious visage. Indulging her need, actually her right, to experience the "broader and deeper satisfactions of life" was separate and apart from our pledges and commitments.

Until that moment I had refused to crystallize my thoughts about her incredible plunge into adultery. I had forcibly held in suspense my undisclosed knowledge of her first step into debauchery.

I had refrained from drawing conclusions before refining what I thought I knew.

Of course, my knowledge of her having strayed was rudimentary until that point. But she now was most certainly filling in gaps and answering questions.

My mind drifted momentarily as I sipped my coffee.

As usual, I had learned of her initial treachery because of her failure to attend to detail rather than my fabled ESP. Nothing exciting. Just old Fate throwing the dice as Providence intended.

Simplicity perfected, the home message recorder snared her. The hotel manager unwittingly had tipped her infidelity when he called to say that she left her cell phone in the hotel room.

"Oh, and tell Mr. Malone he has a credit of $14," the manager had added. "The daily room rate was only $112."

I had discovered the failure to communicate when I routinely checked the message center intending to monitor and delete. I did not delete.

When I tuned Sophia in once more, she was reaffirming the profundity of her love for me. Oh, yeah, she loved me "more than sin." Having said that, she held her flat belly and laughed uproariously.

Well, she might have meant that she loved me at least as much as she loved sin. For the next 20 minutes she repealed all taboos and mores know to mankind. Again, I emphasize she was speaking for womankind.

Next, she would repeat her well rehearsed mantra as if to a slow learner, intoning distinctly that her foray into indiscriminate fucking need not end or even modify our idyllic domestic life.

Isn't that the 21st Century vernacular for "let your wife fuck around and keep a smile on your face?" Just accept your fate. Or else!

And don't forget the house payment. For reasons I have never questioned, though she topped my annual income by $40,000, I was fated to pay all bills.

Since I had compromised in late adolescence and left Gramps' fishing boat for academe, I was committed to maintaining this stupid supercilious professorial facade. We faculty males were compelled, on pain of losing our $160,000 a year pay-off, to agree that we were living in the Post Christian Era. We numbly recited the Nihilist creed upon demand. Post Christian men of letters must never controvert the wisdom of their betters, the women who ruled the campus.

And, as of this morning, I had learned that the strong libido of Lot's wife, Edith (Ado), the heroine of one my favorite erotica stories from the Bible, was alive and well. Lot's wife, the putative owner of bars, dance lounges and whorehouses in Sodom and Gomorrah, had transmigrated over the centuries. Her legendary salty heart now was beating hard and fast in my wife. I would never have argued the authenticity of the ancient story; but it had always served as an effective teaching device.

Like a doppelganger, the fabled wife of the man seduced by his daughters, had seized Sophie's fragile psyche. How many bon vivants had Lot's wife and Sophie banged and ganged?

All behavioral psychologists have fragile psyches.

Sophia's mind numbing declaration and demand hammered at my sanity as I drove to work.

It kept rattling around in my brain as I attempted to complete the commentary and guidelines for the graduate seminar. Try concentrating on "The Cultural Essences" after hearing that.

Had it been only an hour earlier that my loving wife of 27 years had stunned me with her core shattering pronouncement? Obviously, Sophia had made her declaration without realizing that I knew that she had become a cheating bitch. In her view of her drama,she had been ingeniously discreet.

During the preceding three weeks, I had literally agonized and wrestled with the question of what to do about my wife's betrayal. At the time of her threatening, though revelatory confession , I was already hanging on the moment of truth.

My questions had refined to two. Did I dump her ass as brutally as the situation permitted; or, did I take the counsel of the 21st Century conventional wisdom and "work it out"?

"Work it out!"

No way, Jose! I had acquired that poor man's proverb from Old Jose Greer, the ancient mariner who served as First Mate on Gramps' fishing boat for 25 years.

No one has ever cataloged all of the colorations and variants of thought that torment your consciousness when your wife tells you she intends to "fuck" other men.

When the icon of your existential reason for being cracks as you watch, you either put 9 mm slug in your brain or become a mindless warlord. I had not crystallized my decision until that tragicomedy unfolded in the kitchen.

It was time for work. Like a good grandson of an old sea captain who never shirked, I went to work.

I owed these nine soon-to-be doctoral candidates my undivided attention. Ironically, the four-month seminar would focus on identifying cultural trends that had jelled after Gloria Steinem had declared war on Western Civilization during a appearance on the Johnny Carson Show in 1968.

Sexuality had become the crank and wheel of arbiting the future of civilization. Apparently, my wife had decided to arbit our microcosm of the American dream in the bedrooms of others.

My opening remarks to my seminarian colleagues were obligatory. I would moderate and advise the investigative study.

I said, "Sexuality is the vital force of human existence. How you use it is your choice, free will some call it; and the degree and quality of your erotic knowledge, governed by your core values, seems to determine the depth and scope of your life's outcomes."

Then I paused and did the unforgivable for an academic. I humiliated another academic.

"And, Frank," I said casually, "my wife won't be available for fucking next Thursday; so you can save your $112 for the room at the Holiday Inn."

Gasps of shock circled the table. There was something else, however, in the eyes of Beatrice Malone. She turned sharply to Dr. Frank Malone, her husband. Murderous pain shot from her eyes.

"You had convinced me I was wrong, Frank," she said calmly. "What do you have to say now?"

Dr. Frank Malone was professor of applied mathematics and director of the prestigious new undergraduate program touted as a "marriage" of Computer Sciences and Electrical Engineering. Frank had obtained permission from the Dean to audit the seminar.

Strange! I almost felt sorry for the poor sombeech. Could he possibly perceive that what was left of him when his wife, Beatrice, finished would be my rancid fish to fry?

To be sure, my facile mind had shifted from "live life to the fullest but do no harm to others" to the methodology of planting two more pillars of salt in the desert north of Vegas.

Then, too, there was that story that Jose and Gramps loved to repeat. It seems that Captain McGee caught his loving wife in a sleazy bar with sleazy owners and sleazy patrons demonstrating oral sexual techniques.

So! The good Captain gave the lovers an opportunity to survive on a remote bar of sand somewhere near the Farralons. I don't think you can see the Golden Gate from there, even on a clear day; but they won't be annoyed by passing voyeurs. No one ever goes near that geographic coordinate. But the prolific rabbits and rattlers would entertain them incessantly.

"Don't fret, Frank," I taunted. "It's only next Thursday that Sophia won't be available."

I could see that I had lost Frank when I explained why Sophia would miss their Thursday fuckfest. Both my son and daughter would be competing next Thursday in a preliminary to qualifying for the Brand Cranston Piano competitions.

Dr. Frank Malone quietly pushed away from the seminar table and walked from the conference room without looking toward anyone. I knew that Frank would never suffer a moment of humiliation lightly. His calm response and retreat without reacting was self preservation, an immediate grip on damage control.

For those who have never partied in an academic seminar, language like that of my formal opening is necessary and useful. You are tinkering with civilization's building blocks. You must be all things in one while at the same time critically focusing and irrationally attempting to take the step into a frightening unknown.

Make the wrong assumption, and people die or worse. Think about "Global Warming." This pair of pranksters wrote a paper, and all hell broke loose. Did they stupidly stumble across an essence from hell, or...So soon do academics come full circle. They always gravitate from saints to sinners.

EVENING AT THE KITCHEN TABLE

We delayed the incredibly absurd face off. Sophie busied herself finding an exotic specialty of coffee. I studied the idiotic outline on my yellow pad, words that would, if she accepted, restructure the framework of our lives.

Adorable Annie practiced with the determination of an acclaimed pretender to the concert stage of riches and adulation. Oblivious to the insanity developing in the kitchen, Annie's gifted fingers and blessed soul filled the air with vibrant hope for mankind's advancement.

Womankind? I no longer knew what to hope for womankind. Of course, Annie was a beautiful woman, was she not. That's not fair, I warned Fate.

Fate was Mother Nature wearing a balaclava. We all know Mother Nature is a whore recruiter. Don't confuse the issues, Fate, you cuckold maker!

Strains of combinations of perfectly sounded notes emanated from her Steinway. We had maxed our limit at the credit union to find the $22,000 to buy the beautiful instrument.

Both Sophie and I were as proud of the imposing musical enigma as Annie. I was overboard, I know, in my casting it as the manifestation of Western Civ's highest achievement in the march toward the perfection of mankind. I had specified "mankind" consciously; because, at the time, I thought women were already God's example of perfection.

Though Buddy exhibited the same degree of talent and interest, he had favored the Mason & Hamlin that a neighbor was selling for only $14,000. Thank the gods for little favors. Forgive my dark humor. In truth I was happy that we had the money.

No one could believe that we had invested the equivalent of half of our combined annual earnings in such a low probability outcome. They pointed to the odds. Only one Van Cliburn had been crowned in 60 years of intense universal competitions.

It was a gamble worthy of a Vegas high roller, my friends allowed. True, I responded, but a winner in Vegas only has money. We have Tchaikovsky, Mozart and Chopin.

Coffee tends to get bitter and cools too quickly when loving wives and their husbands discuss fidelity or infidelity. Sophie warmed her thick brew as she indicated I was to perform first.

I had decided during the faculty meeting that I would never agree to a divorce. My perversity was flying high at that moment.

Sophie had surprised me that morning. Her intention to spread her legs for other men floored me; but her smug footnote that she would never agree to a divorce had truly thrown me off course.

Well! So be it! There damn well would be no divorce. What would she do, however, when she heard my terms.

I had also decided that I would never again drop my boxers in Sophie's presence.

"Unless you vacate the premises forthwith," I drawled as melodramatically as my limited talent permitted. "I shall impose a reinvented and more objective culture on my half of the family venture."

"Oh, goody!" she said derisively. "Old Faithful is going to try to get cute."

"I don't know how cute it will be," I answered flatly, "but if you hope to maintain our idyllic family image, you will accept and religiously follow my rules."

I articulated the Articles of Armistice: Number 1 . Sophie would have sex with at least three men Friday night and three Saturday night or one if it's an all nighter. Number 2. Sophie will occupy the master bedroom with exclusive rights. Number 3. I will build myself bachelor's quarters at the rear of the lot beyond the swimming pool. 4. None of Sophie's lovers will be welcome on our home property.

Watching her eyes, I could not guess what she was thinking. I had wagered everything on her being bitterly offended and shredding the document.

I continued reading: Number five. Neither of us will miss any celebration, school or church event or other activity involving the children unless both children give consent. Number 6. Since her income exceeds mine, we will share household expenses proportionately.

Now she was reading the capper. This would cause profound detonations of inestimable damaging force in her brain; and in refusing, she presumably would run screaming from the house never to return; or she would see the error of her ways and beg forgiveness.

My self destructing Final Requirement: "Sophie will deposit to a special account a check in the amount of $500 from the checkbook of each lover before each tryst. Failing to agree to this part of the contract or to deposit the money will be tantamount to agreeing to a divorce.

"Codicil: All rights are reserved including the right, conveyed by Sophie McPherson to Grant McPherson, to hold and submit all information, including pictures and videos, to persons of his choosing and the internet."

Would I grant her a reprieve? Hell no! To the curb she would go, bouncing on her butt all the way.

When she had read my format for our future, she blinked involuntarily, wiped her sweaty hands and poured more coffee. She watched me steely eyed over the rim of her cup.

"I accept!" she said, her voice strong but casual, almost flat and dispassionate. Without a doubt, she was pleased with this unanticipated development, my most brilliant ploy.

What the hell! She accepts! My silly bitch accepts!

"You can't be serous!" I croaked.

Obviously, she was a better poker player than I. She had called, and I had no hole card.

"Sombeech!" as Jose would say.

"I'm not leaving the family," she said emphatically. "Get ready for the sex circus."

Sophie quickly signed and dated the document.

My attorney had warned me this might happen. I had scoffed. Not a chance. Sophie's not that dumb.

"Well," my attorney had responded thoughtfully, "there are more frightening possibilities here than the prospect of your wife's being dumb." My mind must have drifted my attorney said that. I had heard his words, but his sage comment obviously had not registered.

"There!" she said. "We're all set."

Sophie grinned defiantly as she pushed the documents across the table to me.

She's got to be kidding. Has she lost her frigging mind?

I already had the yellow envelope with the divorce petition in my briefcase ready to serve. Of course, I could slide it across to her, but what effect would that conditional agreement have on the state of affairs?

What would a sane man with at least a 60 IQ do now?

TO BE CONTINUED

(The second part will be submitted in two days.)