Remember that scene in The Godfather when Michael Corleone sees a beautiful woman in Italy and kind of goes into a stupor? His two Sicilian bodyguards see it and start talking about how he's been hit by "the thunderbolt" and he's lost in love.
That's not just a made-up movie thing. I've seen it first-hand, although at the time I wasn't aware of what it was. It happened to my wife. Unfortunately for me, it didn't happen to her upon meeting me. It happened with another man 25 years after we were married, and was the beginning of the end of what I thought was a perfect life.
I'm getting ahead of myself. I do that when I think of my former life and how things were supposed to go, but didn't. I suppose I should start at the beginning, and introduce myself.
I'm Allan Gregorson; everyone calls me Greg. I'm 50 years old and I live in a small Midwestern city about two hours from Chicago. I'm an accountant for a pretty big national firm. It's kind of mind-numbing work, but the pay is great and, with the exception of March and April, the hours are usually right on the money at 40, with no weekends.
I was married up until two years ago. My ex and I had one child together, a daughter, Morgan, who's 25, married, has one child, and lives in Denver.
My ex and I wound up a divorce statistic after 26 years of marriage, the first 25 of which I thought were wonderful, as I already told you. I met Traci at Iowa State University in Ames, IA, in the fall of my sophomore year. She was also a sophomore, but had transferred into my dorm after her freshman year in another dorm. I spotted her lithe, athletic body outside the dorm, lying on a towel soaking up some of Iowa's strong August sunshine. I was walking into the dorm with some friends when I spotted her out of the corner of my eye.
"Guys, I gotta go. I'm about to introduce myself to the future Mrs. Gregorson," I said, not entirely in jest.
The two friends I was with followed my gaze to Traci.
"Wow," said one of them. I heard the words, but I couldn't tell you which one of them was talking. I was totally taken with this blonde goddess lying on a towel in a bikini off to the side of the dorm.
I just left my two friends and went over to introduce myself, but when I got about four feet from her, she got up on one elbow and starting waving me off with her other hand. I was crushed, until she spoke up.
"Hey, dumbass, you're in my sun!"
I immediately jumped about a foot to my right, which allowed the sun to fall back onto my goddess. She lit me up with a megawatt smile, and at that moment I might have committed any crime she wanted me to.
"Much better, dumbass," she giggled.
She didn't seem uncomfortable with a strange guy approaching her. I guess when you look like that it probably happens all the time. I introduced myself to her, told her I thought she was beautiful, and asked her out on a date for the next Friday night.
"If I say yes will you wipe the drool off of your chin?" she asked coyly.
"Wh-what? Yes, the drool, the drool. Sure, gone immediately," I responded like a lummox in heat.
"Well, I can definitely see you're not one of the slick ones with a line for everything, so sure, we can go out on Friday night."
I got her phone number. We hit a small Italian place in Ames that Friday night, and while I sat there like a lovestruck puppy, she proceeded to tell me everything about her life from the time she was 3 years old until the present. I think she only stopped talking because the main course was finally served.
We just seemed to click, and inside of a month we were together almost constantly during our free time. Not only was she smart (she was her high school's valedictorian) but she had a puckish sense of humor and a quiet confidence.
I felt I was a decent-looking guy, nothing world class, but I was fairly athletic (seven varsity letters in high school), smart (top five in my high school), and I could carry on an intelligent conversation about a broad base of topics. Although as Traci pointed out I wasn't one of those guys with a slick line for everything, I was pretty confident in myself. But I knew I was reaching way over my pay grade when I asked her out. Hey, you get nothing if you don't ask, right?
Traci and I had our first sex on our sixth date. Neither one of us were virgins, but I know I hadn't had more than a handful of partners to that point, and I kind of got the impression that it was the same thing for Traci. But despite my relative inexperience, I had a secret weapon: I actually read the articles in Playboy, not just looked at the pictures. A lot of those articles focused on sex and pleasing a woman, not just having sex to get your rocks off. I paid special attention to those articles; some I read twice. Not a lot of men were doing oral sex on women in the '70s and '80s. I made it a staple of my lovemaking, and judging by the number of screaming orgasms I was able to get out of a woman, I must have been pretty good at it.
A major thank you here to the late, great Hugh Hefner. Not only did he have the best nude women in his mags, but I was introduced to great writers like John Updike and Alex Haley and was also taught that sex is a two-way street.
Traci and I got married soon after we graduated. We both found jobs easily, she as a third grade teacher and me as an accountant. We had good solid incomes, bought a house a couple of years later and had our only child, a daughter, almost a year to the day we moved into the house.
Life was good. Our sex life, while not being anything wild, was varied and plentiful enough for both of us, although like many couples, time and age does take its toll on the frequency. Still, when Morgan left for college, we were still going at it with gusto three or four times a week.
Through the years, I had my moments where I worried about Traci being true to me, but those were very few and far between. Like she might say something about one of the new young teachers in her school being a little flirty, but she never gave me any indication that she ever responded back or anything went further, so I always attributed that to my own paranoia. I mean, I'm not blind, the woman is still hot, and I couldn't blame any man for at least taking another look at her - but just a look. There's no sharing in my world. I made that quite clear to Traci way back when we first became exclusive. She responded in kind, telling me she felt the same exact way. She didn't mind if I looked at another woman, but if there was ever any touching, there would be hell to pay. I was more than OK with that.
And that's the way things were until three years ago.
We were at the annual summer party put on by our neighbors three doors down in our trendy neighborhood. Scott and Wendy Harris always put on an all-day bash at their place the weekend after the Fourth of July. Traci and I attend every year, as do most of the neighbors on the block, and we always have a great time. Scott and Wendy are excellent hosts, the food and booze are great, they have a large in-ground pool and a sand volleyball court. Even the outsiders they invite are good people ... with one exception ... but again, I'm getting ahead of myself.
The party starts at noon, and Traci and I wandered over about 1. I went to the bar, got a white Zinf for Traci and a Michelob for myself, and we started mingling, at first together, then we separated as we each got absorbed in the various conversations going on both inside and outside of the house. Never an issue before ...
Every now and then I'd check back in with Traci to see if she needed a refill, a plate of munchies, whatever. Sometimes she would find me. We usually left each other with a quick peck on the lips.
I was talking with a group of male neighbors and Traci was just across the yard talking with a group of women, when a small group of outsiders showed up in the yard. It was a man with two women, and Scott went up to greet the trio. And that's when I saw "the thunderbolt" hit Traci. After looking at the new trio, I just happened to look at Traci, who had stopped talking to her friends and was intently watching the new people, with a look on her face that I can now say was a cross between amazement and pure lust. I really didn't have a clue as to what kind of look it was at the time, only that she looked awestruck, and I have to admit my "spider senses" started tingling. She watched the trio for about 10 seconds, then she turned in my direction, spotted me, looked me directly in the eyes, and blushed a deep red. She then turned back to her friends and got involved in the conversation again.
Did you ever get one of those funny feelings that things aren't quite right with the world, but you can't put your finger quite on what's not right? That's the feeling I got about an hour later, and I didn't feel any better when I scanned the yard and couldn't find Traci. I went to the bar and picked up a white wine for her and started to wander around, and finally found her in the Harris's den with four other people, including the guy who Traci had been gawking at earlier. In fact, he had his arm casually draped around my wife's back, with his hand resting on her right hip. That looked way too comfortable for me, especially considering she had apparently just met this guy, and the five of them seemed to be in friendly conversation.
I'm confident in myself and was completely trusting of my wife, and I didn't want to cause a scene, but I felt this was just a little too hands-on for the newcomer. I approached the group from behind Traci and her new pal, and I put a solid grip on his wrist as I removed it from her hip.
"I don't believe we've met yet, despite the fact that you obviously feel way too comfortable with my wife," I said with a hard edge to my voice.
He started to spin away from me, but the death grip I had on his wrist prevented him from going anywhere. Traci, who appeared to be flushed before I went up to the group, got even redder when she realized I was right there.
"Oh, Greg, please!" she kind of squealed when she realized I was squeezing the offending wrist. "Greg, this is Charles Delane, he teaches European literature at the college. He started there last year. He's French, he didn't do anything out of line, so I just left his hand where it was."
The others in the group were nodding their assent, so I let go of Charles' wrist and grabbed his hand in a firm handshake, crushing a few of the middle hand bones together as I did so. Traci then introduced me to the others in the group, kind of like an afterthought.
"Thought you might need a refill," I said to her as I handed her the glass of wine while looking directly at Charles.
"You are so considerate, my dear husband," she replied.
Charles - pronounced the French way - "Sharl" - looked like typical Euro-trash to me. I have to admit he was a fairly good-looking guy of about 32, about 6 foot tall and 170 pounds, with a three-day growth of a spindly beard and was somewhere between having long hair and needing a haircut. He had the full French accent on his English, and I thought to myself that he was probably sleeping with half of his students - both the females and males. After the introductions, he went back to expounding on Victor Hugo or somebody, and satisfied that I had made my presence felt, I wandered back outside to the yard.
Traci and Charles made it to the back yard for the start of the sand volleyball. I was always a major player in these games, and as we played "winner's court," my team spent a lot of time playing. We always had a pretty good crowd watching from the safety of the deck, and that's where my wife settled with Charles right next to her. I was a little busy with what was going on in the games to pay a lot of attention to the pair, but I did notice a lot of hand and arm touching, smiling, and an occasional blush from my wife. I would occasionally wave over to her, and she would wave back.
