NOTE: After feedback from many of you (my thanks) it was clear this story was not finished. It could be read as a stand-alone tale but the context would best be understood if you read Chapters 1-5. This is still a story of healing, reconciliation and facing the demons that we all try to push-under-the carpet and try and forget. We never forget how we have been hurt (or hurt others) we can only do our best to be responsible for what we have done (or failed to do).
The teachings of Jesus tell us that faith, hope and love are necessary for people to live, especially when the world seems to crumble around them. Saints Peter and Paul go on to say that love, of the three qualities, is most important. Love is necessary for faith and hope. Faith and hope, without love, has little meaning. No, I'm not going to preach or praise the Lord. Getting "religious" is best left for another time and another place.
It is important, for me, that it took all the love in my being to have faith in Jocelyn and let hope back into my life. When I understood the power of that love it became relatively easy to extend my trust and have faith that our marriage was going to work, that we were beginning to grow and learn how to be "whole" as a family. It felt good as we learned from each other. As a result we began to talk frequently about what was (or wasn't) going on in our lives, what we were thinking and feeling, and sought ways to do things for one another.
Our conversations evolved into a "dialogue" of give-and-take, a real-life dialectic that moved us closer to acceptance and understanding. With my penchant for the analytical, some might call the predisposition for trying to see something that isn't there, as nothing more than a "mind game." Fritz Pearls calls this mental masturbation. Masturbation, in any form, was not where either of us wanted our lives to be reduced to. After all you don't need another person, by definition, to masturbate. You do need another person to love, have faith in and share your hopes and desires with.
This change in our lives took time. In fact it was almost a year following the time when I lost my job and Jocelyn found work as a model on an adult webcam site before we reached a comfort level that found a strength our marriage never had. To get to this point meant we needed to be more attentive to one another. This attention also needed to go beyond expressions of love, like making love, holding hands, kissing each other hello and good bye. It meant being able to mean what were saying and doing. Meaning then came from that deep-seeded belief that love was the driving force in our lives. With the love we would be able to withstand those stressors in life that threatened to tear us apart.
It is just such a stressor, a challenge, a force outside of our marriage that slammed into us a year later. I was, at least this time, better prepared to handle the stressor. Being better prepared, as a good Boy Scout is always prepared, does not mean I would deal with the event very well. There was a part of me, something so ingrained in who I was that I would need to understand first. This is a thing called ego. No, to be more precise, it is my male ego.
As a child I was raised by a career military officer and was always told it was important to "be a man", to be in control, to never let an opponent get the upper hand. When I fell off of my bicycle with skinned knees and palms my father ignored my tears and put me right back on the bicycle. When my grandfather put a pistol in my hand and told me to pull the trigger I dropped the handgun into the sand and cried. He picked up the handgun, cleaned it off, and made me empty the revolver, three times! I had to do this until I was not afraid and did not cry. When my father caught me smoking out by the garage at age 12 he did not yell at me. Instead he made me smoke an entire pack of cigarettes until I was so sick I never wanted to smoke again. There was little room for emotional outlets and little acceptance for anything that challenged what it meant to be a man.
Faith, love and hope were not part of my father's preparing me to be a man, to be in control, to be able to withstand crisis situations with strength and dignity. My father was, after all, a warrior who saw combat in Korea, World War II and Vietnam. He also died an unhappy alcoholic. For him, he died a soldier first, not a father. But he still had been my primary role model and I knew I needed to work on being able to accept adversity without my male ego getting in the way.
The crisis situation?
It was precipitated by the eruptive death of Jocelyn's parents who were killed in a car accident. It had been one of those late night drives down Ventura Highway when Jaclyn's parents were hit head on by a semi truck driver, who had fallen asleep at the wheel. The truck driver demolished the car Jocelyn's parents were in and jack knifed the truck in the process. The truck driver died also when the truck flipped, breaking his neck and back. When Jocelyn was arranging the burial for her parents she was also confronted with enormous financial debt left by her parents. They had a Living Trust that named Jocelyn so everything, including the debts, fell on her. This included her parents Santa Monica home, which had two mortgages, and the fact her father had lost their savings in a bad investment scheme. No sooner did we have her parents in the ground when creditors began to do their vulture-circle around our home, threatening to take everything we owned.
We found ourselves in a situation similar to the one we were in a year earlier only this time we were in this together. There were no secretes. It quickly became clear we would need another source of income, even though I was (am) making fairly good money as a hospital administrator. Working for a large hospital demanded I be available almost 24 hours a day which meant it was almost impossible for me to take a second job. Other than her work a year ago at the adult webcam site Jocelyn had little real-life experience. The economy was still struggling and it was not a good time for her to go back to school, that would take time and money as well. We needed a second source of income to keep the creditors away from our doorstep, at least for a couple of years.
It was a few days after our return from Santa Monica when Jocelyn and I sat down late one evening to evaluate our situation. I was a little surprised when she came out of the bathroom that evening for our talk. She was wearing a dark pink top that showed a hint of cleavage. She was also wearing a pair of dangling ear rings I'd given her a few years ago. The top she wore was more of a tank top that left her navel exposed a navel that was now pierced with a single rhinestone stud. Beneath the navel she had on a pair of thigh-high black stockings and a very sexy, but tasteful pair of black lace panties. She had not gained any of the weight back she'd lost a year ago by running almost daily. In fact we now usually ran together in the early morning to stay in shape.
I also had not noticed that the corner of our bedroom had been painted red with a bamboo design that was very tasteful. Jocelyn did not come to me as I sat in bed g, waiting, wondering how we were going to deal with the debt left by her parents. Instead she walked over the corner of the bedroom and switched on a halogen floor lamp. It was then I noticed that the corner had been wallpapered, not painted, with an oriental looking red print. It was pleasing to the eye and I was beginning to get an idea about what was to come. My stomach churned, as in knots, with the glimmer of what was about to unfold.
"Jocelyn, what are . . . . "
"Shessssh. Let me show you, and then we can talk." I immediately closed my mouth.
There was a large divan sitting in the corner, one of our favorites for napping in or sitting to read. In this way one of us would not to disturb the other while sleeping. We'd gotten to the point where the presence of the other person was important for peace of mind so it was easy for me to sleep in the room if she wanted to read before bed.
Jocelyn then wheeled the computer monitor and computer (on a fancy computer stand made of hardwood) facing the corner. When she did this I immediately knew what she was doing. I wanted to immediately say, no way in hell! But I stopped myself as I wondered how much of my reaction simply was my male ego or my twisted sense of pride. I needed to let her continue. I knew it important for her to at least complete her, show?
Once the monitor was in place she turned it on so that I could see the image that was on the screen. Jocelyn then sat down on the divan facing the couch and I realized how sexy a woman I was married to. Her stomach was flat and the stocking did a wonderful job of highlighting her white skin.
"See the image Bobby?"
I nodded my head yes almost choking as I realized how I was becoming excited.
"Bobby, you have to talk to me as if you were watching me from out there, in cyber space, OK?"
"OK" I was recalling how I had ambushed her when I discovered her webcam job over a year ago.
Could I do this?
"Hi."
"Hi." I said back to her.
"Are you lonely, hun?" She was now looking at the monitor and not directly at me or the monitor and I willed myself to play along.
"No. . . . I mean yes" I realized this was, in a sense, a role play.
