Chapter 2: The Letter
Every married woman has a secret hideaway for personal things. Jeni was no different. She reached into her lamp table drawer and pulled out that envelope she'd kept hidden for many years. Through the years, she developed a strange attachment to this letter. She hated it, yet she could not destroy it; it had a mysterious hold on her. This document had produced every kind of emotion in her that one could imagine.
Almost ten years ago, after receiving the letter she flew into a rage. She was ready to throw Matt out of the house, leave with the two children and file for a divorce. Luckily, for her this was not so easy. Matt was traveling out of the country and could not be reached. It gave her some time to settle down and think. She reflected on that period of time as she opened the letter and read for the umpteenth time.
Dear Mrs. Ekland:
I hope some day in the future you can read this letter and consider it a gift. Now you may consider it a terrible nightmare. I expect that after reading this that your first reaction will be to experience all of the devastating emotions a woman can experience...rage, revenge, jealousy, embarrassment, rejection, contempt...all of those feelings that drive good people apart.
Jeni read and thought...How dare someone else tell her how she felt?
You see, I'm older than you by, maybe, ten years. I mention these emotions as I have experienced all of them and realize that I made a huge mistake. I recently ran my husband off which later ended in a nasty divorce. I became the bitch from hell. He had to pay. Eventually, I didn't even like myself; but I was on a mission. I would be the role model for all scorned women.
Well I came to realize, too late, that the son of a bitch that I threw out was a pretty good MAN. He was pretty smart. The "fixed for life" fortune that I thought I was going to get was barely enough for me to raise our two children. He got himself a good lawyer and before the trail proceedings were over, one would have thought that I was the adulterer.
To his credit he maintained a good relationship with the children and made sure all of their needs were met...college included. His show of love for the children was one of the things that began to soften my bitterness toward him. Slowly we were able to rebuild a friendship the kids appreciated. Yet, I could not let go of his indiscretions.
He was an animal. By that I mean that if there was a pussy out there that needed scratching, he would be first in line. He felt it his duty to relieve the itch of any woman in heat. He had no shame or embarrassment about it. He never saw a need too. I could not accept that kind of thinking. From my point of view, he was mine. He was my property.
And yet, he was a contradiction. He would confess that he could not help himself and made no great attempts to restrain himself. On the other hand, he was discreet about his affairs in public. His opinion about sex was that it was a basic need that needed satisfying and that was the natural animal role of the male species.
I've often thought that was too lame of an argument for men to use.
He even suggested that on a less frequent occasion that women would need the same outlet and I believe that he would not have cared. He would observe that this type female behavior was normal in the animal world. He truly believed that to be the case.
I concluded that he was just an ancient thinking Neanderthal with a brain located at the end of his dick. Now I realized, somewhat reluctantly, that he was much more complicated that that.
I began to change my mind when I met Matt. I was an administrative assistant with Myer Construction and on many occasions we would travel to other nearby project locations.
It always pisses me off to read Matt's name in this letter.
I began to see the same animal instincts in this guy. He worked extremely hard and played hard. He viewed everything as a competition. I gradually became attracted to his maleness and began to realize that this is the "it" that appeals to the opposite sex. He was an alpha male. This "it" is the thing that we women have to claim for ourselves. We think we have to capture it and mold it into a domesticated possession. We see them as objects of reproduction with the qualities we would like to create in our young. How else are we to unleash those nurturing qualities that are born in us?
Often, and after we have the children, the stud flees in search of new flowers to pollinate and new ground to plant seed. We could care less about those sexy, stud-like qualities that attracted us in the first place. We have young to take care of. And when we lose the stud mate, we have to make ourselves attractive all over again but this time we could care less about his breeding-stock characteristics. We are looking for a well healed mate that can provide food, shelter and security for ourselves and our children.