Let me stress first that I do not recommend the method my wife and I used to patch up our marriage. But I do have to say it worked for us.
If my wife's friend Elaine hadn't used her bottomless well of sexuality - not to mention her tight, horny little body - to bring us back together, Debra and I would have more than likely gone through with a divorce neither one of us really wanted.
After almost 25 years of marriage, we sort of hit the wall. It wasn't really anyone's fault, or, more precisely, we were both equally at fault. I was an asshole and she was a bitch. I screwed around on her, and she retaliated by screwing around on me. It had always been a volatile relationship, made worse by the fact that I drank way too much.
The bottom line is I had an affair that lasted the better part of a year with a younger co-worker, a blonde divorcee who had become a close friend and a drinking buddy. When Debra found out, she got even with me by going out to bars four straight Saturday nights to meet other men - co-workers and such - who fucked her royally, then she brought home the evidence to throw in my face.
After the fourth time she came in at 4 a.m. stinking of sex, I'd had enough. I was drunk, having sat at the house - alone - drinking beer since coming home from work that night around 10, and we had a vicious row.
I'm ashamed to say that that night was the only time in my life that I ever wanted to hit my wife, she infuriated me so. But even in my inebriated state, I knew better than to do that. So rather than do something I'd regret for the rest of my life, I finally stomped out of the house, got in my car and drove smack into a sobriety checkpoint. Of course, I was arrested, and spent the rest of the night and most of the next day in jail before Debra finally bailed me out.
At that point, I realized that I needed help, with my drinking and with my marriage. The thing is, I never once stopped loving Debra. If I had, I wouldn't have cared what she did, and I did care. It hurt me, and I cared that I'd hurt her. I knew that if we were to survive as a couple, I needed to get away, get sober and get some treatment.
When I got home, we had a long serious talk, and we agreed to a separation. I packed my things, took a leave of absense from my job, and checked myself into a substance abuse treatment center, where I stayed for three months.
After I was released from rehab, around the first of July last year, Debra wasn't ready to take me back, so I moved in with my brother and his wife, and that's where the story really begins.
But first, let me backtrack a little and give you our background. I was born, raised and still live in a fairly large Midwestern city. My name is Al Johnson, and only under extreme duress will I admit that my given name is Alfred.
I had an older sister who was killed in a car crash a number of years ago, and I have two younger brothers. My dad was a mail carrier with an ego and a heart as big as all outdoors, and my mom was a nurse named Betty.
My dad's name was Alfred Murray Johnson Jr., and he was damn proud of it. Unlike me, he liked the name Alfred. He used to call himself Alfred the Great, usually accompanied by his big booming laugh. One of the ancillary tragedies of my sister's death was that he hardly ever laughed like that afterward. He died of a heart attack six years ago, and I think it was a broken heart from grief, because he and Sis were really close.
Anyway, nobody was surprised that I was named Alfred Murray Johnson III, and I hated it. The one good thing about it, though, like that kid in "A Boy Named Sue," it made me pretty tough. It seemed like at the start of every year in elementary school, some punk would tease me with a chant of "Allllll-fredddddd," and I'd punch their lights out. After a couple of times, they'd leave me alone and call me Al, the way I wanted, and everything would be fine the rest of the year.
Of course, the neighborhood where I grew up wasn't any place for wimps. It wasn't exactly the inner city, but it wasn't suburbia, either. Fortunately, all of us boys grew up to be pretty sturdy. I'm 6-1 and weigh in now at 225, and I'm blessed with a metabolism that allows me to eat anything I want without really getting fat. The 40 extra pounds I carry now over my weight in my youth are the result of a dedicated love of beer that ultimately landed me in trouble.
I met Debra Potts in sixth grade, and we had an on-again, off-again relationship all through junior high and high school. Truth is, we were both in love with each other from the start, but we're both pretty headstrong and stubborn, so when we weren't fucking, we were fighting.
That continued into our college days, at the large local university, until one afternoon late in my sophomore year. Debra called me and told me we had to talk. We had been back together this time for about six months, and, as usual, we'd let our passion run wild.
This time, though, there was no off-again for us. Debra was pregnant, and since she was at the time a pretty staunch Catholic, abortion was out of the question. The solution, then, seemed pretty simple. We got married, and at age 20, I had a wife and a child on the way.
After our daughter was born, Debra went to work while I finished my degree in journalism, then I went to work for the local paper and helped put her through business school, in accounting. We had a son about three years later, and that was it. Debra had her tubes tied, and we settled in as a rather boisterous, sometimes contentious family.
I stayed at the paper, working as a sports writer, and Debra worked for a large company in the accounting department. Eventually, the kids grew up and when our son left to go to college, it was just the two of us again.
Now I've always been a touch jealous where Debra was concerned, as she was with me. Any man would have been, because she's always been a knockout. She's tall, about 5-9, maybe 5-10, and well-built, with a healthy pair of 36Ds that are an immediate attention-grabber and a nice ass that is meaty, but firm. She's got thick, dark brown hair that she's always worn pretty long, and big brown eyes set perfectly in a pretty face.
I've always been considered good-looking, sexy even, and I never had trouble attracting women. I've got brown hair - or did until it started turning gray on me - a thick moustache and steel-blue eyes, and I now have to wear glasses all the time.
I'm not going to dwell on the affair that triggered our marital trouble. It happened, and I was honest about it when Debra found out and confronted me on it. I offered to move out, but she said no, and I should have been suspicious that she was planning to avenge herself by fucking other men on the side and rubbing my nose in it.
Whether my staying or going would have made a difference, though, is questionable. I personally think my affair gave her an excuse to do what she'd been wanting to do for awhile anyway. She was always telling me about all these men at work who were hitting on her, and I think it finally started getting to her.
