April Fool

Next thing I knew, I was attacked by an irate Bernie.

"You lowlife!" she shouted, causing a certain amount of attention. "How could you humiliate Tom like that?"

"Payback." I said.

She stared at me and then the penny dropped.

"So I can't play jokes but you can?" she snarled.

"That was payback for helping you last time. I don't play jokes on my friends if they don't play them on me. Where's your sense of humour?" I relished that last comment!

That was the end of the argument. Once again I got the cold shoulder at home for a day or two, then gradually things thawed. Her lingerie got more flimsy and eventually relations were resumed. You should see some of her underwear! On second thoughts, perhaps not.

And Tom? He came to me one evening in the pub and apologised. He hadn't thought about the effect from the other side.

It was two weeks before Bernie's and my wedding when Tom came back to me with a worried look.

"Seth," he said as we got our pints. The women were in the throes of wedding preparations and we had agreed we were better off out of it.

"I've got to warn you. Bernie is planning one last trick before you finally get hitched."

"I don't believe it!" I said. "I warned her what would happen if she tried anything else."

"She's planning it for your party. She reckons it'll be too late by then for you to back out. She did solemnly promise no more after that."

"So why are you telling me?"

"She wants to enlist my help. She reckons I'll want revenge after your trick at the party," he grinned, "but I know how I felt, and I'm not going to put you through anything like that again."

"So what's her plan?"

"She's going to make a video. It's for late on in the party. I'm supposed to video her and I think, John, as they go into your bedroom. Then the scene will change to them both in bed dressed, but under the covers and simulating him humping her. Once they've 'orgasmed' they relax for a few seconds -- long enough for you to get really angry, then they jump out of bed and shout 'Gotcha!'"

"So this video will play at the party?" I asked. "Late on -- in front of all our friends, the lot?"

"Yep!" he answered.

"OK." I said, a plan forming in my mind. "This is what we do." I gave him a key to the house, and went to find John.

Three days before the wedding, I had my stag do and Bernie had her hen party. Not the night before, because there was a meal for family at our house. Not two nights before, because we had a mixed party for friends -- no kids allowed.

My stag do went off relatively quietly. We drank rather too much, even though we knew there was another party the next night. At the time we thought we were quite restrained. After the stripper had been and danced all over me, Tom came in and told me he had a video to show me, or rather two videos. We waited until the party finished before going to his place and viewing the two masterpieces.

The first video was for Bernie. It began to play.

Tom had deliberately made it to look as if a rank amateur were following Bernie and John, who everyone knew was hung like a horse. The picture bounced and twitched. They were in our house and going up the stairs with their arms round each other.

"Just this once," she said to John, "I must have that huge thing in me before I settle down with Seth."

"You'll get it all right, baby," scoffed John, "but you might not be satisfied with Seth afterwards!"

John and Bernie were seen entering the bedroom, and then the scene abruptly changed to one showing the bed.

John's head and bare shoulders were seen and he was obviously shafting Bernie quite hard. I had to admire his simulated action!

"Oh yes, yes, yes John!" she cried.

"This is how you like it isn't it Bernie? My cock stretching your tight little pussy?"

"Oh yes, John, harder, please harder. You're so big!"

And so on until with yelps and cries they orgasmed together.

After gasping and sighing for a short while, they both sprang out of the bed. John, stripped to the waist and Bernie fully dressed in jeans and teeshirt.

"Gotcha!" they shouted at the camera.

"Bernie wants to give you this message, after the trick," said John to the camera, "that she promises solemnly that this was the last joke. She will never ever play a practical joke on you again."

I nodded, "That's so true, but too late."

Tom laughed and played the second DVD. It was exactly the same as the first one, until the point where they rested for a moment. Then two short scenes were carefully edited in. Tom had done a masterful job: you could hardly see the join.

The next evening the party went roughly as parties do, people milling around, people talking, drinking, eating and dancing to various styles of music.

Tom came to me. "I managed to switch the DVDs. Bernie was very pleased with hers. I'm supposed to come to you and tell you I have a DVD to show, an early wedding present from a well-wisher.

Bernie's friends had done their job and a crowd gathered in the living room to watch it on the big screen on the wall. There was a good deal of muttering, knowing looks in my direction, secretive grins and giggling. It was clear most of the folk there knew something was afoot. I smiled innocently at Bernie. She smirked at me.

So the DVD began to play.

"Ooh," said Bernie, "What am I doing here?" as the pair on the screen climbed the stairs. Everything went quiet, and I affected a hostile stare at Bernie. She grinned.

When the scene shifted to the bed, there were catcalls and cheering, and I heard a few comments using the word cuckold. I made as if to stand up, which caused more merriment as Tom pulled me back down.

The orgasms were greeted with applause, and then there was quite a prolonged pause. Bernie looked surprised, as well she might, the pause was much longer than on her DVD.

Then instead of the two bounding out of bed, John filled the frame as he got out of his side of the bed naked, his substantial cock at half mast, and wandered off screen presumably to the bathroom.

We had suborned him to do this when on his own in our bed. He was something of an exhibitionist, and had no qualms about appearing naked: with his equipment that was not surprising. He had stroked himself to half mast and then got out of bed.

There was a murmur of worry from the previously cheerful crowd, and a good number of glances my way. Bernie looked horrified, but there was worse to come.

The camera abruptly changed scene to Bernie's side of the bed. For me, who knew the next scene (we had filmed it ourselves about six months before for our own enjoyment), it was obviously filmed at a different time, but no one else would notice.

On the big screen, in full view, Bernie smiled at the camera as she climbed out of bed naked, and obviously just fucked. She stood with her legs apart, and put her hand to her sex, middle finger extended under her. The picture froze and the image remained of her in that pose. She would remember when she had done that for me some months before. For everyone else, she had just been fucked by John for the benefit of her husband to be.

There was dead silence. Bernie suddenly shouted in anguish, "Turn that fucking thing off!"

Tom pressed play and the screen went blank except for one word. "Gotcha!"

"What's up, Bernie?" I mocked. "Can't you take a joke?"

She burst into tears.

I continued in the shocked silence that followed. "You remember, I hope, what I said the last time you tried to humiliate me? If you ever tried to do anything like that again, the wedding would be off.

"It's off.

"Perhaps you understand now how I felt when you played your stupid tricks and made me look a fool. You can explain to the family why there's no wedding. Why not play them the DVD? I'm sure it'll give them a good laugh. Good bye Bernie, have a nice life!"

With that pandemonium broke out, and Tom and I left the house and went to his place, where Ann, looking sombre as well she might, made us some coffee and allowed us to unwind.

It was late; time for bed really, but the house phone rang. We all knew who it was.

I know conventional wisdom turns off all phones and refuses all communication, but in fact what Bernie had been doing wasn't all that serious. It was just that I couldn't face a lifetime of humiliating tricks and if I'd allowed that one, I thought I would never be free of them. I personally didn't care if I got married or not, but I did love Bernie very much, and therefore I was torn.

On one hand I couldn't live with a trickster; on the other, I really wanted to share my life with her. So when Ann picked up the phone and looked quizzically at me, I took the phone from her.

"Hello Bernie."

"How could you do that to me, Seth?" she asked. She didn't seem angry, just sad.

"Easy," I replied somewhat flippantly. "I had a good teacher. You displayed me naked to our friends, I did the same to you. You pretended to give a blow job, I made a video pretending you were really unfaithful."

"I'm sorry," she said. "I never meant to hurt you, you know. I do love you very much."

"Bernie," I said patiently, "I told you how much you hurt me. I told you I wouldn't put up with it any more. You agreed not to do it any more. You said I was worth it, then you tried to do it again. Well, it got up and bit you. Now you know the feeling."

There was muffled sobbing at the other end.

Listen," I said. "Get some sleep. Come to Tom's tomorrow and we'll talk."

"Does that mean--"

"No," I cut in. "I told you the marriage would be off if you tried anything. I meant it, but it doesn't mean we can't talk."

"You mean stay together?"

"Perhaps. It depends on what we decide when we talk."

"Thanks, Seth."

"Good Night Bernie."

----

Seth paused in his tale. I got him another pint and waited. He relaxed, drained half of it, and continued.

-----

OK, I can tell you won't allow me to leave it there. That could be seen as a poor practical joke [he grinned at me].

The marriage was off. She explained it to the families, and had a hard time, but was forgiven on my pleading that she'd been punished enough.

We had the reception and the party in the evening. After all we'd already paid for it. At both, Bernie apologised for causing the cancellation of the wedding. She said something like this:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, this will be the only speech. I played a number of humiliating jokes on Seth, and when he complained I always told him he couldn't take a joke. One joke was so bad, now I look back on it, that he threatened to end our relationship and the wedding if I didn't promise never to play a joke on him ever again.

"I promised. Then, well you all know what happened. I tried to play a last joke, and he turned it round on me. It was only then I realised how he had felt.

"So," here she went down on her knees. "I'm sorry Seth for all the tricks I've played. And for ruining our special day. I promise before all these people that I'll never play another joke on you, or anyone else."

I lifted her up. "I forgive you," I said, "and I promise to live with you as long as we both shall live, or until you play the next practical joke."

There was applause and some laughter.

We then solemnly cut the 'living together' cake, and drank champagne to our future together.

Well, she was true to her word. She never played another joke on me ever again.

Two years later she got pregnant, and I took her to the register office and we got married. We'd had the wedding meal and the party two years earlier. She cried all the way through the quiet ceremony, to the confusion of the registrar.

As I said, I can take a joke as well as the next man, but.

----

Seth paused and had another drink from his pot.

"But today?" I asked. "You were soaking wet. Surely that was a practical joke?"

"Today," he said, affecting solemnity, though with a wry grin, "a plastic bucket of water, placed over my study door drenched me to the skin.

"Mark, my oldest son, apple of my eye, only twelve years old mind, laughed and laughed, 'April Fool Dad!'

"Immediately I turned and looked accusingly at Bernie.

"'I had nothing to do with it.' she was laughing. 'It's April the First, All Fool's Day. All his own idea, must be in the genes!'

"'OK.' I said with a smile. 'I can take a joke!' and smirked at Bernie who was aghast at the hypocrisy of my comment. I did enjoy that!

"Then you rang the doorbell.

"I got dried and changed, and just before coming out, I made my son an apple-pie bed, and put the ink soap in his soap-box. I'm looking forward to bedtime."

Seth sat back with a serious though contented expression, as, like Bernie, I looked at him in some amazement.

Then a smile began to play on his lips and on mine.

"My round, I think," he said, going to the bar.