Bombshell in the Berkshires

At first I thought the fallout would be insurmountable.

And for many weeks it seemed that way.

Opening the side door to our old New England farmhouse kitchen that late October Saturday, with sunset just around the corner, I was taken completely by surprise to see Barb standing by the window staring out into our backyard. She turned to face me when I entered, and the look she leveled at me said a galaxy of things. I was caught, the jig was up, and she was pissed.

I stopped and tried to collect my thoughts. I kept my voice low and even, but soft.

"I thought you wouldn't be back 'til later. I was just going to start up some dinner for us."

These were both true statements.

Barb's eyes were keen, on the verge of accusing, and they bored straight into me.

"I sent you a text, Clay. Rachel wasn't feeling well, and we called off our shopping early."

We looked at each other.

"But you were occupied." Meaning why I hadn't seen her text.

Her words and tone revealed that she knew a lot.

"I saw you. In the garage. In that Volkswagen van of yours."

She said "Volkswagen" like it was a hand grenade with the pin pulled.

"Roger's pants were off," she said in a flat voice. "You were between his legs. I couldn't see his penis, but your head was plastered to his crotch and moving around. I knew exactly what you were doing."

Her eyes got all strange and moist. She wiped the side of her left eye with the back of her hand.

"Clay. How could you? No wonder you two have been together so much."

She turned away, looked out the window again.

Barb is not typically an imposing woman. A couple inches shorter than me, and I'm not even that tall, she has never been lean, but forty years and a couple kids meant extra weight, and in our little rural town in the Berkshires she passed as sweet but unremarkable.

But she held herself well, and no one could doubt her essential kindness with a touch of backbone. Pointed chin, long narrow nose, a face normally graced with a wide big-toothed smile. Her shoulder length dark hair with a touch of silver was loose, not in its usual pony-tail, and she had even worn a long skirt to go into town.

I had gone and created a world of unhappiness for her.

I did not like that my hands were clenched shut. That my stomach felt awful. That the warm glow that had been coming from my penis not moments before, which Roger had pleased so nicely with his energetic wet tongue and lips, had evaporated.

Not for the first time in a crisis, my mind went numb. Words eluded me, but I knew they provided the only possible route to safety. Silence would have been the worst possible option.

"Barb. I'm sorry. Let me explain."

I stopped, while she still stood at the window, looking out. Her body was tense, unpleasantly rigid.

"Look, this is a bad move on my part. I still love you."

I meant this.

"I did not mean to hurt you. This is just one of those things that..."

"Betrayal!" She whirled and faced me with a ferocity I had only seen a couple times before in our twenty-plus years of marriage.

"Behind my back! Sneaking around! Doing sex with another... guy." She spat out this last word.

"Hey look, it's Roger. Not just 'another' guy."

She looked like she was going to say something, her face got all scrunched up, but her lips clamped shut. She held up a hand.

"Clay." This was a command. "We need to talk. A lot. But not right now. I'm too upset."

She turned away from me. "Get some dinner going and let me know when it's ready. I'll join you, but leave me be for the moment. I'll be upstairs."

She poured herself a glass of wine, and I heard her footsteps go up the old wooden stairs to our second story bedroom, sounding like the drumbeat at a dirge.

I made dinner, a decent fall stew with onions, potatoes, parsnips. My hands stayed steady some of the time while cutting the vegetables. I think one of the worst feelings in the world is when you have hurt someone, let them down, and you need to atone, make amends, not something I do very often or well.

I thought about every angle I might take in explanation. How I could outline the manner in which Roger and I had become an item, that it wasn't about cheating, or infidelity, it was just two married guys who'd found ways to make their cocks feel good. No harm, no foul. But nothing I said to myself sounded very convincing.

And then I thought about Roger. I was going to have a hard time with Barb, but once Carrie found out, there was going to be a lit stick of dynamite in the old Roger/Carrie marriage world. I felt my whole body tense up. Maybe Barb wouldn't spill the beans. Barb might manage this but not Carrie. But the moment I considered the chances of non-disclosure, I knew it would be inevitable.

At the kitchen table we ate in silence. Barb scarcely looked at me. Every noise in the room was magnified. Setting my knife down on the plate after buttering a bread slice. The wind rattling a loose window in its frame. The clank of a spoon along my bowl, fishing out the last bit of potato.

I stole a glance at her from time to time, thinking about our history together. Friends would describe her as a "horsey" sort of woman, down to earth, no-nonsense. She looked like she'd grown up on a farm, although she hadn't.

I had been thrilled when we got married, and our mutual enthusiasm went on for several years, diminishing a bit with our first-born Stephen. Then when Jon arrived two years later, life became more of a domestic Olympic long-distance event. But now it appeared I had thrown a big wrench into the marriage works.

Barb turned to me when dinner was done. "I'm going to bed. Please don't talk to me until tomorrow. But we need a conversation, Clay."

I was quiet and assented with a head nod, feeling contrite. I was at her mercy.

New Englanders are not known for dealing well with big emotions, and this certainly qualified.

That night was not a good one. Although our bodies were in the same bed, the distance between us, both emotional and actual, felt like you could drive a big rig through the gap. I didn't sleep a whole lot, and it bothered me how my thoughts ping-ponged around. Mostly about Barb, her feelings, the damage I had done to the marital fabric. How I might make good, regain trust. But there was another set of thoughts that crashed through my head.

The way Roger's lips on my penis had felt so good that afternoon, coaxing semen load number two out of my cock. How I'd finished him off nice in the back of the Volkswagen, after a good long time licking those incomparable balls of his, all slick and wet and heavy with semen, with his legs out stiff and shaking at the end when he pushed his cock into my face, pumping out a good eruption of sperm. How that event might have been the last time anything like that would ever happen.

After breakfast the next morning, handled in silence, Barb turned to me.

"Let's go to the living room."

I followed her, and she settled into her favorite chair next to the fireplace. I sat on the chair on the other side, facing her.

"So Clay. Talk to me. You said yesterday you still love me, and I want to believe that. Although the evidence is against you. You've thrown a bit of a wrinkle into things."

She pursed her lips. "Why? Why? Extracurricular sex! And here I thought we were married."

She paused. "Tell me."

"We are married. It's complicated." I had certainly used that phrase before. I didn't think it was a dodge.

She sat back in her chair, with her arms crossed. Outside the day was cold and raw. More or less felt that way for me inside, too.

"You have heard about my little penis fascinations before. I've told you and not kept that a secret."

"Yes you have. I more or less assumed all that was in the past. And you wouldn't be acting on those particular urges any more. The little scene you've placed here in front of us is a bit different."

So I told her the story. About Roger and me on our hike the summer before. My little dalliance with his member. How it turned into something greater. She listened and didn't interrupt. And then I got to the delicate part.

"When Jon left home and it was just the two of us in the house, I had figured that our old sex life might return." As our second and final son, he'd gone off to college two years earlier and except for brief stays at holidays and vacations, neither of the boys had ever come back to live at home. We were official "empty nesters."

Her eyes narrowed. "I don't remember you saying anything about this."

"I didn't. But I did try, maybe not in a way very apparent to you, or with any narration, to sorta jump start things. I was hoping for a bit of our old intimacy."

"That may be true. I honestly don't remember any such attempts on your part though. You're not trying to blame me here, are you?"

"No, no. We're over forty Barb. I am still a horny guy. Maybe not like in college, but still. Didn't feel like our urges, our wantings for sex, were matching up very well."

We shared a long look.

"Things were a bit quiet at home. When an opportunity opened up with Roger, I went all in." I spread my hands.

She looked hard at me.

"To tell you the truth, I didn't think it was cheating." I looked straight into her face. "Didn't regard it that way."

Here her eyes got big, and she was about to say something angry.

Before she could, I made an addition. "It was with a guy. No romantic involvement, just sexual release. Not technically adultery or anything."

Now her words exploded into the room.

"Not 'adultery' you say! What, since he wasn't a wife? Couldn't get pregnant? Since no penetration was involved?" She looked puzzled for a second. "Or was there?"

"Nope. Just penis play, nothing more than mouths and hands."

"But you didn't do this openly, Clay, that's the big part. This was a secret little behind-the-back thing."

"Roger and I had our reasons."

She snorted. "Right. Neither of you would've gotten the 'go-ahead' if you'd mentioned anything about it. Especially from Carrie. If Roger had said anything, she would have thrown him clear into Vermont. And I wouldn't have blamed her."

The stare she leveled at me made me want to look away.

"What hurts the most is the not telling. I can believe that you wanted to enjoy some 'penis play' with a pal, some sex without any strings attached like you might have with a fussy wife or something."

It looked as if my phrase "penis play" had taken on a life of its own, and I regretted having used those words.

Barb looked at me hard, and I struggled to gauge her thoughts. I apologized in every way I could think of. Our discussion did not get much further that day.

We talked sporadically over the next few weeks, and I was made quite aware how much Barb had been hurt. Our talks were usually brief and revolved around the same themes. But mostly we didn't talk much at all, and the house felt like a prison.

Roger and I only communicated a couple times, by text. I don't think either of us wanted to show our wives any sign of friendship or desire to get together. The VW sat alone in the garage much of the time, but I texted Roger once when I'd taken it out on a drive.

'u okay?'

'yeah. carrie's barely talking to me.'

'same here too. I miss your u know what'

'me too. I mean yours'

'think it will blow over?'

'not sure. not easily. hey clay, gotta go. hang in there'

'u too. best'

I tried to stay busy around the house or outside doing chores. I went on long walks. But it is the time of year when you tend not to want to be outdoors much, especially when the cold November rain was coming down. Barb and I more or less orbited each other inside the house, keeping our distance, except for dinner and sometimes breakfast, never in the same room for too long.

I made it a point to take care of trouble areas that tended to be flash irritation points in our marriage. I made sure the waste bins, especially in her sewing/project room, were cleared promptly. I raked our lawn, was far more neat and meticulous about house stuff than usual. I think Barb noticed, although she didn't say anything.

Sometimes she'd shoot me these looks and open her mouth like she was going to say something but generally didn't.

Our longer conversations usually happened at dinner. She asked about what sorts of things Roger and I did with each other. I would answer when her tone was level, but deferred if she looked really upset.

"You're saying you didn't always do sex whenever you were together?" I could imagine she was doing calculations in her head. That we were penis-fondling every minute we were in the same place.

"Nope, of course not. Usually only when we had a good chunk of time free."

"On your projects."

"Or on a hike. Yes. But not every time. Sometimes."

"I should have guessed, after that first car project, what was up. But I didn't." She sounded peeved.

She took a sip of wine.

"And that's why you got that silly VW bus then, isn't it? So you'd have a mobile bedroom, somewhere to lay down and do your gay stuff together." She shook her head.

"It's not 'gay' Barb. It's fun with a friend. A guy who is married, yes, but this doesn't affect the marriages of anyone."

I got a glare back.

"Maybe not your view of marriage, but what about me? Or Carrie? How do you think we feel?"

"I think I know, Barb. You're angry. I don't blame you. I'm sorry. You think maybe I'm cheating, but I'm not."

"But you're doing sex stuff with someone else, who is not me. Isn't that cheating?"

I shook my head. "No."

I then got an even more alarmed look from Barb. "Are you in love, Clay?"

"No. Maybe with his cock, but not with him."

This at least got a small laugh.

"So why? I still don't get it. Why this penis attraction?"

"You can guess, Barb. My cock is not the first one you ever met yourself, right? Didn't it feel good to play with one? Make it hard? Excited? Make the owner happy? You've stroked, you've licked. Cocks. Before me."

I suddenly had a question I'd never asked.

"But maybe after me?" My eyebrows went up. This question I'd never ever considered, which tells you what kind of double standard I was operating under.

She laughed, not a cheerful laugh.

"No, Clay. Unlike you, I've never strayed. Been faithful our whole time together." That stung.

"Well, same here. Roger and I played, no fucking, no other wives, nothing ever romantic or with an emotional connection. The sex was healthy, just us, no danger of STDs or anything."

Barb furrowed her brow. "You ever kiss him?"

"No. Unless you mean his cock-head. Or his balls."

She looked exasperated. "No, I mean a real kiss. On the lips, a proper one."

"Nope. Never. Not into it."

And here our talks generally broke down. She could not fathom sexual contact with someone else without a personal attachment. I tried to tell her that I cared for Roger as a friend, that our sex stuff was just for pleasure, just for amusement, that it didn't infringe on our marriages.

We didn't make much progress. She did make a good point though, that this constituted our first major challenge together as a couple. Over the course of our marriage we had dealt with aging (and dying) parents, and each of us had come through for the other during hard times. We'd had difficult kid events we'd had to navigate. But we'd never had a personal crisis between us like this. It was actually an encouraging sign when she pointed this out, I even detected a trace of compassion in her expression during that talk.

But there was one thing I couldn't do, which I think would have made a world of difference for Barb, would have made for a complete apology. I couldn't say that I would never touch another penis again. I don't like making promises I cannot keep, and I do not like lying. Every time we got to this point, Barb's lips would compress and her face got hard. I felt terrible.

There had been a couple Amazon deliveries to her the last few weeks, a bit unusual since we don't tend to get much stuff online, preferring local buying if possible.

But I had spied a couple books on her side table once, the top one was titled "Hite Report" or something with "men" or "male" on the cover. Next time I passed by it was gone. She spent a lot of time reading alone up in the bedroom. More than once when I came into the kitchen from outside she would finish up a phone call, like she was in a hurry, then look hard at me, like I had interrupted.

Things got a bit easier, we talked about other life things more. We did Thanksgiving with her sister's family in Northampton. I don't think anyone noted tension between us. The d-word was not mentioned, or even hinted at. Life went on.

Her anger, of course, leaked out in various ways and times. As a couple we typically don't argue that much anyway and usually not productively. One Friday I came home from work and although we had been conversing more of late, about the usual range of practical matters, I found that every single sentence I uttered came in for critique.

"Amanda did not get married in July, it was late June."

"You said you'd paid the electric bill last week but the envelope's still on your desk."

"I would not describe Desmond up the hill as a 'sweet old man.' He's a loudmouth prick, not just to his neighbors."

I finally had had enough.

"Hey, Barb. Lay off, willya? I can deal with straight talk but not all this sniping. Did you do everything perfect this week yourself?"

We stared at each other, on the edge of a good fight.

She looked away.

"Sorry. I get it. But I'm still furious with you, Clay, and don't have a decent way of getting over this scene we've got here."

She had apologized, which I did not take for granted.

We didn't clear the air entirely that evening but turned the temperature down a notch. She even suggested going to the farmer's market together on the upcoming Sunday, which was a huge step forward in normalization. I took it as a peace offering.

The next stretch still went by uneasily, however. We didn't talk much, and while the looks we exchanged were not always adversarial, there was an air of uncertainty that saturated the house. I confess that I was glad to go to work during those long, trying weeks, happy to be at a place where my actions and motions were positive, and results were concrete and satisfying.

The next week, on a Thursday, Barb surprised me at dinner. I'd made a nice soup, gotten some good bread at the bakery in town to go with it.

As Barb polished off her last buttered slice, she sought my eyes.

"Clay, I would like to make love tonight. I don't like this distance between us at the moment."

My mouth went open and stayed that way.

She laughed. "My period's coming up and you know I sometimes get more aroused that time of the month. Okay?"

I was "okay."

And of course the sperm tanks hadn't been emptied in weeks, no Roger or anything. I think the look on her face told her everything she needed to know since she laughed.

"Excellent. Let me take a short bath after dinner, and we can call it an early night."

If you've been married for twenty years, a good amount of intimacy can become routine. We each knew the other's body, reactions, preferences, and dislikes. It's not quite like seeing the same movie over and over again, since each time is unique in some fashion, but it does feel like a TV series sometimes.

Barb was sweet. Fresh from the bath, she removed her robe. Naked she's a more handsome woman than most would expect. She rarely wore makeup, mascara at a wedding was as far as she would go. Neither of us wear good clothes often, and even at special events we remain on the understated side. She is short with soft, droopy breasts that she took pains to minimize in public, by bra choice and the shirts she wore. Usually she was bundled into a blue workshirt tucked into jeans, what she typically would wear to her half-time job at the hardware store.