Down & Up The Road Ch. 03

I thought I was being noble and trying to save Ted from pain, but I know now it was really because it was so hard for me to admit to myself how selfish and hurtful I was to those around me as I indulged in self gratification of fantasies and urges that I was un willing to control or learn to express appropriately within my marriage covenant. Ted already knew the cause of my betrayal, he didn't need to learn it from me, he just needed to hear it, he needed to know that I knew what caused it and that I was prepared to live my life differently in order to put it behind me and go forward.

When I tried to proceed by selecting what I confessed and what I tried to hide, things mired down again and the more I fought against myself, the more impossible things became. Another thing I realize, as I look back from here and now, is that in reality there were still powerful compelling urges that had been awakened in me that were not going to easily fall back to sleep.

One by one, dirty nasty details of what I had done or let be done came out. Teri had reluctantly told him what she knew of my behavior in the construction area. I finally admitted that I had stripped naked at the club in front of at least fifty men and even confessed at wanting to strip there regularly when given the guarantee offer by the manager, but I didn't admit it until he produced the panties that Randy had stripped from me as we left the club. Apparently Randy had auctioned them off and one of the guys there had recognized me as Ted's wife and thought it would be a kick to present them to him at work. He didn't like Ted too much; Ted was always too honest and proper for his way of thinking.

It won't surprise anyone that Ted and I could never resolve the problems I brought into our marriage. I shouldn't include me in that. Ted honestly did everything he could to give me the opportunity to commit to change. Way down deep we both knew I was the one who hadn't come to grips with controlling my desires, or imagined needs; I slipped up, and would again until I changed my way of thinking. I'm certain that much that could have been done to add life, passion and even lust into our marriage appropriately, but I was the one who refused to consider sex in the same context as love.

The divorce was amicable and even generous on Ted's part. He got custody of the kids and I was provided with flexible visitation privileges without a lot of responsibility. The clothing company fired me because my loss of objectivity had allowed Darren to take advantage of the company. Court battles and settlements went on for three years between them until he finally declared bankruptcy.

I blamed Darren for my own weakness and saw him alone only a few times after that night at the dance club, those were not pleasant encounters; they were filled with anger on both our parts, on Darren's for loosing control over me, on mine for having lost the best part of my life even though I still didn't fully realize what that meant then. The last time, Darren completely lost his temper, and beat me badly. If the good citizens who couldn't have helped overhearing the commotion hadn't intervened, he might have killed me. It didn't take much to get a restraining order to protect me from him after that.

My interest had shifted a little that night in Randy's club from Darren to dancing. There was a powerful urge for exhibition at the core of my selfish lust, and after the divorce, my self esteem was so low I was ready to bare my sole, so to speak, to the world. I spent the next seven years stripping at Randy's club and then on the road. His guarantee held for a year and a half and then after the second month in a row that he "made up the difference", he cancelled the arrangement. Never the less, money continued to be good, I made a good six figured income for all seven years and squirreled away a half a million in retirement savings. I even put myself through school in business and eventually ended up in charge of the collection division of Apex Financial, just outside Portland, Oregon.

It's been twenty six years since I married Ted, and I've never been married since. I've stayed close to him and the kids throughout the years and was invited to and participated in all of the important rites of passage as my kids grew into tremendous adults. Ted remarried a wonderful woman. A fun Latina from South America who was a perfect mother for our kids and the three they had as well. She was a much better mother than I would have been for many years. It was hard to not feel guilty when I was stripping and fucking like a rabbit, but I tried to show my love as genuinely and properly as possible and Ted was always supportive and has never said anything other than the best about me to the kids.

I can tell you something now without any reservation. If I had it to do all over again, would I have done anything different, damned right. In spite of a full diet of sex and lust, I have never spent a day without loneliness and regret. Sex, even now, seems to answer an element of hunger or emptiness, but after it's over and I'm alone and quiet again, I feel even more empty than I did before. The older I get, and the farther I move in time and distance from the little perfect family of my past, the more deeply I feel that emptiness that grows more suffocating every single day. You see, I have never been able to trust myself enough to love anyone else deeply or to run the risk of hurting them badly like I must have hurt Ted and Tyler and Jessica Davis. I still love them all, more than ever, and I always will.

To be continued as Ted tells his story.