Drop Those Cum-Stained Drawers

"I didn't know what was wrong, I didn't know why you didn't want me. Most of the time I couldn't get you to react physically... you know, your... get hard... oh God this is so difficult! I wondered if you were having an affair." She sobbed quietly for a few minutes; I resisted the urge to comfort her and just watched and waited. "I was afraid that I wasn't attractive, Ivan, that no one would ever find me attractive again.

"Then I went to the Halloween party at Ja—" She caught herself too late. "—at the Riley's. I wasn't going to go because you were in Germany, but you told me to go and have a good time. Everybody was drinking a lot and Jack danced with me and told me how good I looked and it felt so good to hear somebody, a good-looking man, tell me that. And I could tell that he—that he was attracted to me." She looked at me pleadingly, but all I could think of was how badly I wanted to shout something about how good his hard-on must have made her feel.

"Please try to understand, Ivan. I had too much to drink. I had to know that I was still a desirable woman. It wasn't love, it was only sex. It didn't mean anything. I loved you, I still love you, I'll always love you. You've got to give me a chance to show you!"

Right. She loved me so much she fucked my best friend, might as well have done it on the floor in front of everyone else at the party. I had to struggle so hard to push back the rage that I felt lightheaded. I closed my eyes so I couldn't see her and tried over and over to visualize my safe place.

When I felt like I was back in control, I stood and said we should go back in the kitchen. We sat back down at the kitchen table. I took the broken handle out of my cup and poured us each another cup of Lapsang souchong, even though it had cooled too much.

"Okay, no more games Jean. You and Jack fucked for a couple of years. I talked with the guys he named. They all admitted it, and they gave some other names. I talked with those guys, too. I knew almost all of them, of course; it never occurred to you that you were making me the laughing stock of the company, of our friends, of your co-workers.

"Here's the roster of your fuck buddies, at least the ones I know about, in chronological order: Jack Riley, Bill Wood, Ted Ferian, Phil Bergen, John Houseman, Eddie Wooley, Paul Petzoldt, Peter Quillen, Jackie Shen, Sam Knightley, Geoff Thompson. You probably weren't counting, but that's 11 men over 12 years. You were 29 when you started fucking other guys to reassure yourself that you were still attractive. Apparently you needed a lot of reassuring, because you were still at it when you were 41.

"Why did you piss on your vow to forsake all others? Why did you piss on my trust? When did you lose your respect for me? Or did you ever respect me?"

"Let me tell you what I did while I was in Germany and you were fucking Jack Riley. She started to say something, but I kept talking, didn't give her a chance to interrupt.

_______________

"I stopped first at the lab in Amsterdam, worked half a day there, then caught a flight to Stuttgart. By the time I checked into my hotel and got to our design center late that afternoon, I'd been up for 36 hours and felt like I'd walked all the way to Germany.

"I checked in with the engineering manager. She—yeah, it was a woman—told me to go back to my hotel, eat dinner, and go to bed without setting the alarm. Whenever I woke up the next day, I should take the time to eat breakfast, then come out and see her again so we could go over what I'd be doing.

"I did, found out it was going to take more time than we anticipated, and worked my ass off for eight straight days. The day I finished, she said she wanted to take me to dinner that night. What could I say? She was a third-level manager—that means I was something like a master sergeant and she was a colonel.

"I was flattered, but just a little uncertain because she was a few years older, and quite attractive. Then I figured what the hell, I'll bet I'll get a good meal out of it and I'm finally going home tomorrow, so I said yes.

"She picked me up at the hotel in her Mercedes coupe around 6:00. I wore the only suit I brought, but she had on a little black dress, a string of pearls, and heels. She drove a few miles into the Black Forest to a building that looked like a big hunting lodge. Turned out it really had been a hunting lodge a couple of hundred years earlier, but now was a very expensive restaurant.

"I had roast boar and she had medallions of venison. We shared a bottle of really good German red wine (she chose) then a piece of Black Forest Torte for dessert, followed by coffee and cognac. Through it all, lots of conversation.

"She had degrees in Computer Science and German literature and was hired right out of college. She opted for a management track rather than technical, which was unusual for a woman then. She rose pretty rapidly and enjoyed her work, but said it took so much time that she found it difficult to have a social life.

"I told her the story of how you and I met, bragged about my wonderful wife and children, and rambled on about how good the dinner was. When we finally finished dinner she asked if she could show me a wonderful view before taking me back to the hotel. I said of course.

"She drove deeper into the Black Forest, then turned up a smaller road that wound up a hill to a parking lot at the base of an enormous TV tower. Unlike our bare towers, these European jobs are major structures (think Space Needle in Seattle). Some even have gift shops or restaurants up in the sky.

"We took an elevator to an observation platform that circled the tower a good 700 or 800 feet up, then walked outside; she was right, the view was spectacular. We could see the lights of a couple of nearby smaller cities, and Stuttgart stretching to the horizon.

"The view wasn't the only breathtaking feature, though, the wind was too. It whipped around the tower, humming and whistling through the guy wires that supported the final 100 feet or so of bare tower that continued above us. She was wearing sort of a trench coat. As we walked to the railing at the edge of the platform, a strong gust of wind startled us. She sort of squeaked and jumped in front of me, grabbed my hands, pulled my arms around her, then turned her head, looked up at me, and said something like 'That was very frightening.'

"Wow. She wasn't just quite attractive, she was beautiful: windblown hair, flushed cheeks, eyebrows raised in...something. I looked into those sparkling blue eyes, drew breath, and said—'It sure was. We better go back down.'

"Which we did. She drove me back to the hotel, I thanked her for a splendid evening, and I flew home the next day. It never occurred to me to do anything else, because I loved you and, more importantly, respected you too much to find out what she had in mind.

"Now, instead of being proud of myself for showing such good character, I'm kicking myself for being such a dipshit." That really didn't leave much room for her to say anything. I was starting to wind down.

_______________

"You might be a shitty wife, Jean, but you're a fairly decent mother. Still, I want joint custody in case you start bringing your asshole boyfriends home. The kids can stay with you most of the time. I'll come get them some weekends and holidays and summers. We'll work out the schedule ourselves, we don't need some judge to tell us how to raise our children.

"We'll split cash and savings and everything we accumulated since the marriage 50/50. We each keep our retirement accounts; mine's a lot bigger, but tough shit. We'll get the house appraised and you get half of our current equity. You continue to live in it and pay the utilities and upkeep, I'll pay the mortgage; when the kids turn 18 we'll sell the house and I get all the proceeds. You don't deserve that much, but it'll let you give our children a good home."

I took a file folder from the seat of the chair beside me and put it on the table in front of her. The rage started creeping back in.

"Here's the divorce agreement with those terms, Jean. Get a lawyer to look at it and make sure that it says what I just told you. Then sign it and we'll get on with our lives. You can fuck every swinging dick you make hard and I'll try to keep earning a living and forget your sorry ass.

"But if you fight me, if you try to get a better deal or drag it out hoping I'll drop it, I'll nuke you. Everyone we know, everyone who uses Facebook or YouTube or Instagram or Snapchat or Pinterest or Twitter, everyone will know that you fucked at least a dozen guys for 11 or 12 years. I'll send copies of their statements and Jack's video to our kids and your parents and brothers and my parents and sister and brother, to newspapers, television and radio stations, everyone I can think of."

I leaned toward her to make sure she understood that I meant every word I said. "Jean, I'll drag your name through so much fucking mud you'll never be able to look anybody you know in the face again. That's not a threat, that's a promise."

Now it was my turn to stop and take some deep breaths. The rage started shrinking back, but I was afraid if it did that I might start remembering the good times, remembering that I still felt some love for the woman I married; I was afraid that the unbefuckinglieveable pain would suck up my spirit and strangle my soul. I didn't have any good choices. I let most of the rage stay.

"Three of your fuck buddies are divorced, the rest are still married. If you go to war over this, you'll be responsible for wrecking the lives of 8 men, 8 women, 15 children, who knows how many fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters. Your family and friends won't want to have anything to do with you, your own children will be disgusted with you.

"And I won't stop until you feel at least as destroyed as I do, until the only place you'll be able to show your face is the Jerry Springer Show or that whorehouse down on River Street. Come to think of it, the whores probably won't want anything to do with you, either; at least they're honest about what they do."

I stood up, took the cups and saucers and teapot over to the sink, took the infuser out of the teapot and dumped the soggy tea leaves along with the lemon wedges into the compost pail, then rinsed everything out and put them in the dish drainer. After wiping off the kitchen table, I walked toward the bedroom hall. I stopped for a moment. I realized I was exhausted.

"Goodbye Jean. I wish you'd loved me better." I went into the bedroom, closed the door, lay down on the bed, and fell asleep in minutes.

I woke up two hours later, disoriented; I wasn't sure where I was or what time it was. I sat on the edge of the bed for a few minutes and it all came back to me. I went back into the kitchen.

Jean was gone. She had signed the papers.