Eejit

PART 1

I'm an engineer. I design and build oil rigs, wind farms and bridges. I'm good at bridges -- I have a doctorate and a very nicely paid job to prove it. I'm trained to evaluate stress points, breaking strains and assess hidden tension. I do that properly and the bridge stays up and nobody falls to their death.

And in my considered, professional opinion, my marriage was a bridge that was just about to dump people, cars and trains into the river at any moment. It was right at the tipping point.

I had instantly calculated all that from just eight words. I told you I was good.

"They've asked me to be in The Dance."

The Dance. Every country has one -- that television show where B-list celebrities are invited into a dance competition over a number of weeks. The winner gets a trophy and a chance at moving up in the celebrity pecking order. The losers just go away to try and tour their dancing. It's very popular.

My wife looked at me, her eyes shining with excitement and a huge smile on her beautiful face, waiting for my response. I knew she didn't understand all the ramifications of what she had just announced, I think women rarely consciously put their men in a no-win situation. Subconsciously -- oh yes! They delight in it; a chance to revel in that rare chance to hold all the power.

It was a Heads I Win -- Tails I Win situation. No matter how you tossed the coin, rolled the dice, flipped the card; she won and I lost everything.

I know some of you are sensing what the problem is, so I'll get straight to the heart of it: The Curse of the Dance. That's it -- just substitute the name of your nation's show and you have it. The Curse is fully international and is omnipresent.

Yes, that's the one -- the curse that breaks up the marriages and relationships of half the people that take part every time that show is on. Sometimes it's immediate and the couple bursts into flames and explodes like a meteor hitting the atmosphere of public attention. But more often it's a slow burn and months later, when all is burned to cinders, the relationship is quietly put to sleep -- sent to the same farm in the country where dogs, cats and other pets are sent by parents trying to avoid heartache in their children.

I stared at her and forced a smile to my lips, which felt so frozen I was sure they would crack under the strain.

I looked at her like that as often as I could -- not frozen-faced like now, but staring at her, drinking in her beauty. Now in her early thirties like me, she was as beautiful as she had been when I had first seen her; golden hair curling around her shoulders, big brown eyes, perfect nose, bottom lip that begged to be sucked; all in a perfectly symmetrical face.

Below that was a lovely tight body with strong shoulders, C-cup tits, a flat belly that smoothed out into a narrow waist and then flared out into generous hips. For someone only five foot three, she had surprisingly long legs -- supple and strong.

I loved that body, but I loved the woman inside it more. She was usually fairly calm and tranquil -- unless she was annoyed or excited, at which times she could curse and swear up a storm that would have Billingsgate fish market traders running for cover -- and yet could sing with the dynamism and power of Janice Joplin. She was cool, quiet and contained and yet could burst into orgasm in a cursing, writhing, spitting, exploding fireball of energy. She was funny, kind, thoughtful and very clever. And she loved me and I loved her, and we both loved our perfect little Hellspawn -- known to everyone else as Beth -- our seven-year-old.

But, with all that perfect life on our side, Raven had now lit the fuse to a pyramid of gunpowder barrels that were going to make a spectacular bang when it blew me onto the garbage heap of life.

Raven -- the name the result of hippy parents who been astonished but delighted to have their first child in their late thirties. Apparently she was so-named because she had been born with jet-black hair -- and had then suckered everyone by going golden blond within five years.

"Raven, I'm speechless" I said, choosing my words carefully, trying desperately not to fall into trap number one -- the controlling partner trap, in which voicing dissent about something your wife dearly wants to do is being jealous, domineering and controlling.

"It starts in four weeks," she babbled in her enthusiasm. "We all get to meet up and then start training for the opening dance. I wonder who else is going to be on the show. Imagine if Paul Cunningham was on -- ooh that would be so cool."

Yeah, yeah, yeah... No! No it wouldn't!

Paul Cunningham was on her freebie list -- that list that almost every married person has -- five celebrities with whom they would be allowed to have sex with no comeback. Oh great. I hadn't even considered that might come up. The stack of gunpowder barrels grew higher.

"It sounds like a blast!" I said, my mind on that metaphor.

"I have to get measured up, and then hit the tanning salon. I can't go on the show looking like this -- even with fake tan, people would think it was a programme on ghost hunting. Next week there are three meetings with the stylists and choreographers." She hugged herself with excitement.

"Ah," I said thoughtfully. "So you've already accepted then?"

"Yes. They wanted an immediate answer, so I accepted."

"All sixteen people had to accept straight away? Wow. What are the odds of that actually happening?"

She looked puzzled. "I don't know what you mean."

I smiled and then frowned. "I mean, sixteen celebrities -- each probably with a calendar of things they are booked up for -- all expected to immediately agree or turn it down flat. I wouldn't have thought many celebrities would accept that deadline."

She wrinkled her cute nose. "Okay -- I suppose I didn't have to agree immediately. I guess I could have taken a couple of days to think about it. But I didn't need to! I knew that this could relaunch me -- and relaunch Dark Raven. I know where Barry and Gail are now, and I'm pretty sure they'd be more than happy for us to get back together. And I know you'd support me, so why..."

I said nothing. Not even a mutter about how I would have liked to have at least been consulted.

A crack appeared in her certainty as my silence extended uncomfortably. "Come on, Michael! You'd support me, wouldn't you? This could be the start -- the restart -- of something very big. It's everything I've ever wanted. You know that!"

Actually I didn't know that at all. After the way we'd met, I thought she just wanted the life we now had -- a family, a prosperous lifestyle, a house we loved which was full of love. This was the first I'd heard of 'getting the band back together'.

So here was trap number two. If I didn't support her, then I didn't love her. Women see things differently to men, I guess. How the trap actually worked was 'you just don't want me to (insert desire here) because you (choose optional reason from this long list) and therefore don't love me.'

Both traps were designed to force my hand -- every guy's hand. Again, not consciously, but kept in reserve in the dark recesses of the mind. Something learned, while never being actually taught, at the knees of their mothers.

When she had told me of the invitation to be on The Dance, my engineering mind had immediately gone into overdrive, weighing scenarios, options, weak points and accepted strengths, creating a flow diagram that started at the end result and worked backwards.

Of course, the possible end result that I feared most was our marriage splintering into tiny pieces, the three of us no longer in any emotional condition to live and love together, with me no longer able to share the life of the woman and the little girl who meant everything to me.

So that was the most nightmarish end result from my point of view, although there were a couple of alternatives that were almost as bad.

What then might lead to that result? The short answer -- an affair.

And the possible steps that could lead to such an affair? Her in an environment exciting enough to disturb calm reason, with me noticeably absent and unable to remind her of what we shared, where ongoing physical and mental stress could lead to some seriously bad decision-making. In other words... The Dance.

Using reason and informed guesswork I mentally calculated that there was a 58% chance that she would be tempted into thinking about it from week three, and a 2% chance of that temptation proving too much to refuse immediately. That was based on her probably reaching the halfway point in the knockout competition. After that the odds would increase by around 1.3% each week as the competition became more intense, reaching 19% if she made it all the way to the final.

Now most people would say that chance of a wife having an affair in such a situation being only 19% were pretty good odds really. Except those numbers were based on just one professional dance partner being involved. However, the male dancers in the show all were way above average in attractiveness -- and there were eight of them, and eight male celebrities. Taking into account upper age ranges and the outer limits of the homosexual arc on the sexual rainbow of those in the show, as well as my wife's proclivities, the odds of her resisting came in at -32%.

That was what my mind came up with in the couple of seconds after she made her announcement -- just a 32% chance that she would NOT have an affair. That meant if she went through the exact same scenario three times, two times out of three she would finish up fucking someone who was not me. Bad odds. Very bad.

And then there was the band thing, her wanting to reform Dark Raven. That was a whole different nightmare in which my mental gymnastics suggested that there would be only a very slight chance of us remaining married, and that didn't take into account the possibility of her touring a live show, in which case the odds went down to 0.00%

And I couldn't say a thing about my calculations to Raven.

I said before that she was very intelligent. More than clever enough to accept my logic and follow my reasoning, but too intelligent not to get caught up in the numbers instead of the reality of what the statistics indicated. We had been through this type of argument on several earlier occasions over everything from overseas holidays to schools for the Hellspawn, and every time we had become bogged down in fighting over sampling units, variances and estimators instead of what they meant in the real world.

I don't bother trying to demonstrate logic flows any more.

"Michael?" she looked slightly concerned. I realised my thoughts had taken me away from the conversation for too long.

"Look, if it's what you want to do, of course I support you. I love you. I always want you to succeed." Except for taking part in The Dance and reforming Dark Raven, I added in my head.

She kissed me then, the concern disappearing from her face.

"Oh, I hope I don't get knocked out in week one!" she declared.

For a moment I thought she'd said 'knocked up in week one' and my heart stopped. But 'knocked out in week one'? We both knew that wasn't going to happen. She had taken two years of ballet at school, a year of Irish dancing after that, and had used a professional choreographer in the latter ages of Dark Raven. She would sail straight past the dummies brought into the show for laughs, the suckers who would try their best, be rudely insulted and then disappear in the early rounds before the good dancing really got started.

"Hey, I believe in you!" I stated firmly. My only plan at this stage was to avoid the traps. I would have to think seriously on this when my mind had had a chance to mull over it. "I know you're going to dance the pop-socks off everyone else there, despite all the tears, sweat and blisters. And I trust you completely to make good decisions."

She smiled, and then frowned. "What decisions?"

I shrugged, unable to stop myself. "Oh things like chatting to me before signing away four months of your life."

She started to protest, but I cut her off.

"No, no! Don't worry about it! I can rearrange my trip to the Shetlands field, and I'm pretty sure that Sven can take the North Sea evaluation. And if I can't postpone the Edinburgh inspection, then I shall take the Hellspawn with me and we can have some Daddy-Daughter time on the trip. Just the two of us. It'll be fun."

Raven looked guilty, and rightly so in my opinion. I was the sole breadwinner at the moment, her royalties from Dark Raven having petered out long ago. So putting a lot of stress on my job so she could have fun Dancing for Dunces was looking a little selfish. Then she looked put out. Normally we would all go together on those field trips where I could take my family. We always enjoyed them. Now she was going to miss out.

You may think I was being petty and mean, making her feel guilty and pointing out the obvious -- that she was actually stepping out of our family for a while. And you'd be right. Of course I was doing that, exactly that, in order to try and lift the veil from her eyes before she got swept away by the glitter of The Dance. I desperately needed her to be able to see this whole thing for what it was -- a petty entertainment programme with no great reward at the end other than a slight increase in media coverage. Something I wanted no part of.

She was going to be swept up into a world of contrasts -- intense boredom and incredible excitement. I knew this world and knew all too well how easy it was for values and promises to be tossed out of the window when the adrenalin was flowing, when boredom led to mischief and stupid decisions, when everyone you met seemingly loved you and wanted to pamper you completely -- until the show was over. That's entertainment, folks.

I forced my face into a big smile. "I'm sure everyone is going to absolutely love you. You are going to be the most beautiful girl on television, and I know you are going to absolutely throw yourself into the training regime of seven in the morning until seven at night, six days a week. You're going to be a world class athlete by the time the show finishes."

She basked in my admiration, and then looked startled. "Seven until seven? One day off?"

"Raven, you did read the contract? Even I know they practice that hard, and I don't even watch the show."

"Oh God," she muttered. "What have I let myself in for?"

"You didn't read it?" I was genuinely shocked. She was too intelligent to do that type of thing. "What were you thinking?"

"There were three of them at the meeting and they never seemed to stop talking to me," she protested. "It was incredibly difficult to concentrate. I should have taken my agent with me. It was dumb."

"Have you got the contract with you?" I asked. "I can run through it for you, if you want."

She pulled a folder from her bag and handed it to me. "I can read a contract, you know," she said sharply as I took it. I could hear the huff in her voice, but she knew she had fucked up.

"I know, perhaps the excitement got to you. But I trust you."

She raised an eyebrow. I shrugged. "Okay, I trust you to usually make wise decisions."

"It was stupid. I got carried away," she muttered, turned away and as she headed for the kitchen, flipped her skirt up at the back. The pleated white wisp of a skirt was short, so I got a great view of that wonderful, apple shaped bum, divided by a tiny white thong. I say it was divided by the thong, but I was only going on faith, as most of it had disappeared into that glorious crack, leaving only the whale tail at the top and the faint promise of something covering her pussy below.

I laughed happily. This was her way of acknowledging to me that she had screwed up and needed to apologise and make reparations. It was also her way of promising I would have a more than even chance of getting between those glorious cheeks this evening after the Hellspawn had bid her demonic minions goodnight and settled down to sleep. My cock lifted like the barrier at a customs post. Having my beautiful wife's arse was a rarity, almost like winning the lottery. And it didn't matter how often you won, you couldn't help but rush out to buy more tickets.

She drifted into the kitchen to make a pot of tea for us, a little downhearted despite the display. Well, my taste-of-reality tactic had worked, except now I felt really guilty. I loved her, and I wanted the very best of everything for her, including reaching her dreams. I wanted her to enjoy her experience in The Dance to the full, except not on the end of some pretty boy's cock.

I am not pretty. I'm tall and rangy rather than cut, my hair is starting to look like the tide is going out on my forehead, and the best thing that even my mother could ever say about my face was that it's craggy. And I have a perfectly average cock for my height, even though I have big hands and feet -- thereby putting the kibosh on that rumour.

PART 2

So how did I hook up with Raven Quinn, one of the most beautiful and popular up-and-coming singers of her generation, who had somehow mixed the harsh sounds of heavy metal and the gentle mystical playfulness of Irish folk with incredible success? So what would she see in a Joe Average engineering schmuck like me?

Only one thing -- well two things, I suppose. She made one of her infrequent less-than-wise decisions and I was there when she did it.

While I was studying for my engineering degree, in order to pay for it I was also moonlighting as a runner at the Great Alhambra Theatre in London. I was there on the night Dark Raven played to a capacity, standing-room-only crowd in the last show of their maiden tour. It was billed as an intimate happening, although it turned into a complete scrum -- a cluster fuck of the first order. What were they thinking, jamming that many metal fans into a theatre?

It was my job to collect ticket stubs from the ushers, restock the snacks and drinks counters when they ran low, run cold drinks and hot food to the VIP booths from the bar and caterers, make sure the waste baskets were emptied, and run messages back and forth between stage hands, artistes and staff. Those lowest-level mundane-but-necessary things were my responsibility. Most runners burn out quickly.

I had first seen her in one of the backstage areas, walking towards her dressing room, surrounded by her two band members, a hair stylist, make-up artist, agent, roadies and stage crew and several bigwigs from the theatre. They had moved as one in a jabbering ball of humanity down the passage as I walked up it, forcing me to press against the wall so they could pass by without acknowledging me. But for a moment, Raven's eyes had locked with mine before drifting away again, leaving me with the memory of huge brown eyes and a ghost of a smile.

And at that moment, I -- a man who believed firmly in application and functionality -- discovered I had fallen completely in love with her at first sight. From then on I spent as much spare time as possible watching her rehearse and perform.

So I was definitely there at the time.

The less-than-wise decision happened when, on a whim, she decided to crowd surf instead of simply leaping up into the air as the final note played and a storm of cheers broke out. It was a bad decision. Part of the problem was that the lighting was computerised and programmed to switch to strobe at that point, leaving the crowd in almost complete darkness as her rehearsed leap became a series of stills. It had always proved to be a visually stunning way of ending the show.

Her dive from the stage was unrehearsed and frankly, she was lucky that she was caught by a small sea of upraised hands.

Seeing this from one of the wings, I sprinted for the stage. I knew what was going to happen. I had seen it before.