Erotica Artist 00: Prologue

In our twenty second year of marriage my wife began a sexual relationship with an old boyfriend named Leonard Foyle. They'd kept in touch over the years, ran into each other every few months at various union functions. I'd met him myself, once or twice, always cordially. The last time, as I recall, on one of our infrequent trips to the big city, he'd brought along his teenage daughter, a lovely young woman named Sarah. He'd been separated from her mother for several years by this time.

Our own marriage had reached a dead-end. We were both depressed and unfulfilled, trapped in an empty relationship but unable to do much about the situation no matter how many counsellors we saw. I suppose we stayed together because of our two daughters, one of whom was on the autism spectrum. Cora was highly functioning, but her condition did present tremendous challenges and this no doubt contributed to our marital difficulties. But the feelings of our daughters, their happiness, their security, we always put first. And so we stayed together, and the years passed.

Our sex life, by the start of our third decade together, was virtually non-existent. For some time we'd slept in separate bedrooms, though this wasn't so much to do with our lack of intimacy. We'd rarely had sex late at night, before sleep. We were always way too exhausted, or sometimes working on different shifts altogether. No, we slept apart because I was a restless sleeper, forever scratching and twitching, and Kelly was, to put it politely, a heavy breather. She sometimes snored like a lumberjack.

A crisis point came one evening while we were doing the dishes together, of all things.

"Mason, I have a question for you," Kelly began, pausing for a second to gaze out the window. "Are you still in love with me?"

What a question! Over the dishes yet! And I couldn't answer. In part I was stunned by the question, but mostly I was hard-pressed for a response. I finally gave her some rigmarole about feelings evolving over so many years of marriage and so on and so forth. For in truth I didn't want to confess that I probably wasn't in love with her. Or even worse, that I doubted I had ever been in love with her. What a realization, after two decades of marriage!

And of course the question arises: why then did we marry in the first place? Well, neither one of us was getting any younger. I was in my early forties, Kelly her early thirties. I for one had never, I'm ashamed to say, had a lasting, successful relationship and was under no illusions about the likely opportunities as I entered middle-age. Time was running out for both of us and we were more than ready for something stable.

Just how stable a set-up were we in for? Neither one of us was an immature teenager or twenty-something. And Kelly for one had had a couple of lasting live-in arrangements. But I was doubtful about myself. I'd been unsuccessful with the ladies, it's true, but if a person lives alone as an adult for a couple of decades there are sometimes other reasons than bad luck or incompatibility. There's the matter of choice. I loved my freedom. I liked living alone. I liked sleeping alone. Was I ready to give that up? And with someone like Kelly, who, attractive as she was, struck me sometimes as something of a flake? Or at least not the best choice for me. She was sociable and out-going while I was quiet and deeply reserved. She was moody and unpredictable while I was even-tempered and pretty set in my ways. She was personally untidy and disorganized and I was neat and meticulous. When I first began seeing her she was living in a run-down east-side apartment, could not qualify for a credit card, had no driver's license, much less a car, and she was a smoker.

So there was incompatibility there from day one, and yet we ended up married. Why? I'm embarrassed to confess that a major reason for me was that after a couple of decades of near-celibacy I was ready to get laid regularly. And there was one other thing. Kelly asked me.

Yes, Kelly proposed to me one afternoon after I'd been staying over at her place on weekends for two or three months. I didn't hesitate. I said yes. How could I do otherwise without ending the relationship completely?

The reason she asked me, twenty-odd years later, if I was still in love with her, was that she couldn't stop thinking of a certain person, no matter how hard she tried.

Oh really? And who might this person be? None other than Leonard, her old boyfriend from years back, several years before she'd known me, in fact. Way back then she and Leonard had first grown close during trade union functions, and this had blossomed into romance and an eventual moving-in together that had ended only because a previous girlfriend of his, one Louise, had become pregnant, apparently by Leonard, shortly before their break-up. Ever the decent fellow, Leonard determined, at no small cost to his personal happiness, to do the right thing, since his ex was determined to have the baby.

Still with me? There's more to this story, but for now fade to black on the star-crossed trade unionist lovers, skip over the twenty-odd years of marriage to me and the two daughters, and fade in to a renewal of the friendship/romance with Leonard, again at union functions but now conveniently away from home, since we moved from the big city many years back, the better to raise our children.

A wife who is lonely and depressed and feels abandoned. An old boyfriend who is now free and who lends a sympathetic ear and tells her he's never stopped caring for her. The inevitable starts to happen. And so over the dishes one evening Kelly and I come to an arrangement.

I tell her I don't mind if she starts up something with faithful old Len as long as our family life remains stable and our daughters are not upset. She agrees, since her first priority is also our children and she has no intention, for the present, of leaving me to move back to the city, Len or no Len. She'll go visit him every six weeks or so. A few years down the line, once our daughters are young adults, maybe something more permanent with Len could be arranged. Divorce for us? At this point, who knew? We never got that far in our discussion. For now, the die is cast.

A sense of relief, of impending freedom ensues. For both of us. Freedom from a marriage that has been slowly suffocating us for years. The wife is in love with an old flame who feels the same way about her. Maybe now I'm free to look elsewhere myself, catch up on all I've missed in my younger days. Everybody's happy, right?

But then what happens? A union convention is upcoming. Kelly books an extra two days off work, for a total of four. And thence begins the longest, most miserable weekend of my life. For within twenty four hours of our 'arrangement' it dawns on me what I've agreed to. I've given my wife the green light to sleep with another man. And not just any other man, but someone she's had feelings for, of one kind or another, for a very long time.

Why should that bother me, if I no longer love her, if I've never been deeply in love with her at all? Is some kind of primitive territorial imperative kicking in here? "It's all over between us, isn't it?" she'd commented that evening over the dishes. And though that gave me a pang, I'd agreed.

This is what I struggle with over that daunting four day weekend as I stare into space on the backyard patio. Why am I suffering such desolation if my feelings for my wife are dead? Only going through the motions of caring for my daughters keeps me from screaming out loud.

What's unfathomable to me, in retrospect, is why I'm not taking advantage of the situation, why I'm not out prowling for sexual adventure myself, if not in some bar or nightspot, where I've never been comfortable or successful, then perhaps with a professional, someone at least to take my mind off my current, unexpected misery. Why do I remain inert, passive, stewing in my own toxic juices? Here's my big chance at freedom, and I'm in a state of total paralysis. Am I in shock? What's happening?

Well, truth be told, there are a few other things occurring that are cause for concern. I'm no believer in old adages, as a rule, but the one that may be applicable, in this particular case, is that trouble always comes in threes. Yes, my marriage is in deep jeopardy, may in fact be on life support. But also, my old friend Nick is at death's door. He had been informed, with exquisite timing, two days before Christmas, that he had stage four lung cancer, the salient point of course being that there is no stage five. A life-long smoker, he had been given this diagnosis after a series of tests, prompted by his concern that he was losing some of his basic motor skills. He was dropping things, could no longer grip his electric razor, for example. What was going on? Stage four lung cancer that had metastasized and spread to his brain, that was what was going on. How long did he have? This he either didn't ask or didn't disclose. But as the summer progressed, we had the distinct impression that it was a matter of weeks.

Then there was my dear mother, eighty nine years old, saddened by the death of my father five years earlier, also diagnosed with cancer. Breast cancer that has also, it would appear, metastasized. She's an old lady, yes. She has lived a long and fruitful life. But the thought of losing her is still daunting, much more so somehow than the earlier passing of my father. She has been a loving touchtone for so long. I've always taken her presence so much for granted. I don't want to lose her at such a vulnerable, precarious point in my life.

But of course I have no control over any of these eventualities, any more than I have control over my disintegrating marriage.

Kelly returns, tells me that yes, her relationship with Leonard has indeed been revived and consummated. It was a struggle, apparently, much of their time together spent in tears, for it was a saying goodbye to her marriage and to me, in a way. But in the end she had to do it, she had to follow her heart.

My depression doesn't lift. My own sense of freedom not only unconsummated but not even part of the equation any longer. Days of deep despair, hardly relieved by talks with and prescription medications from our sympathetic family doctor, who expresses the opinion that our arrangement will never work.

Given my feelings over the previous few days, I must say I agree with him. Though there are some unexpected glimmers of change. An increased tenderness between Kelly and me for example. Lots of hugging and hand-holding. Touches that have been absent for years.

The solution to my dilemma, of course, as I repeat to myself ad nauseam, the problem of a cuckolded husband whose wife refuses to leave him, is for me to go out and find a girlfriend myself. Or at least pay someone for sex. Wasn't this at least part of the expectation I'd felt over our initial agreement, the sense of impending freedom? But in my present mood it just isn't in the cards. I'm truly in a state of shock, desolation, paralysis.

Which is why, one July afternoon, I'm in a darkened bedroom with my newly unfaithful wife, the woman I hadn't had sexual relations with for the better part of a year. She has invited me to join her there to escape the heat, for some quiet time and a talk.

The talk hadn't really begun. We'd lain side by side in the shaded room, she reading, me trying to block out the image of her in bed with her new lover. But eventually she lays her book aside and asks me how I'm doing. I confess I'm miserable beyond my wildest dreams. I actually shed real tears, something I haven't done since I was a tiny child. Caresses ensue. And suddenly I'm sobbing on her breast, wailing "I'm so unhappy! I'm so low!" Until, in the midst of my misery and pain, a minor miracle. An erection.

These have been few and far between the past few years, as I've navigated the shoals of late middle-age. Another aspect of our waning love-life. Then how, I ask myself, now in the throes of such sorrow and remorse, can a guy get a hard-on?

But this question, as relevant as it is, soon is by-passed in favor of another: "Would it be too much to ask," I whisper, "for you to jerk me off?" How sad and pathetic can I get?

She has told me she's a one-man woman and I know this to be true. Before she made her confession to me and I in effect gave her the green light she had no sexual contact with Leonard or anyone else. In the few weeks since the renewal of their relationship she has, up until now, had no sex with me. But now she doesn't hesitate. She locks the bedroom door and strips to her underpants, then proceeds to do as I request. Without my asking, indeed without me saying another word, she goes on to give me the sweetest of blowjobs. And though I've had problems sustaining an erection for some time, I have no trouble on this occasion. Erection and climax are just fine. What, oh what is going on here I ask myself again.

Sex as therapy. That is what is going on. Sex as a soul-nourishing, nerve-soothing, life-saving balm. I may be learning, or re-learning, here in my late middle-age, that a happy marriage, at least for me, is a fallacy, a fiction, as is romance, as is professional and spiritual fulfillment, as are so many of life's premises, but I'm learning also that the one true constant, the one true source of perfection now, in my sixties, as it was in my teens and has been ever since, is sex.

Simplistic and naïve, you say, and you may well be right. And what about your seventies and eighties, you add, when erections and sexual rapture are perhaps no longer options? And all I can say is "We'll see." For if testosterone shots and little blue pills can work miracles now, why not then? For yes, one of the by-products of this terrible time of crisis in my life is now going to be a resort to more chemicals. I've needed anti-depressants initially, of course, but now, after this potential renewal of sex with Kelly?

The need for contact of some kind with a wife whose physical and emotional needs are now being met elsewhere is powerful and profound. And I'm amazed to find that I'm not the only one to feel a seismic change is occurring.

The morning after our first sexual encounter in who knows how long, Kelly comes down to breakfast with a serene smile. And our initial hug of greeting soon has us dashing back upstairs and into bed. Her pants come off this time and a second sexual consummation in a matter of weeks occurs for her.

And a second honeymoon of sorts begins for us, with sex of such ferocious intensity as we hadn't perhaps experienced on our first honeymoon. Though as anxious as I am to satisfy Kelly as she's not been satisfied, at least by me, in a long time, something I can do best, as in the past, through oral stimulation rather than coitus, I myself am sometimes again unable to sustain an erection or attain release. The anti-depressants are part of the problem, of course, and can be adjusted or changed. But suddenly I'm also in regular need of testosterone shots and little blue pills. Ah the joys of late middle-age. At least this stuff is available now. What did previous generations suffer, I wonder?

I'm initially at a loss to explain this sudden explosion of sexual activity, given my overall depression and despair. Is Kelly suddenly infinitely more desirable because she's fucked another man and I'm faced with her loss?

Part of it is triggered by discussions she and I have over Leonard. There's some kind of weird frisson occurring for me whenever we talk of him and Kelly and their newly activated sexual relations. It's an almost voyeuristic thrill, or as if I'm perhaps pimping for her. The thought of her having sex with more than one man is for some reason incredibly exciting.

I know a thing or two about voyeuristic thrills, and about the excitement involved in a woman having two or more partners. I have after all, in a previous life, been a writer of erotic fiction and this kind of activity, along with its unavoidable corollary, betrayal, have been staples of my thematic concerns many a time, have in fact been major obsessions. But more of that later. For now, I'm on a sexual joyride with my wife of twenty-plus years, and my despair is being alleviated by physical therapy of a rapturous kind. I think the great Marvin Gaye referred to this phenomenon as sexual healing.

Until of course Kelly tells me one day that she's been asked to go visit old Len once more. And my vale of despond opens up once again.

One afternoon as I visit with our doctor to discuss how the little blue pills are working and to receive my now regularly scheduled testosterone shot, and here the irony is certainly not lost on me, I stand there with my pants down, awaiting a needle in my ass, and talk to him of my renewed appreciation of the terms 'heart-ache,' and 'heart-sick.'

"It's almost a physical pain," I tell him, meaning every word. This from a man who is convinced he doesn't love his wife.

Well, perhaps my marriage isn't completely dead after all. Maybe I'm just experiencing what the good doctor calls a wife's 'shock tactics.'

She leaves for another three day dirty weekend with her lover, though not before we two have had a couple more raw sex sessions, one of which takes place on the afternoon of the day she is to leave. What a truly strange satisfaction I gain from knowing, as I drive her to the airport that evening, that her insides are awash with my ejaculate, and that even though old Lennie will doubtless be screwing her within an hour or two, on this day at least, I've been there first.

For yes indeed, my friends, this is wild, lurid territory we are into here, where thoughts and feelings are as skewered and bizarre as I, for one, have ever known them.

The new anti-depressants help get me through the weekend. And I'm busy with my daughters, driving them to dance class and horseback riding sessions. When we pick Kelly up at the airport on Sunday evening Stella, our youngest, asks her mother if she stayed in a hotel. She's eleven and wise beyond her years. Why would she ask that unless she senses something in the wind? I've insisted that our daughters not be lied to, so Kelly answers truthfully that she's been staying with her friend Len. Stella has no further comment.

Later, as I unload the soiled laundry from her trip into the machine, among which I notice a couple of pairs of sexy see-through underpants, Kelly comes to me in tears. Is she sad at leaving her lover? Upset at Stella's question?

"It's the transition," she admits. "It's so hard."

By which she means the coming home to her family after a weekend with her boyfriend. How she manages this I've no idea. How she can step off a plane to meet her husband and daughters just hours after leaving another man's bed and not have something crack inside her is utterly beyond me.

"Love hurts," I comment, recalling an old Everly Brothers song.

"It sucks," she replies. "I feel so guilty about what I'm doing to this family."

For a strange but possibly salient point in all this, one which our good doctor suggested, is how do we ever explain to our daughters, if not now then in later years, our little 'arrangement'? "Mom was with another man and dad knew?" is the quote the doctor offers. How exactly are they going to react to that?

It's probable that we would never discuss the details of this crazy arrangement, of course, but there are many things impossible to explain or predict at this point. Like Kelly's need to have 'space' after her return from Lennie's bed. She doesn't want sex with me for at least a few days because it's too 'weird.' But she can screw me in the afternoon and fly down to Len's bed that same evening without a qualm. How can she do that? Mystery upon mystery.

And when she is finally ready for sex with me again, and a riotous and very naughty session it is too, how can she ask within the hour if it's okay to phone old Lennie for a chat? Some kind of strange guilt thing must be going on here. For yes, she's betraying her husband with her lover, but she's also betraying her lover with her husband. A double betrayal. Complication upon complication.