Fatigue

"Joe! Shut up!"

"Helen! Bitch!" I mimicked her tone. "You do not put me together with your dates! You do not fuck them in our home! You do not do humiliation bullshit!"

"Joe, listen to me...." Her tone was now low too. "You will give me this. You will. I will have him here for just a couple of hours. I will get what I need. You will listen to us, and when we are done, I want us to have sex."

"No. You won't be fucking him." I told her. "You want to get off, take him elsewhere, but you don't come back tonight! I am so pissed off right now, I'm ready to..." I clenched my hands and snarled at my wife.

"Joe, I want you to get amped up again." Helen slowed down her rate of speech, and was trying to talk to me like I was in third grade. "Then I want to see if you can power fuck me. That's all."

"That's all?" I asked, pretending to be surprised.

"That's all. I don't love him, this is just sex. You've agreed to me dating. This is just an experiment." Helen continued.

"Helen, here's what's going to happen." I explained back, talking to her like she was eight years old. "You aren't having sex with mister limp-wrist. You are leaving this house tonight, and staying away until I'm a little cooler. Right now, I'm going upstairs and breaking his dick off. See ya!"

"Joe! Get back here!" Helen yelled, as I stormed past her, and started up the stairs.

At the top of the stairs, I didn't even have to check the other rooms. I knew he'd be in the bedroom.

"Ok, here's the..." I started to give a pithy little diatribe, then my eyes showed me something I wasn't ready for. "... oh you gotta be fucking a spinning bicycle tire."

There knelt Malcolm, facing the wall, his profile to me. His hands were in his lap, and beside him on the floor was a sleep-mask, a pair of handcuffs, and what looked like a ball-gag.

Malcolm just knelt there, head down, facing the wall.

"Ok, get up." I said, striding over to him to haul him up by his arm. "Get the fuck up."

"JOE!" yelled Helen from downstairs. "Get back down here."

"Get up, and get the fuck out." I told Malcolm. "I know you kinda got railroaded here, but I'm not on-board with this. Get out." Malcolm was giving me limp weight, not helping me get him up.

"Malcolm, this is your chance. You aren't getting laid, and I'm pretty pissed off. Get your ass up, and get out, or I'm gonna fuck you up." I was very clear in this, I thought.

Malcolms head turned to look at me. He seemed... concerned. But not worried.

"JOE!" Helen echoed.

I backed up a couple of steps, so I could have room to posture. Also, to get a running start at him.

"Dude, I mean it, I will beat you like a thirteen-year-old who just found his first porn and is going for the gusto."

Malcolm sighed. I shit you not, he sighed, put his head back down, and pushed himself to his feet. He turned to face me, and I swear, he looked sad.

"Joe, you won't be doing anything." He informed me, sounding like this was reality. "Mistress is in charge here. She's ordered me to come here, and we are going to humiliate you. She's going to humiliate me, give me delicious punishment, and hopefully, an orgasm. You don't have a say in this." He was stripping off his jacket. It really was a nice suit.

"Been eating your vitamins?" I asked him, sneering.

"JOE! Get down here NOW!" Helen yelled from way, way far away.

Once Malcolm had his coat off, he flexed for me. Malcolm was bigger than me, and definitely had more muscle mass.

He put his right foot forward while bending his left leg a bit, so all his weight was on it. His heel was up on his right foot, while his toes were the only thing touching the ground. His hands went up in some kind of pose, the outside edges of his hands, fingers up, pointing toward me, his right hand in front.

"I work out every day." Malcolm informed me. "I teach Tae Kwon Do three times a week. I have won many state-level tournaments. Please, Mistress doesn't want you hurt. She wants you to go along with this. Be reasonable, go along, and you won't get hurt."

He sounded so certain, and yet sad.

"Fuck reasonable," I said, and launched.

My right knee led, my shin vertical. I had aimed my knee at his high-stomach level. I shot across the floor, maybe six feet, coming like a Joe-shaped bullet.

Malcolm's right foot came up at me, but it met my raised shin as I closed, and it glanced aside. I might feel it later, he was wearing shoes. Nice shiny ones.

After bouncing off me, my knee crashed into Malcolms gut, and I saw his eyes start to widen as his hands flew out of his guard. I was pushing him back with my full weight, and the guy had been a complete sucker.

As his head started to come forward, to counter-balance his ass going backward due to a sudden influx of knee into his stomach and his feet no longer being under him, my right forearm, just under the elbow, found his cheek. Hard.

Ever seen those rubber balls on a string, attached to a paddle? They go whap-whap-whap back and forth? I was doing that to Malcolm's entire body.

Malcoms back hit the wall and his head snapped back to crack against the drywall.

As his head started to come forward after bouncing of American interior construction material, I leaned in and hit him again with the right forearm, with a LOT of my shoulder and weight in it. In the lower face.

I caught some teeth that time, and felt my forearm tear. Oh well, it wasn't the first time.

The back of Malcolm's head broke my drywall. Damnit, I hate repairing that stuff.

By this point, my left hand had found Malcolms shirt, and I was gripping hard, twisting my fist into the material. I intended to pound away.

Malcolm's knees gave out.

'Never hold up your opponent, if they want to fall, help them fall.' I ignored that bit of lore. I had the fucker pinned to the wall.

A few more forearms to the head, a yank sideways with my left, and Malcolm crashed into a chest of drawers that was innocently standing there, minding its own business.

Good thing it was Helens chest of drawers. It collapsed under Malcolms weight as I let go and stepped back.

Elapsed time, maybe twelve-point-five seconds.

"I got a belt in Pissed-Off Fu, jaggoff." I informed the unconscious man, as the blood started to appear from between his lips.

"WHAT WAS THAT?! JOE?!" yelled Helen as I heard footsteps coming up the stairs.

++++++

Y'know what's bad about being arrested for assault on a Friday?

That's right, you are stuck in holding until bail is set, which happens on Monday, unless you have an awesome lawyer who can get away with annoying a judge into doing their weekday job on their weekend.

I didn't have that lawyer.

Helen had called 911 as soon as I went up the stairs. Then she kept the phone line open, being recorded by the 911 operator, as she yelled for me to come back. It was on the record, along with the crash of the chest of drawers.

Nothing I had said to Malcolm was caught.

As far as holding cells go, this wasn't bad. There was only one other guy in it, and while he smelled bad (vagrancy and panhandling charges), he slept most of the time.

"Joe, your wife is here to see you." The duty cop said as he walked by my cell on Sunday afternoon. I had just finished my tiny box of room-temp apple juice and bologna-plus-cheese-on-white sandwich. "You can talk to her in room three."

++++++

"I'm very disappointed in you Joe." Helen started with. She was alone, and dressed in her pantsuit she wore for work.

"I guess I'll have to live with that." I said sarcastically.

"You will." Helen confirmed. "Why couldn't you have just gone along?"

"Well, because either I give that guy... Malcolm? That's his name?... I give him a light ass-whooping before you two fuck and humiliate me, which was your plan... or I kill him after you fuck and humiliate me. I'd rather take the assault charge over the murder charge." I explained.

Helen just stared at me. She was pretty calm.

"You know, Malcolm is in the hospital," she informed me. "You broke his jaw, crushed a few teeth, he has a concussion, a retina is loose, you damaged the joint of his jaw, the orbital socket of his left eye is cracked, and his once pretty face is... a rash of colors and swelling."

I just grinned. All that had only taken a few head-shots. I had probably needed stitches in my forearm where I'd gashed myself on his teeth, but after the bleeding stopped, it seemed okay. I'd scrubbed it out with the handsoap in the bathroom anyway. I got bandaged at the police station.

"Malcolm is inclined to press charges, as well as sue you for loss of work and income while he recuperates, along with you paying the medical bill." She explained further.

Shit. Dental work is expensive.

"Well?" she asked me, sounding annoyed.

"It's a price. I'll pay it." I admitted, shrugging. "The real question is why did you do that? I thought about it. It was a set-up. You won any way it went down, except if I beat up that guy like I did... and you thought his karate crap was going to let him take me, right?"

She just looked at me.

"If he knocked me out, what was the plan? Tie me up? Then fuck him like you planned?"

She said nothing.

"You HAD to know that bringing one of your fucktoys home would set me off like that. We've talked about it. It's why we had the rule. Just hearing about what happened used to be enough to set me off as much as it did... putting the target in front of me was going to be bad. You KNEW that." I Joe'splained to the woman, who already knew all that. "That's why you brought one who you thought could fight. Could take me."

"What I thought would happen is you'd understand that you still aren't doing it for me in bed, and it's affecting everything else between us now." She countered. "You are so wrapped up in your macho image, that if you can't consistently prove it to me, that you get all... you go from being all mopey, to being sullen... back and forth."

I sat back and crossed my arms. She had another spiel for me.

"I'm getting tired of it." She huffed. "I wanted you to get charged up like you used to, and once I had Malcolm out of the house, ... after you agreed to what I wanted you to do..." She gave me a pointed look as she said that. "...that you would have sex with me like we used to."

"I wanted that to break the pattern we're in." she gave a frustrated gesture, indicating me and herself. "I wanted to see if you'd snap back to being you."

"I see that being plan "A," I said as I sat forward and rest my elbows on the table between us. "Plan "B" was Malcolm putting me down, and you and him giving me a show, which would also have royally ticked me off."

"That wasn't the plan." Helen said. She looked down and to the side as she said that.

"Yeah, it was." I asserted.

She just kept up that staring at the floor thing. It was getting creepy.

"So what now?" I asked her, expecting her to say we were headed to the Big D... divorce. That she wasn't going to put up with me any longer. That she'd tried everything, and I wasn't giving enough back. I really expected to hear "sick and tired" come out of her mouth at some point.

"We have an option." She said, now looking a little more annoyed.

"What's that." I said flatly.

"Malcolm will drop all the charges. He'll let his insurance handle his medical bills. He has money, he doesn't need to sue you for lost income." She said, her voice a little lower. A little more no-nonsense. "But he wants something..."

I sat back again, my arms crossed. I knew she wanted me to ask "what does he want?" but that was part of the game. The script was obvious. Besides, I already knew a couple of things.

Helen waited for me to ask. I didn't.

We sat there, looking at each other.

"Joe, listen to me." She started, a bit more heat in her voice now. "His insurance requires that he go after you first to pay for his medical bills. It's not going to pay it automatically, like you think. His taking you to civil court for the loss of income is his choice of course..."

I was surprised to hear his insurance required him to go after me. I hadn't run into that before.

"... but he will win in court. It's a slam dunk. On top of three days in the hospital, at about $8,000 a day, the surgery, the care, the long-list that's going to cost you more than you have, then the dental bills, the loss of his income... you will have to pay for his lawyer too."

Ah, shit.

"His lawyer makes $400 and hour, and has already put in three hours. It's going to get worse."

My stomach did a little lazy roll-over on me. Maybe it was the sandwich? No, I didn't think so either.

"After that, and you end up in jail for the next eight years, I will divorce you. Since you will have been convicted of a felony, I will get almost everything left in the divorce, and I may even be able to get more money out of you later, from your retirement account."

Okay, I hadn't seen this coming. It was way, way worse than I thought. The screwy thing was... I still loved Helen. I think. I didn't want a divorce.

Yes, I know. Don't roll your eyes at me.

"However, I may be able to change Malcolms mind." Helen said, now sitting back and crossing her arms, followed by her legs.

Yeah, it wasn't the sandwich going bad in my gut.

"Okay, what do you want?" I asked.

++++++

"All I want is for us to put our marriage back on track." Helen said.

She never came outright and held what had happened over my head. She did tell me that I would have some new duties, and she had new expectations. I never said I'd do these things she wanted when she would lay them out, I'd just go and do them. It was hard to keep from mouthing off, so I said nothing. For her part, she said she'd cut down on her dates, but I would have to pick up the slack.

Honestly, I'm okay with having sex.

But it wasn't about sex.

For his dropping everything, Malcolm got what he wanted... more time with Helen. Relatively... and I hate the term... 'relatively,' he didn't ask much. More time with Helen, on a regular schedule. A weekly schedule.

Helen wasn't too upset to provide. Oh no, no, she wasn't.

Once he healed up, and it took a while, they got onto that schedule.

Next time, I may have to find a way to drag out that healing process.

After her sessions, Helen made it a point to delve into humiliation now.

"Sloppy seconds," "Cuck," "He did a better job," "Malcolm would have done it," "You need to do better," "I'm not happy with this," and more things were said around me by my loving wife.

The most hated phrase, that I held dearly, became "It's time for the paddle."

I hate that damn paddle.

If you look at it, it's not much.

The pain of a couple swats on my naked butt isn't bad... but by that twentieth, yeah, I'm feeling it.

Apparently, Helen believes it will "bind us together" and allow me to have greater "emotional release as well as control." I have no problem disagreeing with that, but Helen isn't interested in hearing it.

Once a week, I get twenty smacks to my ass. "It's not a punishment, it's a privilege."

After a couple of years, paddling became the go-to punishment for Helen.

Yeah, this went on a while.

Helen started small. I had to service her with my mouth in the morning and when I got home from work. Plus, I always had to make certain she got hers first whenever we had sex, which was often, and I didn't mind that at all. The morning and evening sessions, I often got mine too. She was trying.

But I never got caught up in another hormonal storm after Helen had a date until year five, post-release-from-jail. The response just didn't happen. In fact, I had to indulge in 'chemical help' to get a functional boner at times (I didn't let Helen know that).

I could still have sex, and perform, but that animalistic display of dominance wasn't there.

Normal sex happened, and I was good. Helen was too. That was a good thing, but knowing that better had happened? It was a lot of frustration-with-an-evil-grin.

Our home life stabilized, I ate a lot of crow, and Helen put in the effort.

Two years after I was released though, Helen started changing. For the worse, if you ask me, but you didn't.

She dated a bit more. Malcolm, who had been getting three-hour sessions every Thursday, seemed to fade from favor with Helen. She still went with him, but she lost her enthusiasm. If he complained, he got paddled.

Instead, she picked up another boytoy, or rather 'took him in.'

I never found out his name, but for a year, she was all into dating him. Once a week though, as Helen and I had set the boundary of her only dating twice a week. The second date was for another of her boytoys.

After around a year, she got bored of him too. She dropped him.

She picked back up with Malcolm, but they had to come to new arrangements, as he'd met someone, and that woman didn't understand "the lifestyle." Helen told me Malcolm hoped to bring his new interest into the fold, and live honestly, but he didn't feel she was ready to know yet. When Helen asked me what I thought of that, I expressed that Malcolm can go do an impossible sexual act on himself.

I got paddled for that, and the three other times I expressed that sentiment.

Malcolm is not someone I like.

Malcolm showed up at the house one time, about two and a half years post-release. I had enough presence to tell him I was going to 'really fuck him up this time' as I saw him start to come in the door, and he left quickly.

Helen was... lets say she was 'quite unhappy' with me. I told her to fuck off, and if she wants to push it, our deal is off. She believed me.

She wanted to punish me for all that, and I refused to let her. That changed something in her. She got colder from that point on.

Year four post-release wasn't bad at all. I got promoted at work, and I found myself in tight with the new CEO, who was the son of the founder. Lifelong buddies.

I caught a promotion that wasn't quite overdue, but was maybe a bit heavy-handed... one other guy was qualified, but it was a tossup which of us could land the position. I won.

To prove the promotion wasn't bullshit, I dug in and got to work. I made a number of good things happen that year, and I ended up getting along really well with the guy who lost the promotion to me. Eventually, I brought him into my circle, and once he got into the groove, things got even better at work. I made certain he got a nice raise, and had some authority. He does good work.

Work became something I took high pride in, and that helped with the low shitshow at home.

Helen and I got a nice vacation at the end of year four. We didn't even have any bullshit I wasn't okay with while we were away. Helen was pretty happy.

Year five I got to work.

I had long figured out why I couldn't go all caveman on Helen anymore... after enough times of having to reclaim the same woman, over and over and over, my hind-brain, or whatever place in my head that response lurked, had declared 'She ain't worth it, bro.'

Helen was pretty happy, but I wasn't.

Sex with her was mechanical, and passionless. Oh, I could get it up and perform (more and more often with aid from pills), but my main function in our "relationship" was letting Helen get her emotional jollies off. That happened outside of sex. I was constantly in this low-boil of irritation and anger.

No, I wasn't doing this bullshit for the rest of my life.

But year six? Year six was the landmark for me, post-release.

I had found out how to trigger the caveman response again. It wasn't anywhere as powerful, but it lasted almost as long, which meant long enough to get home from work to jackhammer Helen, and make her say "Finally!"

You see, I had gotten an Executive Assistant.

She was very smart, very hard working, fun, wasn't afraid to get in my face and tell me when I was wrong on something, and she was sex on a stick.