February won't Suck Again

I packed my laptop and went to my office, where I could work on a detailed plan for the coming months. I did some internet research and found that divorce would pretty much leave me screwed. I did not care, really. I still felt better living in a badly heated 1 1/2 room apartment, eating canned spaghetti and Ramen noodles than being a cuckold, made fun of by LaButtplug and getting sloppy seconds.

Ok, maybe I was exaggerating and pushing it a bit far. But at the time, I had no way of knowing. Those alpha-assholes had no respect for anything or anyone except their own person. Considering the way he took what he wanted the night before, without the faintest snippet of consideration for me, I felt I had good reasons to prepare for the worst. For all I knew, maybe his fantasy was to use Linda in every possible way and rub it in my face to show his superiority. I would not have this, period.

By the end of the afternoon, I had the beginning of a financial plan and a budget outline, a list of attorneys I could contact on Monday morning, a list of apartments that I could visit over the next days, and a list of furniture or other items in the house that I wanted to keep. The only thing I did not know was if that would end up being plan A or plan B.

***

I went back home late in the afternoon. Linda's eyes were red. She was fixing dinner for the kids and asked me what I wanted to have. I told her to just take care of the kid's dinner, and that we would order in. We sat with the kids, and chatted with them while they were having dinner. We did our best to not let them feel the rift that had opened between their parents, and it seemed to work pretty well.

I had some sushi delivered around 7:30 PM. When the kids were tucked in bed and I had read them their stories, I opened a bottle of white wine and we sat on the ground in the living room, to eat on the coffee table. That was a ritual for us when we needed to have an important conversation. It was a change of décor from the kitchen, and it was easier than going to the restaurant and having the kids babysit for a second night in a row. Maybe tonight would be the last of those...

I put on some quiet music and dimmed the light. I intended to have a calm and constructive conversation. I was still mad at her, and I too was finding it hard not to cry, but having a plan somewhat helped my keeping it together.

We tacitly decided to eat before delving into it. When she was done, Linda took a sip of wine and gave me an intense, probing look.

"Jim, not knowing the answer to the question I asked this morning has been torturing me all day. Is it true that you want a divorce?"

I looked at her silently for a few seconds.

"That's what I said last night, Linda, yes," I told her, bluntly but calmly.

"To be honest, Jim, I had the same thought when I saw you with that woman in your hotel room this morning. I was so disgusted that you had to go for a revenge. I spoke with Dee today and she assured me that she explained everything to you last night, that it was just one night, and that nothing would change, that everything would be the same after that. Did you really have to do this?" Linda was getting mad again.

"I am afraid you don't get it. You can't get to think outside the box of your head on this one," I started.

"Ok, please, enlighten me, then!" She almost yelled. Her voice was loaded with sarcasm, and I could feel a bit of arrogance in it as well.

I looked at her with a sad smile, without saying a word. She backed off.

"I'm sorry," she said.

I took a couple of deep breaths. Keeping calm was not an easy thing for me either, but I needed to explain things as methodically as possible to make her understand what had taken place in my head. Our future would greatly depend on how she would receive what I had to tell her. If she took it with consideration, then maybe, MAYBE we had a chance. If she were to dismiss my feelings, we were done, period.

"Please, let me explain how I felt last night, without interrupting. I will of course want to hear what you have to say after I'm done, ok?"

She nodded.

"Linda, my having spent the night with Carolyn is probably the main reason I can manage to have this conversation with you tonight. Last night, we were supposed to have a special night, only you and me. I'd been looking forward to that all week. If you remember, I was ready to leave the club with you and go back to our hotel room even before that despicable individual arrived.

"I can get past the few dances you had with him, even the slow, even if you had promised to dance only with me. But then you left the table, dumped me, went away with him, and asked Dee to stall me and to manipulate me into seeing things your way, period. You didn't even face me or give me an explanation. I felt that the only thing you and the others wanted me to do was to suck it and shut the fuck up.

"I felt set-up, humiliated, manipulated, betrayed, abandoned and inadequate. I felt like a worthless cuckold in front of all our so-called friends who tried to get me to think that all this was some normal situation, and that I was the one who was wrong to feel bad about it.

"Everybody's only concern was that you'd come out of that unscathed. Nobody cared about me, about how I felt. I was merely the glitch that could derail the whole project, so I was erased, neutralized, negated. Zero consideration for me as a person. I was even denied the pain I felt. And they pretend they're my friends! And you pretend you love me!"

Linda's initial arrogance and self-righteousness had vanished. Her eyes no longer had that defiant look. At that point, she would not even meet my eyes.

I had the darkest thoughts on my way back to the hotel," I continued, looking at her intensely. "When I got to there, I was devastated."

Then she looked up and met my eyes. I think that is when she really understood how wrong she had done.

"I decided I needed a beer. There was nothing in the room, so I went to the bar downstairs. Carolyn was there, on a business dinner with clients of hers. I had not seen her at first, because I was not paying attention. Her clients left and Carolyn came to sit with me at the bar. I hadn't seen her in 10 years, since Adam's wedding. She is newly divorced. And yes, as she told you this morning, we had a good time.

"You know what, Linda, after an evening of laughing, flirting, lovemaking and cuddling with Carolyn, at least I no longer felt abandoned and inadequate. Your tryst with LavAsswipe had crushed my self-esteem, and my tryst with Carolyn helped me rebuild it. After having been treated like a trash bag, it helped that, somehow, I could still be worthy enough that someone would care for me and even be happy to spend a night in my company."

Linda was now silently crying. "I didn't try to set you up, Jim. I didn't know Marc LaValliere would show up at the club last night. I hadn't planned to hurt you," she explained.

"Ok, I believe you when you say that you didn't expect him to show up. But what I don't understand is that Dee, Jane, Sarah, Tracy, and yourself all acted as if you shared a single brain. How come did all of you ladies seem to know exactly what was happening, how to deal with it, what role each had to play and what to tell the husbands? It looked like everything had been rehearsed."

"Have you ever heard about the concept of 'the List' ?" Linda asked, with air quotes.

I shook my head. That was new to me.

"It is simply a kind of thought experiment saying that if you met with a celebrity that you had put on your list, and that this person agreed to have sex with you, I would automatically give you a hall pass because it wouldn't be ok to deprive you of the chance of a lifetime," Linda explained.

I was bemused.

"Wow... ok, first, I can see the fun in that idea. But it's fun as long as it stays what you say it is, a thought experiment. If you put it to work in real life, it's a recipe for disaster. Second, you had never told me about any celebrity that you had put on such a list, let alone LaDickhead. And you had never cleared anything with me first," I replied.

"That's true. The problem is that the girls and I have had that kind of funny conversation all the time since we met years ago. Marc was on the list of a few of them. He was not on mine, but we all joked that if any guy on any of the girl's lists showed any interest in any of us, then we would do everything to make it happen. Well, it's always been a running joke. Until last night..."

"The joke may have been funny, Linda, but basic judgement says you have to stop the joke before it's no longer a joke. And last night, it was not a joke, especially to me," I hammered.

"I'm so sorry Jim. I know this sounds totally ridiculous, but at that precise moment I was like on autopilot, and never considered the implications of what I was doing. I got caught up in the moment and I totally ignored your feelings. I guess I can blame some of my behavior on the alcohol, but certainly not everything. I acted like a spoiled child."

"And that's where the heart of the problem lies, Linda. Not to insult you, but how could you be so stupid as to not realize that I would be destroyed by what you were doing? Was it that you didn't see it, or was it that you didn't care about it? Had your brain punched out for the night?" I asked.

She was now sobbing. I knew my arrows had hit the bullseye. She was down. I knew I had been harsh, but the intent was not to destroy her. My reflex would have been to take her in my arms, but I just could not.

"I don't know," she said, crying like a toddler. I let her cry. She started to calm down after 5 minutes.

Now I had to know how it had been, if she was considering seeing him again. Judging by her fear that I would ask for a divorce, I thought I could pretty much rule out the possibility of her wanting to leave me for him.

"I hope your night was worth the storm it created, at least?"

Linda's crying intensified. She shook her head.

"You want the truth? Marc was one of the worst sex partners I'd ever had. He sees his cock as the 8th wonder of the world. And he uses it to FUCK. And fuck again. No foreplay, no fondling, no talking, nothing," she admitted.

"And to think that you had all that with Carolyn..." she added. "Let's just say that I'd do anything to go back to our table last night at the club, before Marc arrived."

She was still crying, but silently.

"I even had to take a cab to get from his house to the hotel this morning. He wouldn't even fix me breakfast, or give me a lift," she said, with apparent disgust.

"I take it that you're not planning on seeing him again? This is not about to turn into an affair?" I guess I had to ask.

"NOOOO! Once was too much. I had my lesson," Linda said, looking away. "Can you forgive me, Jim?"

I considered her question and took a few seconds to answer. I knew Linda would not like the answer.

"I may, in time. Right now, I still feel betrayed and humiliated. No matter how much fun the girls and you had with that LIST, I never agreed to this. I never condoned this. So last night, Linda, you cheated on me," I answered.

"Technically, you cheated on me too," she said.

"Technically yes, you're right. But as I told you this morning, Carolyn made it to my bed because you dumped me. YOU were my first choice last night, as always. I was not your first choice. You deliberately chose that asshole over me. So YOU started this pitiful chain of events."

"I know I don't have the moral ground, or even the right to tell you how it hurt seeing you with her. God, it hurt so much." Linda said.

"No, you don't," I replied. Knowing that I hurt her made me feel very strange. I was not seeking a revenge; I did not want to hurt her. And I was sad if felt like a revenge to her. But the fact that she was hurt by my sleeping with Carolyn somehow made me feel worthy. The human mind is so tortuous.

"Are you gonna see her again?" she asked. There was fear in her eyes.

"I dunno. I still have some sorting out to do. There's no user's manual for what happened last night. We'll have to figure it all out by ourselves."

"So what do we do?" There was fear in her voice.

"No idea. One thing for sure, we can't sleep together, Linda. I still love you, but I don't like you enough right now to sleep with you. I considered calling Blaine to ask him if I could crash there for a few days. But right now I don't feel like bringing my brother or the rest of my family, or yours into that shit storm. So I will sleep in the guest bedroom for a few days."

"I understand," Linda said. "It kills me, but I understand."

"We will need to lay out some new rules. The first one is about the 8-pack. I want those so-called friends out of our lives for a while, and probably a long while. Especially Dee. That woman has no honor, and no sense of right or wrong. Plus, she is a hypocrite," I explained. Linda nodded.

"The second one is we should promise to keep everything that happened last night only between you and me. Nobody else needs to know any of that. We don't need our families and other friends to think that you're a slut or that I'm a cuckold. And we don't need the interference of anybody else. Knowing my family and yours, the only thing they'll do is they'll bury us in rebukes and will demand that we justify ourselves in our actions. And I'm not gonna put up with that shit. The only people who know about what happened are those who were there yesterday, namely the 8-pack, Carolyn, and Shithole himself. But none of them knows our families or other friends. Ok, Dee knows your mom, but since your mom hates her so much she probably has nightmares about her, chances are slim that Dee will dare call her. So things should be fairly easy to manage," I said. Linda agreed again.

"The third one is that we will both have blood tests on Monday to check for any STDs that we might have caught," I concluded. Well, the risk was minimal in my case because Carolyn had a pack of condoms in her purse. But for some reason I thought it would be more politically correct to request that both of us be tested.

Linda agreed to my three conditions.

"I love you, Jim. I love you more than life. And I promise that I will be with you only from now on. There will never, ever be anybody else," Linda said, tearing up again.

We stood up and cleared everything in silence. I went to the guest bedroom and gently closed the door.

I wanted to believe her. God, did I want to...

***

The atmosphere in the house the next day was ok. Sunday was chores and errands day, so we kept busy. We of course did our best not to let the kids feel that something was off between their parents. I told them I was not sleeping with their mom because I had a problem with my knee and it was easier to sleep alone. At their age, they bought it. Linda got tested for STDs on Monday. She had found a clinic 35 miles from our home where she was not known. I did the same on Tuesday, in another clinic located across the city. Fortunately, both of us got clean results.

The situation improved slowly over the following weeks. Very slowly. Linda did everything to show her love to me, and repeated over and over how sorry she was. But I could not help feeling like crap. We had other conversations, and Linda was adamant that she did not have any other contacts with Dickhead, but I still had huge trust issues.

I could not be sure who the 8-pack might have talked to about that fateful evening. So I was constantly on edge every time I was out in public, afraid that someone would look at me and recognize the cuckold of February 29th. And I was also afraid of coming face to face with anyone of the 8-pack. I could not explain why I was afraid. I was not afraid of any of them, for sure. I guess I was just afraid of the awkwardness.

Around the end of March, I started to notice that Linda was getting more and more subdued. It was very subtle at first. I had started to feel better by then and things had been slowly warming up between the two of us. I was even considering going back to our bedroom. But with her darkening mood, I decided to wait for this. By mid-April, things were not getting better. I saw her crying silently when she thought I was not paying attention.

That left me puzzled. Maybe she did not want things to go back to normal. Maybe she was missing LavAsshole. Maybe she had started to realize that she no longer loved me, and she did not know how to tell me. I tried to talk with her, but she did her best to dismiss my fears, and to tell me not to worry, that she was just a bit tired and preoccupied with problems at her job.

But I could not buy it.

My doubts and questions would all be answered the following Thursday. I walked into an eerily quiet house that evening. Those who have or have had small children know that there is no such thing as a quiet house when the little ones are around. I found Linda sitting at the kitchen table. She had obviously been crying.

"Oh my, what's going on? Where are the kids?" I asked, taking a can of beer from the fridge. I knew the storm that had been brewing for days was about to burst.

"They're at my parents'. Jim, we need to talk," she said.

I had read and heard countless times about those dreaded four words. And I was somehow expecting something of the kind. But still, I had to admit that the punch they deliver when you hear them for real is phenomenal.

I sat at the table. She would not meet my eyes. She took a deep breath before destroying everything that was left of us.

"Jim, I'm pregnant."

I was paralyzed for a few seconds. Then I left the kitchen without saying a word, went to the guest bedroom, locked the door and collapsed on the bed.

I knew this baby could not be mine because I had been vasectomized the year before and the final test I had showed that I was completely sterile. And of course LaButtface did not wear a condom. Such a self-absorbed prick would never suffer the annoyance of actually giving a shit about the women he uses as pleasure providers.

But then again.

Did this "list" concept imply throwing all of one's mental capacity out the window? Hadn't Linda known about condoms, had she even asked if he had some?

Hell, Carolyn and I had had that conversation before jumping in the sack together -- had Linda and LaCrap?

Or were they so caught up in their moment that the thought had not even occurred to my wife... MY wife...

Knowing Linda's and her family's beliefs, the mere idea of mentioning the word 'abortion' would degenerate into a nuclear war. And I for one would never, ever, raise a child that was not mine. Let alone Asswipe's child.

So that was it. That was the end. No getting back from this. The B-plan was now the A-plan. I would contact a lawyer the next day.

I spent the whole evening crying. I could not sleep. At 4 AM, I had enough. I got up, took a shower, packed a couple of suitcases and my laptop, and left the house.

I left a message at the University saying that I would take the day off. Fortunately, I had no class that day. I had a very early breakfast and reactivated my plan. At 8 AM, I started making some phone calls. I was able to get a meeting with a lawyer at 11 AM. I had some time to make a trip to the bank and rearrange my finances before meeting her.

The lawyer explained that no judge would grant a divorce if the woman was pregnant, at least not before it could be proved that the husband was not the father, vasectomy or not. I could file, but the final judgement would be delayed until the baby was delivered or until a conclusive DNA test could be presented to the judge. I was ok with this. And I had already accepted that Linda would keep the house, and that I would end up paying maintenance for both Linda and the kids.