Forgiveness Denied

Prologue

She was a virgin when we married. Of course, this was a time just before the sexual revolution that decreed that virginity was something to be fixed as quickly as possible. Today, young girls are actually ashamed of their hymens and are teased by their peers of they are thought to be virgins.

In 1959 I was a twenty-two year-old second class petty officer in the US Navy stationed at the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft plant in Middle River, Maryland, on the outskirts of Baltimore. I was temporarily assigned, along with about fifteen other Navy aviation types, to test fly, and accept into the Navy inventory, eight reconfigured C-121 aircraft. The aircraft were originally Lockheed hurricane hunters. The birds were known in civilian airline service as the Super Constellation passenger airliners. It was the workhorse of the trans-oceanic flight routes in the fifties and sixties. The jet and turbo fan airliners were just making an appearance to force the piston avgas prop planes out of service.

It was Christmas, 1959, and there was a major glitch on the reconfiguration work on the planes, so the decision-makers decided to allow, for those who wanted, to take Christmas leave from late December '59 to a week following New Years. I came to this assignment directly from 18 months on Guam so I decided to go home and live like a civilian for at least a few weeks. I knew my parents would be happy to have me home and I could rekindle some old high school friendships.

There was no special woman in my life. Hell, I had nobody, special or not. On Guam, I was air crew on the same aircraft we were reconfiguring, the Super Connie or the Navy designation, WV-2. After the reconfiguration, the planes new designation was WV-2Q or as they were nicknamed, the Willie-Victor two Q.

As aircrew I actually spent little time on Guam which was a boon for my sex life. The Guamanian girls were old school Catholics who were under threat of ex-communication if they even spoke to an American sailor, let alone screwed one. A few lucky island-bound single guys were able to provide sexual comfort to the willing Navy wives while their husbands were on deployment to Japan, Taiwan, and the sailor's wet dream, Olongapo, P. I. (Philippine Islands). [Google it.] A lot of sixty and seventy year-olds vets have a web site that waxes nostalgic over the former sex drenched little town just outside the gate of the massive NAS Cubi Point air base. The married guys fucked the LBFMs (Little Brown Fucking Machines) in the P.I. while the sailors on Guam fucked their wives. It was kinda of an even balance in scheme of cheaters.

Back to Christmas in my home town in Southern Illinois. I was having a ball drinking beer, legally this time, and getting together with the friends that stayed on after high school instead of joining the Navy or going to college. There weren't many, but luckily for me, one of my best buds, Duane, was home from grad school, so I had somebody to run the roads and chase pussy.

Duane's parents lived in very large house on East highway 161 and Duane had the great idea of throwing a big New Year's Eve party for the class of 55 and 56 still around. His parent's house was perfect party place. No near neighbors to complain about the noise and enough rooms to sneak off for a little bumpity-bump or at least some stink-finger. We called everybody in town that we knew and asked them to pass the word about the party.

One glitch almost shut the party down. Duane's parents, for unknown reasons, rescinded permission to have the party at their house. (They weren't stupid.) Fortunately, my parents gave their permission to party at their house. They weren't stupid either, just more understanding and knowing that not much in their house was valuable if something got broken. The fact my boyhood home was about one third the size of the original venue was a negative, but not an insurmountable one

The party was a smashing success. A couple of drunks threw up the bathroom and a few girls got screwed in my parent's bed, but all in all it was great. The party was so good it was a life changing event for me. One of the guests who heard about the party and just showed up was MaryAnn Knox. She was a year ahead of me in school, class of '54, so I didn't know her very well. She was active in the various organizations and clubs and was very popular. She was not a great beauty, and her body shape wasn't the cheerleader model. She was rather tall, and sturdy, about 5' 9", about 145 lbs., but since I was 6' 1" and180 lbs., we made a good couple visually. Her strong point was a fantastic personality. There wasn't a mean bone in her body, and because of a problematic childhood with a mother who, while not an open prostitute, was known as a "good time girl" who could be found at the local nightclubs and bars most Friday and Saturday nights. MaryAnn was definitely not a spoiled brat. Her father was undetermined, and in a practical sense could be any one of her mother's the multiple "male friends". MaryAnn's large number of aunts and uncles made for a loving childhood even if the situation wasn't a stable nuclear family. Her grandmother was married at 15 and had 9 children. MaryAnn had one uncle that was more of a brother being only 2 years older than her.

I was impressed by the way MaryAnn organized the remaining semi-sober party goers to clean up the house before they left. That helped me a lot and in gratitude I asked her to have breakfast with me.

We sat in a booth at the local greasy spoon 24 hour diner, there were no MacDonald's in 1960, and talked long after the sun came up. She told me her life was not in a good place. There was no money in her extended family for college and no jobs in our home town for a 23 year-old female. She was visiting her grandmother for the holidays and was currently living with her mother in Oak Park, IL, a Chicago suburb, and working as a telephone operator. In 1960, you could still dial "0" and speak to a real person to get a number or make a long distant call. I wasn't due back in Baltimore until Jan 7, and MaryAnn figured out how to stay in town until then. We were inseparable for the next week, except for sleeping.

Now, dear Reader, this would be a good time to put a paragraph or two of steamy sex and descriptions of how I taught my new girlfriend some mind-blowing oriental sex tricks. No, no, no. Remember, this is before the sexual revolution and nice girls didn't give it up before the wedding. After many long talks, we agreed the best and only thing for us to do is get married. In retrospect, that decision was not the best for either of us, even though it seemed like a good idea at the time (cliché).

As a second-class Petty Officer I was entitled to a housing and subsistence allowance or housing in lieu of the allowance. My orders were to proceed to Atsugi, Japan when we finished accepting the eight WV-2Q electronic warfare Super Connies. Four planes were going to VQ-2 electronic warfare squadron in Morocco and four were going to VQ-1 at NAS Atsugi, Japan.

Looking back on this period in our life with the benefit of maturity, we were in love with the idea of getting married and living in Japan and were not that much in love with each other. MaryAnn was getting away from a dead end job with no prospects to improve her life and I was going to solve a problem that was worrying me. Namely, I had the choice of living in the barracks for two years, or setting up housekeeping with a bar girl in tiny Japanese house. I was in love with the ideal of living in a rather nice Navy housing and having a "respectable" life. I was counting on falling in love with MaryAnn after the marriage. I guess that didn't work out too well.

Chapter ONE

We were married on February 11, 1960, at Naval Station, Bainbridge, MD by a Navy Chaplain. We were turned down by several civilian ministers, smart guys, before we modified our story and told the Chaplain we were high school sweethearts before I joined the Navy and now wanted to do what we had been planning for years. It's not nice to lie to a minister, but we paid the price in the following years.

We moved into the house trailer that I was renting with a roommate, a real WWII hero who had a gazillion medals earned when he was a radioman on a PBY navy anti-submarine amphibious aircraft. He very graciously found other digs and left the trailer to the newly-weds. On our wedding night I found my new bride was, in fact, a 24 year-virgin. Our sex was very plain vanilla and it took me 10 years to get my first blow-job (under less than perfect circumstances as it turned out).

Although not exciting or great sex, our couplings did the job as our first child, a boy, was born on April 18, 1961, in the Yokosuka, Japan, Naval Hospital.

Our daughter was conceived in Japan, but was born at the Navy Hospital Pensacola, FL on 24 June, 1962. We wanted to stop with the two, but MaryAnn could not take birth control pill because of an allergic reaction. Her face would break out in brown splotches. Not a pretty sight. We used spermicide jelly as an imperfect birth control and had our third child, a boy, on Jan. 6, 1964. My wife was the model mother and faithful lover, I have no doubts my children are mine.

From Pensacola, I was transferred to NAS Sanford, FL. I deployed on the USS Saratoga in March and on 1 Sept, 1966, while in the Mediterranean, I was promoted to Warrant Officer, and returned early to Sanford. My (then) faithful wife was happy to see me home early. She was not happy when I told her that my new Officer orders were to report to the USS Forrestal and deploy to the waters off Vietnam in a few months.

On July 29, 1967 the second day on Yankee Station off the coast of Viet Nam, the Forrestal had a massive fire and bomb explosions killing over 300 of the crew.

As a squadron, we lost all our aircraft, but suffered no personnel casualties. RVAH-9, a sister squadron of RA-5C photo bombers was not doing well on the USS Kitty Hawk in San Diego during workup before deployment to Southeast Asia. The performance of the RVAH-9 pilots in carrier landings on the Hawk was so poor the CO of the ship kicked them off to NAS Miramar, CA, to practice landings ashore before someone was killed.

The importance of all this was that my squadron, RVAH-11 had a full complement of competent pilots, but no aircraft. The logical solution was for RVAH-11 to take RVAH-9's six RA-5C Vigilante birds and embark on the Kitty Hawk for a nine month deployment to the South China Sea. As a squadron, we had already had been away from home for four months which meant we were facing a 13 month separation from our families. As it turned out we had a 90 day stay at Albany and went back to the Gulf of Tonkin for 10 months. We were separated from our families for a total of 23 months from April, 1967 to September, 1969. War is hell.

Chapter Two

I tried, really tried, to write frequently and send little 3 inch audio tapes at regular intervals. However, on January 21 '68 Khe Sanh started the six month siege and on January 30th the Tet Offensive began. The main offensive lasted two months, but so-called mini Tets were also launched in May and August. We were flying 18 hours a day and remained on station off the coast of Viet Nam for 60 day line periods separated by five days in Cubi Point for R and R. The sailors called it S and F for Suck and Fuck. The aforementioned Olongapo was specifically designed to give horny sailors all the pussy they could want in exchange for dollars or Philippine pesos. The Japanese had their "comfort girls" in WWII and the US Navy had Olongapo during the Viet Nam war from '66 to '74.

The intervals between my letters home were in proportion to the heat of the war. After 18 hours on the flight deck and a prospect of six hours off duty before doing it again left little time to write or make a recording. We had no email or Skype in 1968. I cannot deny my correspondence to my wife and kids was not what it should have been. Whether that was a factor in what happened to my marriage, or just an excuse, is not really important.

Before the three months off the carrier for some time home between the '68 and '69 cruise, the Vigilante wing moved from Sanford, FL to Albany, GA and of course MaryAnn had to do it all herself (with three kids under seven). She excelled as a competent Navy wife and packed up the house and kids for the move from Sanford to Albany without a hitch.

The time at Albany between cruises went by very fast with not much time spent with MaryAnn because of all that had to be done to get the squadron ready to go back out for another ten months. As I write this I have a real problem remembering that I was home at all. The situation did nothing to strengthen our marriage. As I learned later from MaryAnn, she really would have rather I had not come home at all. She missed her fucking time with Victor and wasn't getting much from me.

The next few paragraphs will describe the worst time in my entire life, bar none.

After two years on the Kitty Hawk I arrived back in Albany in October, 1969. I was in receipt of orders to NAS Norfolk, VA, to detach in Feb 1970 for three years of shore duty. I was a happy sailor ready to assume the duties of Husband and Father. Ha, not so fast.

Being separated from MaryAnn for so long, I was not very good in picking up on her state of mind or moods. I did know she was not the same Southern Illinois housewife that I left nearly two and half years earlier. The welcome home sex was not what I had looked forward to those long months at sea. I got the distinct impression her mind was someplace else while we were fucking. She was jumpy, moody, and not as talkative as I remembered. I think she tried, but as I learned from her later, I was the stranger and Victor was her real lover.

About four weeks at home I asked her to meet me at the O club for Friday night happy hour. She got there about 4:30 and was in a surprisingly happy mood. I could tell she had spent some time on her clothes, hair and makeup. She looked like a million dollars.

We danced, drank, danced some more and ate a little. It was the best time together in over two years. When we got home about 1AM were all over each other. MaryAnn undressed me and pushed me on the bed. She took her clothes off quickly while I watched with love and wonder. I admit I partook of a bunch of LBFMs in Po city and got my root sucked regularly in port. But this was mind-blowing. Before I left in 67, I could rarely talk her into a poor excuse of a blow job. Her distaste was palpable and a real put off. I rarely asked –or rather begged- for a blowjob. It just wasn't worth it. I would think about the professional dick-suckers in Po city when I fucked my wife in the missionary position.

But this; Wow! Unsolicited dick sucking that was amazing. In retrospect the alarm bells should have started ringing loud. How did she learn how to suck a dick like a Las Vegas thousand dollar hooker? That was what I should have asked, not what I actually did which was gratefully think about all the future world class blow jobs I was going to get.

In the soft cotton-candy afterglow of the best sex EVER, I said something like – remember this is the cusp of the Seventies, the sexual revolution was in full swing. Something like "Darling, I feel bad about your lack of sex during my long absence and the fact you were a virgin when we married. Have you really only had one lover, me?" The actual words I can't remember. But MaryAnn got big eyed and blurted. "It was only a few times and I really didn't enjoy it."

"WHAT!" You fucked some guy while I was gone? She didn't answer but started sobbing. "I knew you would find out. I am sooo sorry—it didn't mean anything." The standard dialog from a cheating bitch came out of her mouth. She was in a state of high anxiety from the first day of my return. Her frequent visits to the BOQ (Bachelor Officer's Quarters) were noticed by many as well as her time with Fuckhead in the O' Club. In truth, nobody did tell me of her infidelity, maybe because fidelity was not the norm at NAS Albany in the late sixties. She told me later it was actually a relief to get it out in the open. But, she didn't tell the truth by long shot as I would discover later.

MaryAnn's attitude was she was very sorry and wanted to move on, because she loved me and besides it didn't mean anything, and we have to think of the kids, yada, yada, yada. And, we are moving to Norfolk in a few month and we can start over, whew! That was a 180 degree shift from her earlier attitude. She would not talk about her fuck buddy at all, no names, no places, just forget about it and move on. She just kept to the line that it wasn't important, and it was over, and she would not talk about it at all. That was her, but not me. I couldn't forget and move on, I needed to know details.

Over the next few weeks I started to get the real picture. A lot of it from our neighbor that shared the car port.

Melba, the neighbor, was MaryAnn's best friend before I left, always over for a cup of coffee; looking after each other's kids, a real close friend. That was one thing that I wasn't clueless about, I had not seen Melba in the house once since I got back.

I waited until MaryAnn was out of the house grocery shopping; I slipped over and knocked on the screen door. I heard Melba coming to the door with a "Welcome home Neil, I'm sorry I haven't been over to see you." I came right out with it. "Melba, I know MaryAnn has a boyfriend and has been cheating on me. She's admitted it. What I don't know and really need to know, and will not get the full truth from MaryAnn is: who is it, and how long has it been going on, does she love him or is she just keeping the sexual edge off with him? You can tell me now and save me a lot of work – please tell me the truth."

She looked at me with the most sorrowful visage I have ever seen on a human except in the movies.

"Neil, I'm very, very sorry to be the one to tell you this- but I will tell you the truth." "His name is Victor MacDonald. He is a bachelor LTJG in RVAH-3 (the training squadron that doesn't deploy). He lives in the BOQ. MaryAnn met him about a year and a half ago. "WHAT THE FUCK!" I blurted out "JESUS, Melba, she said she has only been with him a few times." "HA," Melba snorted, "A few hundred, or maybe thousand, times would be on the low side. Neil, you've been gone almost two years." She said "At first MaryAnn would talk to me about her "little affair," but when I pointed out it was much more than a little affair, and I let her know I did not approve of her trashing her marriage, she cut me off." "She told me that you didn't even write to her anymore and likely was fucking every time the ship was in port. She told me that "I can't just stay home all the time and take care of the kids. I'm entitled to a life, and yes, a sex life." I do know she met him at the base pool right next to the BOQ. She would take the kids there to swim and he would see her from his second story balcony of his room and scoot right over with his tight bathing suit that outlined his bigger than average cock." "When MaryAnn was talking to me she said the first time she had two good reasons to go to his room and fuck him silly. His big dick and that she had not gotten a letter from you for over three weeks." "After that, she just fell into a comfortable relationship with him. He took your place Neil, in every way."

I said "Damn, Melba. That was right in the middle of the Tet offensive. I barely had time to eat and catch a few winks for the entire month of June '68. So, when I was here between deployments last fall, she was still in a full blown relationship?" Melba said, "MaryAnn told me she was really conflicted those three months. She was glad to see you, but she really missed Victor's big cock. She was afraid to go to him when you were here. But, when you left she made up for it. She spent more time in the BOQ than the officers that lived there."