Heroine Addiction Pt. 02

Kari was dismayed, she'd told me over and over she hadn't had sex with him. Hearing it phrased my way she seemed amazed at the size of the flaw in her plan and the polar difference in our perceptions of her behavior.

"Let's talk about us now. Others talked you into it, but you agreed. The women in our neighborhood, all of which know me, were in on it. All of them knew your decision was to keep me in the dark, all of them kept that dark faith with you.

"You disrespected me and did it in a way that would subconsciously lead all of them to disrespect me too. All of you agreed to sharing your body with Lewis, but that wasn't enough, you had to codify my denigration and get all of your friends to piss on me too, as the price for you to be, what, their exterminator? Doesn't that mean they see me as vermin too?

"One pest deserved it because he was too full of himself and hit on married women. The other because he loves his wife so much, that she knows she can deceive him by leading another life behind his back and get away with it? Damn Kari, you made my love for you into a license to make all your friends see me as no more than a chump to be led around by his trusting unsuspecting nose."

Kari was shaking her head so quickly I thought I'd have trouble explaining the resulting injury to the chiropractor, "No honey, that's never what I wanted!"

"Isn't that what you did, though? Isn't that what happened?"

Kari's eyes kept growing larger with each realization, "All of the ladies feel sorry for you, they are very sympathetic ..."

"To my plight, that they talked you into." She saw my face twist in disgust. Clearly, I didn't want their sympathy. "Then you all officially signed off on the new Cheater's Club by-laws. Because you were cheating; I don't care about the motivation."

Kari fell back stunned. That was the most horrific reasoning she could imagine: that her motivations didn't count at all; that she would be judged entirely on her actions. Understanding that was exactly how I saw this scared her the most. Whether you robbed the bank to buy yourself things or to pay for a liver transplant for a loved one, you still robbed the bank.

"No Barry, you don't understand."

"I do understand. That's your problem. Let's look at the facts again. You decided that making your friends happy was more important than loving your husband. You called this a mission yet say it's no more than a lark; apparently your missions are more important to you than your promises to me. Apparently, you assign me little value as the cost of this lark was my faith in you and your fidelity to me. I find those costs gigantic and heart rending, but you treated them as a lark, so that's what they must be to you. The value you assigned to your mission is a lot more value than you value me."

Kari was horrified.

"You say you weren't going to give yourself to him. You flirted with him, you lent him part of your femininity to do that. He didn't deserve it, but he's seen that side of you, heard your sexiest voice that I thought was mine alone, as well as dozens of other intimate details about you. He's experienced you that way, and that side of you, that experiential facet was to be mine alone. Yet horrifically, Lewis and I could have a real discussion about how you act and look when you are turning your heat on a man. We could compare notes on how being the beneficiary of that gift from you made us feel."

Kari exhalation was a groan. She felt as though a giant boot had kicked her in the stomach. What had she done?!

"I have the added horror of now knowing you can turn that part of yourself on and off at whim, and that I don't uniquely draw that out of you. Lewis sure as hell didn't earn it, but he got it. Now I'm not sure I've earned what I previously thought of as my unique province. I don't even know if that province is unique! Apparently, it isn't mine; it's all yours and you can give it to anyone at the drop of a hat. That's a cold spike in my heart, Kari!"

"Oh no, Barry, no." She was still breathless with my take on her actions.

"You can't say your flirting with him cost me nothing -- look at me! Is this nothing? I'm a wreck. If you wanted to flirt it should have been with me. You took time you could have flirted with me, or done anything with me, and gave that time, energy, and intimacy to him. I sure as hell lost something! All your flirting was supposed to be with me, you stole that from me. Taking any of it meant I no longer possessed ALL of it, meaning your commitment to me was negated in part. That's huge! Especially when you kept me in the dark so that my commitment to YOU would remain intact, while you cheated me out of my due. That's duplicity of the first order. I don't think you treat someone you love that shabbily."

Kari was still drinking in my words. It seemed like she was being forced to watch something truly terrible, perhaps the assembly of Frankenstein's monster. What was taking shape in front of her was almost too hideous to imagine, yet she was transfixed unable to look away.

"You didn't barge into your friend's homes and tell their husbands what was going on in order to save our household. Instead, you hoped they may be able to help me after the fact. After you had your fun, after you touched him, after you burned him, after you were a hero, and after everything was stolen from me and burned in front of my face."

I pulled my hands up, they were shaking fists. I worked hard to unfurl my fingers spreading them several times to relax them trying to keep them from cramping. I would've made one hell of an angry guy meme.

"Your friends didn't get hurt and you got several rewards. You got to be freewheeling and fancy-free, irresponsibly throwing off the shackles of convention, and hey, you also got some strange on the side. That's a pretty good haul, while hubby's still slaving away at work shackled to outdated concepts like love, loyalty, marriage, and you!

"Your friend's marriages didn't get hurt. They get to pull up chairs and roast marshmallows, while Lewis and I burn. You had a great plan -- only two people get hurt: Lewis and me! Incredibly, you rededicated yourself to that decision AFTER you knew I was hurting! You purposely let me, and our marriage, burn to ease things on your friends. What the holy hell, Kari?!"

I got closer pulling a virtual Jack Nicholson "Here's Johnny" expression, letting my intense stare wander over her face, "Kari, can you answer to ANY of that? You let me burn. That was the price for your being a hero and it was acceptable to you! You negotiated it, made it happen, and merely hoped I wouldn't be too badly damaged afterwards!

"You let everyone see me as just as inconsequential as Lewis. But I'm not just like him, am I? You stole your time, affection, and respect, from me. All foundational things, denigrated to facilitate your rubbing and cooing over him. You swished your hips, and licked your lips, and kissed, and fondled him. I don't know how far you were willing to go, half a blow job, half a screw, letting him dock his dingy for a while, just to let him hang blue balled ... eventually, or all the way to let him know what he'd never have -- again. But in the interim he got your best, while you sold me down the river."

Kari quaked mouth open gasping for breath. She couldn't believe how differently I saw this than her. She also saw that from my perspective there was nothing incorrect about my conclusions. She'd turned a blind eye to what she was doing. She avoided it all by telling herself I'd never know. Now she was forced to see just how ugly her actions had truly been.

"You allowed yourself to be talked into vamping some guy because you were happy to seduce another man even if it meant my destruction. By your own admission your plan was not to look to my care until after your "mission" was over. So, you never spent an ounce of energy on caring for me. You didn't see it because you didn't want my interference.

"You cheated on me, cuckolded me in a way, to get what you wanted. Your glory with some girls who didn't have the balls to do this for themselves was more important to you than me."

I knew Kari couldn't take all of this in, many of my messages were being lost in the torrent of grievances I was filing. The flood gates were open now and it was pouring, gushing, out of me. Kari was overwhelmed, her mouth was drawn back in undisguised horror.

"Don't you dare think that only you had the ammunition to do this. You were a beautiful woman, after using me so callously for your own gain you seem more the pretty manipulative bitch; two dimensional, not an interesting character. That guy was dog nuts! He would've screwed any one of you! Why'd my wife volunteer? Lewis didn't need your beauty to be enticed. By your own twisted logic wouldn't it have been the best revenge if he was spurned by the least attractive of you, instead of the most?"

Kari moaned as my logic hit home again. Still, I wasn't hurting the silly bitch one tenth as much as she'd melted me. I was just forcing her to see her deeds in the light of day by ripping off her rose-colored glasses.

"You built him up to be a target worthy of you, and then built yourself to be a more worthy target. Your head got bigger and bigger as your self-estimation rose, while you manipulated my worth down to both of us and everyone in our neighborhood."

Kari cringed at each line I threw. Coming from me they hit her like genuine slaps.

"I signed up for a good and loving woman. We'd grow together and help each other, give ourselves to each other, and even sacrifice for each other. Instead, you did things for yourself, making us grow apart. You got what you wanted, and it wasn't me. In fact, all you had to sacrifice was me. You're a model of efficacy; you get what you want and get rid of what you don't simultaneously. I get nothing I want and lose everything ... except me. I won't give myself away like you want me to. I won't follow your lead on that. I think I'm worth something. I just got fooled by you."

I paused for the summation, my palms both rested on my forehead trying to keep my head from exploding. How could this have happened. My fingertips clawed into my scalp. They stayed there as I spoke. Kari gaped up at me in horrified amazement.

"Actually, I do have something I didn't have before. The knowledge that Lewis has things he didn't have before. What did I get that I didn't have before? A red-hot poker that Lewis got something too. Lewis, of all people, knows how you taste now. He knows the texture of your skin, he's felt it, even examined it with his tongue. That's just what I've seen with my own eyes.

"He knows the feel of your hair because he's run his fingers through it. He knows your scent and the salt of your neck when you perspire with passion. He knows the softness of your lips because his lips at least grazed yours. He knows the pattern of your breathing when you're in a romantic clench, the scent of your breath, the look of your iris close up.

"Hell, he knows the heft, elasticity, and resiliency of your breasts. I note you wore a very flimsy bra for him, perhaps to entice him with your jiggle, which he knows now as well. Heck, probably from your previous flirtations. But now he's pawed you and sampled those breasts with his hands. That bra revealed the secrets of your natural buoyancy. He knows the texture of your tatas. He's groped your ass."

I paused trying to keep my heart from exploding, my tone still harsh definitely carried sadness, my eyes welled, as I continued to spew the horrendous facts of my new founds acquisitions, "He knows the feel of your caresses and your gropes. He knows the feel of your fingers through his hair, your hand on his arms, on his back, and the firm grip you use to stroke a man's cock. He knows your excitement as you try your best to pleasure a man! All of these are things that men stopped knowing after we coupled, after you committed to making sure that only I enjoyed and knew them hence.

"And now a man I truly detest knows all those things pretty much as well as I do. Perhaps I've experienced them more times, but he experienced them thoroughly enough to commit to memory. And he experienced them most recently. He's the last man to hold you, not me. He got all those truly wondrous gifts because you gave them to him. I get the red-hot poker of knowing he'll carry that knowledge of you the rest of his days."

Kari couldn't even shake now. She'd already seen the monster assembled, now she'd seen it rise. Many of the things she took as permanent no longer were. Many of the things she counted as firmament had dissolved. Welcome to the club, bitch. She did have one weight I was glad I didn't: she knew she'd caused it all.

She no longer knew what to say to me. She had no idea what could be said. She knew she'd cracked me, broken me. Her sorrow was palpable. It was inescapable. Why hadn't she seen this moment coming?

My hands fell limp at my sides.

"I leave without my heart. I gave it to you to love or burn, you made your choice. I leave without much self-worth though I still have some self-respect; I'll try to leave with my head held high. It's little solace, but I know I'm worth a lot more than the pittance at which you and your friends value me. You know why? Because I never treated you ill. I made a contract and I fulfilled it. I gave you everything. And though I may be dressing you down, it's in the hopes you can reverse this trend. I can't stop loving you all at once, even though you don't love me."

I looked down done defeated. "I played right by you. I gave you everything, every part of me I could. That's what love deserves. I didn't know only one of us made the commitment."

I stopped for a moment my anger extinguished with most of the passion I was capable of, I was truly deeply sad now, "I'm sorry Kari, truly sorry, I didn't give you whatever you needed for you to love me back."

I stood there for a while drained. I wasn't sure what to do and I sure as hell wasn't in a hurry to do it. Meaning in my life no longer existed. It's hard to find motivation with no wind and no sails.

I wanted to keep speaking. I hadn't exorcized my discontent, not by a long shot, however I'd said it all. It had turned out to be quite a speech. Too little too late, but at least from a rebuilding my self-worth standpoint, better late than never. I was glad I'd said it. Clearly, I'd given Kari a few new things to think about. It all should've been obvious to her before, if it had been, she'd never have gone down the road that wrecked us. That seemed to mean she hadn't really loved me. She sure had me fooled, I would have sworn.

I stopped, looked down, saw her eyes open wider as she realized I didn't want to look at her, and that perhaps I'd looked on her for the last time. I knew I was faltering. I didn't want to go; I didn't want to stop loving her. I didn't want to lose the woman I thought I married.

I didn't want any of this, but all I had left was the dust of defeat and the vacuum of loss. It was being forced down my throat, I could swallow it with it my pride, and any real value I had as an individual, or I could walk away.

Sadly, my job and time here were finished. My head dropped. The job was done, the mission complete, a complete failure on my own behalf. Hopefully we'd stopped the neighborhood cancer and the other marriages would be saved, but I knew I was going along to the incinerator with the excised tumor. I was done in all sorts of ways.

I turned away from the increasing sobs of my wife. You don't walk into a new life with your head down. I raised mine, I put my hands in my pockets so they wouldn't dangle at my sides. I didn't see anything yet, my future hadn't taken shape, but I walked forward ready to find it, bidding it come as quickly as my last life had dissolved.