Mystery Meat Marriage

"No, sir, it's not about the money, I could afford it out of my own resources, but you see, I don't want bail. If I am bailed I would be unable to return to my former home as that is where my wife had sex with her lover. I no longer consider that my home. And my wife? Well, when I caught her with the ejaculate of another man seeping from her vagina, I knew she was no longer my wife, that she was his concern now, not mine."

There was a murmur from the sparse audience, then the sound of my former wife, sobbing.

"But you'll go to county jail," the judge said.

"Sir, I am well aware of that. However, I shot a man, I'll get jailtime in any case. I just thought I might as well start that sooner, rather than later."

He nodded and said: "I can see your reasoning. However, I note you have no legal representation. That's something you will need to address." He committed me to the county jail and as I was shackled and handcuffed, I glanced toward my wife. She looked like I felt. And I was glad if it.

I shared my cell with a young guy who was in jail for fraud. I felt sorry for him, his story was one of ineptitude rather than malice. Apparently his boss had bilked him on his pay, so he had inflated his invoices for expenses. All his attempt at do it yourself restitution had netted him was two years in jail.

When I told him my story he said: "Gee. That's a horrible thing to find out! My dad cheated on my mom. You know, she never remarried."

And that's where this story started. I was in jail, awaiting trial for shooting my wife's lover. And although I'd made my point -no one fucks my wife, but me!- where the hell had that one foolish act of retribution gotten me? No job, a medical licence that would be pulled and God knew how many years in jail.

I had no work to do in prison, I was on remand and technically not guilty of anything, yet, so not given any work assignments but I quickly grew bored and volunteered to work in the prison hospital. It wasn't a real hospital, just an infirmary with a few beds in a side room. There was very little to do but help the nurse who ran it.

He was a wily old guy, he'd been an Army nurse in a MASH unit in the Vietnam War and was near retirement age. He heard my tale with sympathy as we catalogued the meagre medical supplies in the prison hospital.

"Shit, Doc!" he shouted, a laugh in his voice. "That so-called friend of yours is damn lucky he didn't cheat on my wife! No, way! If I'd have caught him with my wife I'd have shot his balls off!"

I laughed with him. First time I'd laughed since the incident with Lee Pairings. That seemed like years ago, but it was only a matter of a week or so.

My wife came to visit me. The arrangements in the county jail I was in were what they were. I don't know, or care, frankly, if they are the same everywhere. The meeting was in a small private room. It looked like an ordinary office, except there was no external window, there was an armed guard and I was in handcuffs.

We sat at either sides of a small coffee table. Which was bolted to the floor, same as the chairs.

She looked tired. "How are they treating you, Wally?"

I shrugged. "Well enough, I guess. Why are you here, Debrah?"

A look of irritation flashed across her face. "Because I am your wife!"

"Are you? Really? I thought you were Vic's woman, now?" My voice sounded somewhat bitter.

"I am not his woman, Wally. I am your woman. I just... had a fling with Vic, that's all."

"How long for?"

"Oh, I don't... I can't quite recall. About six months?"

"There's no use asking me, damn it! How the hell would I know how long your affair lasted?

"Still... six months, you say? Debrah, that is not a fling, that's a full grown love affair!"

Tears welled up in her eyes. God! I was going to get the full treatment if the waterworks were anything to go by!

"Anyhow, how is Vic?"

She snuffled before answering. "He is OK. It was only a flesh wound. He's already back at work."

I looked at her, hard. "And how is his wife, Mandy? The woman you cheated on with Vic?"

"She and I... we had a little talk. She's mad with me.."

"No shit!" I shouted loudly. "She finds out her faithful hubby is banging you and she's mad with you? Boy! The nerve of that woman!" If sarcasm was a crime, I'd have been declared guilty.

Debrah shook her head. "She's not mad with me because I cheated on her with Vic, she's mad at me because of how badly I hurt you!"

I sat back, shocked. "Really? Why's that?"

Debrah rubbed her hands together, nervously. "Because, well, they have a sort of an open marriage. But she said it was wrong to have snuck around. That if we were going to play together, Vic and I, that we should have told you and her." She shrugged. "I can see her point, now."

So our business partners were swingers and one of them had snared my wife into an adulterous lifestyle? Fuck. And you think you know people! And then my mind went back to my original opinion of Vic and I realised I hadn't misread him at all, back then. Except maybe I'd underestimated what a piece of shit he really was.

Eventually, visiting time was over and Debrah left. Thank God.

My life in prison was pretty routine. It wasn't as bad as some movies would have you believe, but then, nor was it a country club, either.

I realised that I was getting out of condition, so I worked out in the prison gym, I tried to eat more healthily, which wasn't easy in the County Jail, and life went on. Debrah visited me once a week and I realised over the weeks that although I still loved her very much indeed, that things would never be the same again. That the only way forward for me was divorce.

After the second month of my being remanded in prison I had a surprise. Mandy. She came to visit me.

As she sat down I said: "Well, Mandy, this is a surprise. Not an unpleasant one, necessarily, but it is a surprise, never-the-less. How can I help you?"

She smiled. "Oh, Wallace, despite the circumstances, it really is good to see you, again. I was worried about you, wondering how you are getting on. But you don't seem to look too bad."

She gave a frown of concentration. "Are you working out?"

I gave her a smile in return: "Yes, gosh, if it's that obvious, then it must be working."

She nodded and said: "It's obvious, but especially to us women. We tend to notice things more. Except, well, maybe I am a disgrace to the gift of female intuition. Because, Wallace, I had not got the first idea that Debrah and Vic were an item.

"When she phoned me and told me that you'd shot Vic because you'd caught them together in bed, I thought she was joking, but when I heard the fear and panic in her voice, I knew that she was telling the truth."

She looked at me and said: "I expect Debrah has told you that Vic and I were swingers?" ('Were" rather than "are"? That particular choice of words intrigued me.)

"Yes, she did mention it. So, what does all this mean?"

"Wal, whatever Debrah and Vic were getting up to, it was not swinging. Every marriage has to be based on trust. And, believe it or believe it not, the swinging marriage even more so. There are certain boundaries that are never to be crossed, always ensuring your spouse is happy with your choice of swinging partner, that they are happy too, that they get as much sexual release as you do.

"Then there are other rules. We belong to a couple of swinging clubs, one in a city 100 miles to the north, the other in a slightly smaller city 50 miles to the east. And we never swing with anyone we know, no friends, no in-laws or work colleagues.

"I'm here to reassure you that I was not a party to what was happening between Vic and Debrah. That was not swinging, it was cheating. A long term affair. And I will not be cheated on. Ever!"

I asked her if she thought the cheating was as a result of the boundaries of their marriage already having been blurred by the swinging lifestyle?

She looked thoughtful and took several seconds to formulate an answer. "You know, Wal, I'm not certain. Though I think you might have a point I'd be willing to concede. Maybe it did. Anyway, I am not keen on continuing the swinging lifestyle any longer. I have always played fair and he decided to go play with someone else. And that's not fair."

"So, what are you going to do?" I asked her.

"I want to try counselling. What about you and Debrah?"

I shrugged. "I can't see how I can get past the cheating."

She pursed her lips and nodded.

She took her leave.

Just after my third month of incarceration my trial was slated for the next week. Apparently something had happened and a case had collapsed so my trial was one that was boosted up the list. I think this was because I had plead guilty so they knew there'd be no lengthy court room time.

The day of the trial I felt, what?, calm? Yes calm. "Show time!" I smiled at myself in the steel mirror of my cell as they put the cuffs on me and I walked out of the cell.

There was a problem as the judge would not let the case proceed as I did not have a lawyer representing me. I told him I would represent myself. He shrugged and nodded. "Well, a person is allowed to defend themselves, if they wish."

I plead guilty and the DA stood up. He asked me several questions about my relationship with the injured party. After standing for several seconds in thought, I said: "A good friend, right up until I found him having sex with my wife in our own marital bed."

He said: "You were angry with him. Angry enough to kill him, perhaps?"

Before I had a chance to answer the judge rapped his gavel, one time. He look irritated. He addressed the DA: "Bruce! I simply will not let you get away with that! If he had tried to kill his rival for his wife's affections, you'd have him here on attempted murder charges! So quit that, now! There's no damn jury to grandstand to, so just stop it!"

The DA's face flushed with embarrassment and he apologised to the judge.

He turned to me. "Why did you shoot him?"

"I honestly can't answer that question. I didn't want to kill him, didn't in particular want to hurt him. I just wanted to stop him having sex with my wife."

After some more inane questions the judge intervened, saying: "Just where in the Hell are you taking us? The defendant has admitted his guilt in the offence of wounding his wife's lover. So what else is there to go over?"

The DA said: "I understand that."

The judge said: "Well, let's move on, then. Are you ready to making your application for sentencing?" "Yes, your honor," came the reply. "Than let's do it."

The DA really began to lay it on with a trowel. He told how fearful my wife and Vic had been when I had found them, how they thought that I intended to kill them both in hot blood and so on. He rounded it off by demanding 18 years in jail! My heart sank. Maybe I should have tried a not guilty plea? Got a lawyer? I could spend the next 18 years, eating prison food, for fuck's sake!

The judge asked me if I would like to reply. I thanked him and stood up. "Your honor, until the afternoon when I found my wife having sex with my former good friend and colleague, Doctor Victor Marsh, I thought that Debrah and I had a first rate, loving and caring marriage."

I shrugged at this point. "With the benefit of hindsight, I can now see that was not the case. Clearly, my wife had grown tired of my attentions and perhaps tired of me and that she had decided to take a lover.

"If I could turn back time I would not shoot Vic, he's a cheater. He's not worth it. I am not used to handling guns, but carrying a gun was part of the contract of my work at the hospital and so that's how I came to be carrying a pistol."

I looked into the public gallery. Vic wasn't there, but I saw Debrah and Mandy. They were huddled together and Debrah was dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief.

The judge thanked me for my comments. He looked at the DA, then me. "Well, Dr Victor Marsh got shot. In the bed of his married lover by someone who he had decided to hang the cuckold's horns on. But Dr Wallace Greenslade did not like the fact that his supposed friend and his wife could do such a disgusting and hurtful thing to him, so in a moment of rage, he took one, non-fatal, shot at Dr Marsh.

"I have to say that Dr Marsh was the author of his own misfortune. Only an idiot or a monumentally arrogant person would consider having an affair with the wife of a friend and colleague, if he knows that the husband of his affair partner was legally carrying a gun." At this point, he paused for effect.

"However, let it me noted that the ability for Dr Marsh to be stupid or arrogant are not mutually exclusive. So it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that Dr Marsh was both stupid and arrogant.

"However, that does not excuse the fact that Dr Grenslade did shoot Dr Marsh. However, this was no hoodlum shooting up the owner of a mom and pop store, no gang member randomly shooting some guy in a parked car in a driveby shooting.

"No. This was a good, loyal and loving husband who caught his wife having sex with another man, in his and her own marital bed. You know, that's got to be a bad place to be.

"So... I am going to do something unique. I accept that Dr Greenslade accepts that he is guilty of the crime. And that in our State that crime usually carries a jail term of between 8 to 15 years. And I am sentencing you to 8 years in prison, Dr Greenslade." I heard a woman, possibly Debrah, give out a sob. I, however, was sanguine about it. It was pretty much what I'd expected.

The judge continued: "However, I also accept that there were exonerating circumstances. I therefore propose to suspend the remainder of the sentence for a period of six months. If you keep your nose clean during that six months, then you will be a free man."

I couldn't believe it. Far from having to send the next decade or two eating prison food, I was actually already freed!

But it was a hollow freedom.

I got a small furnished studio apartment and I decided to file for divorce. My wife insisted on couple's counselling. It was a waste of time, from my point of view, as my mind was made up.

We each had an individual session followed by a joint session. It was a bit: "Get in touch with your child" for my liking, but if it was part of the process of ridding myself of a cheating wife, then I could endure it for a while.

I knew what I wanted to do with my life, so I looked up an old friend from medical college and he helped me arrange some things.

The joint session was in a conference room at the offices of the counselor we had each seen individually.

Debrah spoke first. She told me how sorry she was, how she had realised she had some serious boundary issues, but how she had grown, how she would never cheat on me again and so forth.

"But we can make this work!" she was very emphatic. So emphatic that I realised my wife really did not know me very well at all.

The marriage counselor, June Brookes, was a kindly and well meaning woman who looked like she was a throwback to the hippy era. She smiled when Debrah had finished and nodded. She looked at me and said, "Wallace now it is your turn."

I looked at Debrah and said: "How?"

Debrah looked confused. "How, what, Wally?"

"How can we make this work?"

She smiled. Once, her smile melted my heart. Now? I found it insufferably irritating. Then she spoke. "Well, Carla and I," she nodded to our marriage counselor, "have come up with a plan. I will let you have full access to all my online accounts like Facebook and Twitter, you can have the password to my cell phone, plus you can place a GPS locator on my phone so you can always know what I'm doing, where I am going and so on."

She seemed so pleased that I was uneasy about bursting her bubble.

Both of them were smiling, like they'd done something good.

"So, you want me to monitor you, day and night, Debrah? Keep tabs on you all day, every day?"

She nodded: "Yes! If that's what it takes, then I'll be happy with that!"

I shook my head and spoke in slow, deliberate tones. "No, you won't. Or at least, you will be happy with that, at first. But tell me, Debrah, how long before you started to resent me for monitoring you 24/7?"

She looked at me, a stricken expression on her face. This was not going as she'd planned.

"But... I wouldn't!" she protested.

"Oh, Debrah! I know you better than that! You would start resenting me. Eventually, you'd work out a way to beat the monitoring. And in any case, if I had to monitor your whereabouts 24 hours a day, that would not make me your husband, it would make me your jailer! You'd be my prisoner! I just could not live like that!

"Besides which, when a normal husband or wife's partner is 20 minutes late, the natural reaction is to think: "I hope nothing is wrong with them! I hope they're alright!" But the spouse of a cheater would think: "I wonder who they went off with?"

She looked at me, glanced at June who shrugged her shoulders. June said: "Nobody can make a betrayed spouse reconcile with the partner who cheated on them, Debrah."

Tears started to flow from Debrah's eyes. "But I love him, June! Can't you help me make him see that?"

Darla said nothing. She looked at me, as if she was expecting me to say something. I cleared my throat. My heart was breaking, but I knew that for my own peace of mind, there was no going back on what I had planned. "It's no good, Debrah. I know you love me and I love you. But I cannot live with a cheating spouse. I could not live the rest of my damned life always monitoring you, checking up on you, spying on you. That would break my heart. That'd be no life for you, or for me.

"I am surprised you chose to do it, when you knew what even consenting swinging did to the marriage of Dean and Nancy Ross? Did you really think that I would be able to forgive you for cheating on me?"

She shook her head. "I am sorry, so very sorry about this, Wally. I turned you into my cuckold. I knew you'd be mad with me, should you have found out. I guess I never understood exactly how mad it would make you feel. That you'd shoot Vic and that you wouldn't be able to forgive me."

"That's not right, Debrah," I walked over to her, wiped her eyes with a tissue from the box on the table. "I do forgive you. But I just can't get over what you did. I am sorry. You'll get the divorce papers in the mail. I won't have a process server serve you. That's not what I am about. I do not want to punish you or humiliate you. I just want to get on with the rest of my life, as best I can. And I want the same for you."

Mandy forced Vic to make an out of court settlement on me and six months later, the divorce was final and the jail sentence was no longer hanging over my head.

I had a hearing at the State Licensing Board. They decided to suspend my licence to practice medicine, but backdated it to the period that I was in prison. So I got a slap on the wrist, but no more. Vic, on the other hand, received a stiff fine and a mark on his record. Apparently cheating on the spouse of your fellow doctor was taken quite badly by the board.

I gave the landlord of my furnished studio notice and I made another call to Doctor Dean Ross. Apparently after he'd split from his wife and left medical school he had gone back home to California and transferred his studies to a medical school there and completed his degree.

He had a job as Medical Director of Anglo-Pacific Cruises, one of the largest cruise liner concerns in the world. After I'd told him of what had happened between Debrah and I, he'd managed to arrange a berth for me as a ship's doctor on their flagship the Maid of the Bay.

My first cruise would be around the world voyage. I was fitted with a proper officer's uniform (two, counting the tropical whites) and had a beautifully appointed cabin attached to what the ship's map referred to as a doctor's surgery. The spelling and terminology on the Maid of the Bay was all in British English, to ramp up the "Anglo" aspect of the ship.