Outsurance

I wouldn't physically hurt her, not for any particular ethical reason but just because she wasn't worth going to prison over. After what she'd done, not just to me, but our family, she wasn't worth pissing on.

That, to my mind, only left humiliation. Returning some of the feelings Simon's revelations had inflicted on me. Jenny's social standing was the most important thing in her world. In the past that had amused me. I'd always indulged her. I'd never commented or teased but what other people think of me has never mattered to me. To me, a reliance on the acceptance and approval of others was tantamount to enslaving myself to them. Jenny was built differently, though. And I had accepted that. I'd always tried to create an environment for her that protected her from her weakness.

Now, I intended to use my knowledge against her. My revealing her behaviour to a select few of her friends, family, and associates would be devastating for her.

What the hell, I'd never done things by half measure, why start now? ALL her friends, family, and associates would get to see the real Jennifer Brown.

At my usual hour, I went home. Yes, I got in trouble for the cigar. Yes, I was told I would be punished by missing out on my conjugal rights for the next week. Excellent! One week sorted, five to go.

SIX WEEKS LATER

The catering for our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary was lavish and expensive. Ah well, less dollars to share out.

I'd had my specialists check Simon's injuries out and give a more realistic quote on the costs of rehabilitation and physio and whatnot. With that information, my insurance company made him an offer that he accepted. The last time I'd seen him he still hadn't heard hide nor hair from Jenny. If I was thinking kindly of her, I'd say she'd been honest with him about it only being sex, but, shit, the guy was a cripple and she clearly didn't give a shit.

Talking of Jenny. She was in her element tonight. She was like a bee flitting from flower to flower. The belle of the ball. Of the eleven members of her extended family present, she had the finest house and loved showing it off. Something else I'd indulged her over the years. You'd think she had achieved it on her own rather than by my endeavours. In recent weeks I'd come to realise how little acknowledgement she'd given me over the years. She had a habit of multiplying her contributions to our life and minimising mine. Funny the things you notice when the filter of love is removed.

I looked around at the attendees. Every other member of the school board except one was there plus most of the senior members of staff. Our priest and the local bishop joined fifteen other senior members of her congregation, all watched over by some senior members of the local media. Half the local council were there with their significant others, either dressed as peacocks or penguins. All the families in our street were represented, though some of the younger people came stag, their partners looking after their kids probably.

That left only six significant people. My two sons, the eldest with his wife, the youngest with his girlfriend. At my signal, the latter, Sean, would distract Jenny's mother and father when it was time for my speech. They were good people and in no way deserved a daughter like Jenny. As much as I wanted to see her humiliated, I couldn't do it at the expense of her parents.

Sean made eye contact with me, and I nodded, he gulped then went to do his duty. As I saw him head inside, I entered the pavilion set up in the backyard and turned the sound system on. That drew everyone's attention and I waited for them to gather closer with their glasses in hand, ready to toast us. Jenny came to the front, kissed me on the cheek, and looked at me adoringly, obviously in heaven at being the centre of so much attention.

I saw no reason to delay the inevitable and just launched into my speech.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends and Honoured Guests. I would like to be able to stand before you and say that the last twenty-five years of my life have been rich and rewarding, due to my wife Jenny being at my side the whole time. However, my parents brought me up to never tell lies."

Jenny turned to me, a look of embarrassment and horror suffusing her still smiling face. It made for an odd combination. Realisation was dawning. I'm glad she was catching on so quickly. Hopefully, her intelligence would magnify her pain and suffering at being outed.

She shook her head at me, silently imploring me not to do what she suspected I was about to do so publicly. I was unfazed. For someone who wasn't reticent about giving butt plug demonstrations to janitors, she was certainly shy about a little truth telling among family and friends.

"I found out recently that my beloved wife has been hanging the horns on me for some time now; sleeping with another man without my knowledge or consent; doing things with him that she has forever denied me."

Jenny has always been a quick thinker and in all our years has never backed down from a fight. She quickly concluded that without a quick denial from her, she was finished. In case I had no evidence it was her word against mine and most people present knew her better than they knew me. She elbowed me from the microphone and looked daggers at me.

"I don't know what sick joke Dave is playing here, folks, but I can assure you I have never been anything but a loving, faithful, and supportive..."

Jenny is an accomplished public speaker and knows to sweep her vision across her audience. She stopped talking when her gaze reached the far right side of the crowd. The side Simon was being wheeled in from in his wheelchair. He would be in it for several months to come. She stopped dead, all blood draining from her face. As Simon approached, he held out an old-style audio tape to me. I received it, turned, and put it into my old sound system attached to the public address set-up. Jenny looked stunned as the audio started to play from the position I'd cued the tape to. Simon's voice blared from the speaker.

'She also obviously had a thing about the feel of my cum dripping out of her ass after anal. She went wild for that.'

That was as far as the tape got before Jenny kicked the old stereo over. Quite a feat in her high heels and fitted skirt. Never underestimate the fury of an Irish woman exposed as a slut. As if that wasn't enough, she began ripping wires out of sound system. It was muted forever. She turned on me, her face like thunder. All self-control gone in her humiliation. As she screamed, spittle landed all over me.

"You pathetic heap of garbage. You try to humiliate me and in the fucking process admit that you were never man enough to satisfy me. Yes, I fucked Simon. I fucked him a lot." Jenny's face was screwed up into a sneer. It wasn't pretty.

"And you know what, Dave? I fucked a whole lot more before him. I would tell you how many but, to be honest, I lost count somewhere along the line. You remember our fifth anniversary, Dave? The trip to France? You remember the couple we met? Phillipe and Simone? Remember how we didn't want to join you on a few tours of WWII battlefields? Well, we had fun. Real fun, and you, you naïve idiot, never had a fucking clue. And I've been having fun ever since. How dumb does that make you, Mister High and Mighty Businessman?"

At this point, Jenny stopped. Maybe she'd run out of breath. Her chest was certainly heaving. Maybe it was the realisation that her legendary temper had just ended her life as she knew it. Suddenly, I recalled a quote I'd read. It went something like, we all live three lives. Our public life. Our private life, and our secret life. Well, Jenny, in a fit of Irish temper had just revealed her secret life to all and sundry.

She stared at me, no doubt wondering why her latest words hadn't appeared to be a surprise to me. She seemed confused by my grinning at her, effectively telling her I'd had the last laugh. I'd played her like a fiddle, stirring up her reflex to hurt whoever was hurting her, without adequate thought.

She looked from left to right of the staring audience, made up of just about everyone in the world whose opinion mattered to her. She looked at me at the very moment she realised something vital in human relationships. It isn't a crime to be naïve. Being trusting doesn't make you a social pariah. Being a cheating slut does, though.

She looked back at the sea of condemning faces, some of the ones belonging to single females already edging forward. To be amongst the first to console me; lay claim to me.

Jenny's world was all about trust. From this moment on no one would ever trust her because they realised they didn't know her.

She cut a very lonely figure as she headed for the exit.

.

EPILOGUE

Yes, I'd orchestrated the whole thing. I knew exactly how she'd react if I pushed certain buttons and she fell in the pit I'd prepared, beautifully. Irish by looks, Irish by nature.

How did I know Simon wasn't the first? For two reasons really. Firstly, her demand I ring her from a landline when I was travelling wasn't a six-month-old request. It had been happening long before cell phones were ever linked to brain disorders. Secondly, my new buddy, Simon, told me. That's what we'd chatted about for twenty minutes at the end of our first meeting. He told me he'd once asked her why she insisted on such elaborate precautions, and she'd told him, laughingly, about the few times she'd almost been caught over the years.

Fucking in the charity office, after hours, when the cleaner walked in. Me querying her about a motel bill once and her having to make up a convincing excuse on the fly. Me coming home unexpectedly and her lover having to hide in the closet.

The funniest thing was that after I discovered Simon and started my planning, three other people let me know she was cheating, or might as well have.

Firstly, the mother of a local school soccer player, whose team I sponsored generously, worked at a local VD clinic and slipped me, at the risk of her job, copies of the paperwork proving Jenny was being treated for a recurrence of anal warts.

Secondly, the best friend of my eldest son's wife inadvertently asked if a patient at her clinic, with the same surname, was related. Following up on that snippet revealed that my wife was scheduled for a termination the following week. According to the paperwork, my wife blamed the St John's Wort she was taking to help her sleep. Could her conscience have been bothering her? Or did that interfere with her secretly taken contraceptive pills? Hard to see how she could have kept an abortion secret.,

And finally, Sean's pained revelation, the day after my discovery that he knew of his mother's affair. He'd been on an all-night bender and was looking for somewhere close to crash. He'd used the stashed spare key and was sneaking into his old room when he'd seen Simon returning to the master bedroom from the bathroom. He'd watched in the dim light as Simon got dressed and headed for the stairs. Ironically, it had been Sean whose extended foot Simon had tripped over in the dark and fallen to pain and fear. Sean took his time telling me as he didn't want to be responsible for the agony of revelation.

Yes, Jenny made out alright financially in the divorce, but with the local media reports and gossip it was either skip the state or face a sneering populace forever more. It turned out to be both. The first place she settled she began splashing her money around and was invited to sit on several charity boards. Shortly after that, the other board members received certain documents and she was uninvited, with haste.

She moved again to have the same thing happen again... and again.

The last time I heard from the faithless bitch was when she rang me one night a week after another set of packages had been delivered. The area code indicated she was three states away from me.

I think she was drunk when I answered my phone to be greeted with howling abuse.

"For fuck's sake, Dave, haven't I been punished enough?"

"Nope." Beep, beep, beep, was what I think she heard.

THE END

Now lighten the fuck up! Let's see who I can upset today.

Involuntary Muscle Contraction

Professor Higgins at the University of Sydney was giving a lecture on 'Involuntary Muscle Contractions' to his first year medical students. Realising this was not the most riveting subject, the professor decided to lighten the mood slightly. He pointed to a young woman in the front row and said, 'Do you know what your arsehole is doing while you're having an orgasm?'

She replied, 'Probably out fishing with his mates!'

It took 45 minutes to restore order in the classroom.