Splashdown Ch. 03

"I know you made the decision for yourself, but there is no you alone; there's two of you in the marriage, but what you did was beyond that. When you were discussing your body, you were also discussing his, which should have been obvious. You discussed Gary's sex life with your doctors. Then you and your doctors made the decision for the one person who was not represented in the room. It's hard for Gary to see any of it as accidental now.

"I'm not going to cheat!"

"Peggy please think about it: he's only been wrong once."

Peg looked at the phone as if she was looking at Kathy for explanation.

"Peg, Gary never thought you would make a unilateral decision and especially one at his expense. What you did the way you did it was very wrong. So wrong it actually makes his dire conclusions seem more plausible. I'm thinking he may have a point. It isn't all you Peggy, there is clearly something fishy going on. Regardless of the future, look where you are now and the mess you are in: Peg you already have hurt your marriage and it didn't need to happen."

"But I reject that is exactly what happened."

"Your biggest problem right now is that by your own actions it's only Gary's narrative that matters, his perception is reality. You aren't convincing a jury: you have to convince him. These things are what he believes. It's not a case of making sure he never believes them, he already does. You have to change his mind about what he already believes. He didn't believe it, he was fighting it, until you made him believe it.

"And Peg, I don't know how you can say what you did and chose didn't happen. It did."

"You believe it too?"

Kathy didn't try to hide her exasperation, "It's undeniable! You did make choices that cost him, and you did it without consulting him. That happened. Face it."

"Any other trouble?"

"Well yeah, the big one."

"Great. What we have been discussing is the simple stuff? What's the big one?"

"Well Peggy my good friend, Gary loves you. It's hard not to see where he would think you betrayed him. Loving you is what has him pissed off at life. He used to believe you loved him. Now he isn't sure, but feels the facts say not. That's the big one, Peg."

Peggy lowered herself to the floor, making animalistic noises. Biological noises quickly followed as she soon threw up. Then she vomited again before exhaustion took her and she passed out.

* * * * *

Peg awoke to a sympathetic but worried face. Kathy forced a gentile smile as Peg's eyes began to focus.

"You and your husband have become a full-time job. You two are a mess."

Peggy realized her head was cradled in Kathy's lap as the latter sat on the kitchen floor. "Oh my gosh," Peggy finally grasped that she had passed out!

She groaned through a throbbing skull, "You heard me drop over the phone and came to help me?"

Kathy nodded and gave her sympathetic smile again.

"And that smell is ... vomit?"

"Yeah Peg, you seem to have gotten as much on you as the floor. I checked your pulse and you were snoozing. I cleaned the floor so we would not leave that behind while I got you into the shower."

"I can't take time away from the door: what if Gary comes home?"

Kathy tried to keep her voice steady and normal hoping to keep things as calm as possible, "Gary's not coming home dear."

"What? NOOO!"

Kathy cringed at her failure, "Wait, wait, I'm sorry, that's not what I meant."

Kathy took Peggy's cheeks in her hands forcing her to look into her eyes. She didn't seem to mind the traces of vomit she had not washed away yet. Astronaut. They were used to vomit as well as putting first things first.

"Gary has not left you. At least not yet. He's sleeping now. Both of you need sleep badly. I'm betting you didn't sleep much for the days since he's been gone. I suspect that and not eating contributed to your passing out while you spoke to me on the phone. I'm going to develop some sort of complex from talking to the two of you."

Peg's eyes opened wider, "Gary is asleep. Do you know where he is? Oh, you can't tell me. I forgot." Peg looked miserable.

"He was at a hotel downtown. I told him I would not tell you where he was then. And I don't want you trying to contact him yet when I tell you he is sleeping at my place now. He came home with me because I was trying to coax him out of the neutral ground and get him back home to you. He agreed to stop home with me. He doesn't open up much, but when he does it is an experience to remember. He did at my place and then finally succumb to slumber. I think he felt safe and knew I would watch out for him. Frankly, I'm flattered."

"Peggy he was asleep on my couch when I called you from my bedroom. I heard you drop on the other end. So, I left him a note and came here." She regarded her friend's misery, hearing the facts was calming her.

"You have a great man, Peggy, but he's deeply worried. The condom thing for him on earth, and the contraception for you in space has rocked him."

"Oh Kathy, it sounds to him like I will be sexually servicing those Russians on the space station. And look at his job: the Russian connection makes this ten-times worse."

"Peg, you must get your arms around this. You have set doubt upon doubt on him. It takes Gary an hour just to list the slights you have sent his way. It would take the rest of the day to prioritize them all."

"Peggy, Gary doubts you love him, that is an entire magnitude worse than anything else you are facing."

* * * *

Peggy

I was immersing myself in my studies and physicals. Everything would ramp up shortly. The long term injectable had made me a little queasy. I had two thoughts. First that if Gary had to be gone, being gone while I was queasy might have been the best time. I didn't need to wrap him in another layer of doubt if he wanted sex and I was suddenly bilious. Gary was a very clever man, except that cleverness was being turned against him. With my behavior I had opened the door to paranoia concerning our marriage. Normally he would have known the chemicals were to blame if I became ill. Seen through the prism of my recent actions however, Gary would have wondered if my sudden queasiness was another sign of my rejection of him.

Gary had come home. He had his head together again. He was very supportive of me and the space shot. He was also distant. Perhaps others would not notice, but for Gary this was shouting. He didn't mean to project; I just saw it. I couldn't help but notice. Gary is not the sort of man to shrink. Gary could take over almost any room as he walked into it. He chooses not to. Frankly, he doesn't want the attention or responsibility that comes from commanding glancing acquaintances.

It would be a mistake to view his reticence to engage with me as shrinking or sulking from the rejection he perceived. He was hurting, and he was dealing with it. I worked at NASA, we had scientists and the military, and all sorts of people who I feel are more serious and dedicated than in most workplaces. Of all the people I worked with responsibility meant more to Gary than any of them. He was doing his best. He was supporting me; he was trying to love me. He simply believed that I could not have loved him as much as either of us thought to have done what I did.

While Gary lived in a world of various shades of grey, he was very good at boiling off the extraneous and blowing away the mist to see things as close to black and white as possible. Gary thought I had chosen against him even when I didn't have to. Which not only dropped him from top of my personal Totem pole, but pretty far down.

I tried to make him comfortable. I still tried to please him sexually. Blow jobs helped and concealed a growing lack of bodily response. I fear they came off more compassionate than hot. They still worked. Until once when near his completion he tried to forego finishing and initiate penetrative sex. Gary had been struggling and it had a physical component. His tensile strength was not what it had been. And now I was facing a lack of lubrication. I had no idea the new medications would work this quickly. I feared mentioning that for several reasons. Gary wasn't an I told you so sort of man. It would, however, be one more dire prediction he had gotten correct, one more item checked on his horrible path of destruction.

My lack of lust meant my body was not responding. I was not wet enough to make this easy for either of us. I was willing to be uncomfortable for Gary. It was the least I could do considering this was all a result of my decisions. I feared his less than excited state would make our coupling difficult. I had no idea. He was not as hard as normal. He touched my all too dry sex and softened even more. It's a testament to the man and what we had shared that he had never felt me that way. Before this mess just beginning to make out made my body instantly rev up for him.

Gary pushed forward and nothing. At least I didn't grunt in discomfort, but he made no penetration at all. He was still hard enough to get the job started; it was my body that was halting his hilting. Then he faded. I watched my beloved husband go pale then absolutely crimson. I had known him for years and had never seen him close to this level of embarrassed. That state didn't last long; it shifted to full on humiliation. I started to reach out to him, to say something, his jerking away stopped my efforts. I'm actually thankful for that as I'm pretty sure anything I could have said would have made matters worse.

You see Gary's reaction was twofold. Plain as day Gary felt he had failed both of us. But he saw me as his underminer. Gary had shrunk quickly. His flaccid member mirrored how he thought I saw him, useless and unwanted. He had failed to be a man and please his mate as a man should, but that was because I didn't want him. I didn't want pleasure from him. He just thought my body was being more honest than my mind or heart. But Gary took responsibility for that too, saving me from that fate. Each episode further convinced him I didn't feel much love for him. He always took responsibility; he had failed to capture my heart and mind. He felt he should have presented a better case for me to love him; that it was his fault that I didn't. What was my fault was not telling him and letting him continue to love me until something better caught my eye, like an extended stay on a space station.

And thereby hangs a tale. I should have been more honest about being miserable at the thought of being separated from him. I should have told him about the flight. I should have balanced my excitement for the mission with my upset at leaving him for so long. I planted the seeds of doubt in his mind. Though he was wrong about my feelings and motivations, I was definitely the one who had made Gary feel this way.

His notion was that I didn't want to share my adventure with him and "protected it" by hiding it from him. Ergo it was more important than him. I had made a decision, and reveled in it, only thinking I should have mentioned it to Gary first after the fact. After that initial terrible mistake, I could have saved us by calling him immediately and telling him of the offer. He would have been so happy. We would have shared it! He would have told me to get off the phone and accept the mission and everything could have gone forward correctly after my titanic blunder. Except I didn't do that, starting this treacherous cascade.

I was always still off balance from my latest mistake when I would step on the next landmine. The explosions, however, always damaged Gary instead of me! I didn't know how to fix all the damage I had heaped upon him. I didn't even know how to make him believe it was accidental. Compounding issues was a massive amount of space shot related work to do. I couldn't and don't think I should have held back my glee about making the trip to the space station. Taken together though, why wouldn't Gary believe I valued the space shot more than him. To tell a man who feels you love him less that you are only making a temporary change in priorities is to deny his feeling and consign him to the trivial position of being just one more thing to prioritize. Gary would not be the love of my life, or even a man, but only an item on a grocery list.

It was an insidious web I had no idea how to extricate us from, especially as item after item Gary predicted came true. He was most right about one huge point: it was all unnecessary. I didn't have to cut him out of the choices, but for a handful Gary would have made the same decisions I had.

What I couldn't argue against was the effect on Gary, even if I found it unfounded. Having already castrated him emotionally I had now done the job physically. There was no denying it. He attempted insertion and it was a no-go. A later attempt with my mouth would not do the trick either. I had majorly messed my man up. The sex missions were scrubbed. I felt terrible. I felt like a bad person and a rotten wife. It was worse for Gary. Not only did he think I didn't love him as much; he felt like he was no longer a man. I had even robbed him of his masculinity.

He still supported me, though now for the first time he was shaken. It got worse. My chemical reaction grew so strong I didn't lubricate much at all. There were excellent over the counter remedies except for Gary everything was so different, and he hated the difference. I used to be excited to the point of desperation to be with him, now he elicited the excitement of a forgotten library book. When Gary and I tried again after a week of mental and physical cruelty for a young red-blooded male, we failed again. He hated the idea of a sympathy fuck or sympathy anything. I uttered something like, "Oh Gary." It didn't come out anything like I felt. I meant it as a sincere apology for my misdeed against him. It sounded like a mother tired of her child's continued hijinks. It seemed I had scolded him for the emasculation I perpetrated.

Gary's face lifted and I saw how truly abashed he was. He was beat red with embarrassment, no, it was shame. It was worse than before. My tone was apparently taken as condescension. He looked at me like he had just discovered a body snatcher had replaced me. He stood stiffly, his eyes glued to mine in horror, he took a step back and turned exiting our bedroom still naked. I had no idea where in the house he had gone. I wasn't sure if he had escaped me or left before he beat me.

I jumped up to follow him. I didn't move as quickly as needed, my body making a weary tired almost exasperated sounds, not the worried moan I felt. As I stood the mirror above the dresser showed my reflection. My reflection wasn't exasperated or worried. I looked impassive; I looked like I just didn't care! My injection had numbed me.

It was hard to explain that to him, the tears helped prove my sincerity. He informed me that I didn't look like I was as sad as he expected for tears. The chemicals were having a stronger effect than I thought they would. Then I made things worse.

I did what Gary expected and hoped I would do, marching myself into the doctor's office first thing the next morning explaining the situation and demanding answers. A series of tests were run. When I returned home that afternoon Gary was glad to hear I had cleared my schedule to get to the bottom of it. He then asked if they found anything. My reply was straight out of Bad Wife 101.

"Yes, thank God! All my reflexes are still normal. I'm good to go!"

I heard my words only as I said them.

Gary blanched, his head making a quick jerking motion. For Gary that was a huge tell. For a second he looked lost. Then he looked angry. He tried to dial down his feelings of abandonment as he spoke to me.

"Well okay," he said with steely control. "As long as you are fine with the results. That's all that matters, right?" He walked out of the room. His shoulders dropped as he reached the hallway. He must have felt he was safe showing his emotions there, he must have thought I wouldn't bother to keep my eyes on him as he exited.

I thought about what Gary had needed to hear, what he had waited all day to hear. First, he needed to know if I was okay. Second, he needed to know if this was how this chemical was supposed to work. Third, he wanted to know how to fix what was obviously broken. But I only asked the first two questions.

After confirming my health, I had asked if this reaction was normal. I was told it was in the norm, if not nominal, which made me sigh in relief. I had asked fearing for my launch, not for my man. I thought of the obvious third question; the one I had not asked that concerned Gary: was there a way to dial back the extreme reaction? I asked what I needed to for my mission not my marriage. I had emasculated my husband and best friend, yet I did not ask how to help him. His plight was worse than mine; how could I have done that? No, how could I have done that again? My husband was surely wondering the same thing.

I called reporting my mishap to Kathy. I could hear the line go silent on the other end. I was pretty sure she was counting silently before speaking to me. She was not pleased. Gary was hurt; I was the cause. Even knowing it, I was still piling on the hurt! Both Kathy and Gary were right, and I had been wrong. It appeared I wasn't capable of steering the ship in the right direction.

This started a period where I desperately tried to entice Gary to take his pleasure with me. Our results weren't stellar.

I was trying all sorts of things. I spoke to Gary frankly about how I was letting him down, trying to assure him I did not mean it. I tried to encourage him to simply use me however he saw fit. I told him that he was probably masturbating why not at least use me as an exotic toy if I wasn't a worthy partner? I told him I would love it emotionally, even if I was impaired physically. Gary tried, just to keep our intimacy on life support. Each time the lack of passion on my face destroyed his ability. He told me that incredulously he felt ugly and undesirable. I should have expected this as I showed no passion, but, damn it, I had no passion, the chemical having altered my emotions as well. I never expected things to go this far.

I truly felt for Gary. I didn't want to hurt him; hell, I didn't want him hurt! Emotionally impaired or not I wanted to help him. I no longer cared if I got physical gratification, that part of me was simply disconnected, but I wanted the connection we were losing. I wanted him to be happy to see me and be proud of me like he had always been. Trying though became more and more complicated for me, and frustrating for Gary.

At least my voice sounded hopeful, "Maybe if you try just a little harder Gary. I-I could turn over so you don't have to see my face or lack of emotion, then maybe it could work. Y-You still like my ass, don't you?" I only meant that if my dry vagina was a turn off, he was welcome to use any orifice he wished. As he couldn't see my impassive face using that, I still had something to offer. I hoped making that sacrifice for him might show I was still thinking of him.

He spoke softly and quietly after we aborted docking a couple of times. "I feel like a child or something, having to lube up and go for it. It seems like really hard masturbation, and I feel like less of a man, Peggy."

Now I showed emotion! I looked back with huge fearful eyes holding my breath as he continued. He was sharing with me again, though what was being shared was the postmortem of his defeat.

"I mean, I can't get my partner off. I have always gone to extremes to make sure my partners have no complaints. It's not that I need endorsements, but intimacy is important to me. I never want a woman to complain or feel shortchanged for making the important decision to be intimate with me: I want to reward their decision. It's not a competitive thing with other men, it goes deeper, I want the connection with my mate. It's especially true for my wife, the woman I hold above all others."