Swingin' on a Star

I parked a few houses down the street and got out the binoculars I had bought. I had about fifteen minutes before Ted usually got home from work.

I had called his job that morning and had been surprised to find that he was still going to work. As I waited, a light snow began to fall. The snow got heavier as I waited. I had to start running my engine to warm up the car, but Ted hadn't come home yet. It was almost two hours later than he should have been home when I finally saw his Jeep coming down the street. I trained my binoculars on our porch. Through the high-powered lenses, Ted's face was so close that it felt like I could reach out and touch him.

I saw him pick up the note I had written to him and stuck on our door. My heart lurched as he simply balled it up and threw it into the snow without even bothering to read it.

The pain on his face was evident even through the binoculars. It made me feel even worse. One of the biggest things about cheating is that after it's all over you realize that it was never really worth it.

You never think that you'll be caught. And you certainly never think about the pain it will cause the people you love. Seeing Ted like this hurt me badly. One of the worst things about it all was that I noticed that Ted didn't stop by the garage to check on his car. Somehow his pain made my usual healthy, strong, confident husband, smaller and weaker. Even his Mustang didn't seem to matter. I started crying. For years, I had wondered how Ted would be without me. What would his life be like if I died in an accident or something? I often joked that as long as he had that fucking car, he'd be okay.

Sitting there in the middle of a winter storm watching him from half a block away I realized how stupid I'd been. That car had never been any more important to Ted than my jewelry or my furniture was to me. The car was a thing. Ted loved that Mustang, but I was in his heart, and I had done my best to break that heart.

Just before I pulled off to drive back to my sister's house. I saw Mickey come out and start to shovel the snow in front of his house. I wondered what the hell had been wrong with me. And then it happened. Samantha came out of her unit and went over to ours. She didn't bother even speaking to Mickey as she passed him; she knocked on our door and went inside. I was suddenly extremely jealous.

Mickey finished the snow in front of his condo and started doing ours. Ted came out and yelled at him to stop. He clearly didn't want Mickey doing anything for him. I realized then that what Mickey and I had done had long-term ramifications. For years, Ted and Mickey had helped each other with yard work and everything else. They had their differences like most long term friends, and a lot of the time cutting each other's grass or shoveling a heavy snow went a long way towards mending those minor tiffs. But this time was different. Ted was refusing to accept even the smallest gestures of apology.

It made me hurt in another way. Ted and Mickey had been friends, even before I met and married Ted. Besides delivering a hard blow to my marriage, I had possibly destroyed a friendship that had lasted for most of their lives. As Mickey took his snow shovel back inside of his condo, I knew exactly how he felt.

I drove back to my sister's house with a lot on my mind. I called Samantha and tried to pretend that I hadn't seen her go into my condo that evening. She was pretty frosty at first. I told her that I had called to apologize to her for what I had done and for betraying her trust.

"I'm sorry if I sound catty or bitchy," she said. "But this has gotten totally out of hand. I spoke to the asshole I'm married to, and I found out everything. I guess this really isn't totally your fault. As a matter of fact, Mickey suddenly realized that you shouldn't have been included in this anyway."

"I ... I don't understand," I said. "What do you mean I shouldn't have been included?"

"I made Mickey tell me everything," she said. My heart lurched because Mickey had made me do some pretty degrading things.

"It was all about revenge," she said. "For most of his life, Mickey has been the butt of every joke by most of the guys he knows. It started when he was ten with whoopee cushions and "kick me," signs. Throughout his teens, the jokes got worse and more vicious. Mickey had to just grin and bear it, so they'd think he was a good egg. If he didn't, they started not including him in their activities. So he had no choice, he decided he'd rather be a part of the crowd and be laughed at, than not be a part of the group.

"Don't get me wrong, I love Mickey. I always have. Sure I wish he had more on the ball. I wish he had more get up and go, but he accepts me for what I am and loves me back. And until this happened, I never thought he'd cheat on me. I guess I can understand his motivation. I just hate what he did about it. And including you has ruined things for him."

"I still don't ..." I began.

"Elaine, Mickey is rather well endowed, but I guess you already know that," she said. "A certain type of woman responds to that in a ... well ... extremely positive way. And Mickey decided to use his uhm ... anatomy to seduce some of the women in our circle."

"I guess it was kind of a "he who laughs last, laughs best," ploy. You might have noticed that some of the men at the Super Bowl party not only didn't participate in making jokes against Mickey, they also discouraged others from doing so." She cleared her throat.

"Those men already know that Mickey was fucking their wives and had turned them into size queens. In exchange for not fucking their wives anymore, they dissuade their friends from jokes or pranks against Mickey," she said.

"But I thought that Mickey and Ted were really friends," I said.

"They were," she said. "And Mickey hopes with all of his heart that they will be again when this is all over. In your case, things were different. Mickey never wanted to hurt Ted. He just wanted to try you out. Mickey has that blond cheerleader fetish really bad. He thought that you were just too pretty to pass up. He just wanted to screw you a few times and have you dress up in a cheerleader outfit and film himself fucking you. He was bringing you along slowly, but Ted saw the two of you, and now it's all out in the open."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Most of the time when Mickey told the guys that he was fucking their wives, they got angry. But in the end, they agreed to keep it all quiet. You probably notice that a few of the couples at the party were very distant. Shit, some of them barely spoke to each other. The men were acting cocky, but it was all an act. The women, on the other hand, had that hang dog look, like they were walking around on eggshells around their own husbands. And you're probably going to hear that two of the couples we regularly hang out with are planning on moving out of the area."

"But why," I asked. "I saw on TV that at some time during a long marriage, almost fifty percent of couples deal with an incident of infidelity. A lot of them are able to put it behind them and stay together. You just have to want it badly enough. You just have to love each other enough."

"Come on Elaine, you aren't that stupid. Most of the couples that survive are cases where the man was the one who cheated. In most of those cases, he was also the breadwinner and there were children involved. This is a completely different situation because not only were the wives the ones who cheated, but they cheated simply because Mickey has a really big dick. That crushes a man's ego like almost nothing else." I thought about it and realized that she was probably right.

"So rather than let everyone find out that they've been cuckolded these guys just pretend, "in public," that everything is normal in their marriages. None of them know that they're all going through the same shit."

"What my poor dumb ass husband fails to realize is that these guys are not going to take what he did lying down. On the surface, they're all beaten and doing what he wants. However, I'll bet each, and every one of them is plotting some sort of revenge against him. As I said two of the couples are moving away as soon as the husbands can find new jobs. Those women are even stupider than their men. Neither of those couples, have children. Once they're away from our town where everyone knows them, how long do you think it'll be before the husbands file for divorce?"

"But you said that Ted brought everything into the open," I said. "As far as I know no one has heard about us except for the four of us and my stupid sister."

"Ted doesn't give a half a damn about how big Mickey's dick is," she said. "Ted isn't driven by his ego, dummy. Ted is driven by his heart. That man loved you more than anything else in his life. He feels that love has been tainted ... to him your marriage is pretty much over. He's leaning towards a divorce. He doesn't care who knows about it. All he wants is for the pain to stop. He just wants to start over."

"We can do that," I said. "We can move away and start over, just like those other couples, but without the divorce."

"So that's what you need to convince him of when we all get together to talk tomorrow evening," she said.

As I hung up the phone my stomach was all twisted up in knots. I hadn't even bothered to ask her the question that I originally called her to find out. I just didn't understand it. It seemed crazy to me. Ted wanted to divorce me after ten years over one stupid mistake?

And Samantha made no sense at all. I couldn't understand or follow her logic. The husbands who cared far less about their wives than Ted did me, were staying with them, while Ted, who loved me so completely wanted to throw my ass on the scrap heap? How exactly did that work?

I had twenty-four hours to plan and prepare to save my marriage. I needed to use it wisely.

I woke up the next morning and started working out what I would say to Ted. I prepared facts, studies, and statistics. I also got the name of a really good marriage counselor and arranged for us to see her. I was sure that I had a good chance of keeping my marriage together, or at least keeping it from falling apart.

That evening I was more nervous than I have ever been in my life. It was almost laughable. Why the hell should I be nervous? I wasn't going out on a date. I was meeting my own husband, the man who loved me so much that he asked me to spend the rest of his life with him. I already knew that he loved me. We were just going through a problem. And shit, I was an adult. He couldn't spank me or ground me. We both worked, so he couldn't take away my allowance. On second thought, if Ted wanted to spank me, I'd let him.

I drove up into our driveway and got out of the car. I took one more deep breath and opened the door. Samantha and Mickey were already there. No one looked happy. There was no food out so this was clearly not a friendly gathering. As Samantha had said, this was the four of us getting together to talk about what had gone on.

We all sat down at the same small table that we usually played cards or board games at. The tension in the air was so thick that you could cut it with a knife. No one wanted to say anything.

"Okay," said Samantha, after an eternity of staring, yet avoiding each other's eyes. "We all know the situation that brought us here. Over the last few days, I've spoken to all three of you, so I know pretty much how you all feel. I've spoken to Mickey the most, even though I'm so angry at him that I wish I could throw him through a wall. There are seven relationships here that have been damaged by what happen, and we need to sort them out and decide what we want to have happen."

"I'll start first," said Mickey. "Elaine, I'm sorry about what happened between us. It was wrong. I guess you've probably heard from Sam, my reasons right or wrong for what I was doing, but you should never have been a part of it. There was no reason for it. I was taking the wrong steps for my revenge in the first place, but I had no reason to include you and Ted in it. Ted had never been anything but friendly to me. I guess that I was just overwhelmed by how pretty you are. Ted is a lucky man. Anyway, I'm sorry."

I couldn't believe that Mickey was apologizing to me. It was hard not to smile.

"I've already apologized to Sam," he said. "I know that it's going to take me a long time to regain her trust, and she's already told me that it won't be easy. She also told me that I might not be able to take the punishment she's going to dish out, but I know she's wrong, and I'm determined to keep us together." He smiled at Samantha, and she smiled right back at him. That made me feel so much better that I just couldn't hold it inside anymore.

"Ted, Honey, I love you, more than anything on earth. What happened between Mickey and I should never have happened. I swear to you that it will never happen again. I just lost my head. I am so sorry, but I pr..." I began.

"Elaine, stop," said Ted suddenly. "There's no need for you to apologize."

"Why not," I asked. "If I don't at least ..."

"I've done a lot of thinking over the past few days," he said. "And I realized finally that I'm the one who was in the wrong ..."

"Huh?" I said. Samantha and Mickey looked at him in confusion at the same time I did.

"Whatchu talkin' bout Willis," I asked.

"You and Mickey are both adults," he said. "You were both consenting to what occurred. I might not have liked it, but I have no legal right to stop it. Technically, it's none of my business. I have no right to interfere in what two other consenting adults decide to do. Since my name is on the lease for our condo, I could object to it going on here, but as far as I know it never happened here, so ..."

"It was always at my house," spat Mickey. "And it only happened four or five times, maybe six at the most."

"There you have it," said Ted. Samantha was staring at him in total bewilderment.

"I still want you to know that it will never happen again, Honey," I said. My happiness was off the scale.

"Whatever floats your boat," he said. "But I'll never know if it does."

"You mean that if it ever happens again; make sure you don't find out?" I asked. I didn't like the sound of that. I knew that what Ted was hinting at was some sort of 'I'll have my affairs, and you have yours arrangement.' I didn't like the idea of him sleeping with other women even once.

"No, Elaine, I meant that since we're not going to be together, you can do whatever you please," he said. I almost passed out. I was having trouble breathing. It seemed like some sort of nightmare. He had to be joking.

"Ted, no, you can't be serious. I apologized," I said. "I told you it wouldn't ever happen again. We've been married for ten years. Samantha is forgiving Mickey."

"My lawyer says we can have a no-fault divorce and just walk away," he said. "We each keep our savings and pensions. You keep your car; I'll keep mine. Whoever wants the condo the most can keep it. Luckily, we're leasing it not buying it, so we have no equity in it."

His words made no sense to me. In fact, his voice sounded like Charlie Brown's teacher in those animated specials. He just sounded like random warbling sounds.

"Wait, stop," I said. "You aren't listening to me. I already said that I was sorry. I know I made a huge mistake. I want to fix it. I will do anything ... ANYTHING ... to make this right. Maybe you don't understand why this happened. Did you even know that I have ..." I sighed deeply and put my head down.

"Teddy, before you and I got married ... I ... I had a problem. It was kind of why I left college. When I first got to school, I was a nineteen-year-old virgin. I messed around some like everyone does. As you know, I'm not hard to look at, so getting guys was easy. I met up with a guy on the basketball team.

We hung out at a lot of parties with the team and the cheerleaders, and I ended up getting drunk at a lot of them. Anyway, I was still new to sex, and it really wasn't a big thing to me. Then one of his team mates spent the weekend with us and somehow while drunk, I ended up sleeping with him. He was a black guy, and he had the biggest ... well you get the idea. Anyway, I got kind of hung up on bigger ... equipment and for a while, I guess I was kind of a size queen."

"Why didn't you ever tell me about this?" he asked.

"Because, it was never a factor with us," I said. "Most of those guys aren't really that good in bed; they're just bigger. The only thing that turned me on about them was that feeling of being stretched to my limits. Some of them even hurt me and tore me down there. Sex like that isn't really pleasurable; it's just an addiction. And after I had things down there repaired and went through counseling, I got over it.

After I met you, things with us were so good that I never even thought about it again until that day about a month ago when Mickey pulled down his pants, and I saw..."

"Well, now you can have what you need," he said. "You don't have to worry about me and my tiny dick, anymore."

"In the first place, you're not tiny," I said. "You're above average and you're far better in bed than Mickey. I love you Ted."

"I'm sure there's some huge dicked guy out there just waiting to find you," he said.

"Ted what do I have to do ...?" I said. "I'll do anything. Please forgive me."

I couldn't believe it. Ted got up and came over to hug me as I began to cry again.

As he hugged me, I felt all of the warmth and love that I had always gotten from him. He wrapped me in those strong arms, and I melted. I felt protected and loved. I felt really foolish because I had never gotten anything like that from Mickey.

"I love you Ted," I said. I reached up to kiss him, but he turned his head away.

"I loved you too, Elaine," he said. He even smiled a little, or tried to anyway. "And I do forgive you. However, you have to understand. I know that Samantha thinks a lot of the guys involved in this have fragile egos and are feeling inferior to Mickey's giant junk. I'm not. To me, it's a non issue. It's like you and Samantha's boobs. You know she has them. You know they're incredible. But you're secure enough in how pretty you are that you don't care. You always knew that I loved you, and I loved what you have enough that no one could ever come between us." I nodded my head in agreement Samantha is beautiful besides having those huge tits, but I knew that Ted loved me too much to cheat on me.

"The real deal breaker for me was seeing you, Elaine. Seeing you so desperate for Mickey's huge dick that you allowed yourself to be degraded for it. He made you crawl across the floor on your belly like a snake ... and you were willing to do it. I have no idea of how many degrading and disgusting things you did or would have done for it. I'm sorry but seeing that ... well I realized that you were willing to go to lengths to get that that you just weren't willing to do for us. By your own words, you used to have a problem with size. You probably realized when we got married that I would never stand for cheating. You've always called me a Boy Scout. So you had to know what would have happened if you got caught. Maybe you counted so much on how much I love you, and it made you sure that even if you got caught, I'd take you back. So you took the risk.

However, Honey any time you gamble, you risk losing. And this time you rolled snake eyes. I just can't get past this. I've already filed for divorce."

I just stared at him, and then anger over took my sanity. "It won't matter," I said. "I'll get my own lawyer. We'll be in court forever. You will never be free from me. In the end, we'll still be married years from now."