The Curmudgeon

You need to understand me and the circumstances that led up to this story. I don't think I am different from many other guys my age. I have led a very enjoyable and rewarding life. It's been interesting from several standpoints. I am 60 years old. That's not unusual these days, but considering everything, it is a milestone for me.

In my younger days, I believed I was destined for a short life. Most of the males on both sides of my family had died young from a variety of maladies, all connected to cardiovascular disease. I had decided early on that if I was in store for a short life, it would be exciting. I lived, played, and worked hard for the first half of my life.

When I was about 40, I realized I might need to reevaluate my situation. Medical technology was changing rapidly. People that had the same sorts of health issues to which all of my predecessors had succumbed, were now routinely being treated and living on for many years. To shorten the story, I stepped back, evaluated my life, took some precautions, and charged ahead.

Don't misunderstand. I am not without my issues. I had a double bypass and have had three or four stents inserted. I can never remember the exact number. I am a type II diabetic. Long years of ignoring my health, the bypass surgery, all the meds, and the chronic diabetes have taken another toll as well. I haven't had an erection in probably 10 years.

See, I have been married for almost 30 years. To the same woman. Yeah! I find it hard to believe too. Through all the trials and tribulations, she has accepted me for who I am and what I am. She stayed through raising two children of our own and a foster child. With almost 50 years of marriage under our belts, it has become more of a routine than an adventure. We are both retired and all we do is mess around with our hobbies.

About my wife. We got together the first time on a blind date that was supposed to be a whole group of people. By the time the date arrived, only the two of us were there. So, it was dinner and onto one of the local clubs for dancing. The night ended up back at the house I was renting. Two years later we were married in a church with all the pomp and circumstance. Her mother insisted.

All the attendants at the wedding, and half the relatives on both sides, were taking side bets on how pregnant she was. We fooled them all. We didn't have our first kid for almost three years. Time enough to get her out of school and me to decide that I needed a real job with benefits. That led to the fire department. It was a good choice for me. I'm unsure if it was a good choice for a young family. Working 24 hours on shift and then having 48 hours off may seem like a dream, but you would be surprised how many birthdays, Christmases, anniversaries, and household emergencies occur when you are at the fire station and can't leave.

Anyway, back to more of the present than the past. We were in a rut. I knew it. She knew it. But neither of us was willing or comfortable enough to talk about it. We just kept shoving it aside, under the carpet, or in a closet rather than face the fact that we had a problem. Oh. I do need to drop this into the conversation.

My wife has never been a raving beauty. She is attractive and personable. At 5'4" she is a little on the pudgy side. She has small breasts. She claims a B cup but she routinely adds tissues or toilet paper to her bras to fill them out. Her behind was always a little big; after two kids, it is even larger. She does have great legs and used to show them off. Now she covers them up with fucking yoga pants. She wears sneakers most of the time because she has had trouble with her feet and can't wear heels for any length of time. My loss.

There was a time she would dress up and we would have fantasy nights. We had a nice wardrobe of exotic lingerie, corsets, and other very feminine things that she would routinely wear on those nights when we could dump the kids off with one of our parents. At one point, we even got pretty serious about the BDSM lifestyle when we were alone. Try as I could, I could never get her interested in participating in the public side of a BDSM group.

I haven't seen her in anything sexy in years. When I approach the subject, she says that an almost 65-year-old woman can't look sexy and has no business wearing that kind of stuff. I don't know what happened to our collection. I haven't seen any of it in years.

So that's where we are. I suspect we are not much different than thousands of other couples our age, simply passing the time.

I spend a lot of time on the computer. I admit to being a bit of a geek. I am good with my laptop and can do a lot of things most people my age think of as voodoo when it comes to electronics. I write. I write erotic stories. I write very explicit erotic stories about some extreme subjects. It turns me on. I can't help it. The hydraulics in my male parts don't work anymore. But all the other functions seem to be intact. I can orgasm, I get aroused, I can cum. I just can't get anything that closely resembles a hard-on. Chalk it up to a lot of hard living in the past compounded by some genetic issues that I can't control.

As a writer, I always look for a good storyline or plot. I was thinking one day. OK. I was daydreaming. Sue me. I was daydreaming, maybe fantasizing, and working around a plotline for a cheating wife-husband storyline. My mind was playing with what might make a husband suspicious that his wife was cheating. I was making a list. Checking it twice. That's a good way to find out who is naughty or nice. Pardon me. Sometimes my brain slips and gets off track.

Anyway, I was working on this list of all the things that might be red flags.

Long absences from home with plausible excuses.

A change in attitude or affection.

Sudden interest in social media on an electronic device.

Unexplained changes in wardrobe, hairstyles, or any of several personal habits.

A new involvement in a social group, club, or other activities outside the house isn't really geared to a couple.

Much more careful use of electronic devices including not leaving them readily available, hiding them, or changing passwords suddenly.

I thought I had a great start on a story as old as the hills and spawned a million variations. Not very creative, I know. But. It fulfilled my need to put words together in a row and provide some titillation to my constant need for stimulation. So I started writing. It went pretty well as I crafted the storyline, the character development, and the first few chapters. The husband was finding the clues and beginning to suspect his wife. I had taken a break from writing to peruse the output. I reread what I had written, and something ticked the back of my brain.

The more I read of my own work, the more it resonated with me. I went back to check my list of suspicious activities and added another check-off. I mean, I didn't have a physical written list. It was all mental, but I was still checking the list.

I spent all afternoon thinking about it. I came to the conclusion that I was writing about something closer to home. I began to catalog things from my list.

Several years ago, my wife had gotten involved in several small groups. She has always liked crafting and suddenly got involved with several crafting groups that regularly met on afternoons and evenings. Two or three times a week, she would leave early in the afternoon with a bag of yarn or a sewing machine and a load of fabric for some group session somewhere.

Later she added one day a week when she would leave at noon and spend the entire afternoon until late in the evening with one or two of her friends at their houses quilting, sewing, or some other craft activity. It didn't twig for a long time that they never came to our house for one of these sessions.

Long Absences with plausible explanations. Check.

It also came to mind that there had been a decline over the past couple of years in our intimate and sexual relationship. Yes, I thought I was working hard at trying to maintain some kind of sexual excitement. My dick wouldn't work, but my fingers and tongue certainly did. As I thought about it, I saw a pattern emerge. She had become less and less interested in that kind of activity. At first, she would actively participate. There were times when she took the lead and became the sexual aggressor. Then, as I thought back, I could see a gradual change. She lost her aggressive nature. Then she seemed less and less aroused and interested. Of late, she had even, occasionally, begged off. When I questioned what was wrong, there were excuses about age, declining hormones, etc. The last year had been nothing more than a few instances of my caressing her small breasts and then rubbing her clit until she came to what I took to be an orgasm.

A change in affections or attitudes. Check.

Several years ago, out of the blue, she asked me to find her a small laptop computer. I had no reason to think anything about it and I found a reasonably priced 14" laptop that suited her. It was pink. I set it up, introduced it to our network, and didn't give it another thought. Now, I think about it a lot.

She spends hours online on either her laptop or her smartphone. She admits to playing many online games with others. She has also been very attracted to Facebook and other social media websites. I wasn't aware of what she was doing; I just knew that she was spending more and more time on her devices.

Sudden interest in electronic devices. Check.

I don't pay much attention to what my wife wears around the house daily. As I said, she has adopted yoga pants and tights with baggy sweaters as her usual attire. Her hair was cropped into a bob style because it was easier to keep. Makeup became almost non-existent.

When she started going to her craft groups and meeting her friends regularly, I didn't notice much of a change. Looking back, the changes were subtle but they were there. Her hair became much more of an issue and hints of makeup started to appear more frequently. She still held onto the yoga pants and tights, but I can remember that they became much more stylish than the cheap ones she had chosen for a long time.

Lately, I have noticed that her wardrobe has grown as well. There are more options. She seemed to be paying much more attention to her outward appearance than she had for a while. I should have paid more attention when the mail-order lingerie started to arrive, and she began to wear much classier and elegant underwear than the cotton briefs and padded sports bras that had been the staple for years.

Unexplained changes in wardrobe, and hairstyle. Check

That day I sat at my desk and didn't open the word processor. Instead, I began a different sort of search. In a matter of hours, I had my answers. It took me a few days to accomplish all that I had planned. For the first time that I could recall I was going to perpetrate a ruse on my wife. I had set up keylogging software to place on her computer and her phone. The former was fairly easy. She never took it anywhere. It was passworded but my wife is a creature of habit which makes things like passwords relatively simple. As it turned out, the password was our anniversary.

Her phone proved to be a bigger challenge. She carried that thing with her everywhere, even to the bathroom. If she was in the shower she was listening to some podcast. If she was working in the garden, it was the same thing. Getting a hold of that phone for even ten minutes would be challenging. I figured my best chance was when she was asleep. The last thing she did every night was lay that phone on the bed's headboard and put her glasses on top of it. The first thing she did in the morning was put on her glasses and pick up that phone. If I could purloin it while she was sleeping, I could put the keylogger in place.

Several nights later, I was in bed early, as usual. I feigned sleep until she came to bed and performed her usual evening rituals. I lay quietly, sleeping, or so she thought. In time, I heard her snoring. I took the chance and carefully reached over her and plucked up the phone and the glasses. I quietly left the bedroom and headed to my office. In less than five minutes I had the keylogger installed. I put everything back as close as possible to how I found it. I rolled over in the bed and was almost instantly asleep. All I had to do was wait.

I stayed away from the logging site for several days. I wanted to give it time to do its work. Besides, I got preoccupied with a new story idea that kept me focused. When I had exhausted the possibilities of the story, I came back to the keyloggers. I pulled up the website, accessed my account, and found that both worked well.

I checked the laptop first. There wasn't much to see there. A couple of emails with one of the kids, some innocuous text messages from one of her girlfriends, and a list of websites she browsed looking at quilt patterns. Nothing that I needed to worry about.

The phone was a different story. The listing went on for page after page. The keylogger was thorough. There was a chronological list of everything she had put into that phone. Every phone number she called, every test she had received and answered, every Facebook message she sent or received, and every Facebook comment she had made. It was going to take hours to sift through everything. I needed a plan.

First, I looked at the phone numbers. Many I could eliminate or discount because I knew who they belonged to. Most were her known friends or family. Those cut the list down considerably. Out of what was left, one was repeatedly on the list. They weren't phone calls but the origination of text messages. I jotted that phone number down in the small journal I had started keeping. The texts that went with the messages were a bit more telling. There was nothing overtly incriminating. Most were brief messages like "good morning, good evening, have a great day, etc."

In the list of websites, I found some other interesting bits. There were several of the gaming sites as she had claimed. There was also one that I didn't recognize and had some unintelligible name made up of random numbers and letters. I punched in the URL on my laptop and was soon looking at an adult chat site. I knew from the keylogger where she had been going on the site. I had to create a username and an account on the site. After I did that, choosing to call myself Suspicious, I checked out the rooms where she had been frequenting.

My first stop was the one that she seemed to gravitate to most often. It was a chatroom named "Easy Pickups." I checked into the room and even at this early hour in the afternoon, there were more than 40 users. It was an almost equal mix of men's and women's names. Whether they were the sex they advertised remained a mystery.

I decided just to wait and watch for a while. I got an eye full. What I had found seemed to be a wholesale marketplace for people looking for everything from an evening of sexting to people looking for a full-blown hookup. It was nothing I hadn't seen before, but it had a different feeling when you knew your wife had been on a shopping spree in the department store.

I stayed about 40 minutes just reading the chat room messages. It was difficult sometimes as the scroll was so fast. Not only that, but I had to fend off a host of private messages from both men and women who thought Suspicious was an intriguing screen name. Eventually, I left to visit other chat rooms on the log list. They were all about the same. I finally got to one room called OurPlace. When I tried to log into it, I was informed it was a private chat room that was currently closed. That bit of information went into my little blue journal.

I closed the log and sat back. I now had someplace to start so I decided to get started. I looked at my notes and decided I needed some more technology. My next stop was the local big box store. I picked up an inexpensive laptop and took it home. I set it up and logged into our Wi-Fi network. In a few minutes, I had the logging site up and turned it to full-time. I set it up on my desk where I could see the screen and hear any alerts.

I went to work writing and got lost in the story I was writing. It was about a couple that found new life in their marriage and a small neighborhood with a different outlook on life. I heard the new laptop ping and I looked up. She had logged into the chat site. I looked at the clock. It was just 2 pm. I thought about it and remembered she was in her "sewing" group. I pulled the new laptop toward me and looked. Sure enough, she was logged in. I flipped over to the chat site. I was looking for a user named Sugarbum. I searched the user list and saw her in a private room. It was the room called OurPlace. I tried to get in but was promptly told that it was a private room available by invitation only. I seemed to be stymied.

I flipped back to the logging software. I could at least see what she was typing. I sat and watched.

"Hello, Sir."

"Very well, Sir."

"A good day, Sir."

"I have given it a lot of thought."

"Yes, but there are a lot of circumstances that have to be considered."

"I don't know. Can we talk about this some other time? I need some personal attention."

"Yes. I did as you told me. I have it."

"222 345 8109"

I jotted that number down. It was a phone number I wasn't familiar with."

"Yes. Ok... Tomorrow. Now. Can you please do what you do best?"

For the next 40 minutes, I sat and watched what I expected to see come across the screen. There was some of the usual give and take, then the conversation turned blatantly sexual. I guessed it was what some call sexting. Without the other side of the conversation, it was decidedly lopsided. I had to assume a lot, but it did appear that she was having a good time. Still, it told me a lot. More notes went into the journal.

Suddenly, she was gone. I looked at the chat room site and it was closed. My attention turned to the phone number. I had a sneaking suspicion. I got up while there was still time and headed to our bedroom. I started a systematic search of the drawers in the vanity. It didn't take long for me to find what I knew was there. In her lingerie drawer, the one where all that erotic lingerie continued to reside.

It was a cheap burner phone. She probably got the idea from one of my stories. I use a lot of burner phones in those types of stories. Anyway, I found the phone, it was passworded, of course, but it didn't take long to unravel that mystery. My wife is not a paragon of inventiveness. Once I opened the phone, it was just a few minutes until the keylogger was installed and running. I put the phone back exactly where I found it. I rearranged the lingerie, stopping for a moment to hold a few pieces and let the memories come back. I shut the drawer and returned to my office.

She left the house the next day. It was her day to spend with one of her girlfriends. They typically got together just after lunch, did whatever they were going to do, had dinner, and then went to a knitting group. That usually puts her home around 8 pm.

Based on what I had read the day before, I was curious about that phone number. Unfortunately, I wouldn't know except that she had called the number, or she had received a call. I would get the number on the other end.

I was busy with some other business when I heard the logger chime. I pulled it up and sure enough the burner phone had an incoming call. I put the number down in my journal. The call lasted just over 30 minutes. I noted the time as well. That immediately put me into investigator mode. I got my regular laptop and went to work. Modern technology is amazing. Within an hour I knew as much about the owner of that other phone number as I knew about my own kids.