Uncle Henry & My Incredible Life

"Yeah, I can see how that's hit you so hard, June."

"I took her in, I fed her, I clothed her, I arranged for her job and I loved her with all my heart for ten fucking years and this is how she repays me?"

"June, I get you. I really do. I've only been with Mary for about three years, but what the fuck am I going to do? She was my entire life."

And then a horrible realisation struck me. "And who the fuck is Al Small? How come I don't know anything about Al? And she is still married to Al? My marriage was a fucking sham? Just what the fuck is going on?"

June looked at me, with a blazing look of determination. "I didn't even know she'd been married before. Looks like I wasn't in the loop on that. We can fix this whole sorry mess, but we need to go up to your apartment."

I hadn't a clue what she meant but if she could fix the mess our spouses had made of our lives, I was all for trying it out.

When we got out of the elevator, and entered my apartment, she walked purposefully into the bedroom that I shared with Mary, which looked out over the Bay.

She started taking her clothes off. I felt bewildered. "What's happening?" I asked.

She pointed at me, then to herself. "You and me, Paul, we're going to have a screwing party. Get your clothes off, now!"

"I thought you were a Lesbian?" I asked her, genuinely puzzled as I stripped off.

She gave me a weak grin. "Yeah, and it's been years since I was with a man, but we need revenge on those two lousy bums and this is my idea of sweet revenge."

She was now naked and she pulled back the comforter on the bed, climbed in and beckoned me to join her, with a welcoming smile.

She glanced at my erect cock and said: "Boy! Someone's pleased to see me!"

I nodded. I'll just go get a condom and..." "No!" She shouted. "No condom. I want us to be skin to skin, to be able to feel each other while we are... making love."

I shrugged, climbed I the bed, we hugged, we kissed and we started making love.

As I reached my climax I said: "I'm going to cum. Should I pull out?"

She grabbed me closer to her. "No! Don't! Come inside me. Please!" That was what I did. Three times, in total. I'm not going to describe our love making. Not here. I don't think it would be right.

We had finished our third and, at least for that day, our last session of love making. We both smoked the last of the Kensitas cigarettes that I'd brought with me from England. She'd seen me getting the pack and said: "Mind if I bum a smoke from you?"

"Not at all. I didn't know you smoked?"

She shook her head. "Not often, but sometimes. Like now, sometimes." We both smiled. It was funny but I knew at that moment I would smoke no more cigarettes after this one. And, in the main, I didn't.

We both stubbed out our cigarettes when the door to the apartment opened and moments later Mary and Sandie hurried into the room. Shit, they were angry. They began shouting at us.

June got out of bed and put on a robe of mine that was hanging by the bed. "You two little bitches have got some nerve! You have both been cheating on Paul and me and you are coming over like a pair of wronged virgin brides! Well, fuck that shit, bitches! You'll not get away with it.

"As for you, Sandie, is this all the thanks I get from pulling you, literally, from that putrid shit-filled gutter in Idaho, ten years back? Damn it! If you'd wanted to move on, why not just dump me before trying out with Mary? And Mary! I thought you were supposed to be my friend?"

I was quietly getting my clothing together and dressing. Mary looked at me and sneered. "Got nothing to say? You wimping out?"

I looked at her, harshly. "I didn't feel it was my place to interrupt what June was saying to the piece of shit who basically sponged off her for a decade, before deciding to stick the knife in her back with her best fucking friend?"

Now, after she had decided to insult me, the gloves were off. "And we've only been married five bloody minutes! Bloody, buggering hell, Mary. And it turns out we aren't even legally married, because you are still married to some bastard called Al Small. Why the fuck couldn't you have been honest with me? Why?"

Suddenly the bravado slipped away from Mary and she sat heavily on the chair in front of her dressing table, as Sandie stood, pensively and silent by the picture window as the sun began to set.

Mary shook her head. "I'm sorry, Paul. I know I should have told you about Al. We got married when we were 17 and still in high school. We thought we were the love's you dream of, but you know how it is, sometimes?

"Within a year we were both different people. He joined the Coastguard and I moved to California to go to college, and then I met June and Sandie, then you, and I could never tell you about Al and my still being married to him. The opportunity never seemed to come up. I'm sorry."

They both left, together.

At first I was worried because there'd been a major ruling by the California Supreme Court in 1966 that any property purchased or acquired while the couple were married belongs to both partners and would have to be divided after the divorce.

I had visions of Sandie trying to twist this to take away half of the money and property owned by BDP, but then I realised that she didn't have a leg to stand on, because she had fraudulently entered into a bigamous marriage with me, so I owed her not a damn penny.

I mentioned this to June and she laughed. "Yeah, looks like she screwed herself real good, there."

Mary and Sandie were genuinely in love, or so they thought, and they decided they would move in together, they soon got a dumpy little two bedroom house way out in the sticks in what was then a largely rural community called Santa Clara, commuting back into the Bay for work.

June remained in the apartment that she'd shared with Sandie, though she did say she wanted to get out of the lease as quickly as she could.

Three weeks after the whole mess blew up in our faces, a worried looking June came to see me in my office. She swallowed before speaking and said, "Paul? I'm pregnant. I just came back from the Doctor and he confirmed it with a pregnancy test. What'll I do?"

For the first time since the whole shitty situation had kicked off, I felt at peace with myself and very calm. I walked towards her, hugged her and said: "Don't worry. Everything will be just fine."

I disengaged from her, knelt in front of her, took her hands in mine, gazed up into her shocked eyes and said: "June Tabour, will you please marry me?"

She burst into tears and gave her tearful agreement to my proposal.

Afterwards she said: "But I'm a Lesbian. Doesn't that make a difference to you?" I received a guffaw of laughter and a probably well-deserved punch to my shoulder when I did a fairly good impersonation of Joe E. Browne's immortal line from the movie Some Like it Hot "Well, nobody's perfect!"

As I rubbed my shoulder I kissed her and said: "I'm sure things will be good. We can work things out, can't we?"

She nodded, but looked pensive. Then she grinned and nodded and I knew we'd work things out.

For some reason a couple of days later, Mary and Sandie asked for a meeting of all four of us and we asked them to visit us at my apartment that June and I now shared. The day I selected was a Sunday afternoon. They both looked anxious when they arrived.

They came out with apologies, but which actually, when you analysed them, were really nothing but half-baked justifications for their appalling behaviour.

As June and Sandie had been together the longest as a couple, I let June take the lead in our responses.

"But, Sandie, if you were unhappy with me, you should have told me. Maybe we could have worked it out, or maybe not. But that sneaking around and cheating on me? That just wasn't acceptable."

I then chimed in with: "I agree with June. Mary, you should have spoken to me, too. Hell, you should have told me about Al. I like to think of myself as a modern, 1960s man, perhaps we could have lived together as common law husband and wife? But we'll never know, because you never gave me the opportunity."

I paused, then I said: "But I have an announcement to make to you. June and I are engaged to be married."

That shocked them, but Sandie sneered: "But she's a lesbian! How the hell can she marry you?"

Before I could reply, June flared at her: "What gives you the right to define me, huh? You cheated on me. I literally pulled you from the gutter and this is how you fucking repay me?"

Sandie replied: "Our relationship was never equal. The way you rescued me was always hanging over my head."

June shook her head. "That's bullshit and you know it. You were the one who kept bringing that story up, not me. You know, I remember what your father shouted to you. He called you an ungrateful little whore. Maybe he had a point?"

At this point Sandie turned her ire on me. "You do know that she'll cheat on you, right? First chance, June'll leave you for some pussy!"

At this point Mary said quietly, yet firmly: "Sandie, that's enough. June and Paul aren't the cheats. That was on us."

She looked at both of us and said; "Congratulations, Paul, June. I hope you are both very happy together."

She took Sandi by the hand and propelled her through the door of the apartment, closing it softly behind her. We both laughed nervously about how it had turned out.

Then, soberly, June said: "I will not cheat on you, Paul, with either men or women."

"And I won't cheat on you, June," I replied.

For some reason I'd not told them of June's pregnancy.

Sandie tried to report us for bugging the phone, but the police told her that they had better things to deal with than a man tapping his own 'phone line. A contact of June's at the SFPD Southern Station, told her that. If you remember, cops were being attacked and shot, killed in some cases, so Sandie was told to back off.

My marriage to June marriage took place a couple of weeks later.

It was a simple affair conducted by a judge (it was what we both wanted), and as neither of us were legally married, there were no complications. Though I did take a signed letter from my lawyer just in case, when we got our marriage licence.

My Uncle Henry was able to come over for the wedding. He'd had to miss my first wedding for health issues, but I was pleased he was able to come for what I now considered to be my real wedding. He arrived with his own new bride, who was Doreen, the mother of Dolly Savage, my erstwhile love interest back in Brum. Funny how things happened, sometimes.

Dolly was only briefly mentioned, and Uncle Henry made a discrete point that she was now on her second marriage, herself. The butcher boy had, it transpired, an unfortunate desire to place his 'own special recipe pork sausage' into some other butcher boys hocks (as you might say!) something Dolly wouldn't tolerate. And, after my experiences with what Mary and Sandie had done to myself and June, I felt some sympathy for Dolly.

As it transpired over the years, June and I were able to work things out, and things were good. Outrageously so.

Baytech became a multi-million Dollar research outfit and the San Francisco branch of BDP went from strength-to-strength until it became a billion-dollar publishing enterprise in its own right, eventually absorbing the head office back in Birmingham in a management buyout. Uncle Henry and Doreen Earp, nee Savage, decided to take a well-deserved retirement in Prestatyn, North Wales.

Eventually, June and I had three children, Melony, our first, followed by Vincent and Sally. We moved from our apartment to Nob Hill, and when the time came for our retirement we moved to Pacific Heights into a house which cost nearly $40 million.

I decided to cast a nod at my Brummagem (an ancient spelling of Birmingham, fact fans!) heritage by having the lounge bar of a pub that had been demolished in Birmingham carefully removed and shipped over to the States and built into a recreation of a British pub.

It even had working hand pumps for beer and some proper pub optics for spirit drinks. We also had a temperature controlled wine-cellar, though June and Vincent were mainly in charge of that. I never quite got the hang of wine drinking. Sorry, honey!

What happened to Mary and Sandie? They were killed when a 747 crash-landed on their little house, a runaway express train jumped the tracks and crushed them, a pack of wild dogs tore them to pieces, masked bandits burst into their house and shot them to death, or whatever.

Actually, the truth is, after their "apology" that Sunday, neither I nor June wanted to know what they did, or how they got on. We'd moved on from them, and we didn't give a damn about the pair of them.

So, as our children, grandchildren and now great-grandchildren and other various and assorted relatives and friends gather round us at our four-storey Pacific Heights home, to help us celebrate our Golden Wedding Anniversary, I'm distributing copies of this, the mini-autobiography that you all demanded that you just must have me write.

If there are any parts in it you don't like, just pretend you didn't read them and move on. Because as your mother and I found out, sometimes moving on is the only way forward. And that's not a joke.

And you'll be interested to know that Uncle Henry is still alive, at 116 and is now the oldest man in Wales.

(This autobiography was written in 2016 by Paul Earp and was published privately for his family on his retirement on his 80th birthday.)