40 Years of Earth Days

Loving wife has had enough, after 40 years of Earth Days.

The sun was shining, the sky was blue, and the birds were singing, but there were dark clouds of discontent on Elizabeth Gordon's horizon. She was married 40 years today, Earth Day.

"Happy Anniversary to me," she said taking a sip of the chilled champagne from the freshly opened bottle. It was only 9am and Elizabeth was already drinking.

She loved how the tiny bubbles of the champagne that popped and fizzed in her glass exploded in her mouth, as if they were her personal, miniscule fireworks there to help her celebrate her wedding anniversary alone, again. Putting her head back and closing her eyes, she waited for the alcohol to calm her nerves and to quell the rage that was slowly but surely brewing inside her heart and inside her head, in the way of a sudden storm that unexpectedly blows up on the horizon, rolls in, and darkens her blue sky. She took a big, deep breath trying to relax to stave off the inevitable, but to no avail. Having lived her life in denial and having closed her eyes to all that she suspected but didn't want to believe, it had taken her forty years to finally admit to herself how better her life would have been had she not married her husband. Angry that she had wasted her life with this man, she was now ready to make a change.

Her husband, Gordon G. Gordon, is such a wonderful man, really, so smart and so educated. When he married her, he knew how she felt about the good Earth and he shared the concerns she had for the ecology and conservationism in wanting to do her share in saving the planet and walking with a smaller carbon footprint, even back then, before it was the right and the popular thing to do. So committed to helping save the environment, so in love with Gordon, she chose the first official Earth Day, their favorite holiday, as their wedding day. In hindsight, had she known that Earth Day was not such a good day to pick to get married and to have as a wedding anniversary, she would have picked another day. Perhaps, had she picked another day to celebrate her wedding anniversary, things would have been different between her and her husband.

"Happy Anniversary to me," she said again, and again taking another slow sip of champagne.

Gordon planted that tree out in front of their home, a Weeping Willow tree, to forever commemorate the day they were married. How perfect is that? Happy when she first saw the tree 40 years ago, now with her angst and depression, she wanted to fall to her knees and weep in a mirror image of the tree. Emotionally, she felt how the tree looked with her head and shoulders slumped forward and her limbs as heavy as the branches of the tree from the weight of her sorrow. It's funny how the tree symbolically translated her mood.

Tied with a white, satin sash with an oversized bow, a decoration that had long since been removed, the tree was his first wedding gift to her and, at the time, she swooned that he did that for her. So beautiful and giving so much shade, that tree meant a lot to her in the beginning. It had grown to become the strong and growing symbol of their undying love.

"How thoughtful of him to do that? It was just like him, he was so romantic, back then, to buy me a tree, instead of a diamond ring," she said for no one to hear, while sipping her champagne. "Isn't that forty-year-old tree beautiful? It was such a perfect surprise, such a shock, actually. There I was expecting a diamond ring and got a Weeping Willow sapling instead. It would have been nice if he bought me the tree, along with the diamond. If only I knew then what I know now, who would have figured he was so cheap?"

Notwithstanding that romantic blunder, it was the thought behind the tree that counted and was appreciated then, but not so much now, especially after all that has transpired to foul her air and poison her mood with reasons to hate him. Besides, everything else was so perfect, back then, and so in tuned with Earth Day. She fooled myself into believing that she preferred having that tree, as their symbol of love, rather than having a big rock, a sparkling piece of carbon on her finger to show off to her family and friends, instead of inviting them to her house to show them her tree. Sadly, she watched the bubbles fizz and explode in her glass in the way she imagined his body fizzing and him horrifically dying in an acid bath.

Forty years later, symbolizing their marriage, the tree is so strong. It's so big. It gives so much shade to their house and oxygen to the air they breathe. There's no better honor to their marriage and to Earth Day than to plant a tree, even one planted 40 years ago, especially one planted 40 years ago. Now, every time she sees that damn tree, she thinks of her no good, dirty bastard of a husband. She thinks of her lonely and solitary wedding anniversary. She thinks of fucking Earth Day, the one day she has grown to despise with a passion that, if she was an alien from another planet in another galaxy, she'd blow planet Earth and him and all his little whores to smithereens.

Although the tree had long since outgrown the ribbon, she delighted in the fact that the tree would always be there as a loving memory, a memorial of sorts, to not only remind them of their true love for one another but also as a reminder of their anniversary and of all the Earth Days they celebrated together and would forever celebrate together. Earth Day was their favorite holiday. Life couldn't be more perfect for them than it was, that is, until, one day, when rushing to leave to go on, yet, another trip without her, taking another one of his young, blonde, beautiful, and buxom assistants, instead, he forgot to close his e-mail screen.

"Oops," she said with a vindictive giggle, as she waved to him from his office window, while watching his cab slowly drive away down the street for the airport.

For five seconds, she struggled with the moral dilemma of violating her husband's personal e-mail account and invading his expected privacy by reading his e-mails. Putting aside the brief list of negative ramifications she had with her moral dilemma in not respecting her husband's privacy, she was curious and suspicious enough, and bored, angry, and hurt enough to read all of his e-mails. What else did she have to do, sitting home alone for a week, until he returned from Switzerland? Even though he could more than well afford it, he was too cheap to buy cable and there was nothing on television.

Besides, she loved to read and there before her were hundreds of received e-mails from women, thousands of them, actually. The pack rat that he was, he deleted nothing and saved everything. Stunned, shocked, and surprised, even though she had long suspected it, she couldn't believe he had been cheating on her with so many women for so many years.

Where did he find the time? Where did he get the inclination? Where did he get the energy? When did he get a prescription for Viagra? She was tired just from reading them all. She couldn't imagine where he found the libido to have sex with all of those women. There were so many of them.

In the way that Wilt Chamberlain had admitted to having sex with 20,000 women, by her unofficial count, her husband, certainly no Hall of Fame basketball superstar, nonetheless, was the Wilt Chamberlain of the academic world. Now she understood why, whenever she was in a playful mood, whenever she needed some physical attention, whenever she required some loving affection, he was always too tired. Now, she knew the reason for his exhaustion, the cad.

She thought he needed a vitamin. She thought he was just old. She should have known better. He was just spent, worn to a frazzle from having sex with women 40-years younger than he is. She's the one who is old. He's the one who's no longer attracted to her. He's more attractive to the very young and beautiful, buxom blondes.

The anal and detailed Virgo that she was, it took her the entire week to print out all of those e-mails and file them away in binders; it took three of them. Then, she realized, what about the e-mails he sent. Wouldn't those be fun, interesting, and entertaining to read, too? Certainly, she had the time and the inclination to do just that.

She had no idea of the enormity of the sexual scandal, until she printed out those, too. His sent e-mails filled three more volumes. She had a regular library, a permanent record, of her husband's infidelity documented via the Internet. Received and sent, they are all in a box bound with tape and sitting in her sister's basement, just waiting for the proper time to present them to her divorce attorney.

"Happy Earth Day, Mr. Tree," she said standing in her living room and looking out the big bay window at the tree, before raising her glass in toast of it.

Every year for the past 25 years, unfortunately, she celebrates her wedding anniversaries alone. Her husband, a well regarded and highly respected university Professor, after earning his Ph.D. in his field of study, has become the foremost authority on, of all things, the meaning of and all that relates to Earth Day in the United States and around the world. Combining elements from geology and other Earth sciences, he teaches an Earth Day, Earth science class that is always full and on the waiting list for most students. He is beloved by his students and esteemed by his fellow colleagues. Much like his lectures, his classes are always fun and interesting. Hell, he's even been on Oprah.

"He's a Hell of a guy, a Hell of a guy, a man's man," she said raising her glass again, this time in toast to her husband.

Even though Earth Day is their wedding anniversary, a day that he should spend his time at home with his loving and devoted wife or, at least, take her with him, sadly, Earth Day is the day he travels the most. As a point of fact, booked solidly, he has a full schedule of speaking engagements from the beginning of March to end of May and every day the entire month of April. The best place to find Professor Gordon in April is behind a podium, on the road, in the air, or in a hotel room. The thought of him in a hotel room was what made her the angriest. Constantly requiring the assistance of several, young and beautiful, buxom, blondes, different ones each year, he's such a horny man, sorry, of course, she meant to say that he's such a busy man, especially this time of year, that seldom is he at home.

There was a time, when they were first married, actually, the first fifteen years of their marriage, to be exact, when he used to invite her to go along with him and they'd celebrate their anniversaries in hotel rooms all over the world. Traveling the world over with her husband was some of the best and most memorable times of her life. Paris was her most romantic memory. London is where they had the most fun. Yet, Rome, because of the culture and her family heritage, with her being Italian, Sicilian, actually, is where she'd like to return to rid herself of his dead and lifeless body, where no one will ever find him, after she murders him and cuts him up into little pieces and feeds him to the fish in the Mediterranean Sea. It's a good thing for him that he doesn't take her traveling with him anymore.

Only, once he started publishing his books and recording his lectures to DVD's and successfully selling those, too, fame and fortune suddenly and positively changed all of that for him, as much as it detrimentally changed all of that for her. One would think, now that Professor Gordon was more successful, financially secure, and no longer a struggling teacher, that he'd be content with his financial and academic successes, she'd be happier, and they'd have a better life together. Unfortunately, in the guise of an extra credit course, subsidized by the university, he's been taking a student with him to help him prepare for his lectures. Most times, he takes a different one each trip, a young, beautiful, female student, instead of her. Because of his desire of wanting and needing to be with young and beautiful female students, rather than with his old and withered wife, instead of growing older, wiser, and closer together, they've grown more apart.

To justify his rejection of her, he told her that he needs the eye candy to sell his books and DVD's out front in the lobby and at the conclusion of his lectures. His excuse made sense to her and no doubt, he's right, of course. He's always right. Only, she couldn't help but wonder, if his young, gullible assistants knew he thought of them as merely eye candy. For someone so educated and so enlightened, he's such a chauvinist pig to demean and belittle women by comparing them to sugared sweets.

Sex sells. Right? Only, in violation of their vows of holy matrimony, especially after reading his e-mails, she knows her husband all too well and she knows the sweet tooth that he has and chooses not to ignore by disavowing his matrimonial vows and indulging in the forbidden honey and the extramarital sex of being alone with someone so sweet. Excessive and compulsive in everything he does, he loves candy, eye candy or otherwise, especially eye candy; he can't resist it. She imagined cutting off his cock and dipping it in dark, rich chocolate and plucking out his eyes to decorate his chocolate covered cock, before feeding it to him.

"How's that for eye candy, you dirty bastard, you lecherous old man," she said out loud for no one to hear.

Unable to grow old gracefully, she suspects he's afraid of getting old and the young women that he has accompany him on his extensive trips takes his mind off his aging for the time that they're alone together. She'd think it'd be just the opposite. Someone so young and so beautiful would make him feel so old and so decrepit. She can't imagine why a young, beautiful, and educated woman would be so interested in such a self-important and pompous, old man. Even with her, especially with her, after a while, his incessant talking, dogmatic pontificating, actually, becomes annoying, much in the way of a radio station that can't lock onto a station.

"Hissssssss," she said repeating the sound she hears, whenever she hears him speak. "Hissssssss," she said letting out some of her boiling over steam. "Hissssssss," she said again thinking of him as a snake and she the deadly mongoose. "Hiss, hiss, hiss, hiss."

She worked in sales after graduating from college and later, after they were married; she had a successful selling career. She knows more about selling, no doubt, than miss blonde, eye candy with the big tits, who he insists on taking with him, instead of her. As his loyal, faithful, and loving wife, who better to hawk his books and sell his DVD's than her? Certainly, she could sell his books and DVD's, as well as Miss sweet, sugar Daddy sucker, but the only men she'd attract are older men, those senior citizens who are more into Bengay and denture crème than the eye candy that accompanies her husband with their big tits and long, blonde hair. Perhaps, it's her age, an age that is closer to his age than to his young female admirers' age, that has soured his sweet tooth for her and the reason why he no longer invites her to travel with him. He's such a pompous, self-absorbed prick.

She wondered if the attendees at the conferences thought his young assistants, he's had so many of them over the years, were his daughters or his granddaughters. She wondered if they suspected or knew that his assistants were doing more than just hawking his books and selling his DVD's, but having sex with him, before and after his lectures. She wondered if she was the laughing stock on campus, the good wife of the illustrious Professor Gordon, putting up with all of his extramarital affairs and sexual shenanigans, even after stupidly and naively helping him to get ready for his trips by washing and ironing his clothes and packing his bags, while handling and dispatching all his personal affairs.

As usual, his logical argument makes sense and he's always so wise in everything he says, especially when making excuses not to take her with him. Now, adding more to his reasoning and justification to not have her accompany him, instead of his sweet, sugar student, he makes more money in selling his books and DVD's than he does in working as a university professor. Between the salary he earns at the university, the money he's paid to speak, and the books and DVD's he sells on tour, he does quite well for himself, actually.

Between his retirement pension that he has with the university, a retirement that he may not live to see, unfortunately, if she has anything to say about it, his hefty stock market portfolio, and his real estate investments, he has more than enough money stashed away to retire, quit working forever, and stay home and/or travel with her. Only, he'd never do that. The temptation of fame and fortune, along with the adoration received from his young and beautiful, buxom, blonde bimbo type of students are what attracts him to the shine of the spotlight like a moth to a flame.

He'd never quit teaching at the university. He'd never stop traveling each Spring. Gone too many nights and weekends during the year, he'd never stay home with her, not now and not ever. Yet, as he always has, he relies on her, his dutiful and loving wife, to take care of him, as well as to manage the multitude of monotonous minutia that she deals with to make his life easier and that allows him to escape her to have his worldwide extramarital affairs. How accommodating of her to do that for him.

As usual, he gave her a laundry list of things to do in his absence, before he rushed out the door. As usual, he doesn't appreciate her, nor does he respect her, nor does he even know all that she does for him. She's just his wife of 40 years, after all, and no one special. She's not young, pretty, busty, or blonde, she's just old, hurt, tired, and angry.

"Don't forget to pick up my suits at the drycleaners," he said without even acknowledging her with a look. "And I'll need my clothes ironed and packed. As soon as I return home to collect my bags, I'll be leaving again tonight for the airport with Christine."

Again, he didn't even acknowledge her with a look. For such an educated man, how rude of him to not even look at her, when talking to her. It's bad enough not to feel wanted and desired, but by discounting her with not even so much as a warm smile, a kind word, or a bright look, he has a way of making her feel hurt and invisible. For sure, he'd never miss the chance of smiling and looking at one of his beautiful, young assistants, or one of his enamored colleagues from the university, or even some devoted fan, a stranger, from one of his lectures, when talking to them.

"Don't worry, Dear," she said. "I won't forget to get your suits from the drycleaners."

Now that she thought more about it, oddly enough, he never even calls her by name. Not able to remember the last time he called her by name, she wondered if he forgot her name. He'd never offend one of his buxom, blonde, beautiful assistants by forgetting their names. Surely, he remembers their names even in his dreams, especially in his dreams.

Then, she thought, with all the women in his life, maybe he doesn't remember being married to her. Maybe he thinks she's his doting mother, his spinster sister, his nosey roommate, or his boring housekeeper. Yes, that must be it. He must think she's an employee and an expense of his business, his monkey business.

Aging along with him, but still looking much like the dark haired Diane Sawyer that she did years ago, surely, she doesn't look bad for 62-years-old, she thought to herself, while turning and looking at herself in the mirror. Everyone tells her she looks ten years younger and can't believe her age, when she tells them how old she really is. Surely, she's no Christine, but at 67-years-old, he's no George Clooney either.