| Straight: Infidelity: A Story of Marital Justice (1/4) |
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My husband’s affair was brief. “Less than a week, honey, I swear. I am so sorry. It was such a mistake. I wish I had stopped myself. I really should have stopped myself. I love you more than anything. Forgive me...please.” They had met at Borders. They talked favorite books and authors in the literature aisle. They sat for coffee. They kissed briefly in the parking lot, standing by her car. That weekend they fucked each other at her apartment. “I’m furious at you! I should leave you right now. What have you done? How can I trust you again?” The affair ended when I found a copy of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer on the back seat of my husband’s Jetta. It was inscribed with a banal pronouncement, “Finding you is the best thing that’s ever, ever happened to me. Yours, Julia.” My husband is a terrible liar. “For chrissake, I don’t know who wrote that on the flyleaf. I got the book from Joe. At work.” “Joe, in accounting? That Joe?” “Uh-huh. Him.” “Joe gave you a copy of Tropic of Cancer?” “Uh, yes.” “For a book club or something?” “For...no, yes. No.” I could have continued to probe my husband’s mental acuity, to resolve the mysterious scenario between him and the cube-dweller on the third floor, but I lost my temper at that point. “Stop LYING to me!” He confessed. While I was under the impression he was putting in extra hours at the office, he was actually making an impression on this woman, very literally, on the ratty carpeting of her apartment, in front of the TV. “We were just watching reruns of Friends. Then things somehow got out of hand.” My husband of two years fell for her intellect, he told me, not her body. Hearing this did not pacify me. Their sex acts weren’t premeditated, he said. Both times. “Okay, okay, okay. Jeezus. Yes, there was a second time. Behind Barnes & Noble. We had been looking through gardening books and there was this one chapter on pollination...I don’t know. It got us going.” Several excruciatingly long days passed before I was calm enough to speak to him again. When I did, I had only two words to say. “End it.” In the months that have passed since my husband redeemed his only infidelity credit I’ve done a lot of thinking. About him, our relationship, our future, and about the guy that lives around the block from us. His name is Danny. He’s single. Rates very high on the cute-meter. Walks his Black Lab by the house every single day. He has a crush on me. I know because he doesn’t let his dog poop on our lawn. He also lights up and then gets very shy when I say hello to him on the street. The day arrives when I summon the courage to invite him in. I tell him I’m a freelance photographer, which, conveniently enough, I am. Not a breadwinning one, but hey, I took some classes in college. I do have a studio in the house, however, and I tell Danny he’d make a fabulous subject for my next series of photographs, which, starting today, I’m calling Men & Their Dogs. With an endearing, bashful grin, he accepts my invitation. After several photo shoots over the course of as many weeks, the dog stays outside. |
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