My wife got me this tie for my birthday once and it was so obviously awful I think she had it custom made. I smiled with all my teeth and thanked her and then I regifted it to the guy we both see for therapy. I thought it would be funny twice because first, I don’t like our therapist so putting him in an ugly tie he would feel obligated to wear would feel good, and second, Claire might see it on him, and I was interested to see how she’d handle that. It’s made of this awful material that I can never remember the name for. Not chamois and not chartreuse.
I’ll start by saying that I’m cheating on my wife. Good to get that out at the jump. And this isn’t actually about that, although everything seems to be about that lately. It’s about the outside of that; what’s around it.
I’m not a monster. If the kids found out or I thought they knew something, then I’d tell them, and talk to her. But she basically knew before it started and pretty much everything had been working fine enough until this Tuesday thing, so I was in a holding pattern.
And it’s that sort of thing where my wife knows, and obviously I know, but also I know she knows and she knows that I know she knows. If I say it to her though, if I cop to it, then suddenly she’s married to a cheater. And that’s something that requires action. Another note is that she actually cheated on me first. It was years ago and honestly I sort of led her to it so I wasn’t planning on using that excuse (it’s another thing each of us knows the other knows but we chose back then to avoid the whole conflict of it) and anyway these aren’t even related incidents.
She doesn’t know who I’m cheating with which feels like a healthy boundary and my therapist doesn’t disagree.
That’s the kicker though; we go to the same therapist. This is what it’s actually about sort of. Dr. Thompson is the only guy in our area and in-network with our garbage insurance. How twisted is this fucking guy? I mean fine he’s duty-bound to the confessional or whatever, but he knows we both know and that we know we both know! Why wouldn’t he tell us to split up? Or confess? Or do a couple’s meeting or something? But then maybe it would look like he’s using one of our sessions to inform the other’s advice? Is there a rule against that? Or maybe this is just free money for him. I want to kill the guy. If he wasn’t butt-ugly I’d guess she was fucking him but he’s not her type, which I know because she said, and I quote, “Dr. Thompson has your nose, Dennis.”
Anyway, part of my problem has been logistics, which is a little dry but stick with me. On Tuesdays and Thursdays my wife goes to pilates (which is something you’re supposed to capitalize but I refuse) at 7am, and she isn’t back until noon because she goes and gets “coffee” with “Trisha” after pilates and that somehow takes several hours. (I don’t know or care if coffee or Trisha are real.) That window is the only time I can actually cheat and I believe it’s the window she schedules her absence for me to cheat. I think if my wife and I aren’t fulfilling this specific aspect of the marriage I don’t think I need to feel as bad, especially if we’re all in on it. (Dr. Thompson hasn’t disagreed with that outright, although sometimes at the end of our sessions he looks like he wishes he said something.)
But, so, I’ve told my office I need those two mornings off and they thought I was really sick (because I said I was getting “treatment” (which isn’t lying)) and they said yes. And I use that time to drop the kids off at school, but that leaves me with a 9am to Noon window. Weekday mornings aren’t usually the time people can be casual about extramarital sex but if you meet someone with a flexible schedule and loose sexual ethic then you’re in luck, even if they aren’t necessarily your type, or physically attractive, or attractive in any other sense.
Here’s the meat of it, and I’m almost done here. It’s 10am and it’s Tuesday and we’re at my house because it’s free and has beds and who cares, not everything needs to be sappy. We’re just getting started, I won’t go into the details but I’m in sort of a Winnie the Pooh state (t-shirt on, but no pants) and that’s when Claire gets home way early from “coffee” or coffee, and I hear her in the kitchen and so we start getting dressed quick and I’ve got one leg in my pants but nothing important is getting covered really and she’s already walking into the bedroom which is where we are.
She looks at me and stutters out a “what” which is the most direct thing she’s ever said.
I look at her and before I can say anything Dr. Thompson says, “We’re in session, Claire.”
Claire then lets out this resigned little “right”, and she closes the door. Can you believe this fuckin guy?
And he’s wearing the tie too. Chenille. I wonder if she saw.
Jack Williams is a grad student living in southwest Louisiana.
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