Cheater Cheater Pumpkin Eater

by Leon Dixson

I want to be with my wife, not at a bachelor party for my boss, Stormer. My wife, Betsy, is a doctor. She’s on call often except for Saturday nights. Our night. Almost every week for ten years. I prefer to go out for dinner and dancing with her, but she insists I go to the party.

“Hank, do this for your career. They will notice your absence,”

 I pay the cabby, take an elevator, and knock on the door of the luxury hotel suite, hoping no one answers. Strippers aren’t my thing. Stormer opens the door to a generous foyer under a shimmering chandelier. We walk to the large living room where the guys drink, talk trash, and try to one-up each other with B.S. stories.

The luxurious cream-colored carpet exudes elegance. They’ve pulled the plush furniture to the side to create room for strippers to dance, and someone is streaming porn from their phone to the enormous flat screen TV. Stormer tells a dirty joke and I laugh. Might as well pretend I’m enjoying myself. The stereo assails me with the rap noise I refuse to call music.

“You’ve got some catching up to do.” Stormer says. He hands me a crystal glass and insists I chug the contents.

Liquor burns as hot as a habanero pepper all the way down. I cough, to the amusement of all the guys. “I’m not much of a drinker, Mr. Stormer.” We all laugh when I fan my mouth.

I join a conversation by the smooth marble fireplace. Gas flames wash over fake logs, pretending to be a real wood fire, just as I pretend to enjoy the party. The juxtaposition of subtle scents from fresh-cut flowers on the mantle, with the boisterous party goers amuses me.

Murph, my best friend and coworker, hands me a fresh drink. We tap each other’s glasses and say, “cheers.” We drink as we check out the view. On the balcony, I sip gin and tonic and scan the Dallas skyline. A room like this is perfect for a date night with Betsy.

Murph leans in. “The strippers will be here at ten. After they leave, we’re taking Stormer bar-hopping in the red-light district and palming him off on a couple of hookers we have lined up.”

“I’m not doing that.”

“Heh heh. No, I’m pretty sure you won’t.”

The lights from Reunion Tower, The Ball, mesmerize me. I swoon like a flag in the wind, clutch the railing, and my glass falls seventeen stories to the ground. I can’t be drunk already. What’s in this liquor?

Murph grabs my arm to steady me. “Whoa there, buddy. We don’t want you taking a dive.” He leads me to the sofa.

Minutes later, a sexy brunette and an exotic black-haired woman enter and walk to the center of the room. Their French perfume intoxicates me. Respect by Aretha Franklin blasts from their boom box. The guys cheer, whoop, and clap. Gyrations fade into a dark unconsciousness.

***

It’s ten a.m. and the Sunday morning sun casts a pink hue behind my eyelids. When I open them, shockwaves of pain stab my brain like a sewing machine needle. I clamp them shut and pull the covers over my head. A woman’s perfume intrigues me, and I lower the covers. An elevated marble hot tub sits in front of floor-to-ceiling windows. Combined lavender and citrus aromas hang in the air.

Crap! I had planned to leave the party early and salvage the rest of the evening with Betsy. A vision of my hands and feet being tied to the bed horrifies me.

The projector in my brain plays a vignette in my mind. It was as vivid as if it were real. I awoke from my alcohol and drug induced stupor with a perfumed woman sitting astride me and patting my face. A dense fog filled my head and clouded my vision. Strong binds held me to the bed.

I struggled against her, thinking of every gross thing I could to prevent an erection, but my body betrayed me. Her lips, and hands sent me into orbit. My climax was as explosive as Halley’s Comet colliding with the sun.

Was it real? Or did Murph give me a hallucinogen, and what I remember was just a wet dream? I shower and go home. Betsy greets me with a hug.

“Must have been some party. Did you guys have a sleepover?”

“I wouldn’t know because I passed out. I was alone this morning.”

Betsy kisses my cheek and leaves for church. I’m eating granola with almond and raisins when my phone chimes. I open a new text message. An image of a nude woman sitting astride my naked body hits me like a charging rhino, its horn goring my stomach. My brain burns as hot as a blowtorch. I drop the phone, run to the toilet, and heave.

What have I done? This will crush Betsy, just as it would me if the roles were reversed. If she made herself vulnerable and ended up in bed with a man, I would want to die. Forgive her? Yes, but the hurt would always be there. She will forgive me too, but that ache from the pain I put in our hearts will last forever.

Only two people handed me drinks. Stormer and Murph. Stormer’s on his honeymoon and Murph is elk hunting in Montana for the week. They’ll tell me the truth if I have to choke it out of them. Especially Murph. He knows what my fidelity means to me. I should tell Betsy when she gets home, but I’ll wait until I know the entire story.

***

I’m nauseous as I sit in my work cubicle a week later. Betsy has grown angry. She asked for sex one day, but I couldn’t perform. Guilt weighs on my mind like a wine press on a grape. I have to tell her what happened, but I can’t bear to hurt her. The indecision rises like bitter bile in my throat. I tell the lead analyst I’m sick and going home.

This can’t wait for Murph and Stormer to return. I’ll tell her I either got drunk or drugged and had sex. After parking in the garage, I make my way to the hallway leading to our bedroom. Betsy’s voice teems with excitement.

“Ommigod. It’s so good.”

Betsy wouldn’t cheat, would she? My heart is an industrial pump pushing my arteries to the limit. I march into the bedroom.

She sits cross-legged in the middle of the bed, still dressed in her scrubs, with her phone to her ear. A gold wrapped box of chocolate sits beside her. “Gotta run, Sis. Hank is home. And send more chocolate!”

Double guilt. I strayed and doubted her fidelity.

“Why’re you home so early?” She looks through squinted eyes. Suspicious eyes. I-know-you’re-a-lousy-cheater eyes.

I plop on the side of the bed, head in my hands. It’s time to confess. I suck up my courage, along with a deep breath. “This will be painful for both of us.”

Betsy scoots next to me. “Talk to me, Hank. Are you going to let one indiscretion ruin our marriage?”

“You know?”

“What? Of course I know.”

“That explains your anger. Did they send you the text, too?”

“Let me see it.”

My voice breaks as I tell her what happened. I show her the image. The woman’s arched back is to the camera, but my face with a rapturous expression jumps out of the picture. I can almost hear the loud guttural moan escaping my throat as it did that night.

She looks at me, her lips pursed, and takes the phone. She stares at the pic and tilts her head from side to side. “Do you think her butt is big?”

I had only glanced at the woman, focusing instead on the shameful lust stamped across my face. But, in the ultra-bright light from the atomic blast that always accompanies that question, I see the truth. “No, honey. That is far and away the finest butt I’ve ever seen.”

“Good answer, buddy.”

“Why did you do this to me?”

 “Because the week before, you asked if I was open to acting out sex fantasies. The idea intrigued me, so I tried it. I set the phone to video us.”

“Fantasies should include both of us knowing what’s going on.”

“You looked straight at me. You had to know it was me before we had sex.”

“My eyes were too blurry. I thought a stripper raped me.”

“I thought your struggled just to play along with the fantasy. You didn’t recognize me in the picture?”

“I didn’t look at her, or rather, you in the photo. For all I knew, I had sex with another woman.”

“Look, I’m so sorry for making you worry all week. I would’ve told you right away, but I thought you knew it was me, and became so disgusted you couldn’t make love to me anymore. And that made me angry, since role-playing was your idea.”

After talking about the experience, the guilt and anger in both of us vanish like a breath cloud in a strong wind. She hadn’t intended to cause me anguish. Finally, we laughing about it and agreed to plan future role-plays together.

God gave me the perfect woman for a mate. Till death do us part.