Something Happened

"Now I am committing adultery," I thought.

It was not much different from the first time I laid my wife after we were married:

"Now I am laying my wife," I thought.

It would mean much more to her (I think), for I went into my marriage knowing I would commit adultery the earliest chance I had (it was a goal; committing adultery, in fact, was one of the reasons for getting married), while she did not (and probably has not really thought of it yet. It may be that I do all the thinking about it for her). I did not even give up banging the other girl I'd been sleeping with fairly regularly until some months afterward. I hit four or five other girls up at least once those first two years also just to see for myself that I really could.

I think I might really feel like killing my wife, though, if she did it with someone I know in the company. My wife has red lines around her waist and chest when she takes her clothes off and baggy pouches around the sides and bottom of her behind, and I would not want anyone I deal with in the company to find that out. (I would want them to see her only at her best. Without those red marks.)

My wife is not as wanton and debauched as most of the young girls and women we're apt to find ourselves with today (and I would not want any of the men I work with to know that about her, either. I don't want anyone I know in the company to be able to blab to anyone else I know that my wife has red marks on her body and just might not be the most versatile piece of ass in the world), although I like that about her — I would not want her the other way — and repay her virtue and restraint with frequent overflows of affection and esteem and frequent acts of kindness. (I'll take her to church.)

Sober, my wife is a lady (and makes me proud). Especially when we entertain. She does that beautifully. (We had Arthur Baron and his wife to di

(Why won't you leave us alone?)

My wife is happiest of all when I'm simply relaxed and kind, and responds to my acts of consideration with lively gratitude and astonished gaiety. It is so easy to make my wife happy it's really a crime we don't do it more often. (She's even prettier when she's feeling good, her face lights up. She doesn't hide it.) I try. When I can. (It isn't always easy to want to.) I'll make the children come along with us to church when I go, and we'll generally have a joyful time. (It isn't always easy to want to be kind and make her happy when I'm thinking of death, murder, adultery, and divorce.)

I feel tense, poor, bleak, listless, depressed (and she calls that strange). I have jagged, wracking i

My wife is a cheerful Congregationalist now (when she isn't getting drunk and crude at parties or humping me on floors or against the butcher-block table in the kitchen or outside at night on our redwood patio furniture). My wife is a devout and cheerful Congregationalist now because the building is airy and the people friendlier than the Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians she has gotten to know since we moved from the city to Co

"Episcopalians," she has told me, "are the ones who go shush in movies."

And I laughed.

(My wife can often make me laugh.) She will bake for cake sales. She will even stop drinking in the day-time well in advance of church socials, and she will grow more reserved in bed. (I can almost always tell when some spectacular social gala is in the offing at church by the waning initiative in her sex drive.)

I am a registered Republican (who nearly always votes Democratic sneakily) and believe I am nearer to God than she.

"The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want," says the new minister, who has been with us just about a year and seems to want a good deal more than he has in the way of social contact and community influence. (He strikes me as a man with his eye out for a better job in a growth industry.)

No registered Republican would go quite that far. We'll let the Lord be our shepherd readily enough, but there's plenty we'll want, no matter how much we've already got. Otherwise we'll fire Him, retire Him, or ease Him aside.

I'll let my wife drive us to church some Sundays when I'm feeling especially benign and charitable (the children exchange cryptic, supercilious signals during the service but do so inconspicuously, because they do not want to embarrass my wife) and then, often, feel like breaking her neck afterward for making me go and ruining my whole day. (I could have slept late, or phoned around for golf invitations. After all, how many years' worth of Sundays do I have left? Thirty? Two?)

"That new minister of yours," I might a

The children crane forward delightedly.

My wife purses her lips with a sidelong smile and decides to pretend to whistle. It will take more than a little routine baiting this fine su

"What say, Dad?" inquires my daughter, to help things along, when she sees my wife intends to remain silent.

"I really don't think," chastises my wife amiably, going along with the game against us in a ma

"Like what?" I am all contrived i

"If you don't know."

"Minister?"

"No."

"What then?"

"You know."

"I've no idea."

"What?" demands my boy, bouncing on his haunches in anticipation as the three of us close in on her.

"Donkey," exclaims my wife in triumph, evading his snare nimbly.

"No fair. He didn't say donkey."

"I know, dear."

"He said ass," says my daughter.

"I know, darling. And I think he's depraved."

"And I'm inclined to agree," I second immediately. "And his English is terrible. And I don't think it's healthy to bring the children to church to listen to a depraved minister."

"I'm not talking about him!"

"His vocabulary's pretentious and his syntax is frequently wrong."

"I'm talking about you. I'm not talking about his language. I'm talking about yours."

"Well, it is."

"And yours?"

"All right," I yield, with a gesture of liberal acquiescence. "I'll change the subject. What do you think of the rectum as a whole?"

"That's even worse!"

"I don't get it."

"Don't you get it?"

"Now I get it."

"Pretty shitty, huh?"

"I thought we agreed," says my wife, with an exaggerated politeness that sometimes gets my goat, "to try not to disagree anymore in front of the children."

"A-men," says my daughter sarcastically, and claps her hands.