When she called back, I reluctantly answered, but I was still in the standstill traffic jam, so, really, there was nothing else to do but talk through this.
“I have two relationships, Mom. I hate omitting half of my life. Do you know Patty and I studied for a week for her psychology exam and she got a B? I am so proud of her. But, you don’t want to hear that. So the next time you call and ask me anything, I’m just going to tell you that everything is fucking fine.”
“You shouldn’t be with a man and a woman. It isn’t right.”
“Well, what if I got divorced and was a lesbian?”
“No. That isn’t right.”
I raised my hand up and slammed it down onto the steering wheel. “So the only answer is to leave Patty and be married and have babies?”
“Yes.”
“Mom, I love you, but I really can’t continue this phone call. I am going to go now, okay?” We hung up the phone in mutual frustration.
My inner turmoil was the dominating factor in my infidelity once again. As if my chaotic life wasn’t messy enough, I found freedom in getting involved with a butch girl from my National Guard unit. In the same week that Zelda and I consummated our affair, I received a letter from my mother about living in sin and my hell-bound afterlife.
Mom wasn’t the only one who couldn’t wrap their mind around my life. On my weekly coffee gatherings, Joy and the rest of the gang, consisting of two straight men, one straight girl, and four lesbians, all demanded details.
“Come on, guys, of course Doug knows,” I defended myself as we sat at a table outside of the coffee establishment so we could chain smoke.
“How can you keep up?” Joy asked. Her labret sparkled under the plaza lights.
“Shit, I forgot you had a husband!” Troy lit another cigarette. “Where is Doug anyway? We liked him way better than Patty.” He high-fived the other guy at the table because they liked any straight male who joined coffee night. They joked that it was another pair of balls to counterweigh the estrogen at the table. Everyone laughed.
Then Ashley reminded the table of the mean shit she said to Patty the first and last time I invited her for coffee night. Specifically, after Patty joked about making me howl during sex, Ashley had chimed in maliciously, “Joy made that discovery long before you came around, honey. Tell us something we don’t already know.”
I was embarrassed all over again as I remembered the awkward intensity of the moment. “Come on guys, she is really not that bad.” My defenses surfaced through my smile. “I love her freckles, and I think she is beautiful,” I added with honesty.
“Is that what you tell Zelda?” Troy sarcastically chimed in, to which Ashley high-fived his nonsmoking hand as everyone, all seven of them, laughed. Admittedly I shook my head and laughed too. I totally asked for that one.
As happy as my life was with Doug and Patty, it was utter nonsense to continue my affair with Zelda, but the sex kept me coming back for more. We didn’t have much in common, and, to be frank, any deep compatibility would have never been reached no matter how hard she tried. She couldn’t compete with the levels of love I shared with them.
It was madness.
To further escalate the insanity of my scandalous life, Patty inadvertently exposed the secrets of my Soldier Show sexcapades to Douglas. While I was chatting to her online one night, Doug stood behind me, as a way to passively tell me it was time for bed. There on the screen was the blinking cursor behind the last question Patty typed: Does Doug know you cheated with that guy in the Soldier Show?
“What guy? What did you do?” Doug asked. His face went pale. I said nothing because I was caught.
As my skeletons fell out of the closet, the arguing grew more intense while I sadly attempted to explain that it was simply a mistake I made five years prior. There was no need to lie at that point, so when he asked what else I had done, I purged, divulging the fact that I prostituted myself once to a virgin as eloquently as possible. Without hesitation, he started packing a bag.
Through hysterical crying, my desperate words begged him not to go while snot dripped from my nose. My body grew tired from the hysterics, and eventually it slumped to the floor in our bedroom as he paused from packing only to yell, “Give me one good fucking reason why I should stay!” His heart was beating so hard that I could almost see it through his chest. It looked as if he was about to burst as each pump created an unnatural motion forward.
From my slumped position on the floor, with tears in my eyes, I attempted to explain. “I’m in love with you, not them. I have made mistakes that I deeply regret.” I tried to inhale, but the mucus and swelling on top of hyperventilation made it nearly impossible. My attempts to receive air made me choke. A pause to breathe was necessary for me to continue and to get a grip on the reality that surrounded me. “I don’t even like men. I don’t know why I did it. I will never be with another man in my life, I swear to you!” I began to calm myself more by sucking air into my lungs through my mouth as I wiped my swollen, snotty face. Finally, with controlled conviction, I added, “But I’m never leaving the women. Don’t ask me to leave the women. I will understand if you can’t handle that. I’m just so sorry, Doug. So sorry.”
His heart was absolutely broken, crushed before his very eyes with lies from a woman he vowed to love forever. He stood at the end of our bed with his clothing crammed into a bag, half of which was hanging out of the opening. In my feeble position on the opposite side of the bedroom, my knees pressed painfully into my chest, I waited for his reaction. A part of me fully expected a slap in the face as he walked out, but he was beyond disgusted and couldn’t muster the energy to waste on touching me.
I slept on the couch for the next few days.
He stayed, obviously because he loved me, but in later months, I learned of an indiscretion he’d had before our open marriage agreement. I suspect this is why he succeeded in letting my infidelity go although the pain of it never left. Throughout this adversity, Douglas and I resumed our marriage. The brutal truth of the matter was that we were both cheaters every day that we continued to have relationships with other people. The way we saw it, all of the others were secondary.
Zelda was asking for drama in her life by being with me. She knew about everything but deeply hoped for a sincere chance at love. She didn’t come from the best life and repeatedly explained how she only passed high school because she was the star athlete. She also told me I was the only real lesbian she had ever been with, despite being married.
Part of Zelda’s appeal was her resemblance to Doug. Visually, she was the female version of him, or so it seemed to me at the time. Only she was distinctly less educated. She had an athletic body and huge gravity-defying tits that she hid very well. They surprised me the first time her shirt hit the floor and there was no bra holding them up.
It was definitely a physical thing with Zelda, although I denied it when she asked. She didn’t need my confirmation of her status as a piece of meat. That would have been mean.
Our sexual tension was chart-topping. It really got ridiculous on several occasions, but especially when she surprised me at a seedy gay bar that Rayya found on the other side of town. It was the dirtiest, most run-down Hispanic shit-hole on the streets that tourists don’t even know about and certainly wouldn’t go to if they did. I was appreciative of the broken lights throughout the place. Had they worked, I would have actually seen the nastiness on the walls. Despite all of this, it was a refreshing change from our normal hangout.