Reluctant Cuckold (16 page)

“It’s a long story,” I replied, not wanting to get into it with him, “and I have to get to bed. Can we talk later?”

“Sure,” he wrote.

“Take care, man,” I replied.

That is so fucked up, I thought.

His supposed friend pops his fiancée’s cherry in the bed they slept in, while he listened. And then a week later his fiancée’s telling him to pack his bags, it’s over, take the next flight home. No wedding, no ever having sex with this girl you loved—no nothing.

No wonder it profoundly affected him.

What a Jim Murta that British bloke had pulled on him. He must’ve relished putting his cock in that virgin pussy with her poor-sap fiancé on the couch nearby. Another man, his presumed friend, had popped his fiancée’s cherry, and he listened, paralyzed, while it happened.

It got me thinking. I wondered what I would have done if I’d heard something in that upstairs bathroom that night when I went upstairs to take a piss.

I imagined hearing sounds from the vent, coming up from the bathroom below. I’d realize someone was having sex downstairs, and put my ear to that vent—thinking it must be Tamara. I might have relished that.

Oh yeah, I’d think, you dirty little slut, let’s hear it, Tamara, let’s hear you get good and hard fucked girl.

I’d hear the balls slapping and the moaning and think, Oh yeah, I’ve got a front row audio seat to your dirty little bathroom fuck, so let’s hear it baby—your secret’s safe with me.

But suddenly the moaning, the voice would sound all too familiar. I’d press my head closer, and hear “Oh God” again.

No, it can’t be
, I’d say to myself.

Then I pictured hearing Tamara’s voice, saying “Oh yeah, Ashley, that’s it, ride it girl!”

I imagined that “Holy fuck” realization moment. The love of my life, my wife, was being fucked as I listened through the bathroom vent upstairs.

Maybe then I would have barreled down the stairs, banged on the door and yelled, “Open the motherfucking door, Goddamnit!”

Or maybe I’d have been paralyzed, in shock. Or even popped a boner, crouched, listening in surreal disbelief.

Sitting in the bathroom now, masturbating, I would pay good money for an audio of what I would have heard that night.

“You’re a little married cock whore Ashley,” I imagined Tamara saying, “You’re taking some serious cock, aren’t you girlfriend?”

“Oh God, yes.”

“Oh God yes what?”

“I’m taking some serious cock.”

“And you’re a little married cock whore.”

“I’m a … married … cock … whore.”

“And I’m about to seed your married pussy,” Jim might chime in. “Where do you want my sperm, Ashley?”

“In my … married … pussy.”

“Say ‘fuck my chump husband, and seed my married pussy.’ ”

“Fuck my … chump … husband … and seed my … my married … pussy.”

I thought of Jim blasting his sperm deep inside my wife and suddenly came.

Ashley was getting ready when I woke Saturday.

I lay in bed and watched as she dressed and packed a small bag.

“Where you meeting Camilla?”

“The East Fifties,” she said, “the Jitney leaves at ten-fifteen, so I’ll have to cab it, and drying my hair’s out of the question.”

“When’s the bridal shower?” I asked, “I thought it wasn’t until late afternoon.”

“Yeah, it’s not till four,” she said, “but I told you, were you not listening? Camilla and I are going to get brunch and go shopping beforehand.”

“Oh, that’s right,” I said, getting out of bed. “I remember now. Can I make you some breakfast?”

“No, I packed yogurt for the bus, thanks.”

A quick kiss goodbye, and she was off.

I waited fifteen minutes to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything; then I went through her closet. I wasn’t going to risk pulling any more photos from albums.

I quickly found her CDs of photos and began downloading them onto my laptop. They were chronological, beginning with photos of Ashley before I met her, and then during that magical fall when we first started dating.

I stared at us smiling at a Columbia-Yale football game. That day I bought her a hot chocolate and a Columbia blanket for us to wear in the stands. By the third quarter, Columbia was down three touchdowns, and we were freezing.

Ashley began asking me, “What are the first signs of frostbite?” I suggested we bail on the game, find a bar and warm up.

I remember her saying she wanted a “Hot Toddy.”

“What’s a Hot Toddy?”

“Some old Scottish drink, I think,” she replied, “like something Bob Cratchit would drink.”

“Bob Cratchit?”

“You know, Ebenezer Scrooge’s boy in
A Christmas Carol.
”

“Oh, sure,” I said, “so what’s in a Hot Toddy?”

“I’m not really sure, but it sounds mighty good right now, doesn’t it?”

At the first place, the bartender looked at us blankly before asking us how it’s made. But there was an Irish pub across the street, and Ashley got her Hot Toddy. I don’t think we ever ordered one again, but I remember thinking—sitting next to her as feeling returned to my feet—that the warm whisky drink sure hit the spot.

The pictures awakened memories.

The first Christmas Ashley spent at my parents’ place.

The two of us making Champagne toasts at our engagement party.

Ashley in cute shorts and a tight t-shirt on the day we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge.

The two of us on the slopes at Park City.

At a Napa Valley winery, the day before I proposed.

Framed by the California sunset, the night she said, “Yes, I’d love to marry you David.”

Ashley’s beautiful beaming smile on our wedding day.

My expression of relief and joy in the pre-reception photos on a hill overlooking the Hudson.

Tamara’s unusually reserved smile in the wedding photo.

Ashley and me in Venice on our honeymoon.

I stared at photos of Ashley from the time she went skydiving with two college friends. She told me how scared and tentative she had been up in the plane, but you wouldn’t know it from her smile in the minutes before she jumped. Afterwards Ashley raved about it and suggested we skydive together that summer in New Hampshire.

“I love you baby,” I remember saying, “but I ain’t jumping out of no plane.”

With over four hundred photos downloaded, including Ashley in her bikini, I wondered why I hadn’t done this before.

Then I recalled seeing Ashley’s camera on her dresser. I went back in the bedroom. It was there—she had forgotten it. Her mom had given it to her last Christmas—after she’d lost her last one. She would email me occasional photos, but I hadn’t been curious about what was on it.

Now, as I picked up her camera and looked for a USB cable, I was intensely curious. Had she brought the camera to the party? Were there pictures from that night? Were there any from that bathroom?

I watched as they began to download, 45, 95, 125 …

I felt uneasy about what I was doing. It wasn’t like trying to get into her email, but she could view it as an invasion of privacy.

A few minutes later, I read the message, “215 photos successfully downloaded.” I returned her camera to exactly where she’d left it and went back to my laptop.

The first photo was of Ashley and her older sister posing by a Christmas tree. Jennifer wasn’t Ashley, but her sister was an attractive woman in her own right.

The next photo was of Ashley with her mom, also by the tree. Ashley’s mom is in her mid-fifties, refined and elegant. Though taller, she is the source of Ashley’s looks and large breasts.

They’ve had their share of mother-daughter issues. Ashley felt that nothing she ever did was good enough. But I think most of it stemmed from her mom divorcing her father when she was in high school.

In the next photos with her dad, Ashley looked more relaxed, more herself, like she was simply having fun.

Christmas last year had been tricky and stressful—dividing our time between her mom, her dad and my parents.

After the Christmas family photos, there was one of Ashley and me with another couple at a Manhattan steak house on New Year’s.

Next up were photos of Central Park after a snowstorm. The pictures she took were Norman Rockwell-ish—kids sledding, some smiling kid making a snowman. I had taken one of Ashley doing a snow angel. In another she was armed with a snowball as if gunning for me—the photographer.

There were photos of the day we went skating at the outside rink at Rockefeller Center. I had dreaded putting on skates. Despite growing up in cold-wintered Westchester, I had only skated twice as a kid. Little kids sped by me, but I didn’t fall, and I managed to look semi-competent.

The next photos were of a Mardi Gras party. I had been away in San Francisco on business. Ashley had gone with Tamara. I hadn’t thought much about it at the time. In the first photo they were both showing cleavage, wearing beads, and smiling.

Would a forward click uncover a photo of them lifting up their tops, Mardi Gras style? It’s wasn’t as if they’d never gotten topless together, as I had recently discovered. Part of me wanted to see such a photo. If nothing else, I wanted to see Tamara flashing her tits, to see what Jim had also stroked to, and see what Jim passed over in going for my wife.

Maybe I just wanted to possess a photo of Tamara topless. It would be one small thing to have over her. I could think, “Yeah, you successfully encouraged my wife to take another man’s cock, but I have a photo of your bare tits on my computer, bitch.”

So I started clicking, thinking, C’mon give me one, show us your tits, Tamara.

But no luck.

It was just more photos of Tamara teasing the camera with cleavage.

The next set was of Ashley and Tamara at a St. Patrick’s Day party. It was at a bar, downtown. I hadn’t gone to that one, either; I had been at a Knicks game with a client.

I stared at one photo in particular: Ashley had face-painted the Irish flag on both her cheeks. I remembered her telling me that, but I’d never seen the photo. She looked super-cute and super-sweet.

In the next one, Ashley was posing with Tamara, wearing a green t-shirt with Charlie Brown’s Snoopy on it, holding up a mug of beer and saying, “Cheers.”

Tamara was dressed more extravagantly in an aqua-blue dress with a belted green coat. Her white thigh-highs had shamrocks on top. Her top hat and bowtie were iridescent greens and blues. It was an outfit that said, “Who’s got what it takes to fuck me?”

I rolled my eyes. Tamara is Scandinavian or Northern European. She’s certainly not remotely Irish.

When I came to our Florida vacation photos, I knew I was getting close. If any photos from that night existed, I’d see them soon.

I clicked slowly through the vacation photos. There were pictures of us on the beach and solo pictures I’d taken of Ashley in her new sky-blue bikini. I paused on one in particular. She was on the beach smiling, a full body shot I had taken of her on the last day before we flew home. Her pearly white teeth contrasted against her new dark tan, and her firm full breasts filled out her top, nipples protruding through the thin fabric.

This was the Ashley that Jim Murta would be fucking just two nights later. I bring her home all tanned from a relaxing, expensive vacation, and he takes her into a ratty bathroom and fucks her hard and bare, and uncorks his sperm inside her.

I slowed down over the last vacation photo, thinking, “Here goes.”

And suddenly, I saw it. A photo from that night at the party. Ashley had indeed taken her camera.

She had posed with friends on the terrace, wearing that black miniskirt and pink top—her Jim Murta fuck-me outfit.

The next photo included Tamara. Then Ashley and Tamara together. I braced myself for what was to follow.

But that was it.

There was no pre-fuck photo of Ashley posing with Jim Murta. In the bathroom, her camera had gone unused. No post-fuck photos, either.

The next ones were of her with a college friend.

And the last photos were ones we’d taken by the Hell Gate Bridge.

“But this bridge would last a thousand years,” the old man had said.

I went back to the three photos from the party, but I didn’t see me or Jim Murta in the background.

Then I homed in on the photo of Ashley and Tamara. This was how they were dressed for him that night. I stared at Ashley’s carefree smile. Could she have known, I wondered, that before long she’d have Jim Murta’s big fat bare cock blasting his sperm inside her?