Helping You To Succeed

My husband and I had been attending counseling in a vain attempt to save our marriage. Doctor Shannon Aguilar was a hottie. It was just my luck that my husband would choose the woman with whom I had just broken off an affair, a month earlier. She was not Dr. Shannon Aguilar when we were fooling around. Her name at the time was Crimson Phoenix, a dancer from the Double Barrel. Three sessions in, and I could already envision myself signing divorce papers.

“She is not romantic. I no longer feel like she even appreciates me. The relationship has lost its magic.” My husband was whining like a petulant child. To be honest, I was here for an arraignment and to enter a guilty plea. No man was going to tie me down. But I was like an addiction to Michael. Why do good Christian boys love bad women?

“I’d like to say something in my defense.” I raised my hand like I was in kindergarten.

“Allow Michael to finish expressing his feelings. You will have your chance soon enough.” Dr. Aguilar flashed a sardonic grin. She was enjoying this.

Perhaps it was a good thing. Because my counter would not have ended well. What did he mean, I was not romantic? This ungrateful man. If he only knew the half of it. Perhaps my soon-to-be ex-husband forgot that I once drove 298 miles to Naples in a car with the top speed of a rickshaw, just to spend the night with him. If I could’ve seen the future, I would have deleted that dating app.

I could think of a slew of men who would beg to differ. Charles would testify that I could recite Othello. Now, that gentleman… he was fun. I learned Shakespeare just to impress him. I even went to several of his crappy plays in that run down theatre in Palm Beach. I got the chicken pox then, from some snotty kid sitting next to me. But it worked to my advantage, as my husband Michael didn’t want me in the house, spreading the plague as he called it. Charles, however, was quite happy to nurse me back to health.

Then there was Robert, who attended one of them snake wrangling evangelical churches. I went there and everyone thought I was slain in the spirit, that the Holy Ghost power was upon me. I even spoke in tongues. I don’t think anyone at the time realized I was hyperventilating, and passed out when the preacher gave me a rattle snake to handle. I had a morbid fear of anything that slithered. But it worked. Heck, which unromantic woman did he know who would manage a rattle for a one-night stand? The lord will have to forgive me for that one.

I must also give an honorable mention to Ariel, the girl who played the cello at last year’s Christmas pageant; she had the cutest dimples. She joined a monastery when she found out I was married. Poor girl had a crisis of conscience. Her loss. I was not even Catholic, but by George, I was a romantic and I would do anything for love.

“She even had an affair with my urologist.” Michael droned on.

Sweet mother Mary, how many times would he bring this one up? It was going to be a horrible drive home. He was just listing my sins like he was reading from a catalog or something. He had names and dates, half of which he was just pulling out of thin air as he went along. He was always so jealous and controlling. I have a PhD. I worked darned hard to get ahead in life, and I deserved to have some fun.

To be fair, his urologist had approached me. Just saying. I had arranged an appointment for Michael, after feeling a lump on his junk, and like a good wife I was simply looking out for my man. God’s honest truth. But now, looking back, it was probably entrapment if you asked me. A good lawyer would get me out of that one. I was about to raise my hand again but thought better of it. We had already fought this battle before he had kicked me out.

But I was a romantic, Goddammit. I had returned to my marital home. Heart in my hand, promising to be a better wife, a committed wife. I did everything he expected his good, quiet wife to do. I was home almost every evening straight after work. I would make sure we had a dinner date once a week. I was his whore in the bedroom and the church mouse when he needed me to be. I even went to that Kundalini yoga thingy-bob. Now that place had some lovely, supple gents and ladies. Point is, I was being a great wife. It’s my crazy side that attracted him and pained him at the same time. It would drive him to his grave.

Heck, I even spent quality time with him and his bratty kids, and they were not even mine. This body was not meant to be a cargo hold for a fetus. Don’t you be judging me now. Uh-Uh. Miami surgeons are not cheap, baby. Long story short, one of his kids had taken a very compromising, grainy photo, allegedly of me at the Double Barrel, making it rain. You could barely make out the svelte woman, wearing the Thierry Mugler bomber jacket, that coincidentally looked very much like the one that Michael had bought me for my forty-fifth birthday. You would think there would be some sort of solidarity between the darn kid and me. She was too young to be getting lap dances, and I should not have been spending her college funds on a Friday night watching Dr. Crimson Phoenix, proving her exquisite agility. But the crazy kid was just as temperamental and disloyal as her punk-ass daddy. I was taught; drunk or sober, to mind my own damned business. She had no manners, that one.

That led to counselling with Dr. Aguilar because my loving husband assumed; I say assumed, because he had absolutely no proof, that I, his loving, romantic, committed wife of nine years, no, seven years, was having another affair. ‘I wonder if strippers have non-disclosure agreements?’ But any who, Dr. Crimson Phoenix had a professional obligation to keep her gob shut, so I should be safe on this one. Doctor-client privilege I think it’s called. Today might just be a win after all. Only four more minutes to go. If I played my cards right, and avoided another soul-draining argument when we got home, Michael might just allow me to meet up with the girls for bible study.