53 comments/ 94874 views/ 11 favorites A Question of Balance By: Alfie Higgins We were married young; too young. That’s it in a nutshell, I guess. She got knocked up. I always thought it was just bad luck. But I don’t know, now I’m kinda wondering if she didn’t set me up. She’s capable of it. I sure learned that over time. We were twenty; we were pregnant; we got married. That’s what you did back then, no questions asked. I should have asked some questions, I know that now. But we loved each other. I always figured we’d be married eventually. It’s just that eventually came along a lot sooner than I’d planned. We were double dating at a drive-in movie, we in the back seat, they in the front. Between flicks the other couple went to the snack bar to get something to eat. Helen was already drunk. As soon as the door closed, she was on me like flies on shit. I was young, dumb, and horny. I have no other excuses. “Come on, baby. Let me get that zipper down. Oh, yeah! I really need to get fucked tonight, baby.” “Helen, I don’t have any rubbers! You’re right in the middle of your cycle. We can’t do it tonight.” “Donnie, please. You can pull out. I just want to feel you inside me for a bit.” How does one argue with that logic? I wanted to get laid too. But I wanted to be responsible. Okay, we would do it a bit, then pull out. Helen whipped out my dick, pulled down her jeans and panties, and then just climbed on board. She started humping me with a vengeance. I was trapped underneath her. Any pullin’ out to be done would have to be her decision. My disclaimer: this was early enough in our relationship that I had never seen her truly drunk before. At that time I had no idea that she transformed into a mindless maniac after downing a few. That’s my excuse, take it for what it’s worth. So I was sitting in the back seat of this ‘72 Chevy Impala, getting boffed by my girlfriend. I learned over the years that being on top was her favorite position. She always got off when she was on top. And that night, she wasn’t getting off (of me) until she got off. The speaker on the window had just announced “Five minutes till show time!” when Helen and I were ready to make a baby. I knew what was happening. I had some presence of mind, still. “Helen, pull off! I’m going to cum! Please, get off of me.” “Oh, Donnie, just a few more strokes! Just a little more, baby. Oh, yeah, FUCK ME!” She started cumming like a banshee and she dragged me with her. I spurted a full load of ‘fuck up the rest of your life’ into her extremely fertile pussy. Helen hopped off, zipped me up, and more or less had it together when the other couple returned with sodas and popcorn. But I knew. I knew that we had just rolled the dice. I just hoped that they wouldn’t come up snake eyes. As if. So that’s how it went. We had two kids right off the bat. I hung around and finished college, even with a wife and kid. Our second one was born just after graduation. Alright, it isn’t what I expected out of life, but all in all it wasn’t bad. The kids were great. The marriage seemed solid. I loved my wife. We started building what looked like a future. It was the American dream. It just started a little earlier than I expected. So there were a couple of things about my wife that I knew about right from the get-go. You take the bitter with the batter. No one is perfect. I knew she had her faults, I just didn’t think her faults were fatal. First and foremost was the drinking. My wife straight: a sweet, funny, smart little girl. Cute. No one would ever call her beautiful. She was cute on her good days. Her shape wasn’t something to write home about. She was chunky, that’s the word: chunky. She did have tits, I’ll give her that: big, soft, round, responsive tits. They kinda grew up with the first baby and never left her. They were her best features. Anyway, I was talking about drinking. Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde time. One minute she was this sweet innocent lumpy little thing. Then she would down a few drinks – she preferred Manhattans – and suddenly she was this vicious attack shrew on the make. And every sentence she spoke contained some variant of the word ‘fuck’. Strangely she was only a shrew to me. To everyone else she was Ms. Available. She only got really drunk at parties – at least in the beginning. Since she only went to parties with me – at least in the beginning – I was her protector when she got really, really drunk. But she looked at me as her jailer. She would sock down three or four of those whiskey and vermouth concoctions and suddenly she hated my guts. I was a ‘“fuckin’ mother fuckin’ son of a bitch”. The later into the evening it got, the more variations of ‘fuck’ got into her sentences describing me. When she finally agreed to go home with me, she wanted to fuck. So I always got laid on those party nights. I went with the flow during the party, trying to keep her calm, trying to minimize her damage. Some people might think of me as a spineless wimp. Maybe so. But I got pissed at her. I told her the hell off. It’s just that I recognized this ‘Jekyll/Hyde’ thing going on and knew that tomorrow (after the hang over) she would return to Dr. Jekyll: sweet, loving, funny. Since these Hyde episodes only occurred a few times a year, I just looked at them as a cross I had to bear. She was young. She had never sewed any wild oats. She never was with anyone else sexually. I told myself she was just letting off steam. I told myself that eventually she was going to screw around on me. If she got drunk and I wasn’t there to protect her, she would be easy pickings. Easy pickings? If I weren’t there she would probably take on every man available. I knew deep down that she had no inhibitions when drunk. I had come to realize that I had married a potential slut. I told myself that I was mature enough to handle it. I would forgive her indiscretions, mostly because I thought she was basically immature and poorly raised, but still good in her heart of hearts. I told myself that she would grow out of this phase and then we would have a mature marriage. I told myself. You sit around contemplating these eventualities, knowing that someday you were going to have to deal with them. It never crossed my mind that my little wifey would remain faithful to me. And yet I never considered being unfaithful to her. It was another indication to me that I was the mature one. I would have to be the one to pick up the pieces once her infidelity finally occurred. I was suspicious rather early in our marriage that she had slipped. There were several occasions when I couldn’t totally verify what had happened one way or another. All I knew was: she got drunk; there was an available man around other than myself; I wasn’t there; she couldn’t remember what happened. That was Helen’s fallback position. When she really fucked up, when she really got out of hand and acted up, that’s when she just couldn’t remember what happened. It was her version of ‘no harm/no foul’. If she couldn’t remember what happened, then nothing happened. It sounds ridiculous, but she believed it. It baffled her when I complained about her behavior at the party the night before, calling me ‘mother fucker’, trying to humiliate me in front of our friends or business associates. She just didn’t understand why I was so upset. She couldn’t remember doing it, so she didn’t do it. Simple as that, case closed. Yes, the bitch was seriously flawed. Why did I stick with her? Well ninety-eight percent of my life was absolutely perfect, that’s why. Except for those few days a year when she lost control, Helen was a wonderful wife. Affectionate, good in bed, fun to be with. My children were like Campbell soup kids, dark-haired and beautiful. My daughter was a sweet little princess, my son a hell-raising athletic little boy. They were perfect. We had bought a really neat old house in a picturesque storybook village, the kind of place where everyone is your friend. I had what remains in my memory as the best job of my life. The work was challenging but doable. I was the fair-haired boy in the company. Eventually I could see myself running the place. My future looked great. So I knew Helen was going to screw around on me. I just knew it. I’m supposed to ditch all the rest of the good stuff because of that? I’m supposed to throw the baby out with the bath water? It was a question of balance. Didn’t the 98% good outweigh the 2% potentially awful? I was determined to try to understand her motivation. I was going to deal with it, when it happened, in a mature intelligent way. I wasn’t going to let it destroy my life. That was the plan. And then it started. She took a job outside the house. It was a nighttime job as a banquet waitress at a local resort. She wanted to ‘get out of the house’. I guess we could use the money. So suddenly two, three, four nights a week she was out working. She was usually home before midnight. But then it started to get later. She came home smelling of alcohol. Somehow I wasn’t surprised. I asked her about it. She gave me the old line: “the gang just wanted to get together for a few drinks after work.” Yeah, I’m sure they did. Sometimes she would come home from work way too late and then want to rape me. I would be asleep only to be woken up by Helen pulling my dick, getting it hard so she could climb on board. Suspicious? Who me? I was trying to remain rational about the whole thing. Okay, said I, let her sew some of her wild oats. Is it going to kill me? I’m not a wimp, and I’m not a cuckold. I’m a rational Homo sapien who is trying to understand a difficult situation. That’s what I told myself. Things seemed to spiral out of hand. I got THE PHONE CALL; the “DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR WIFE IS?” phone call. I asked, “who the hell is this?” The caller said, “Your wife Helen. She’s in bed with MY BOYFRIEND. Right now.” I repeated, “who the hell is this?” The caller admitted to being the wife of an acquaintance of mine. She’s fucking around on my acquaintance, so why the fuck is she upset about her boyfriend fucking around on her? I got the picture though. This was no crank call. Otherwise why would she admit her own guilt? My internal temperature had already been stirred up. Now I began to stew. This was a small community we lived in. Before long, everyone would be knowing my business. Suddenly that rational Homo sapien started to lose his cool. Finally the dam just broke. It was eleven o’clock at night. I was talking to a friend on the phone. I saw my wife walk to the back door with a strange expression on her face. I put my hand over the phone. “Where are you going?” She looked almost panicked. She said, “I’ve got to get out of here for awhile.” I said, “At eleven o’clock at night?” But she was gone. I heard her car leaving the driveway. I had no idea where she was going or when she would be back. I finished my phone call, went to bed and attempted to sleep. I had a meeting with the executive vice-president of my company at 8:30 in the morning. Eight-thirty arrived and still no Helen. I called in sick. Someone had to take care of the children. I was it by default. At about noon my wife came home. She smelled like a liquor factory. I had already decided, ‘fuck this, I’m just not going to put up with it anymore.’ She came back contrite. She was so sorry. She couldn’t remember what she did last night. This time that little ploy wasn’t going to be accepted. I said, “Helen, where the fuck have you been. You do remember that I had a meeting with Al Johnson this morning?” She looked a bit guilty. “Oh, shit, I guess I forgot about it.” I agreed with her. “Yes, I guess you did. I guess you forgot about a bunch of stuff: like telling me you were going out; letting me know where you were going to be; informing me of when you were going to come home; admitting to me who you were going to be fucking!” She look aghast. “I never…” I wasn’t taking her shit anymore. “Helen, give it up. You smell like a cheap whore. You’re a drunken slut. I’ve known about your fucking around on me for quite some time. But now you’ve gone too fucking far.” Well, denial didn’t work. She tried tears. “I’m so sorry. It just happened. We had a few drinks and I ended up in bed with someone.” “Well this ‘just happened’ shit has been going on for a long time. Did you ‘just happen’ to slip out the door late last night without a word?” She said, “There was a party I really wanted to go to. I was missing it and you were on the phone. I just decided to go.” “Fuck this shit, Helen. You went out to get laid. Don’t deny it. You’ve never been a good liar and you don’t have a leg to stand on. Now tell me about it. Is there one guy or are there a bunch of guys? If it’s one guy, do you love him?” She was obviously trying to figure out a lie that would cause the least amount of damage. “It’s only been a couple of guys. Sometimes a guy at the banquet would hit on me and sometimes I would go to his room with him, but only if I was drunk, I swear!” The bitch seemed to think that her being drunk was a ‘get out of jail free’ card. Maybe it was in the past. But she had gotten out of jail free for the last time. I told her, “Look, Helen. This is it for us. You’ve got to choose and you’ve got to choose now. Your choices are the marriage or the boyfriend. Don’t give me this shit about it being the occasional stray you are fucking. I know you are having an affair with one guy. Do you think you can keep that kind of thing secret? Especially someone as stupid as you? Give me a fuckin’ break. I’ve been cutting you some slack, but that’s all over now. It’s your choice, sweetheart. But once you make it, there’s no turning back.” She saw a way out. She was willing to agree to anything. “I’ll do whatever you want. I want our marriage. You are the person I love. I never really loved him.” So she acknowledged the affair even as she agreed to end it. Let’s see if she wanted to abide by my rules. “That’s not all, Helen. You are quitting your job. Now. And the next party you go to without me, the next time you come home with alcohol on your breath, the next time you get home significantly past your scheduled time of arrival: that’s the end for us. I no longer accept any of the shit you’ve been feeding me.” “Okay. Anything you want, Donnie. I’ll do anything. Please don’t throw me out.” Even as she agreed to my terms I was wondering. Maybe I caught her by surprise. Maybe she thought I’d go along acting like I didn’t know what was happening until she made up her mind about her bartender boyfriend – or he made up his mind about her. See I had been asking around. I had learned not to put my head in the sand. Here I was a college graduate with a really good future and she was fucking around with a low-life reprobate bartender and half-way thinking she was falling in love with him. There’s no understanding the mind of a drunken slut. Then again, making it with a bartender insured that she was close to her sources. So it has a certain degree of perverted logic, I suppose. I wasn’t done with my questioning. “Why did you insist on fucking me so many times when you came home after being fucked by that other guy? That really pisses me off.” She tried to look contrite, but she admitted the truth, I guess. “I had trouble getting off with anyone else. I don’t know why. I really needed to cum so when I got home I fucked you. You can always make me cum.” It’s always nice to know that she considered me to be a flesh and blood dildo to be used after she was finished with her real fucking. So it developed through all of this turmoil that I guess things were changing. It started out pretty cut and dried. I loved Helen, even with all of her faults: even though I was a border-line genius and she only used her brain when it was absolutely necessary; even though my friends were lawyers and doctors and professional people and her friends were waitresses and traveling salesmen and, yes, bartenders. Perhaps it appears that she was open and free and I was closed and repressed. But nothing could be further from the truth. I liked to party as much as she did. But I remembered the parties after they were over. I recognized when party-time was appropriate and when it wasn’t. I accepted that our children needed parenting 24/7, not just when I felt like being a parent. So Helen, post-affair, expected things to fall back into their previous patterns. She thought I would forgive and forget and things would be as they were, just with her having to be more careful about how she acted. But that isn’t what happened. You know, I read these posted stories about marriages gone wrong, about cheating wives and their husbands who either throw them the hell out or, sometimes after trials and trepidation, reuniting with a marriage almost as strong as it had been before. For me, real life worked differently. I wasn’t cut to the quick about her cheating. I had prepared myself for it and had tried to understand the reasons behind it. And still, something inside me changed. When someone treats you like shit, after awhile you start to look at that someone in a different light. It’s insidious. You are going along with these solid feelings about people and relationships. Suddenly you are treated with disrespect, you are lied to, you see yourself as an object of pity or scorn to your friends and associates. And then your own feelings start to disintegrate. Slowly at first, and then with increasing acceleration, you find your feelings for your cheating slut wife just aren’t the same as they were for that sweet innocent little thing you married. You have this nice home, these beautiful children, this lovely town, this great job. And you wake up one morning and you just don’t give a shit anymore. That’s the cancer that comes from these adulterous affairs. Everything I’d worked for just didn’t seem to matter anymore. I looked myself in the mirror one day and told myself, “Donnie, you just don’t love her anymore. And you will never love her again. And that’s a fact.” When I fell in love with her, I was young and callow. She was sweet and innocent. Now I’m no longer young, and my callowness was cured by harsh reality. And her innocence is long gone, if it was ever anywhere but in my mind. So now we fast-forward a year or so. She is either controlling her urge towards infidelity or is being far more discrete about it. Personally, I no longer care. I gave her this edict about fidelity. But before long, as far as I was concerned she could fuck the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I just didn’t care. We still had sex together. No one could call it ‘making love’. We were fucking, successfully I might add. One thing that never stopped between Helen and me was our ability to fuck each other successfully. She liked to be on top, mostly because she could rub her clit just the right way over my dick. And I liked her to be on top so I could suck on those pendulous tits as they waved in front of my face. Perhaps I found her to be personally disgusting, but I still was enamored of those boobs. They were the only part of her I still loved; or at least lusted after. It was at another party over a year later. Helen introduced me to Annie, a friend she knew from some committee or other. She was a lawyer. I looked into those eyes and I was gob smocked! I had never met anyone more beautiful. Blue eyes, soft, blonde hair, lovely little body: she was way, way, way out of my league. Her voice was soft and seductive, oozing sexuality but intelligent and insightful. Helen mentioned to her that I was in computers. She smiled and said, “Oh, you know computers! Would you ever consider giving me a hand with mine? I spent all of this money on it and I can barely do anything with it.” This was back in the formative days of personal computers, so she may well have spent as much as $3,000 on her model. Yeah, I suppose if I had spent that kind of money, I’d like to make mine work, too. A Question of Balance I said, “Sure, I’d be glad to give it a look. I can set you up with something that is a bit easier to operate, if you’d like. We could give you a word processor like Word Perfect, a spreadsheet like Lotus 123, and a database program like Dbase. I’ll set it up so everything is menu driven. If you need help with the database, I’ll write you some simple programs to track whatever records you are interested in.” (‘And I’ll get down on my knees and lick your pussy if you’ll let me, you beautiful sexy thing,’ I thought.) She smiled. “Donald, I’d be forever in your debt.” She had me flabbergasted. She didn’t look like a model, she looked like a movie star. Her face had character: beautiful but lived in. She was maybe five or ten years older than me. Her dress spoke of class and money. Alarms were going off all over my body. No one called me Donald except my mother. Everyone called me Donnie. I don’t know why it resonated with me, but it did. Lord, everything she said or did resonated with me. Her voice was perfect. When she spoke there was a hint of laughter there. She had a taste of a Southern accent. There was no problem understanding her, but it added flavor to her already perfect voice. It was like listening to fine, mellow music. I learned she was divorced, living with her child only a few blocks from my house. She originally was from Arkansas but had come East with her then-husband. I would have stood there and listened to the story of her life, but apparently my wife’s radar was activated and she hurried me away from Annie. She looked at me suspiciously. I just grinned. How could I not grin? I had met the girl of my dreams. And I was sure, that was where she would stay: in my dreams. There you have it. I had fallen in love with Helen as an inexperienced teenager. It was obviously just puppy love. How the hell can you recognize true love until you’ve lived a little? If my feelings for Helen were ‘true love’ then how could I have fallen out of love with her so easily? That’s what I want to know. But just meeting Annie, I knew. Given half a chance, this could be the love of my life. I was ten years older than when I fell for Helen. I had been around the block a few times. I knew pleasure and I knew pain. I knew happiness and I had been hurt. I was ready to meet a person to love for the rest of my life. Of course I didn’t realistically look at Annie as that person. She was a thoroughbred and I was a quarter horse. We didn’t belong on the same planet. But I sure could enjoy the prospect of knowing her. I deserved that much, I figured. Over the next few months I got to know Annie. Helen and I were just coasting. I was honest with her. I told her I wasn’t sure if our marriage could last. I encouraged her to look outside the marriage for another relationship. You’ve got to admit, I was up front with her. I just didn’t love her any more. And it was her fault. So fuck her. That’s what I told myself. Annie was aware of the impending breakup of my marriage. I threw that little tidbit out there to see if would elicit a response. Annie is no dummy. She asked Helen about it. Helen admitted that things weren’t so hot with us. She told Annie that she thought I was screwing around on her. Can you imagine the gall of that bitch? Odds were way over 50-50 that she was already getting plowed by other person or persons unknown. And yet she accuses me of infidelity, me who after ten years with her has never been with another woman. The chick was seriously flawed I tell you. There was another neighborhood party. We were there, Annie was there. I danced with Annie at every opportunity. She only had eyes for me. I just couldn’t believe it. She only had eyes for me! She fit in my arms like we were made for each other. Her skin, oh God, her skin: so soft and sexy. I just wanted to touch her. Before long I was seriously hard. My condition seemed to invigorate her. She pressed herself to me, slowly, sensuously grinding her body against my erect dick. Her smile seemed to get wider. Her eyes were ablaze. I was smitten like I had never been smitten before. By the end of the evening, in my mind we were almost a couple. I called her the next day. I told her I needed to meet with her; anytime, anyplace. I could tell that she was thrilled with my call. But she wanted to tweak me a bit. “I thought you told me that you were never unfaithful to your wife, Donald.” “Annie, I was never tempted by a goddess before. You are all that I think about. My work is going to hell. I can’t keep up with conversations. I don’t know about you, Annie, but I need to be with you. I need to hold you. I need to suck on that beautiful neck of yours. Annie, I’m being driven crazy for wanting you. Please meet me and restore my sanity.” Annie laughed. “If it’s a matter of your mental health, then how could I turn that down? Okay, tell me where you wish to engage in this sleazy little encounter.” “Annie, it isn’t sleazy, and I assure you that it isn’t little. I mean, sweetheart, I’m thinking that we might be in this for the long term. I need to find out. I want to find out. When can you get out of work?” We met that afternoon at a motel, a Host Inn. We went to the room hand-in-hand. I was shaking, I was so anxious, so excited, so scared. What if I fucked this up? Here might be the opportunity of a lifetime. I couldn’t blow it! It suddenly occurred to me that I had never been with a woman other than Helen. This would be number two. Sure I was always successful with Helen, but we had almost ten years of fucking experience with each other. I guess we knew which buttons to push. But I went into this one with Annie with a major case of performance anxiety. When we were in the room she removed her clothes. Damn, she was lovely. She had small pert breasts, not big pendulous ones like Helen, but perfect small globes with lovely suckable nipples. Her waist was slender, her ass round and perfect. Her legs were short but sleek and oh so lovely. Her skin was velvet soft. And of course she had the face of a movie star. I took my clothes off as well. In my final years with Helen, perhaps I had allowed myself to gain a few pounds, lose a little of my muscle mass. But when things went bad, after I realized I just didn’t love her anymore, I started to exercise. I walked for miles instead of eating lunch. I played tennis regularly with a small group of like-minded ex-athletes. By the time I made it to that hotel room with Annie, my body was the equal of what it had been in college, when I was a varsity athlete. I guess she was impressed. Still, because of my anxiety my dick was a no-show. Here I am looking at the most luscious piece of female pulchritude that I will ever get to see in person, and my dick won’t get hard. By the way, if you’ve ever had it happen to you, you know it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Uh, it’s the kind of thing that men don’t like to talk about much. After all, it might be contagious. I did the only thing that a gentleman in my situation could do. I decided to go down on my lovely Annie. I pushed her back on the bed and caressed her lovely body, taking my time to ensure that every part was properly adored. I worshiped those perfect tits, that soft smooth belly, her ankles, her knees, front and back. And I slowly worked my way up her thighs to her very center. She was already wet by the time I reached the vee of her legs and her smell was like honey, sweet and delectable. Her sparse soft blonde pubic hair were just enough to highlight that slightly swollen and sexily red pussy. Her clit was just beginning to peek out of its covering by the time I reached the critical parts. I licked her slit then kissed her clit. I sucked her lips, then licked her clit. I attacked one part for a while, then turned my attention to another equally alluring part. Eventually I had several fingers buried in that lovely twat while my mouth ravaged that fully emerged clitoris. Annie’s ass was first on the bed, then arched in the air, then jabbing at my face, back an forth, back and forth. She was flying. I must have eaten her for almost an hour. She had come more than once, of that I was certain. It occurred to me that I had never given Helen more than one orgasm at a time. My fault or hers? I don’t know, but Annie was proving to be multi-orgasmic. I guess my mind was distracted by Annie’s thorough involvement with her seduction. I guess I was excited by the screams, the curses, the thrashing head, the flowing hair. I guess I forgot about my own problems because suddenly I was rock hard. Rock hard, hell! My dick felt like a tree stump. I was so hard I could have driven nails with the damn thing. I realized that I had achieved an erection as Annie was starting to come down from an amazing sexual high. I slid my body up her body until my dick found her soaking wet pussy. I pushed the head of my cock past her lips. Annie’s eyes shot wide open in wonder and excitement. I applied pressure and my dick squeezed its way into that tight warm cunt. I gave a little ground and then re-entered, this time gaining even more of a foothold. Two or three more strokes and I was buried to the bone. As I held her our hips rocked together. I said, “Sweetheart, this is where I’ve wanted to be from the first moment I saw you. This is where I want to remain for the rest of my life.” Annie said, “Donald, I didn’t know anything could feel so perfect. You’re just the right size for me. It’s as if we were made for each other.” I remembered I had thought the same thing, only within a slightly different context. Made for each other. I plunged into her and we began to make love in earnest. I showered her sweet face with kisses as our movements became more and more pronounced. I was sliding back several inches, only to bottom out with increasing ferocity. Soon we were fucking like maniacs. I felt it start from my extremities. It worked its way up my legs and arms and into my center. It seemed to be a lightning bold and it exploded out my cock and into Annie. She felt it too! She screamed and then clenched in ecstasy. I spurted rope upon rope into her sweet pussy. It was simply the most magnificent orgasm I had ever experienced. When I came to my senses, I took Annie in my arms and continued to shower her with kisses and caresses. Her eyes were closed and I thought she might be dozing off. But then Annie opened her eyes and gave me a worried look. “Donald, my goodness, I climaxed at least six times! You must think that I’m a shameless hussy!” I thought to myself, ‘I know shameless hussies, and this isn’t one of them’. I smiled and kissed her nose. She was telling me in her sweet self-depreciating way, that I really rocked her boat. She was embarrassed that I saw how much she loved sex with me, while at the same time she wanted me to be sure that it was her and me that caused this amazing result. Annie always maintains the aura of a Southern belle, sweet and pure. But in the bedroom, she takes no prisoners and expects no quarter. What a gem. What a beautiful, unbelievable gem. I came home late that night. I guess it was about the only time in our marriage that I came home late without telling Helen. She was waiting for me in the living room when I walked in. Her arms were crossed. She had a bitter hurt look on her face. “You were with HER, weren’t you?” I decided to play dumb. “Her?” “You were with Annie, weren’t you.” ‘Yes, Helen, I was with Annie. I guess you aren’t a bit surprised.” She didn’t cry, I’ll give her that. She knew that the axe was going to fall sometime soon. “I guess this is it then, isn’t it?” “Yes, Helen, I guess this is it. I’ll pack my things in the morning. Then I’ll have a talk with the kids. I’m sorry it had to end this way, but we both saw it coming for an awfully long time.” “I know, Donnie, I know. I’ll always love you, Donnie. I want you to remember that.” “And there will always be a special place in my heart for you, Helen”, I said with as much forced sincerity as I could muster under the circumstances. I didn’t want to hurt her. I just wanted the hell out! Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, I left Helen on a Wednesday and by Friday some other guy moved in with her. No it wasn’t the bartender. It was some other guy, a welder. I liked him. We got along well (actually a hell of a lot better than either of us got along with Helen after awhile). The poor sucker, Tom was his name, lasted almost ten years himself before he ran screaming into the night. I started dating Annie. Within a year and a half we were married. Twenty years later it looks like we may be together to stay. Every marriage has its good parts and its bad parts. You’ve got to weigh the good with the bad to know that things are on an even keel, that the bad parts aren’t overwhelming the good parts. It’s a question of balance.