by Anson Pope
Perhaps I deserve to feel this way. We were trying to get pregnant when my online escapades became more frequent. Like a drug, this was my place to escape the real horrors of life. I would talk with others about my deep dark secrets of being married to a woman while still having fantasies that involved men. Bisexual they call it. I hadn't even heard the expression until I met my wife since she explained that she was bisexual.
We welcomed our son in February. I took two weeks off since the idea of paternity leave was still unheard of. One day I retreated to the bathroom with the phone to speak with our mortgage company and beg for a way to stay in the house. I also had to finish the IRS paperwork so we could pay them and get them off our backs. All this life causing me stress made me need a fix bad. The computer was in our bed room which made the online life difficult to maintain.
The plate was in my hand and I was ready to go upstairs. On it, a freshly made turkey sandwich for a late snack before bed. She was in front of me asking questions I didn't understand. Something about finding a picture of a naked man on the computer and it wasn't a picture of me. Like an addict, I had been caught. I felt my insides melt through my stomach and down my legs to my feet and out through my toes.
What made this different though was our mutual understanding. There can be love and a fully developed relationship around one person. Then there can be sex without meaning with another. Only when that idea was proposed to me years earlier I turned it down. They call it an open marriage. I balked because I was too ashamed to admit my desires and too frightened to open up about the online life; like a junky hiding his drugs. Long term though this enlightened philosophy on sex and love would help to heal the wounds. We are stronger today from that miserable experience.
Mother's Day is always a big day in our house as it often straddles her birthday. It's a day for my wife to truly be queen. Yet she is distant. She doesn't even seem interested in birthday sex as I caress her back and ass in bed. She says she is depressed, her usual bi-polar cycle. Through an email conversation the following day it turns out she has an obsessive crush on someone else. He fills an intellectual need and isn't too bad on the eyes she thinks. I feel threatened and inadequate. I feel as she probably did the night I made that turkey sandwich. I likely deserve it.
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I enjoyed my attempt with flash fiction yesterday that I came up with this one. It is based upon true events, but I'm curious if anyone could see it as fiction.
I think you've got a handful of terrific conflicts crammed into this little space. You've got: a guy hiding a pornography addiction; a guy facing serious questions about his sexuality; a guy struggling with financial issues under the weight of a new baby in the house they're about to lose; there's the moral question of open versus closed marriage; there's the threat of the guy's wife having an affair; there's a couple dealing with one's mental illness; there's the guy's preoccupation with sex obstructing his ability to emotionally connect with others. There's a lot of places to explore there.
I'd say enough to fuel a lengthy novel. I don't know what direction you want to go with it, what form you're looking to put it into, but if you were looking at a short story, then you're going to have to pick one from these abundant conflicts and focus in on it, probably to the level of one element of one of the conflicts. Summarizing them all in five paragraphs arouses my interest but doesn't give me enough specific detail to emotional attach with as a reader.
I'd really like to see how the conversation began, escalated, and eventually resolved when the wife confronted him about the artistic photographs of the guy spreading his cheeks. That seems to have a lot of potential energy stored in it, just waiting for you to release it with some honest, microcosmic details.
Thanks Ted. Yes, there is a novel in there. It's finding the best way to attack it. I'm torn between the concept of a full on novel or a collection of short stories which together would paint the whole picture. There are also larger concepts such as the questions with sexuality and what I perceive as "a subculture of male bisexuality." Having been the "addict" I have collected stories that could open people's eyes to a world no one knew was so obviously there. Thanks for the feedback. Food for thought.
I didn't read your note before I read the piece. I read this as fiction. Nice work too.