I knew something was up because Nan had been fidgety since I walked in the front door. It was one of the signs that she had something to say that she didn't think I was going to like to hear. After fifteen years of marriage I knew the signs and I also knew that I couldn't hurry things along. When Nan had something like that to say she had to work herself up to say it. So, while I waited for her to finish dinner I grabbed a beer and went into the living room to watch CNN.

When Nan called me for dinner I was surprised to see that she had opened a couple of bottles of wine, one on the table and one on the sideboard to 'breathe, ' and she had already poured two glasses. Since we rarely had wine with our meals during the week I asked her what was the occasion.

"I'm trying to get you in a mellow mood."

"In other words I'm not going to like what's coming, am I?"

"Probably not."

"Well why not just go ahead and get it over with?"

"Not yet. Wait until we finish the wine."

"That bad?"

Nan looked down at her wineglass and said, "Pretty bad."

We sat in silence as we finished dinner and I wondered what 'pretty bad' could mean.

When dinner was over and the dishes were cleared away I said, "Living room, family room, bedroom or here?"

"Here is fine" and she got up and got the other bottle of wine off the sideboard. She refilled our glasses and then she sat down across from me.

"Would you say we have a good marriage?"

"I would say we have an excellent marriage."

"Are you happy with me?"

"Of course I am."

"You do know that I love you, don't you?"

"Yes, I believe I do, now what's this all about?"

She watched me silently for several moments, took a big gulp of her wine and then she said, "One of my boyfriends wants to take me to Cancun this weekend for a week and I want to go."

My wineglass was halfway to my mouth before what Nan had said registered on me. I put the glass down on the table and stared at her not believing what I had heard and not knowing what to say. I just sat there and stared at her.

"Aren't you going to say anything?"

"Say what? Start where? The sudden news that you had a boyfriend would have floored me, but boyfriends plural? I don't know what to say. When, why, how long, how many, why are you telling me this, what do you expect me to say? If you need to hear me say something how about this - just how long past the end of this conversation do you expect this marriage to last? For that matter, why are we even having this conversation? Why don't you just pack your bags and head for Cancun? It's a damned good bet that I won't be here when you get back anyway."

"That's what this is all about honey. I want you here when I get back. I won't even go unless you say I can."

"You can't be that stupid Nan. Whether you go or not doesn't matter. You have just informed me that you have been cheating on me. You are unfaithful - you are fucking other men behind my back. You think I'm just going to sit here and say "That's nice dear, and have you been having a good time?" We don't need to say anymore; you've just said all that needs to be said. The marriage is toast. Go to fucking Cancun. Go anywhere you fucking want to, it doesn't matter to me any more."

I got up from the table and headed for the basement.

"Where are you going?"

"To get a suitcase."

"Why?"

"Because I'm getting out of here and I'm going to need to pack some things."

"Please stay and talk to me honey."

"We have nothing to talk about."

"Yes we do. We need to talk about us."

"God damn it Nan, there is no more 'us'. We stopped being an 'us' when you hit me with that boyfriend shit. Just leave me alone."

I went to the basement and got a couple of suitcases and went up to the bedroom to pack. Nan stood in the doorway and watched me for several minutes and then she turned and walked away. I finished packing and carried the suitcases out to the car and put them in the trunk. When I got in the car I found Nan sitting on the passenger side. She looked over at me and said, "I'm sticking to you like glue until we talk this out. You admitted that we had a great marriage. You said you were happy with me and you acknowledged that you believe that I love you. So I've had lovers, so what? Our marriage has still been great and I still love you so at least hear me out before you take off."

"All right, go ahead and talk."

"Please honey, just come back inside. We can sit at the kitchen table where I can sip my wine. I need the wine to help me say what I need to say and I'm going to need it to keep me going."

She took a sip of the Merlot and then said, "First off, I have to say that I love you with all my heart. I love being married to you, I love going to sleep in your arms and I love waking up with you cuddled up next to me. I love every thing about you; your laugh, your tenderness and I love the way you make me feel. I love the way you make love to me and that is where the problem with me is. You just don't do it often enough."

I started to say something, but Nan held up her hand, "Please let me finish - let me get it all out - and then you can say whatever you want or ask any questions you want to." She took another sip of her wine; "You don't need sex as much as I do honey. You are fantastic in bed and you never fail to make my toes curl when we make love, but honey, you just don't want sex all that often. For the last six years you have been happy with once, sometimes twice a week and that isn't near enough for me. Where once a week is good enough for you I could handle once or twice a day."

She took another sip of her wine.

"Back when we slowed down to once or twice a week I spent a small fortune on sexy under things and sexy high heels to try and get you in the mood to make love more often, but you never seemed to notice. I tried being more aggressive in instigating things, but you never responded. Eventually I came to understand that you just weren't all that interested in sex. In all other things you and I were perfect for each other and our marriage was great so I resigned myself to only having sex when you were ready. That lasted about two months and by the end of that two months I was so sexually frustrated that I got irritable and cranky and we started having all those arguments over piddily little shit that didn't amount to much and it was putting a hell of a strain on our marriage. I don't think the marriage would have survived another six months if I hadn't had to much to drink at your sisters wedding shower."

She got up and opened another bottle of wine and when she went to pour me some I waved her away. She refilled her own glass and said, "The girls had all chipped in to hire a male stripper to come in and perform. The girls were pretty raunchy that night and they were tossing him money to try and get him to strip down all the way and when he finally did and I saw his hard cock sticking out in front of him I started to feel sorry for myself. It just so happened that he left the party a minute after I did and he saw me having trouble putting the key in the car door lock. I was crying so hard that I could hardly see. He came over to help me and one thing led to another and I ended up at his apartment and in his bed. He screwed me five times before I had to leave and come home. I was fine after that. Oh I did feel guilty and I cried a lot over the fact that I had betrayed your trust, but the frustration was gone, the irritability was gone and so was the crankiness. But it came back and so did the arguments and the arguments were getting worse. One day we had one that left me so angry that I just wanted to scream and run through the house breaking things. I was cleaning out my purse and I found the piece of paper that Chad had given me with his number on it. I had forgotten that he had given it to me. I was just mad enough at you that day to call him and when he invited me over I went. From then on I saw him three and four times a week. Things smoothed out in our marriage, I was happy and I was able to keep you happy. I know that doesn't make it right, but it worked."

"Six years? You have been doing this six years and have been able to hide it from me?"

"I did it during the day while you were at work and I always made sure I was home and cleaned up well before you got home. There wasn't anyway for you to have found out."

"So I don't satisfy you."

"That's not what I said honey. You always satisfied me when we made love. You just don't do it often enough."

"So what you are telling me is that you are a slut for cock and you have a stable of studs to see that you get it."

"I guess you could put it that way, at least from your point of view."

"How would you put it?"

"I would say that I have a few friends that help me out in my hour of need."

"Just how many is a few?"

"Three or four."

"You don't even know for sure?"

"It changes. It started out as just Chad. Then Chad graduated and got a job in another city. He introduced me to Tony, another dancer he worked with, and then Tony moved and I met Gary. Chad moved back to town and I dated both Gary and Chad for a while and then Tony moved back and it just keeps changing. Right now I'm seeing Chad, Harry, Rudy and Glenn, but Harry is supposed to be moving to Dallas this week. I don't see them all at once, I just take turns dating them. That way I avoid any emotional entanglements."

"So who is it who wants to take you to Cancun?"

"Chad."

"And just what is it that makes this Chad think that you can come and just ask me to let you take off for a week with him?"

"He doesn't know I'm asking you."

"Then what in Christ's name made you think you could do it without causing our marriage to self destruct?"

"Try to understand this honey. I'm gambling here. I know I love you and I was sure that you loved me. What I have been doing for the last six years has not affected your quality of life one little bit. If anything, what I've been doing has made things better for us because we don't argue and fight any more. But circumstances change. My boyfriends are losing the ability to see me during the day when we are relatively free from worrying about being found out. To continue to get the sexual satisfaction that I need I'm going to have to do it in the evenings which almost guarantees that I will eventually get caught. So I decided to bite the bullet and out myself. I'm gambling that I can convince you that I love you more that anything, that you haven't lost anything and that you won't lose anything if I continue. If I can't convince you then the marriage is over. If I hadn't come forward now and I'd have been caught the marriage still would have been over. I'm hoping that by doing it this way I'll have a chance at keeping you."

"I don't see how Nan. As long as I didn't know we could have kept on going, but now I do know. I'd never be able to come home again without wondering who you spent the day with and what you did. I'd never be able to kiss you again without thinking about where that mouth had been and what it had been doing. Just the thought that I've been kissing you after you have sucked some other man's cock is making my stomach turn right now. Look at the bright side. Now you can fuck your stable all day and all night every day. That should keep you sexually satisfied."

She looked at me with tears in her eyes, "Damn it Ben, I love you and I don't want you to leave me."

"Sorry Nan, you should have thought of that before you let yourself become a slut."

I spent the next three days in a motel wondering just how in the hell that a marriage that had been so good for fifteen years could have gone down the chute so quickly. I loved Nan and it killed me to be away from her, but I also knew I was right when I stated the way I would feel when I would come home to her. She professed love for me, but how could she expect me to kiss her knowing that she had just sucked another man's cock? How could she expect me to sit across from her at the dinner table knowing that just a couple of hours earlier she had been on her back with her legs spread for some other guy? After fifteen years she had to know me better than that.

Sitting in the motel and staring at the TV I thought about Nan's reason for doing what she did. She was right that I didn't seem to need a lot of sex, but I wasn't going to accept that it was my fault that she turned herself into a whore. There were plenty of women in the world whose husbands were like me and they didn't go out whoring. So I only made love once or twice a week, what was wrong with that? When it happened I was making love not having sex, and it wasn't any quick coupling either - it sometimes lasted an hour or more and it was almost always more than once or twice. I sometimes went three and four times. What was wrong with having quality instead of quantity? I loved Nan and I do believe that she loved me, but Jesus - how could she expect me to live with what she had become?

My car needed work so I dropped it off at the dealership on Saturday morning and took a cab over to my house. Nan would be in Cancun with her asshole and I could take my time going through the place and packing up what I wanted. I held the cab long enough to check the garage and make sure Nan's car was gone. It was so I paid off the cab driver and then let myself inside the house. About an hour later I was in the bedroom taking clothes out of the closet when I heard the garage door opener start up. At the same time I heard a car door slam out in the drive and when I went to the window and looked out I saw a man getting out of a pick up truck. The shock of seeing the man rattled me more than I cared to admit. Nan had said nothing about the fact that one of her lovers was black.

Obviously Nan had brought one of her lovers to the house and the last thing I wanted was a confrontation with Nan and one of her assholes so I quickly shoved the boxes I'd packed in the closet and closed the door. I hurried down the hall to the spare bedroom. As soon as the two of them were in the master bedroom I would get out of the house. I heard them coming up the stairs and then I heard the man say, "Isn't that your bedroom?"