She tapped me softly on the arm, “I’m sorry.” I ignored her.

She tapped again, “I’m so sorry. What can I do?”

I rolled onto my back. I said, “We’ve been through this Maeve. Now let me sleep.”

Grave tactical error! She threw herself on my chest, clutching hard, sobbing.

I said; long-suffering; “Maeve, there’s no, ‘I’m sorry.’ Now let me sleep.”

She held me tighter and sobbed, “I didn’t know what I was doing.”

I said, “You knew EXACTLY what you were doing. You just didn’t think there’d be consequences. Now, for the last time, leave me alone or I’m sleeping in the den.”

She crept over to her side of the bed. I rolled away, pulling the blanket up as I went.

I lay there for a count of ten. Then I angrily shoved the covers back, and slipped on my robe.

She was still lying huddled weeping quietly into her pillow.

I went downstairs and plopped into a chair. She didn’t follow – Thank God!!!

I needed space to think.

It started with an argument. Maeve wanted to go to a party and I didn’t. We live in a neighborhood of unreformed frat-rats and sorority skanks. They might be married. But, you couldn’t tell it by their behavior. The flirting, groping and outright infidelity was epidemic.

Maeve’s special, a tiny supple body, with big Mick tits, red hair, a Maid of Erin face and freckles. More pertinent, she likes male attention. She’s a drama queen; and she can frequently convey availability. She says its harmless, every woman does it. But, I didn’t like how she acted when she was around that group. And I shared that with her.

She told me that we were going to the party; or else! I told HER that it wasn’t going to happen. She said, “You don’t tell me what to do!!!” I reminded her who paid the bills. She told me I could fuck myself. Then she stomped upstairs.

A little later I heard her come downstairs. I was reading in the den. The closing of the door didn’t register. I read for another two hours. It finally dawned on me that only other creature in the house was the cat. I got up and checked. Yep, Maeve wasn’t there.

I called. It went to voicemail. I scratched my head. Where the fuck did she go? Then it hit me!!! Two blocks later, I was pounding on the Larson’s door. Nobody heard me. The music was too loud. I opened the door and walked into a dimly lit room. It reeked of weed and treachery. Drunken couples were dancing, and making out on the couch; no Maeve.

I walked into the kitchen, where I ran into Tad Barlow. He’s a d-bag. But he knew where Maeve was. Actually, he said, “Billy my-man!! That’s one hot little bitch you’ve got there.” He gestured in the direction of the patio. I assumed that Maeve was the hot bitch in question.

I found ten people yukking it up around a fire-pit. All of them were watching my wife, who was, sitting on Russ Jamison’s lap. She was moaning and squirming on the douchebag’s giant hard-on. He was working on her enormous Irish tits. Her nipples were so extended, it looked like he was rolling a blunt.

Jamison must have loved bagging Maeve. He’s almost my height but he’s twenty pounds heavier. It’s blubber but he likes to think he’s a badass. He has a particular thing for me. I mostly ignore him.

I said loudly, “Come on Maeve. We’re going home.” That snapped the two adulterers out of their little reverie.

She looked at me defiantly and said, “Party pooper!! I’m having fun.” I grabbed her like an unruly child and yanked her out of Jamieson’s lap. She stumbled drunkenly and almost fell into the fire. I had to hold onto her, just to keep her from falling in.

Jamison came roaring out of his chair. He yelled, “The lady said she wants to stay!!” Obviously, Russ and I were experiencing a breakdown in communication. I parked Maeve, and turned toward him.

I don’t know what it is with macho types. Maybe they’ve seen too many Rocky movies. But they always get into a boxing stance. I had no desire to prove my manhood. So, I deflected his first roundhouse right and kicked him so hard in the dingle-dangles, that his dead grandfather screamed.

Jamison got this utterly astounded look on his face. It was like, “That wasn’t fair!!!” As I said, we had differing expectations. He hit the ground face first and pissed himself; oh, how embarrassing!!!

Unfortunately, he had landed close enough to the fire that his hair began to singe. I’m a good guy. I grabbed his legs and dragged him backward, adding a second kick to the nuts; just to reinforce my displeasure.

I turned toward Maeve and said, “I’m going home.” She followed me, bitching every step of the way.

She went off, the minute we got in the door, “How could you embarrass me like that??!!”

I thought to myself, “Lord give me strength!” I said angrily, “Let me get this straight. I find my wife dry humping the local pussy-hound while he plays with her titties and you think that I’ve humiliated YOU?”

She stopped ranting and looked at me surprised. I never shouted at her. Maybe I SHOULD have. I snarled, “You’ve got NO respect for me whatsoever.”

I turned to walk away and she shrieked, “What’s the matter with you. We were just playing. It wasn’t like I was blowing him, or he was fucking me. Since when have you become such a prude?”

I turned slowly and said, “That kind of intimacy is across the line and you know it. If his hand wasn’t up your dress, it would have been shortly. You held me up to ridicule in front of that entire collection of assholes.”

She had the good sense to look guilty. At least she wasn’t as stupid as she’d been acting. I said, “There is no point in being married to a woman who can’t obey the laws of common decency.”

She looked like it was finally sinking in. She said, “Okay, I might have gone a teensy bit too far. But I was mad at you and I probably had too much to drink. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.” She looked pleased with herself. It was like she’d settled the business.

Now it was my turn to look astonished. I said, “You disgraced yourself and me, in front of nine other people, and you think that you can fix it by saying you’re sorry? What kind of moron do you think I am?”

She continued to look puzzled. I decided to enlighten her. I said, “This has nothing to do with adultery. It’s about whether I can trust a woman who thinks that she can do anything she wants without costs.”

Maeve laughed and said, totally sure of herself, “You love me. You’d never leave me.”

Okay, I got it. She thought that she could leverage me by acting like a slut. When did my wife morph into a petulant teenybopper?

I said, “People who love each other don’t sneak out to a party; strike one. Married women don’t do what you were doing with THAT asshole; strike two. And finally, you refuse to believe that any of this is your problem; strike three. There aren’t four strikes in baseball.”

She was beginning to look a little worried. She said mystified, “I don’t understand? Why’ve you suddenly got a wild hair up your ass?”

That was a good question. By this point in the marriage, I should be used to being treated like shit. Neither of us understood why the other was so dissatisfied and stubborn. Maeve craved action, drinking, dancing and socializing. While I just wanted to rest from a hard week’s work. She bitched; and I took my lumps. I really couldn’t see any other alternative.

We had met at a party. She dumped the guy she was with; and we spent the weekend trying out every position in the Kama Sutra. Maybe I should have thought a little bit more about what that might presage?

We fucked constantly. It was always wild. So, I married her. I was a kid. I’d confused lust with love. Afterward, Maeve’s life didn’t change. She fucked me and I gave her money. She enjoyed fucking. The problem was that, I didn’t enjoy the exhausting effort it took to make the money.

This current discussion was a waste of time. I would get more understanding from a six-year-old. So, I said, “I’m going to bed.” A half hour later, she slipped in next to me, huffed once, and rolled herself up in the blanket. I’d been put in my place.

The police stopped by to talk. I told them that I had just retaliated for being punched. That was what everybody else had told them. So, it was clear that it was a courtesy call. I spent the weekend being anywhere but where Maeve was.

I worked in the yard, took a shower and played a round of golf. It was 6:30 when I got home. The house was empty. There was no note. So, I called her. Her phone went to voicemail. This was getting ridiculous.

I grabbed a burger at the Swamp; that’s a bar and grill not an actual wetland. I watched a game on TV and had a couple of beers. Maeve’s phone was obviously turned off. I was not pleased.

I was on the way home when I passed another rat-pack party. It looked like the good times had rolled over to Saturday. The lights were on and you could hear the loud music. Inspiration struck. I parked at our house.

I hopped the back fence and walked down several houses. They had a row of tall bushes next to the privacy fence. I walked down a gravel divider between the bushes and the fence. I emerged from the shrubbery, when I got to the party; and almost tripped over a couple taking advantage of the darkness.

They were very enthusiastically making the two-backed-beast. I thought, Mr. Blake and Mrs. Butsikakis would be very upset if they knew what their spouses were up to. She was arched into a bow; holding her legs by the knees while he pounded her. She was going “Ahhh-Ahhh-Ahhh-FUCK-ME” loud enough that the dead had difficulty sleeping.