Chapter 3

I worried all day about what Jenny was going to say to me that night, which I think was probably due to the fact that I’d been hiding what I’d done with my cousin and his friends for so many years that it was second nature by then. I did wake up to the reality of my wife being just as much interested in perverted sex as I was a short time after that, but during the day after we’d watched the perverted movies, my mindset was still on the order of, “Keep it hidden, or you’ll be sorry.”

By the time I had parked my car in our garage after work, I was a nervous wreck, to say the least. I actually wondered if Jenny would even come home at all, but would instead move back to her parents’ home and sue for divorce. Luckily for me, as soon as she walked into the kitchen and saw me working on dinner, she put my mind at ease on that score.

“Honey,” she began as she sat down at the kitchen table, “I’ve been thinking about what we saw last night, and how it made both of us so hot we almost passed out, and I ... well, I guess what I want to say is that I think what I saw in you and what you probably saw in me ... Well, it’s just too fucking important and too wonderful to just pretend it never happened. So ... I think we need to decide what we’re going to do about it. Don’t you?”

I felt the biggest sense of relief ever as I understood she wasn’t upset with me, and not only that, but maybe she was actually glad I was as much a pervert as anyone could be. I turned down the heat under the hamburger patties I was frying, then as I sat down across the table from her, I said, “I do, too. I mean, I think we need to talk about it.”

She waited a heartbeat or two to see if I had anything to add, then continued her line of thought.

“Well, first I think we need to have a ‘confession time,’ so we can see where we actually are in our lives. I’ll go first with a tiny confession, then it’ll be your turn. Then, if I think you’re being honest with you, I’ll tell you something bigger about myself. Then it’ll be your turn, and so on, and so on. Okay? Do you think that’s the way we should do this, Honey?”

Of course, I had no counter-suggestion to make, so I just steeled myself to tell her the truth and nothing but the truth, and let the chips fall where they may.

After I’d nodded my head in agreement with her suggestion, she said softly, “Okay, me first, then. Well, I ... Damn! This is going to be harder than I thought. I guess I’m just so damned afraid if I tell you what I’m really like you’ll run out the door and I’ll never see you again, and I just can’t bear for that to happen.”

As the first tears rolled down her cheeks, I hurried around the table, dropped to my knees, and took her in my arms. I said everything I could think of to tell her she’d never be able to get rid of me, no matter what she told me about her past, and I promised her that when I told her about all the dirty things I’d done before I met her, she’d be the one to do the leaving.

I guess that calmed her enough that she stopped crying, and after she’d wiped her eyes and blown her nose, she took a deep breath, then started talking.

“Okay, Honey, I think I can do it now. First I want to ask that you not interrupt me until I get it all out, because I’m afraid if I stop I won’t be able to get started again.” After I’d nodded my acceptance, she continued, “I guess the first thing I need to tell you, because everything else is due to that part of my life, is this: When I was in eighth grade my brother ... molested me, and...”

I guess that was when she opened her eyes that she’d been keeping squeezed tightly shut, and when she saw the shock on my face it brought her to a halt. I did my best to reassure her by saying, “Don’t bother about me; just pretend I’m not even here. Go ahead and say everything you need to tell me.”

She took another shuddering breath, then after letting it out slowly, she continued her story.

“Well, after he molested me, he said he’d kill me if I ever told anyone about it, and that’s why you’re the first one ever to hear this. He started coming to my bed almost every night, and when it didn’t hurt as much that time, and even less the next, I thought I could live with what he was doing to me, so I kept quiet about it.

“That didn’t stop me from hating him, though. All it did was make me invent bigger and bigger fantasies about what I was going to do to him when I got big. I used to dream about doing things to his willie until it was completely gone, and believe me, some of those things were pretty far out. What I thought about mostly, though, was cutting it off and making him eat it. And that’s the kind of fantasies I’ve been having for years, and when I met you and fell in love with you, I just...”