Looking back, he knew the affair had been a mistake. Of course, in retrospect, ALL affairs are mistakes (or you had better be sure you could convince yourself of that fact if you choose to remain married). This affair had cost him. Not only had it hurt his young, yet already crippled, marriage and ended the marriage of his partner in crime; it had also cost him his best friend. Worst of all, it had cost him part of his sanity.

He had made the mistake of falling dick-first into his best friend's wife. Whenever he explained this to someone (like his cold fish of a wife, or her endless chain of therapists, for instance), he was immediately angered by their first response which always seemed to be "How COULD you?!!?" How he would love, just once, to tell them EXACTLY how he could have done it. It wasn't rocket science. It was one of the few completely simple things that had ever happened to him. The person who insisted upon complicating it was the "victim." His wife. Her brand of mental illness depended upon having something with which to stab him in the back (or groin) forever- God only knows what she might do without her precious grief to feed upon twenty-four hours a day. No matter what his wife insisted upon twisting it into, it had been simple.

He had been so young at the time. And married. Not happily married, either, but married to a woman who could (and did) cheerfully go without sex for months at a time. She didn't seem to find anything at all unusual about not being interested in intimacy. She didn't think it was bizarre to sleep in the same bed with someone night after night without having sex, ever. However, that was not the case with his best friend. In fact, he and his best friend seemed to have completely opposite problems. While his own wife had apparently taken some celibacy vow without his knowledge, his best friend's wife was insatiable. How strange it had been, meeting his friend after work and, over beers, listening to how his friend's wife wanted it all the time. How she couldn't be satisfied. How that, if it was up to her, they would probably be homeless because his friend would never be able to get to work. It had been foreign to him. He had joked with his friend about it, too, about how he only wished he could say the same thing about his wife.

He had visited his friend's home often and, strangely enough, there didn't seem to be that much difference between their home and his home. His friend's wife didn't walk around wearing nothing but stockings and garters, begging to have a dick shoved in her. The only difference he noticed between this woman and his own wife was that this woman was openly affectionate with her husband. She would hug him, kiss him, and touch him- but her husband was uncomfortable with all of that and pushed her away. Yes, he was envious. If only his wife were affectionate. He wouldn't push her away. What a waste it all was. Life can be totally fucked-up, sometimes.

One afternoon he had stopped by his best friend's house for a visit (and to prolong going home to the Frost Queen, of course). It is true, he should have just gone on home when She had told him his friend wasn't home. But he had not gone on home. She had invited him in and offered him a beer. He had only just gotten there and, already, She had shown more interest in him than his own wife had in weeks. So he had accepted Her offer. And, yes, once he figured out She was already buzzed and working on being completely blitzed, he should have politely excused himself and left. Nevertheless, he had not. He had never been alone with Her and, outside the shadow of Her husband; She had been charming and funny. She had made him laugh. And, just below the surface, he could see it, the tragedy of Her marriage. It was like a vein running through both of them. A silent understanding. He wondered if his friend had told Her about what his marriage was like. Probably not. His friend never seemed to talk to Her. He'd had a couple of beers and many laughs with Her. He had watched the alcohol loosen Her up more and more. But he wasn't afraid of Her. She wasn't throwing herself at him, after all. She was just lonely. And he was lonely, too. He was speaking with a kindred spirit, and that's a very powerful draw. Misery has always loved company. They had talked and talked and talked. He found Her remarkably easy to talk with. She had been so eager to listen to what he had to say. She had been hungry for attention. She hung on his every word. As they had talked, he had allowed himself the brief fantasy that this was his home and She was his wife. Maybe that short-lived fantasy turned the conversation to marriage. Maybe not. Destiny has a strange way of revealing itself one way or the other. Whatever the reason, they soon began discussing their marriages. Neither of them had anything near what they had expected. Matrimony just was not what it was cracked up to be. It wasn't about companionship at all, no, as a matter of fact, it seemed more like a business proposition. She had told him that her marriage had turned out to be about money and status- not about a sacred relationship between man and woman at all. When She had said those words, the short hairs on the back of his neck had stood up. Maybe that was the sign married men get when it's time to get the Hell out of Dodge. He didn't know and had no interest in learning at that point in time.

She had left the room and he was pondering all that She had said, the great similarities between Her feelings and his own. He hadn't heard Her come back in the room at all, so deep he had been in his thoughts. He was startled to look up and find Her standing right in front of him. There was nothing out-of-the-ordinary about Her appearance. She hadn't sprouted horns and a tail. The letter A in scarlet detail wasn't emblazoned upon Her chest. She didn't look any different than She had on any of the occasions he had visited this house. The only difference had been Her eyes. She had stood there and devoured him with those eyes. He'd never felt so "on display" as he had at that particular moment, when he'd watched Her take him in from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. She had not missed one inch of him in her assessment. He had actually blushed. He'd realized he had just been fucked, because She had fucked him with her eyes. Whatever She had seen in him must have agreed with Her, because the next thing he had known, She had been sitting on his lap, one arm around him, and Her fingers in his hair. Her face had been very close to his and those eyes of hers were now fixed upon his. Once again, She had seemed to be reading him. One side of Her mouth had turned up in the tiniest hint of a smile and then She had grabbed the collar of his shirt and, without ever taking Her eyes off of his for a second, She had pulled his face to hers, forcefully, until Her lips were fractions of an inch from his. He had never been handled that way in his life and (even though he had been known to pay exorbitant amounts of money along with precise instructions for just how it should be done) he had never been handled that way again. Then She had sealed the fate of her marriage (and his sanity) with an oh-so-simple question: "Well, are you going to fuck me, or what?"