Chapter 9: I Can See Clearly Now

At 7:25 I heard a car pull up in front of the apartment. I felt my hart jump. I was starting to feel relieved. The only thing I was worrying about was that Lisa might show up with this George guy. Then it would be just like the day I came home and found Lisa waiting for me with that piece of shit Devers.

When the doorbell didn't ring right away I began to think that maybe the car had been a visitor going to my neighbors apartment. I wanted to look out the window to see but I stayed on the sofa. If it was Lisa, I wasn't going to let her see me look out the window.

Finally the bell rang. I went to the door and looked through the peep hole expecting to see Lisa, but it wasn't Lisa. Instead there was a tall woman standing there with her back to the door. She had dark hair and appeared to be well dressed. I assumed she was there to sell me something. I was very disappointed that it wasn't Lisa and I certainly wasn't in the mood for any sales pitch. When I opened the door the woman turned around. In the depressed state I was in I didn't realize who she was until she spoke. She said, "I know you never expected to see me again, but..."

My mouth must have dropped open when I realized that it was Carla. I had to take a second look to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. All I could manage to say was, "Carla? What the hell?"

The expression on Carla's face was one of sadness. She asked, "Can I come in? I need to talk to you."

I said, "Sure" and stepped out of the way to let her in. We went into the living room and I invited her to sit and offered her a drink. She looked at the beer bottle I had sitting on the coffee table and said that she would drink a beer if I had one, so I went to the kitchen to get a couple of beers. While I was in the kitchen I tried to figure out how I felt about Carla's showing up at my door. I couldn't seem to register any recognizable emotion so I said, 'Fuck it' to myself and took the beers back into the living room.

Carla was sitting on the sofa so I handed her a beer and sat down in one of the chairs facing the sofa and said, "So what brings you to Charlotte? You here for business or pleasure?" Business or pleasure? As soon as I said it I thought that it really sounded lame.

Carla didn't seem to care. She sat holding the bottle of beer in her hand and said, "Not business and this certainly isn't pleasurable. I came here to talk to you."

"Do you mean that this trip isn't pleasurable because you have to talk to me or that what you have to talk to me about isn't pleasurable?"

Carla said, "The latter. I need to talk to you about what happened in Atlanta."

I was starting to get a little angry. What the hell did she think she was doing coming down her to review something I wanted to forget about. I said, "I thought that we had already said everything that needed to be said on that subject."

"Well you would think that because you got the last word in at the airport. Shit. I am getting mad at you and I shouldn't be. I came her to explain my behavior and ask you to forgive me if you can."

"If you are going to tell why you did what you did and be honest about it, I'm all ears."

Carla said, "That is my intention. All week I have been thinking about the way I behaved in Atlanta. I guess I sort of knew what I was doing was wrong but I didn't really care until you told me off on the Hertz bus. Since then I have been trying to come to terms with why I did that and now I think I have and I need for you to understand it also."

"Okay, I'll keep and open mind. You talk, I'll listen." I still wasn't sure if I wanted to hear what she had to say but there is a part of me that is still a gentleman so I controlled my distaste for her and sat back to listen to her story.

Carla started "I need to explain how I got this way so I need to tell you about my marriage."

I thought 'She's married?'

Carla said, "I met Roger in college and feel in love with him immediately. I thought the world revolved around him so I did everything I could to please him. We got married the summer we graduated college and settled into what I thought was a happy life. The problems started in our second year of marriage. Roger started stopping for drinks with his friends from work occasionally. This wasn't a problem at first but it quickly became a problem when occasionally became frequently. It got to the point where he came home late two or three times a week. Many times when he got home he was drunk and wanted sex. What he wanted was oral sex and intercourse. He didn't want to be bothered with foreplay. When he came home like that I tried to avoid having sex with him, so one night he tells me that if I don't take care of him he'll go find someone who will. I was still in love with him so I started giving him what he wanted hoping that he was just going through a 'phase' and that things would get better.

"Well things didn't get better. I noticed a couple of times that I could smell perfume on his clothes. Then one night he came home around midnight and I could see traces of lipstick smeared on his face. Needless to say I was upset by this but I didn't say anything. Then Roger gets in bed and wants me to give him oral sex. I had already learned that it was easier to give into him than it was to fight it so I was prepared to do as he asked. When I got near his penis I noticed the unmistakable smell of sex. I know what semen smells like and I know what his genitals smell like after we have sex so I knew that he had been with another woman. I was very angry and I started screaming at him, accusing him of cheating on me calling him all kinds of names. Roger waited for me to calm down a little then he slapped me across the face and said, 'Don't you ever accuse me of cheating on you again. If you ever do that again I will through you out on your ass. Now if you don't want to get slapped again you better give me that blow job. From that point on I was broken. His adulterous behavior became more common and he seem to relish in making me have sex with him when he came home. I think he did it just to humiliate me. Over the next three years I learned two important things. First, I learned how to have sex without mentally being there and second I learned that I could bring Roger to orgasm muck quicker orally that through intercourse. I stopped worrying about whether Roger had been with another woman or not. When He wanted sex I just went down on him orally and brought him to orgasm. That was usually all he needed, he would just go to sleep."

"Why didn't you leave him?"

"At first I didn't leave because I thought I could change him back into the man I fell in love with but after awhile I realized he wasn't going to change but by then I was afraid to leave. He had me convinced that if I left I would have nothing and that no man would ever want me again. So I stayed. Then one night a little over a year and a half ago Roger called me and told me on the phone that he was having sex with another woman and that he wanted me to be ready to suck him off when he got home. That was too much. I decided it was all going to end that night. I called my neighbor and told her that I was afraid that my husband might beat me when he got home and I asked her to call the police if she heard any screaming from our apartment. I knew my neighbor didn't like Roger so I was confident that she would help me. When Roger got home I told him I wanted to leave him. He didn't say a word, no warning, no yelling or threatening. He just started slapping me around so I started screaming. Ten minutes later the police where at the door. They arrested Roger for assault. Roger was convicted of assault and given a suspended sentence and I got a divorce. I didn't really care that they didn't put him in jail I just wanted him out of my life and I got that. After the divorce I moved to Chicago and started this job."

I felt sorry for her. If what she had told me was true I could understand some of her behavior a little better. As sympathetically as I could I said, "I'm sorry, that shouldn't happen to anyone."

Carla didn't acknowledge my comment. She just went back to her story. "I know intellectually that most men are not like Roger but emotionally I have felt like all men are exactly like Roger. So that bring us to the first day of our class. When I met you I immediately didn't trust you. Not because of anything you had done, but simply because you were a man. And the more friendly you tried to be the more I distrusted you. Then I noticed your wedding ring and you became Roger. The married man out cheating on his wife. Then you told me about your marriage and I felt bad but I wasn't going to let that influence me. I didn't want to like you so I kept trying to make you angry so you wouldn't like me, even though a part of me wanted you to like me."

I said, "I guess I can understand most of that but let's get to the wagers on the three unit tests. What was that all about?"

"Carla smiled a little and said, "That just kind of happened and you were all for it."

I said, "True, but I would have been happy to bet ten dollars. You came up with the idea for the wagers. And on top of that you lied about your scores on the first two test and said that I had won. That makes no sense to me at all."

Carla took a sip of the beer she was still holding in her hand and said, "This is hard for me to explain. When the idea of a wager came up I was angry that you had just assumed that you were smarter than me. I wanted to make you pay for that but I realized that financially I couldn't afford to make a large enough bet to hurt you when there was a chance that I would lose. I thought what else could we bet that wouldn't cost me money. Then the idea hit me. I knew exactly what I wanted as soon as the idea came into my head."

"You said that you knew exactly what you wanted as soon as the idea came to you but that night you said that you didn't know what you would wager and suggested we think about it over night. Why didn't you just say what you wanted?"

"I had to make sure that you would try to use sex to humiliate me so that I wouldn't look quite so terrible when you saw my wager. You see, you couldn't beat me. After what I had gone through in the last three years of my marriage there was nothing you could do to me sexually that would affect me. I didn't want to reveal my wager unless I won so I came up with the idea that only the winners wager would be opened. I thought I had the whole thing figured out until the day we got our first test scores back. I realized that the only way I would know what you had wagered was if you won so I took the chance that I would be able to handle losing and told you that you won. As you must have surmised by now, giving you oral sex was no big deal. I could have been doing my nails and it wouldn't have made any difference to me."

I said, "But then you let me win the second bet too."

Well by then I had already set up my date with John for the last day of classes. I did that so I wouldn't have to see him in class everyday afterward. I was also a little curious to see what you would want the second time after winning the first round. You see I wasn't worried about what it would cost me to lose. All I cared about was the final test. I had to win that one."

I said, "I guess I kind of understand what you're telling me but I still don't get what your final wager was all about."

"To explain that I have to go back to when I was still married. For about the last year of my marriage I had a fantasy I would think about on the nights Roger was out on the make. My fantasy was that I would go out and have wild sex with someone and come home and make Roger give me oral sex. This was always a strong image in my head. This wasn't a sex fantasy it was revenge for all the times Roger had humiliated me. Well, our little wager allowed me to use you as a surrogate for Roger. I hoped that somehow this would give me some closure on my past."

"Wow... Did you get closure?"

"Actually yes. The image in my head was very powerful and then you played your part better than I could ever have imagined. I was able to close my eyes and pretend that I was talking to Roger and that he was doing what I told him to do. Up until that night I couldn't think about what Roger put me through without getting very depressed. But now it seems that I was able to close that chapter of my life. Now the problem I have is resolving the bad feelings I have about the way I treated you. Actually, up until the night before I collected on our wager I had no feelings about you one way or another. I knew that I was using you but I had managed to make you dislike me enough that you were constantly attacking me which made it easier for me to not care about what I did to you. But then you came to my room and gave me that sexy underwear. You actually thought I had a date with someone I liked and in spite of what I was making you do you wanted me to enjoy my 'romantic evening'. When you left the room I began laughing at how stupid you were. But the more I thought about it the more I realized that you had no way of knowing that I had set you up and that I wasn't going to have any romance, just intercourse. This is when I started feeling bad about myself.

"It got worse. When you came to pay off your wager I assumed that you would put about as much into the effort as I had when I gave you oral sex. But you surprised me. You gave me perhaps the biggest orgasm I have ever had. I was feeling guilty the next morning but I figured you would never know what really happened and I would never have to see you again. But, there you were on the Hertz bus and you knew about the test scores. You very calmly told me what you thought and that you didn't care to hear any response from me because you wouldn't be able to believe me. That hurt and I knew that I deserved it, but even if you had wanted a response I couldn't have explained all this in the short time we had. I have been trying all week to put this behind me. I keep thinking it's over forget about it but I can't. So this morning I booked a flight and here I am."