Don't get me wrong here, I love my wife, I do, I really do, but sometimes circumstances lead you into things you never expect. I mean I never expected to lose my job. I never expected that I would end up a "Mr. Mom" and I sure as hell never expected that I would come to be considered the neighborhood stud.

Dani and I met when we bumped heads - literally - in a Managerial Economics class. I was sitting at a desk looking over the course syllabus when a girl sat down next to me. As she was sitting down she dropped a book on the floor and I bent down to pick it up for her at the same time she bent to retrieve it and our heads smacked together. It was the start of a romance that culminated in our marriage six months after we graduated.

We decided against having any children until we had gone some places and done some things. We both found jobs in our chosen fields and we both worked hard at becoming successes where we worked. In seven years I had climbed the ladder and become a regional manager. Dani had also done well and was a project coordinator which was her company's title for a position roughly equivalent to mine.

At the time I was being considered for a vice presidents position that would come open when Charlie Bivens retired, while Dani was pretty much led to believe she had hit the glass ceiling where she worked. Since she didn't figure to go much higher she decided that it was time to start a family and nine months later Toni and Tanya came on the scene.

Dani had taken six months maternity leave when she had reached her eighth month and when the twins were three months old she decided to resign and become a full time stay at home mom, but before she could do it disaster struck. My company was the target of a hostile takeover and when the dust settled I was out of a job. We decided that Dani should go back to work until I could find another job. But jobs like the one I had just weren't out there. I was offered several jobs, but none that paid even close to what I had been making or near what Dani was making.

Three months after Dani went back to work the president and CEO of her company had a stroke and was unable to return to work. The vice presidents of Marketing and Finance were at a conference when the president had his stroke and as soon as they were informed they chartered a flight to return and then both were killed when the aircraft they were in crashed in the mountains. There was a sudden reorganization and when it was over Dani was the new VP of Marketing.

There was no more talk of me finding a job. There wasn't anyway that I was going to get a job that paid even close to what Dani was bringing home. Maybe in ten years after I had worked my way up the ladder, but definitely not in the foreseeable future.

I became a house husband. I did the shopping, most of the cooking (Dani did Saturday and Sunday), the laundry, the house cleaning and of course - first and foremost - I took care of Toni and Tanya.

The hardest part of being a house husband was being a house husband. I'm not talking about the work I had to do; I'm talking about the attitudes of other men. Even old friends seemed to look down on me. Suddenly I was somehow less a man to them. The invitations to play golf on Saturday and Sunday stopped coming. I was no longer invited to poker games, weekend fishing trips and other things like that.

And yes, I'll admit to it, I had my own personal issues with it. My grandfather and my father worked their asses off to provide for their families and there I was, at home, mopping kitchen floors, separating the whites from the colors and wondering if Tide was better than Cheer for getting the throw rugs clean. In short, I felt like a total failure because I - I- was not providing for my family. The fact that Dani was bringing home more than I would have if I'd kept my old job did not signify, I - I- wasn't the one taking care of my family.

Intellectually I knew that what I was doing was what was best for the family, but somewhere in a compartment in the back of my brain there was a voice that kept whispering, "You are a failure Harold, you can't do a man's basic job - taking care of your family."

And it wasn't just friends and acquaintances who were looking down at me; men I didn't even know looked at me the same way. At Dani's company Christmas party I could see the condescension in the men's eyes as I was introduced. I could see the, "And just what kind of a man are you" written on their faces.

But the bottom line was what had to be done had to be done and so I sucked it up and got with the program.

A year went by and then I began to get a taste of what the stay at home wife goes through when she has a husband with a high level job that involves travel, late nights, client dinners and the like. Dani would be having dinner and drinks and talking business with some client, usually a man, while I was busy changing diapers. She would be on a four-day business trip, going out for dinner and drinks every night, and I would be taking care of two babies with the colic. I resented the fact that she was out enjoying herself while I was at home with teething babies and staring at walls that looked like they were closing in on me.

Under conditions like that it was inevitable that something would happen that would start to make me wonder about the late nights, the drinks with clients and what really happened on the three and four day business trips. It was also inevitable that once I started wondering things would happen that would cause me to wonder even more.

Our sex life had always been great, but Dani started coming home "too tired" and I would hear, "Not tonight Nick, I'm just whipped." We went from three and four nights a week down to twice a week. It might have been my imagination, but it always seemed like those "too tired" nights were nights when she didn't get home until late, nights when she had been having dinner and drinks with clients. She would come home from a business trip and where once a four day separation would have us tearing at each others clothes now all she would only want to go soak in the bathtub. At her company picnics and Christmas parties she seemed awfully chummy with a couple of guys and I saw, or imagined that I saw, people looking at me with smirks on their faces.

Then came the day that I was doing the laundry and I found a matchbook in one of her pockets and inside the cover was printed "Ralph" and a telephone number. Dani didn't smoke so why did she have matches and who the hell was Ralph? I called the number and got a recording:

"Hi. You have reached the telephone answering machine of Ralph Conden."

Not the "Offices of" or even "Good morning, XYZ Corporation. How may I direct your call?" just Hi I'm Ralph. That night I called at eight and a man answered and I hung up. I had never, not once, in ten years of marriage even had the slightest thought that Dani would ever be unfaithful, but now I was checking her panties out when I did the laundry. I was getting up after she had fallen asleep and going through her purse and briefcase, checking out the trunk of her car and looking under the seats. When she was on business trips and called home my ears were straining to see if I could hear anything in the background that would indicate that she wasn't alone.

It got so bad that several times I almost brought the subject up with Dani, but I always backed off at the last minute. I had absolutely no proof. What if it was only an overly active imagination on my part? What if there was a totally reasonable explanation for Ralph? What would bringing up my concerns do to our relationship? It was a no win situation. Say something wrong and our relationship would go into the toilet. Say nothing and suffer with my thoughts.

I did voice my concerns about our sex life and she said that she was sorry, that pressures at work were stressing her, but she would try and do better. Things did improve a little; we did move up to three and sometimes four times a week, but I could tell when she was doing it that it was only to placate me and not because she wanted it. That isn't what I wanted so I stopped pushing for sex and it dropped off to two or three times every two weeks.

Dani didn't seem to realize it, but by the time the twins were three our marriage was in serious trouble with me doubting that she cared about anything but her job.

Things changed for me when the twins turned three. I began taking them out to the park to play and to the community pool so they could splash around and learn to swim. I started meeting mothers who brought their children out for the same thing. The wives of the same guys who were looking down their noses at me and didn't want to golf with me, play poker with me or go out drinking or bowling started inviting me to bring the kids on play dates.

At Dani's company picnic I had women coming up to me and asking me how I handled it when the twins did this or that. One even told me that it was refreshing to meet a man who could do what I was doing and allow his wife to reach her full potential. Another one told me she wished her husband were a little more sensitive to her needs like I was to Dani's. I didn't bother to tell them that the truth was an economic one -that it was only because Dani was making more than I could.

I got in the habit of meeting the women in the neighborhood at the park where we would talk while the kids played. We talked about this and that and when the kids got tired we would go to someone's place, put the kids down for a nap and then have coffee and talk some more.

There were three women that I grew pretty close to - Mary, Tabitha and Maxine - and after the other two or three moms had taken their kids and gone we would put the coffee cups away, open a bottle of wine and then I would become the big brother, shoulder to cry on guy. I heard all about the troubles the three of them were going through.

Mary's husband was my wife's twin. He was a divisional manager busting his ass to make VP. Ted was always working late, going on business trips and when he was at home he would be in the spare bedroom that he had turned into a home office working on stuff he'd brought home with him. She never mentioned if she thought he was screwing around on her and I never asked.

Tabitha's husband Bill was an alcoholic. He denied it of course and told her that taking his customers out to lunch or dinner was part of his job. If the customer drank then he had to drink too. Couldn't have the customer thinking that Bill wasn't an all right guy, could he?

Maxine's husband George was cheating on her with his secretary. She didn't just suspect it, she knew! She had seen them go into a motel room together and she watched for five hours before she left and they had never come out. She turned a blind eye to it because she didn't want to give up the comfort of her home and become a single mother with three kids.

I sat there, sipped my wine and listened to the three pour out their problems. I gave what comfort and commiseration that I could, but I never unloaded my own troubles on them and I think that is why they hung around with me. I do believe if I told them about Dani and me they would have stopped staying with me after everyone else had gone. They wanted what they considered a strong shoulder to cry on and if I had unburdened myself to them I would have become just another whiner in their eyes.

It was spontaneous - it just happened. Dani was on the second day of a four-day trip. She called home that night, as she always did, to say goodnight to the girls. When I answered the phone she asked me how my day had gone and then she told me how her meetings had gone and while she was talking I was almost sure I heard heavy breathing in the background. It sounded just like I sounded after collapsing on the bed next to Dani after a spirited romp. Dani didn't sound out of breath, but I thought she did sound a little tired. Bottom line is that I was sure she wasn't in her room alone. I put the kids on the phone and when Dani had said goodnight to them she told me that she loved me and she would call me the next day. I did not sleep well that night.

The next day, after the morning coffee klatch at my place and everybody except Maxine was gone, she asked me what was wrong.

"You seem way out of sorts this morning. Not like your usual self at all."

"Just had a bad night."

"Something you ate?"

I have no idea why I said it, maybe because I had bottled it up inside me for so long that it just had to come out, but I said:

"No, nothing that I ate, Dani is cheating on me."

"That bitch! After all you have done for her" and she put her wineglass down, came over and went to her knees in front of me and her hand reached for my zipper.

"What are you doing?"

"Getting some payback for the both of us. Your whore is cheating on you and that bastard I'm married to is cheating on me and it is time to even the score."

Now I really did not want to be like Dani and cheat on my spouse, but it had been three weeks since I'd been laid and even then it had seemed like Dani was just going through the motions because she saw it as her duty to me. Still, two wrongs don't make a right and I was a half-second away from pushing Maxine away when her mouth closed on my cock. There might be men who are strong enough to pull their cocks out of a hot mouth and say, "We can't do this, it just wouldn't be right" but I'm not one of them. Thirty seconds in Maxine's mouth and I forgot I was even married.

It was the best head I'd ever gotten and the first time I had ever been deep throated. She took every inch of my cock in her mouth and I felt her tongue moving around the base. Her head bobbed up and down, her tongue worked on me and in only minutes she had me ready to blow. I've only had three girls in my life give me blow jobs and none of them, including Dani, had ever let me cum in their mouths so I thought that was normal behavior. When I was ready to let go I told Maxine and tried to pull out of her mouth, but she grabbed me and pushed her mouth down on me just the cum spurted out of my cock. She swallowed what I pushed out and then kept sucking on me until she hard me erect again and then she stood up, took me by the hand and pulled me up off the couch.

"We are going to your bedroom baby, I want you on her bed."

I didn't resist; I let her pull me along behind her to the bedroom and I stood there and watched as she undressed for me and I was surprised to see that she had a bald pussy. I'd seen pictures of shaved pussies, but I'd never seen a real one. While she was getting on the bed I went and checked up on our kids to make sure they were still napping and then I stripped as I went back to Maxine.

She was lying there, legs spread wide and running a finger up and down her slit and she moaned, "Hurry baby, I need you in me." I wanted to be in her too, but first I wanted to see what it was like to munch on a bald pussy. I got my face down close to it and I noticed that in addition to being shaven her pussy lips were damp. She was so hot and horny that her juices were flowing. Her clit looked like a little hard cock and I flicked it with my tongue and she moaned. I licked her from pussy to asshole and then back and she let out another moan. I slid a finger into her and she hissed, "Oh yes" and pushed her hips up at me. I went to work sucking on her clit and fingering her pussy and she arched her back. I added another finger and she whined, "Harder, harder, oh God harder" and I added a third finger and finger fucked her hard as I worked on her clit.