Chapter 13

At that point, things were suddenly business as usual. We went home and I settled in to watch Monday Night Football and bounce little girls on my lap and my three available staff members hit the street going out to football parties. Carmen confined herself to watching the children. Manny called and wanted to come over, so I ordered submarine sandwiches for dinner for everybody and he picked them up. At some point or another, while Carmen was out of the room, he asked about her. "You're a dirty old man, Manny. She's the live-in babysitter -- and that's all."

"Hey, you can't blame a guy for asking..." Manny retorted.

"No, you can't," I agreed. "There was some initial confusion, but she got a look at my long fangs the other day and is properly fearful."

Manny laughed. "Nice tits on her."

"Very nice," I agreed. "Sometimes, though..."

"Yeah." We went back to football. Once the kids were settled, Carmen stayed out of sight.

The girls came home without incident. Manny decided on the spur of the moment to try Cheryl out, so she took him to 'her' room; they both came back in thirty minutes or so, apparently happy with the results, then Manny hit the street and we went to bed. I had my work cut out for me; Darla got there first, but Luz was ... needy. Johns hadn't done it for her -- or maybe she was looking for some reassurance that all was well again -- and it was, of course.

Tuesday evening was more or less normal for Darla, Cheryl, and Luz. I stayed downstairs in the office for a while in order to avoid discomfort with Carmen; the way things were headed, we might have to replace her, which was too bad. Evelyn and Ted came in around seven; Ted seemed fine until he saw me, then he seemed to deflate.

I went to work trying to fix things, telling him that despite what he might think, he did a bang-up job Sunday -- which was nothing but the truth. "I know you're probably embarrassed, but you were helping Evelyn, which is what you were there for. You know a lot of that stuff was crap, don't you? Remember when they asked me about rubbers and I said I would kill everybody?"

"Yeah."

"I've never killed anyone in my life..." That sounded lame...

"Why did you let them?" Ted asked.

"Let them what?" I asked.

"You let them do Evvie without a rubber."

The simple answer, of course, was that I knew instinctively that it would move things to a new level. But could I say that? Well, maybe... "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

"What if one of them has something?"

"I guess I'll kill them," I said with a straight face.

Evelyn rescued me with, "Uh, Don -- I'm keeping Teddy home for the week. I'm trying to give him a solid foundation in reality before trying to build him up again."

"Oh," I mused. "So we're in the no bullshit zone?"

"Uh huh." Evelyn nodded.

"Let me start over, then," I said, turning to Ted. "You STILL did a bang-up job on Sunday. You accomplished what we wanted you to accomplish -- but it may not have been what you THOUGHT you were accomplishing."

"What was I doing, Don?" Ted asked tonelessly.

"You probably know this, but I guess I'm gonna have to tell you, anyway..." I pursed my lips and looked around the room and at Evelyn, who just sat there waiting, and at the top of my desk. Finally, I met his eyes. "You were taking a crash course in how to be Momma's favorite little Pussy Boy."

Ted's expression went bleak, so I added, "Come on, you knew that, didn't you? You can admit it -- it's just us, here."

"I ... suspected..." he muttered, gazing at the floor. "Why?"

"That's a long story," I said, settling back in my chair. It wasn't going to be easy to explain, either. I had a pad of paper on my desk and a pen... "In the first place, Son, we merely accelerated something that was already in process -- but you know that."

"I do?"

"You do. You deliberately set it in motion. I've had a couple of talks with you now and it was always clear to me that you did it deliberately," I insisted.

"I don't understand," Ted said disconsolately.

"This might take a while," I sighed. "Evelyn, come over here and sit on my lap so he can sit in the chair." Evelyn nodded and got up, came around the desk, and settled onto my lap. Ted sat, somewhat relieved to be able to -- but bothered about Evelyn, who made herself entirely too comfortable on my lap. Well, we would get to that ... I wasn't super-thrilled with where this conversation was going, but Ted was Evelyn's and this was how she wanted it handled... "Okay, now that we're organized ... Ted, you set it in motion that night when you made the bet with Evelyn and took her to the party -- and then made her pay up. Now, you had reasons that night and you gave them to me and they might have stood on their own -- but they were symptoms, not the disease."

"I still don't understand..."

"I don't expect you to -- or to admit it, at least, at this juncture." I took the pad and turned it sideways and drew a couple of 'X'es in what was now the top left corner, then spun it around for him to look at. "This is where you were on that night, " I said, pointing to the top X. "In charge, in control, responsible. This was Evelyn," I added, pointing at the lower X. "Not at rock bottom, by any means, but she had subordinated herself to you and was trying to be a good girl. But that presented some problems, didn't it?"

"Well..."

"Let's go into why," I resumed. "Evelyn is a party girl -- you said it yourself. She likes dicks -- big dicks, on real men -- and she likes more than one occasionally. Now, a party girl is a lot of fun, but only two types of guys can tolerate them in a permanent relationship. The first type is a serious, top-end real man who runs several women at the same time anyway, so if she slips the leash and gets plowed by some strange, it's just entertainment; it's understood at the outset that he doesn't give a shit about fidelity as long as she returns to the stable after her fun. The second type ... Well, the second type isn't a real man. He can offer the trappings and comfort and security, but she's not going to be satisfied, sexually -- and he's going to have to put up with that. And to keep real men with big dicks from snaring her and luring her away, he has to give her ... everything."

I had his full attention, now. He was up and alert, his eyes on me, wary. I continued. "On the surface, these two types react the same. Both of them can sit back and watch their party girl take dick from multiple sources. But the real man does it so she can scratch her itch and he can enjoy watching and can enjoy other people benefitting from his benevolence -- because ultimately, if she becomes a problem, he can dispense with her and not get seriously hurt. Guys who are NOT real men, however, do it because they have to, in order to hang on to their party girl and keep her happy. Ultimately, they'll do just about ANYTHING to keep their party girl happy..."

Ted had that look in his eye -- the one that said he was hearing something painfully true. I kept going. "Party girls are easy to acquire, because virtually no one wants them. Even relationships with the kind of real men who will take them in and share them out for fun aren't stable, because that real man is always going to withhold a part of himself and keep her at arm's length. This is so he can remain in control -- and incidentally, so she can't hurt him. Our second type of guy is all commitment, because it's all he can bring to bear. I bet Evelyn wasn't real hard to talk into marriage, was she? You offered to overlook her gang-bangs and give her love and comfort and support ... Her reaction probably wasn't all you'd hoped it could be, either -- it was probably on the order of, 'I may as well -- I can't do any better, anyway.' Am I close?"

Ted looked like I'd stabbed him; his mouth opened and closed and he looked at Evelyn as though she'd betrayed him. I raised a hand, "Evelyn and I haven't discussed this at all, Son. If I'm on target, it's just because I've had time to think about it."

Ted settled back, not saying anything. I was skinning him alive and there wasn't much he could do but leave. I could see him thinking about taking that option, but Evelyn stirred herself on my lap, "Teddy, you wanted to know the truth. Let's get it over with -- then we can move on."

Ted settled back, warily. Evelyn looked up at me and I resumed. "So, hey, let's fast-forward some. You two get married and Evelyn turns up pregnant pretty quick and she decides that she really needs to be a good girl for you. So she swears off cocks, totally -- yours is no loss, so it isn't hard. But that poses a problem -- you see, you're doing all that heavy man stuff and way out beyond your comfort zone and Evelyn is taking it all in, but you're not getting any benefit. Maybe it's pregnancy ... But a couple of pregnant hookers come along and you realize that it isn't THAT, either. So it's time to give Evelyn a little push -- it'll be worth it to have her take a couple of dicks if it gets her back -- you were prepared to deal with that anyway, knowing she needed them and you couldn't provide enough."

Ted looked REALLY bothered at this point -- I'd called it perfectly, I could tell. It was only a little different than what he'd actually presented to me, but those differences were key things that he couldn't admit to ANYONE.

"Okay," I continued, "Now we're coming to where things start to happen." I pointed at the diagram. "Since you were going to allow Evelyn to fulfill her needs -- forced it on her, in fact -- there was no reason for her to hang out here anymore..." I pointed at the lower 'X', "so she moved up. This was actually a good thing, wasn't it? You were way out there doing the whole responsibility and breadwinner thing, but it was HARD and you were having a tough time with it, because there are real man things involved -- and you just don't have all that in you. So when Evelyn took charge and started bringing in money and taking responsibility and being the breadwinner, it took a load off you, didn't it?"

Ted hung his head. "Yes..."

"Okay, Ted, now that the big picture is out of the way, we can go into Sunday night, all right?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. You were on your way, whether you knew it or not. You see, now that you aren't in charge, you have to be out there, giving Evelyn the things she wants and needs and making her happy. Since you don't provide her with money and the things money can buy, that more or less leaves your personal service -- waiting on her hand and foot to keep her happy so she doesn't leave. That's where you were headed." I drew a long diagonal line from the 'X' that had been his earlier position at the top left to the bottom right of the page. "This is where you were headed. It was going to be gradual and take time, but that's where you were headed. This is WAY down the slope -- nowhere near almost equals -- but you were going to give it all up in small chunks, relatively painlessly, making those decisions that kept Evelyn happy and from thinking about leaving you. Sunday changed all that."

"How?"

"Because on Sunday, someone saw an opportunity to benefit from your descent. You see, there is an audience out there of guys who get a kick out of being on top of some poor sonofabitch -- and nothing says 'I'm top dog' like fucking your woman right under your nose. By Sunday, you'd already been there and done that, but people had been polite about it. On Sunday, a guy called who wanted to rub your nose in it, big time -- and was willing to pay good money for the opportunity. Now, part of the fun of this is pushing you, so you're stressed and unhappy about it, so he can see your reactions, understand? As things were, you were gonna slide down the slope easy, like this -- very little stress over a period of time." I drew a flat line across the bottom of the page. "It was worth money, though, to have you come down rapidly, like this..." I drew a near vertical line from the 'X' that was Ted to the bottom of the page, "which would cause you a lot of highly visible stress." I drew another line with a sharp upward trend. "Frankly, as we negotiated the whole thing, it was apparent that the shit we were going to put you through was well worth the price the customer was willing to pay -- and like I said, you were headed there, anyway -- this merely accelerated things. But then the customer came up with the bright idea of videoing the whole thing for the enjoyment of a larger audience and the benefit went right off the scale!"

"Oh..." Ted looked a little green.

"You see, we were at a perfect point in time for this -- you were at the top of the slide, but already moving. You can't just do this any old time -- if you'd already been most of the way to the bottom, there would have been less stress, less reaction to what went on. So we had a window of opportunity that might not last long -- and we took it."