A Shitty Way to End a Marriage

"I'm sorry you feel this way, Chad. I think..."

"Why are you sorry, Ms Turner? We're supposed to be honest here. If that's the way I feel, and I'm comfortable with my decision, why would that lead to sorrow?"

I think I took her by surprise. "Well, what I mean is I'm here to help you find your way, to talk about your difficulties and see if we resolve them."

"Ms Turner, really? I'm not lost. I don't need help finding my way. My path is clear, and I only see one set of footprints on it. I already have my resolution. The way I see it, you're here to try and get me to accept an alternative I find distinctly unappealing and impossible. I'm here to tell you you're pissing in the wind. But hey, I'm paying for these sessions. I should at least get some entertainment value out of them. By all means, proceed."

I had gotten to her. "Chad, Mr. Jones, you know I have to report to the judge. If you're uncooperative, or fail to participate, it could work against you."

"Am I being uncooperative? I think I'm being very proactive. I've been doing almost all the talking here. And Ms Turner, I respond badly to threats, veiled or other wise. One of the reasons I'm taping these sessions." I lay my little recorder, which had been running the whole time, on the table.

"Mr. Jones! You may not tape these sessions!"

"Why not? You are. aren't you? As the person footing the bills, I have a right to ensure I get my money's worth."

"I refuse to let you do that! Now..."

I got up, taking my recorder. "We're done. Ms Turner. I'll be officially asking for another therapist tomorrow, if I can get to the judge. This tape will be instrumental in his decision, I'm sure. You have a pleasant evening."

I left both her and Beth with their mouths hanging open. My lawyer did convince the judge to assign someone else, an older woman who didn't care if I taped the sessions. Things went pretty smoothly. It was a lot of Beth begging for a second chance, and me saying no. The one heated exchange happened when she was trying to convince both the counselor and me that it was just a short fling, she'd gotten in over her head, she'd meant to end it, blah, blah, blah. I jumped all over her.

"I'm not sure how timelines work in a cheater's world. How long does a fling go, as opposed to a full blown, continuing affair? Is a fling less destructive to a marriage? I know for a fact you had sex forty-one times over at least six or seven weeks. Forty-one times! This wasn't a fling. Neither of you intended to stop before you got caught. Forty-one times! That took a lot of planning, a lot of coordination to pull off. This wasn't a fling, Beth. It was a thoughtfully planned course of action. You guys were pretty clever. It might have gone on years if you hadn't clogged the septic line."

"But you were caught. Pretty dramatically, I thought." I couldn't help laughing a little. Beth went to her sister's, and she wouldn't let her in the door until she disrobed and tossed her things in the garbage. Even after five showers she still smelled. The detailers got her carpet clean, but she had to replace the driver's seat.

I don't know what happened to her partner, but he got served about a week after Beth did. I never once showed anyone the video I had shot, but rumors started swirling. Brain heard about it and nicknamed me 'Rubber'. I think her sister let most of the story slip a few weeks later, after she'd had a few too many at a local bar.

The sessions were pretty dull, we were just going through the motions by the fourth week. Beth crying, me remaining stoic. The counselor called it in the sixth session, and four months later Beth and I were the proud owners (at least in my case) of a set of shiny new divorce decrees.

The settlement was quite reasonable, I thought. Instead of child support, Beth had to pay half the mortgage on the house, and keep contributing to Toni's college fund. There was only ten payments left, so it was pretty much a wash. As soon as Toni graduated, we sold the house and split the money. We got a good price, even in the slump. I took my half and bought the house five doors down. The lot was bigger, there was an extra bedroom, and it even had a pool out back, the only one in the neighborhood. It was a distress sale, and I got it for about two thirds of what it was actually worth. I only had to finance twenty thousand, it was like a car loan. I paid it off in four years.

Toni excelled in college. She started bringing two of her roommates home with her on breaks. I'd get them summer jobs, and when they were off they lay around the pool in as little as possible. I ended up with a lot of college age visitors, male and female.

I became a bit of an urban legend. Now, even at work, most people call me Rubber. I was a department supervisor for a company that made brake parts for high end cars, mostly Mercedes and BMW, but also Bently and Land Rover. I made what a lot of shift managers at other factories made. I was good at my job, and my bosses were happy with me.

I didn't even think about a relationship until Toni was in her third year of college. Really hadn't wanted one. Oh, I had a few friends with benefits over the years, but nothing serious.

Then Collette came to work. She was brought in to head another department. We talked, mostly job related, but once a month the managers would go out to a local pub, shoot the breeze, and relax. After three months, I asked her out, and she accepted.

There was a spark there, and we took it slow. It was almost four months later before we started getting intimate. I felt if she was going to be in my life, she should know my history, So I gave her the full story of what had earned me the nickname Rubber.

She seemed a little surprised, then had a little trouble hiding a grin. Soon she was laughing.

Then she told me her story. Married, like me, to someone a lot like my ex. Seems he loved anal, and she had only tried it once, getting hurt. There was no preparation, very little lube, just slam it home. They'll get used to it was his motto.

Since she wouldn't, he started collecting playmates who would. Collette told me when she found out, she bought an old blender from Goodwill, put on some rubber gloves, took some snips, and collected a full blender of poison oak and ivy leaves. She pureed the leaves, sifting them through a sieve, until she had about an ounce of juice. Then she took a hypodermic needle and carefully inserted it into a half empty tube of KY, and placing it back in his hiding place.

A week later she got a call from the hospital. They'd had to rush her husband there, seems he'd had an extreme allergic reaction to something. She laughed.

"When I got there, he was on his back, the gown tented up because he was extremely sensitive to touch. I swear, he was so swollen up he looked like a porn star. I was talking to the doctor, and he was trying to determine the cause of the reaction. I looked dead at my husband."

"Well," I told the doctor, "He has a habit of sticking that pathetic cock up any slut's ass he can get a hold of. Maybe it was the poison ivy juice I put in his KY. Think that might be it, honey?" The doctor had the funniest look on his face, and one of the nurses dropped her tablet.

"Don't come home dear, or next time I'll do something permanent to your junk. Doc, if you got a slut here with the same symptoms in her ass, might want to check on her. Ya'll have a pleasant evening."

"As I was walking out I heard the doctor tell a nurse to check on the women in 312. It was on the same floor, so I dropped by. She was on her stomach, her ass up in the air. It was so swollen and red I swear it looked like a space alien. She couldn't see who came in because of her position, so she asked if I could give her something stronger for the pain. I smacked her ass so hard I thought I broke my hand. She screamed, and I leaned over, making sure she could hear me. "That won't take the pain away, but it'll give you something else to focus on. I'm the wife of the man you were fucking. I put poison ivy juice in the lube. Next time it might be acid. Think about that, the next time you decide to fuck another woman's husband, whore." I sweated bullets for a few days, waiting to get arrested, but I guess letting the secret out was worse than their punishment, because I never heard a word."

I just looked at her, mouth hanging open, while she looked tense. Suddenly I grinned.

"I think I love you!"

She grinned back. "You better!"

We decided we did, after a few more months. Toni loved her, and understood when she couldn't bring her roommates the next summer. We needed the bedrooms. Collette had a daughter sixteen, and a son fourteen. Toni and the daughter Joy were bridesmaids, and her son Bill walked her down the aisle.

It took a few months before we settled in to a family unit. When it came time, Toni showed Joy around her old campus, and two years later Bill got a tennis scholarship.

We're a few years older now, the kids are here for our fifteenth wedding anniversary. Toni married and has two. Joy has three, and Bill brought his husband and adopted daughter. The grandkids were splashing in the pool. The kids were watching them and getting the meal ready.

We just sat, the guests of honor. From where I sit, I can see the small decoration on the fence. Collette was a quite talented painter, and she painted accents on our mailbox, birdhouses, and fences. The particular one I was looking at was so tiny it was barely noticeable. An inflated rubber, with a poison ivy vine curling around it. "A reminder," she says.

We've never needed it.

As for what happened to Beth, who the fuck cares?