EYES DO NOT LIE
Please play the Eagles song “Lyin’ Eyes”
My wife Chris was so pretty and petite. I fell in love with her way too soon. We were both just babies. She didn’t put her best foot forward when we met. She told me who she was and that she had done bad things , but I thought she was lying and besides, I was already ever so smitten, so I pretended it didn’t matter anyway. She was only 16 and made a couple of mistakes and so now I fell in love with her all the more. Now there is love and compassion and empathy. Things you did are all in the past, I told her. But, she said, I’ve been paid her for sex and I am an alcoholic when I can get alcohol.. She told me she stole a car. She also told me that her father despised her and would never speak to her because to use his words, “I am cutting you out of my life like a cancer.” (I never learned the story behind that. I don’t think I wanted to know.)
Funny how I always thought that when she told me things like this it was just a test to see how I would react which would prove to her just how much I loved her. I never knew how much of it was true. She constantly played games.
(I must sidetrack a little bit here. Everybody has heard of girls that are thrilled with the prospect of being with a bad boy. Well, I liked bad girls. That’s where the excitement was and anything could happen.)
I was just a naive innocent kid when we met. I grew up in the country and chewed bazooka bubblegum and caught lizards on the railroad track but I knew everything now because I was almost 18. I knew all about sex because my friend Bill and I used to go to the public library and look at the pictures of girls in National Geographic. Not only that, but we looked up words in the dictionary and some of those words were pretty naughty.
When I met Chris my world exploded because we were so totally all over each other from the moment we met. If this is love, it feels sacred, it feels almost holy and I will never let this get away from me, so help me God, I will die if this gets away from me .
Every chance we got we were intimate. As a naïve country boy I was overwhelmed by having such passion with this girl, and in every way. I came home covered in monkey bites and I owned the whole world. I want to say it was love but I don’t know what love is. But I can tell you the feeling was so strong that later in life it just about killed me when had to leave her. I became so physically ill.. . Yes, as insane as it was, it was love because after all this time I still cry when I remember back.
Of course we made a baby, it would have been a miracle had that not happened. Nature’s call is so terribly strong. We sort of tried to prevent it but making a baby was very exciting. The girl I love is having my baby. Well I went home and told Mom and Dad that their 18-year-old boy is going to be a dad and I’ve got a get married. Of course Mom had a cow but Dad was very adult about the whole thing and helped us to take care of all the formalities and we got married in front of a justice of the peace. I had a horrible job but Chris’s uncle let us manage an apartment house he owned for free rent. I landed a job with the state just in the nick of time considering how broke we were..
Life was good and I had a pretty good job and an old car that ran. I had a pretty little wife that made me proud and a brand-new little baby boy that was such a cutie pie. We were so young. I remember carrying the little guy around one day when some old lady said whose baby is that? I said he’s my baby, to which her reply was, “he better not be”. That was because I pretty much looked like a baby myself.
One night, my wife said come on , I’d like you to meet some people..
(I think I need to warn you that this story is going to get rough and the fact that it’s a true story makes it even more poignant I suppose.)
I never met these people. It was a couple just like us that lived three doors down. I guess she knew them even though I did not. I can only guess at how that could have occurred, and now it makes me sick to even think about it . I now worked for the state and I was gone 40 hours a week and she had nothing but time on her hands. If you thought it was cruel of me to say that, if you thought that she took care of the apartment, that she vacuumed and washed dishes and cooked and took care of the baby all day long, then you would be wrong. She didn’t do any of that. I would come home to a baby that wasn’t changed all day long and had terrible sores and a diaper that reeked of ammonia. There were moldy dishes piled high in the sink day after day and it was as though something inside of her snapped when we got married, and , on top of all of that, we never made love anymore. Every time I asked, even when I begged, the reward of sex was maybe just rarely, if I was lucky. I was used to accepting who she was but, as angry as I was over the care of our baby and her strange unexplainable behavior, she was still my angel and I was lucky to have her and I knew we can work things out. . I tried to work 40 hours a week and do the dishes and change the baby before I went to work and as soon as I got home. I did everything I could and went to bed exhausted but our household seemed to be working , even though things were screwed up. I was still in love with my wonderful loving faithful wife.
It never ever occurred to me that as long as we have been together that she would ever allow another man’s penis inside of her body. It wasn’t possible because we we had a special loving bond, and that is a sacred thing between us , if that wonderful rare treasure were to ever occur. .
Thinking back and remembering things that happened yesterday, I have to say, just talking about it, even though it was long ago, makes my blood run cold and I literally feel like an icy wind just blew across my grave and I want to wash all of this away with tears.
I got quite an education one evening when my wife said — come on, let’s go meet some new people and we could have a couple of drinks. I never really met them . Even though we managed the apartment house there was no reason for us to run into each other unless they got locked out or something. But Chris knew this couple and she said come on it’ll be fun. So we walked down to their apartment and they were nice and friendly and we had some drinks and got a little tipsy. We were telling jokes and funny things that happened to us in the past and the guy turns to me and said, “How would you like to swap wives?
If I could freeze a moment in time, this would be a good one to tear apart and analyze completely. I’m betting I could write a lot based on that question and its effect. “How would you like to swap wives” introduces behavior that is made out of the stuff that gets some people psychotic or worse . Looking to years that followed, I was married to Chris for 13 years and I almost lost my mind because she turned into a female Frankenstein monster. If I said the things she did, you would not wonder why I acted out. But the cheating I did not know about . God how it broke my heart when I discovered she cheated on me throughout our marriage even with my “friends”, and just let me suffer sexually until love agonized into anger and tears and much worse.
Some people may say that now is the time to let it go, it’s all in the past but, I am remembering today what made me feel like such a fool. It was something so obvious I wonder, had I recognized it for what it was, would I have packed my my bags and left the following day or what I have stuck it out anyway. The guy asked, how would you like to swap wives, and three sets of eyes turned my way.
I was 18 , and on top of that, my wife is cut me off for some perceived thing I have done. Something she made up, something that never happened. They say a stiff Dick has no conscience. As a young buck, such a thing as sex with a strange girl might be thrilling because his wife was very pretty and of course I was horny, I was 18 . But what about tomorrow when Chris and I are sitting on the couch watching TV and I have to think about what he did to you while still having memories of what I did with her. Now I just feel sick inside wondering if “we” have been shattered. What about love and what about us. I could never look into your eyes again and forget where that man has been and it would break my heart each and every time that I looked into your eyes.
When he asked “Do you want to swap wives”, three sets of eyes turned my way. I became flooded with adrenaline and cortisol and endorphins and every other hormone the body secretes, and on top of that I had a few drinks. I was so confused by the my body’s chemical reaction but my intellectual reaction was that there was no way this idea was going to fly so get that idea out of your head. Well, I told that guy off real good. How dare you suggest such a thing. I was having trouble enough in my marriage without his added interference. Satisfied that I had stopped him in his tracks with his idea, I put the occasion to sleep in my subconscious. The other day I was recalling this occasion and exactly how things occurred and then something hit me that I didn’t ever allow myself to see. it was so shocking, something that made me feel stupid for not seeing it, something that could’ve saved me years of psychological agony and tears. if I had responded properly to what I saw — — — — — - with the divorce. But I guess I needed more pain so I stayed .
When that guy asked if I would like to swap wives, I was stunned for a while and then I recalled that three sets of eyes looked at me. My wife wasn’t by my side saying “no we will not do that”. She simply looked at me to see what I was going to say. She had an anticipatory look that I noticed with a quick glance. I have never been good at reading body language. I shrugged off the look on her face. I pushed that down deep inside of me so fast I barely had time to look at it. Bloody hell, after all this time I am remembering her look that night. She actually wanted that encounter and knowing that and doing that would have certainly made my young heart just explode because it would have ended what Chris and I had and threw it all away for nothing..
If only I had known them what I know now. Like cats and dogs we fought for 13 years , scarred our two boys forever and many other people in the process. How simple life would have been if I had known she would be cheating on me throughout our marriage while living inside of her secret life. The handwriting was on the wall when three sets of eyes turned and looked at me on that night so long ago.
Maybe all this pain was for good like
Chris was holding a little place for Joan by
wasting my time for so many years
because, I am now being rewarded for my suffering
And through all that time and space
I finally found myself and my true love Joan
I finally found my place
in this paradise I call my home.
