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Down in the Dirt v048

MY CHEATIN’ HEART

Philip Loyd

     From the very beginning, I knew I would get caught. Even so, I just couldn’t help myself. And with my wife’s sister of all people. How could I have been so bold; how could I have been so stupid? On top of everything, I did it right here in our own house, in our very own bed, while my painstaking wife was but in the next room. I was as quiet as I could be, but still, I was bound to get caught.
    My sister-in-law is nothing like my wife. She is crass, kinky in cast, foul-mouthed, and from everything I’ve heard, easy to the touch. So it only makes sense I would favor her, so wanton and at hand. And she was that easy, only an arm’s length away. It’s not that I don’t love my wife, we’ve been married nearly seven years and have two wonderful children together. It’s just that, well, things aren’t what they used to be. I know that ours is not the only relationship to ever sputter after a sprint, and mind you we had one hell of a roll. But now we seem to have hit such a spell that the well’s run dry. I’ve tried everything, but nothing seems to put her in the mood anymore. And that’s what hurts the most. I really believe I could have walked the Sahara from grain to grain without so much as a drop of water if only she would have been there waiting. From her complete lack of interest and preoccupation with the kids, well, I just couldn’t go it alone. I would never say this aloud, but I do believe it was her fault. I never would have done what I did if it wasn’t for her. And if it wasn’t her fault, then it was God’s. It certainly wasn’t mine.
    It all started quite innocently. Her sister had sent a picture of her most recent vacation, to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. This was her fifth marriage, but no one in her family ever said anything anymore. They would simply wait, usually just under a year, then they would lend a sympathetic ear and a shoulder to cry on. It would happen just as it had happened before, and would again. She was the very picture of trailer trash, drunk with a cigarette in her mouth and wearing—of all colors—red. There weren’t many of the primary colors left. Her newfound husband was wearing a crimson tuxedo leftover from the seventies with ruffled lapels like huge wings and a straw cowboy hat with a feather in it. He was smoking a cigar. Hard to believe, I thought, that she and my wife were sisters. One so familiar with the back seats of cars, the other cross-legged and dainty, graceful in her every stride and soft-spoken to elegance. One so vulgar with stained, crooked teeth, the other with the manners of a Miss and sparkling, pearly whites. But I just couldn’t look at my wife anymore. Disdain would be the best word to describe it. And none of her friends would do, they were too much like her. Her sister was just right, the perfect picture to drop a back-load of hormonal frustration upon. There would be no fear of falling in love; there would be no respect at all. All the obscenities choking me up inside would come rolling off my tongue in an orgy of verbal discharge. The fact that she was her sister did seem to complicate matters some, but I am telling the truth when I say that my intention was not to hurt my wife, at least not my conscious one.
    It was a bad time of day for such a tryst, but then again, who’s to say when’s a good time. I’m sure my sister-in-law would have the whole low-down. From movies I remember, bad television dramas geared toward lonely, suspicious housewives, these sordid affairs did actually seem to happen in the middle of the day—weekdays. So I guess the time was right, at least, it seemed right. It’s just that I didn’t think the whole thing through, like would-say a kidnapper or a hijacker. But then again, in my own defense, I didn’t consider this a crime. What was the big deal anyway? It was my business, not hers. What did she have to do with this? I used to do this sort of thing all the time before we were married. I did it before I met her and before I met my girlfriend before that, and before that. Who was going to get hurt? Maybe it was that sort of thinking that got me caught. Like a sobbing TV evangelist, I felt above the law, God’s law. I could do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. Besides, this wouldn’t be the first time since we were married. Twice before, both times in the later stages of her pregnancies, I had stepped out on my own. There was just one big difference: I didn’t get caught then.
    So there I was with my sister-in-law by my side, trying my best to forget about her brute of a husband who could probably kill me with his bad breath alone. It felt so dirty and depraved, and I liked it. My wife was only earshot away, napping so pretty as I had looked in on her just moments before. The phone rang twice. I knew it had awakened her. But I couldn’t even begin to explain the thrill, so dangerously close. I looked into my sister-in-law’s eyes, so bloodshot and cheap with make-up smeared and streaking down her cheeks. There was just that look about her that pleaded “fuck me.” It wasn’t heaven, but it sure wasn’t hell. It was a place distinctively lost and seldom spoken of. As long as my sister-in-law remained a whore, it was a place I wanted to go. I knew I could count on her; she would never let me down.
    We live in an ante-bellum, Acadiana-style house with creaky wood floors and almost any other time I would have not only heard my wife’s feet hitting the floor, but the squeaking beneath them as she made her way slowly towards our bedroom. I was in too deep, though. I was in that state, that place where heads change the lead and not even a shotgun blast would have made me stop. I was almost there, like a mountain climber with muscles so sore but the peak just within view. And just as she turned the doorknob and entered the room I exploded onto the sheets, a smile on my face so short-lived as to not even have grinned at all. There she stood, her hands covering her mouth even though she couldn’t have uttered a word. Then she looked on the bed next to me, at her sister. “How could you?” she said to me, hysterical and crying on her way out the door.
    I sat back in bed for a moment, not knowing what to do or even if I should do anything at all. What had I done so wrong anyway? What was the big deal? It was my business, not hers. Then I thought, maybe it wasn’t so much what I did or where I did it, but whom I did it with. Maybe if it had been with someone she didn’t know, that I didn’t or couldn’t possibly ever know, maybe then it would have been all right. I didn’t know what to do, but it did come over me like an involuntary response to give chase. So I pulled up my pants and tossed the photo of her sister onto the floor and headed out after her. Her sister was still in Gatlinburg and I knew the first thing she would do would be to call her. I had to stop her. I turned around and looked at the photo once more. No sir, I had to get to her first. I couldn’t afford to have her sister’s Johnny Cash-looking husband find out that I was jacking-off to his trashy wife’s photo; and I really couldn’t afford to have him think I was masturbating to him in the picture as well. He may never believe that I had covered his face with my thumb. He might think I’d gone faggot and then he’d kill me just for the good of his fellow man. “Honey!” I screamed, mumbling to myself that I would never again do what I had just done. Never again, though I still wasn’t sure exactly what it was I had done wrong.



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