Last Wednesday, I listened to my friend Ryan gossip about his sex life as we caught up over lunch.
"I feel like I'm in heat," Ryan joked.
"Did you lose track of your body count already?" I teased him. Having just exited a long term relationship, he's recently single and is making up for lost time.
"I don't count them all," he laughed, "just the good ones."
"Oh yeah? And how do you decide which ones are the good ones?"
"It's not just the sex," he explained. "It's the chemistry between us that matters most."
As he launched into comparisons between his most recent lays, I let my mind wander for a few minutes. I was there to be a willing ear and offer him whatever support he needed, but it sounded to me like he was already moving on pretty quickly.
For whatever reason, my attention was piqued as he described his latest hookup.
"...didn't get his name since it was just more of a spur of the moment thing, but he was insanely attractive. He's tall, keeps in good shape, looks like a Greek god--and has eight inches, uncut." At that last part, he grinned. I made a mental note; he's never met Julien, but his vague description easily matched that of my partner.
"Anyways, I was in the middle of my set when I started to notice him looking at me. I wasn't sure at first, but it felt like he was checking me out, so I started to check him out too while he was working out. When I finished, I looked back at him as I headed towards the locker room and we made eye contact. I guess he really was checking me out because he came into the locker room a minute after I did, and then he basically followed me into the showers."
"I think I can guess how the rest of this goes," I said.
Ryan smirked. "I picked a shower stall and left the curtain open just a little, and I saw him looking at me through the curtain, so I casually slid it open a little more. He came into my stall...and then he came in me."
"Uh huh. Where did you say you found him?" I asked him.
"Oh, this was at the 24 Hour Fitness on Broadway."
"Ah, okay." I recognized that as the gym near Julien's office. "How recently was this?"
"Around this time last week," Ryan answered. "Why?"
"No reason," I said. I let Ryan continue with his storytelling while I lost myself in imagined scenarios. Since his gym is so close to his work, Julien often likes to work out during his lunch break. Attempting to figure out the logistics in my head, I tried to recall Julien's work schedule for the past week.
I could be wrong. It might not even be him. Still, given everything else that's been happening, the idea persists.
I didn't press the subject any further with Ryan. I haven't told any of my friends about what I suspect has been happening with Julien; I'm not ready for that.
By now, I'm starting to get a sense of what's going on with my husband. I wonder if Julien knows that I know about--or can at least surmise--his perfidies. If he's still the same man I've known him to be all these years, I might chance a guess at the logic of his thoughts, and it seems to me that the simplest explanation would also be the most likely: he wants me to catch him in the act.
It just seems too easy. A boy in our bed right when I get home early from work, a secret tryst in the restroom stall at a mutual friend's birthday party--it makes me wonder whether he's been dropping hints for me all this time, but I've only just begun to catch on. It would have been so easy for him to cover his tracks--a phone call here or a text message there to redirect me--and yet there they were, his indiscretions laid bare for me to trespass.
At this thought, I shake my head. Why would he want me to catch him? It doesn't make sense. He knows how I would react to seeing him cheating on me. He must know how devastated I would feel. He wouldn't want that for me. He wouldn't do that to me on purpose.
Or, whispers a sly voice in the back of my mind, he must know how I actually feel about it. It rises from the deepest recesses of my thoughts, a minefield that I've not been letting myself scour, and voices my darkest fears, truths that I know are yet unspoken.
I'm suddenly reminded of the first time we met all those years ago, a memory I don't often revisit due to its haziness. On that fateful night, Nick had invited a bunch of his friends and friends of friends to his apartment to celebrate the end of another semester. I had been on the fence about attending, but in the end agreed to go with a few of my friends who knew Nick better than I did.
Alcohol and other party favors exchanged hands all night, as could be reasonably expected of us college kids; inhibition quickly escaped us all. As the hour went beyond midnight, we introduced each other to each other's friends, we play-fought over control of the music, we hung out. I remember stumbling away from my friends to go look for the bathroom.
I wasn't familiar with Nick's apartment, so I had opened a few doors. Behind the second door, I came across two guys hooking up: Julien, though I didn't yet know him, and someone else. In that moment, I froze. I didn't want to be rude, I knew I should've just closed the door and left, but I couldn't look away--Julien was the most attractive man I'd seen all night. At 6'1 with the musculature typical of a jock, he was a deity chiseled out of marble. There he was, with his pants at his ankles, and between his legs kneeled the other guy.
Neither of the two had initially noticed my intrusion; they were, of course, occupied. I don't remember how long I stood there and observed the guy fellating Julien, but then Julien suddenly looked up and made eye contact with me. Caught, I was embarrassed and was about to leave, but Julien winked at me and my heart swooned. As he and I stared at each other, he placed both hands around the guy's head and began to forcefully fuck his mouth. I forgot all about needing the bathroom; transfixed, I watched Julien's pumping intensify until he was all but slamming himself into the guy's mouth. Without breaking eye contact with me, Julien shot his load down the guy's throat, his chest heaving as his body spasmed.
There's a pattern here between us two, I realize. Julien does as he pleases because he has needs, and his appetite is immense. He has his own gravity, and it traps me in orbit. I've always been irresistibly attracted to him--and I suppose that I've always loved seeing him in action.
But, what about now? What of the promise we made to each other to always be each other's?
I can't bear the possibility of losing him.
I never asked Julien about Nick's party; I don't want him to think I'm making a big deal out of nothing, in case I made a mistake. And, yet, it's not nothing, at least for me.
On our way back home, later that night, I was quiet. I didn't mention it, I didn't say anything to him, but I was absorbed in my thoughts, lost amongst all the what-ifs. I didn't bring it up then, but I think I have to, soon. I've been working through my emotions, parsing them, coming to terms. It's a weird situation...and I'm afraid that I might enjoy it.
Lately, we haven't had much sex, though he still takes care to be affectionate with me; he says he's been taking on more and more at work. Historically, the amount of sex that we have has always been inversely correlated with our external stressors; busier times naturally repurpose times that would have otherwise been spent copulating.
Then again, I've never known Julien as someone whose libido has had too much. For him, it's never too much.
I don't know. I feel like I'm struggling.
Above all, I love him, that's for certain. I want to be able to give him what he needs; I've always placed his needs above mine. And, if I can't, can I really fault him for finding satisfaction elsewhere?
Fuck.
I can't escape the thoughts of him with someone--anyone--else. Nowadays, it's all I can think about, the shape of his body atop another's.
Can he still be mine even when he's with someone else?