My Secret Life

PREFACE:  For those who know me well, it is no secret that I tend to write non-fiction.  I tend to write about what has happened to me or to people I know.  I find that if I write what I know is true then I don’t have to do too much laborious research, plus the “voice” just comes off more genuine.   Back when I was attending college writing classes, often I was assigned to write fiction.  It was always a challenge (as I don’t really see myself as an imaginative person) but I did find it amusing and sometimes interesting writing resulted.

The story below, My Secret Life, was the result of an assignment to “write about something secret or hidden.”  I started off thinking about the movie “True Lies” with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis and how he was a computer salesman by day and a government agent by night, hiding the truth from his wife all the while.   The thought of that double-life scenario tickled my imagination a bit.  So I used the double-life premise as I started my story, not knowing quite where it would end.

At the time I was staying with my mom and dad.  As often happens, I passed the beginnings of my story by my mom.  As always happens, she contributed to the story (the epiphany, if you will) in such a way that for a moment, even I thought that I might be able to write fiction… but only for a moment.

MY SECRET LIFE

Tonight I come home from work and my wife questions me again.  “I called the office and they said you were out.  Where were you?”  She means to sound concerned; I know that after 20-odd years of marriage, but to my ears it rings of distrust.

“Edwards, that bastard, insisted I go with him to see a dissatisfied client.  Like there is anything I can do at this point.  Damage control he calls it but really, after he botched things up there is nothing I can do to save his butt.”  I take off my jacket and carefully hang it in the closet hall.  I’m always very mindful to take care of my personal belongings.  I don’t need my wife discovering anything accidentally.  Before I close the closet door, I go through my jacket pockets, just to be sure.  My fingers touch on something square and flat.  I know instantly what it is.  A match book… with a motel name printed on it.  I grasp it between my thumb and palm and slide it inconspicuously into my front pants pocket.  I’d get rid of it later.

“Really, Laura, we were lucky that Stemco didn’t throw us out…,” and I go on to continue talking the boring office talk that Laura was used to and by second minute would listen with half an ear and by the fifth minute of my yammering if she wasn’t sound asleep, it would be a miracle.  I had the routine down to a science.  Spread sheets, computer crashes, client complaints, an inadequate staff and the list went on.  Anything I could think of that I knew would bore the holy bejesus out of her.  Get her mind off of me and what I do with my time.

I go into the living room and clicked the tube on.  Strategically, I sit by the phone.  If it rings I want to be the one to answer.  Laura is always trying to answer before I can and at this point, it was almost a contest of would could answer quicker.

The routine is to watch the news after a heavy day at the office.  The same stuff night after night; trucks turning over on highways, kidnappings, murders, police chases, school boards up in arms, poisonings of some sort, dog bites, floods, water shortages, plagues and famines – then a humanitarian story thrown in at the last minute to save us all from taking our lives out of despair.  Oh good, a fireman saved some babies from a burning orphanage.  There are some worthy people in the world.  I’ll put of the suicide thing a bit longer.  It’s my cynical way of thinking and speaking.

I notice sometime into the news program that dinner is sitting on the coffee table in front of me.  Funny, I didn’t see my wife put it there.  I’m not very observant for someone who has to watch their every step.  Chicken, baked without the skin, salad with the dressing on the side, boiled rice and sparking water.  Puzzlement.  “Laura, I think you got our dinners mixed up, Hun.”  I hear her shuffling around in the kitchen.  The shutters between the kitchen and living room fly open and she sticks her head through it.  She looks agitated.

“Len, Hun, that is your dinner.  Eat it. It’s good for you.  The doctor said you needed to watch your cholesterol.”  It did look pretty tasty, aside from the salad, but I wasn’t ready to give up the point.

“Are you dieting again?  Damn it Laura, every time you diet, I lose weight.  I don’t need to lose any more weight.  I’m already a bag of bones.”

“If you don’t eat it, you won’t get dessert.”  She scowls at me in that funny way of hers that makes her two eyebrows come together to make one hairy line and her mouth screw up tight like she’s sucking a lemon.  She slams the shutters closed.  I shrug and dig in.  It is good.  The rice is surprisingly garlicky.  She knows what I like.

The phone rings.  Damn it.  It always rings right in the middle of dinner.  I snatch the phone up before she can, yelling almost frantically, “I got it!  I got it!”  “Yah,” I say into the phone.  When I identify the caller, I am particularly glad my wife didn’t answer.  Mostly because I know how a hang-up can ruin a perfectly good evening for her.  If it ruins it for her, then it ruins it for me.

I listen to the caller for a minute, yupping and yeahing in my blasé way but inside I was jazzed.  I was going to have fun tonight.  The caller had promised as much… but if I wanted to have fun, I had to hurry to the prearranged destination.  It was a shabby motel on Route 44 by the name of Red Oaks where last spring some clever high school kids had rearranged the sign letters to read dORks Motel.
I get up from my quickly chilling dinner and tell a bold-faced lie to my wife – real sweet and apologetic-like.  “Gee Hunny.  That was Edwards.  Wouldn’t you know it… Stemco has had a change of heart and would like to hash things out.”  She was looking at my suspiciously.  She wasn’t as dumb as she should be.  “The only thing is, they don’t want to wait until tomorrow.  They want to meet over dinner tonight.”  At least I was quick on my feet.  She brightens up at the thought of dinner out.

“Great, Len.  Just let me wrap up the food.  We can have it tomorrow… maybe in a casserole or something.  I’ll put on my new green dress and, if you can spare another couple of minutes, I’ll just touch up this haystack,” she said tousling her short blond hair.  I swallow hard and stop her tracks from the kitchen to the bedroom.  I lay a gentle hand on her shoulder, which noticeably stiffens when I explain the situation.

“Sorry Hun.  This really is a sensitive issue and there is a lot of top secret stuff we are going to be discussing.  Oh Laura-babe, don’t look at me like that.  No one’s wives are going.  Edwards said so.  You’d be bored silly.  Besides, I shouldn’t be all that late.”  I figured I could make excuses if she caught me coming in a 3:00 a.m. but hopefully, she would be out cold.  She jerked away from me, mumbling that she had better things to do that evening anyway, and kept her tracks to the bedroom, slamming the door.  For a moment I wondered what she meant by her remark but I figured she was probably just being sour.  I felt kind of sorry for her, but it couldn’t be helped.  I was in a hurry.

My discomfort for deceiving Laura lingered only a moment.  I thought distastefully about the fact that what sleep I might actually get tonight would likely be on the living room sofa.  However, my mind was full of the promised excitement that the next several hours held and my guilt faded.  It’s a wonder I didn’t crash driving to the motel, I was so charged up.  I could almost taste the testosterone flowing.

I pull into the dirt lot that served as the motel’s parking lot and momentarily glanced at the establishment’s sign. They had fixed the “dORks Motel” back to “Red Oaks Motel.”  I saw a light shining from Room 2; the usual room.  I saw a face peering out with expectation written all over it.  I took a quick look at myself in the rear view mirror; not much to the surface, but beneath I knew what I was capable of.  I went around to the trunk and took out the black gym bag that I kept there in anticipation of these nights.  The bag was heavy and bulged with the tools of my deception to my wife.

While I stuff my car keys into my pocket, I thought that I felt like Superman. I was mild-mannered on the outside, but with a secret life; able to leap tall buildings in a single bound – well not really, but it sometimes felt like it… particularly on these special nights.

As I approached Room 2, the door opened with expectation.  The evening had begun.  “Len, what took you so long?”  I explained that I had to make excuses to the wife and there had been a minor traffic accident and rubberneckers had slowed me down.  I stepped into the room and sat of the edge of the bed.  Same ugly patched up job.  The curtains didn’t even match.  A drink was handed to me – scotch and soda.

“You know what I like.”  I smiled appreciatively.

“That’s why I called you here.  I thought I might be able to put some excitement into your otherwise mundane existence.”  The tattered old shade was pulled and the light from the bedside table reflected crazily about the room.

“Yeah.  Thanks.  I couldn’t go through with it this afternoon.  I just knew I’d get caught.  The wife’s all over me.  She doesn’t miss a trick.”  I took a large gulf of my drink.  It went down smooth.  As excited I as I was about the whole prospect of the night, I was nervous as well.  It had been a long time.  I hoped I would be satisfied.

“Just remember…it’s like riding a bike.  You never forget it.”  Edwards laughed and slid something long and hard into my hand.  “Do you think you can handle it?”  He asked me a gleam in his eye.

“It’s been a long time Eddy… a real long time.  I might just choke.”  I didn’t have to look down.  I could feel the taught skin covering a package which promised delight.  It was naughty.  I couldn’t say no to it.  I was addicted.  My mind was going wild with the expectation of the pleasure of my vice.  I just hoped that my wife wouldn’t find me out.  Her skin would crawl if she knew what I was up to.  She’d never let me forget my filthy behavior and lack of respect for myself, my body and her.  But, she would never find me out because I intended on taking a shower to wash away my sins – plus gargle and brush my teeth.  Thank goodness I had remembered my trusty gym bag.

I laid back and raised the Havana to my expectant lips.  Boy, did it taste great!  I took a long drag and blew a lazy blue smoke ring while contemplating how my wife would never understand. She had promised the doctor I would quit smoking, and as far as she knew, I had.