A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO ADULTERY
I
Yeah, course you can. You’re welcome to join me as long as you can keep up. I’m not really out of breath, but it’s not easy talking and walking at this pace. I’m fit as a butcher’s whippet – you’ve probably spotted that – but I’ve done about eighteen miles today and walked for five days altogether and I want to get this last mile out of the way.
If I am going to tell you it needs to be before I put the key in the front door. It’s Valentine’s Day, it’s special, so after that, shtum, right? I’m Tony by the way. Hi.
I suppose what you’re after are the main rules for the successful adulterer. I mean, why else would you come to find me? So this is just between the two of us, OK? Just make sure, that’s all.
Now, the one thing I’m not is sexist, so anything that applies to a man in what I tell you also applies to a woman. But I’m a bloke and I’m not saying things twice just to be PC. Take it as read.
OK, firstly what you should do is watch EastEnders and Coronation Street for their invaluable lessons in how not to conduct an affair. Base your extra-maritals on them. So:
No Mobile Phones: Do not use your mobile to arrange, organise, flirt and in anyway communicate with your lover. It is fatal. Your wife will find the message, or the phone number or the name, or all three and come to only once conclusion, the right one.
Cue drumbeats, cue disaster.
No neighbours. For crying out loud, if you are going to have an affair then choose someone who does not live three doors down or serve behind the bar of a pub you frequent twice a day or has been a family friend or workmate for yonks. Your wife will find out.
Cue trumpet, cue catastrophe.
Things have moved on since love letters were written on perfumed paper. We have better ways to completely mess up our lives now.
To be honest I couldn’t take the hassle or the heartache. I love my wife and couldn’t bear to lose her. I can’t wait to see her. Eighteen miles I’ve done today and she’s the reason I’m speeding up. She’s just down this stretch of road. That’s our house right at the end. Individually designed, that’s why I picked it. Angie’ll be anxious to see me, she always is.
I’ll tell anyone I love her and mean it. Just because I take a ride in a different stable doesn’t mean I don’t love her. I said to Wet Dave – a sort of friend but a colleague really. He takes RE at the high where I teach PE – that’s why I’m so fit – and, I confess, I say all manner of things to tease him. He is an easy target, partly because he’s gay. Or did. He’s leaving. better job. I’ll miss him, but Dave’s not comfortable with nudge-nudge sort of conversations and I wonder sometimes whether he thinks I’m just bragging. About what? Well, listen up.
Firstly though there are all sorts of other rules, of course, sub-sections and paragraphs, to which the happy philanderer will comply if he wants to continue getting away with it and sometimes these vary according to the individual. But always the hardest seems to be never to behave strangely or out of character. Never, never, never.
If you and your partner are rarely apart and you suddenly want to, say, spend a night away and your reasons won’t stand close scrutiny then that is suspicious, especially as you may well want to do it again. You have to live with yourself, don’t forget, so you have to be able to commit the ultimate level of betrayal and still do all the married/partner type things without showing so much as a sideways glance of guilt when you look her in the face.
Don’t be over anxious to please her either. A dead giveaway that. I can’t be bothered with any of it to tell you the truth so I stick by the rules.
Far, far better that your life accommodates your affair than the other way around.
Take me, which after all, is what this little tale is all about. I am a serial adulterer and I have never been found out, but adultery fits nicely into my life. I tell Wet Dave the same rules could apply to him. “But you’ve got to come out of the closet first,” I say. He just smiles, like Christopher Biggins.
I tell him, but how’s he going to cheat if he’s got no-one to cheat on? Nowadays there’s no shame in it, being gay I mean, even if he does wear perfumed talc. What is it about being gay that means you can’t use a manly deodorant like everyone else?
I am lucky, I’m fit and I teach, which gives me the ability and facility. Women do like a hard body and I also have time at my disposal.
My pastime – and it is genuine – is walking. Hills and dales, sunshine and rain, road and path. I can take myself off for a week at a time, lose myself in the countryside and I love it. Almost as much as sex as it happens and I think you are beginning to see how these things can be mutually accommodating.
But the guilt? Well, to be fair to me – and I’m always fair to me – there isn’t any guilt because, though I would quite happily die for my Angie. Marriage is about love so I forsake all others; sex is about bonking so I try and accommodate as many women as possible. It’s only fair. Simplistic? Selfish? Well, welcome to the world of the adulterer.
It so happens that Angie is not a walker. I didn’t pick her for that reason, but it’s damn convenient. She doesn’t mind a stroll to the pub and she’ll tackle the treadmill at a centrally heated gym, but she’s an English teacher and she loves her books and prefers her exercise to come in neat little sessions not traipsing the country lanes in a kagoul not knowing where you are going or when you’ll be back.
She loves being in bed with me, of course and I am partial to a good homecoming. She’s so, well, I suppose grateful is the word.
She’s known all along of my fondness for walking and she loves and respects me so much she has never dreamt of trying to halt my forays into the British outback.
When it is time to come home I can’t wait to see her again. It isn’t just the sex and that’s the difference, you see: Do it right and adultery is all about sod all else. There’s nothing platonic in a bonk, nothing meaningful.
Dave fidgets a bit on his bottom when I talk like this, as if it gives him a very personal itch. He says I want my cake and eat it; have my bread buttered on both sides, which seems very Old Testament to me. Of course I do. But I spare him the details, just treat him to the headlines and I’d tell no-one else. That’s another rule: say nothing to no-one, never. Or is it ever. Do so once, you’ll do it again and then you might as well put it all on Facebook.
I have been away six days and that’s a long time to be separated from the woman you love and if it wasn’t for a few intervening bonks I don’t know if I could stand it.
I don’t go looking for it but I do seem to attract it though. Babe magnet? I have been accused of thinking I am, by you know who.
“I couldn’t possibly comment Dave,” I say. “Do you fancy me then?” It’s just a joke, but RE teachers are soooo heavy.
Now then, have you ever been to Derbyshire? A beautiful place, great walking country and you meet all sorts of folk on your way. Blokes never seem to have time to talk to me, they want to get on and I don’t blame them and it works out well for me.
I met a woman about my age who knew what I was about because she was not averse to the same thing. You learn to recognise the signals and hers were all set for go, go, goer.
Our commitment was to each other for the purpose, in this hectic instance, of three bonks. A hat-trick! That’s not bad in a sleeping bag and that goes in the wash as soon as I get home, always does. I never discovered her name and that is no bad thing, but she went away a very happy woman.
Now Jean was different. For a start I knew her name. We had been through introductions to break the ice over a drink in a pub. She’d been let down and, though it cost me the price of room to find out, the other fella would have had to work hard to get value for his money and I only just managed it myself. Twice. So that’s five in six days and now I’m ready for my Angie.
Anyway, we’re here now. Shush. No more talk of naughties. I want a kiss, a cuddle and a cup of tea, in that order. Yeah, come in Angie won’t mind. It’s all very quiet.
“Angie!”
Ah ha, what’s this? A letter on the table, eh? She must have gone to her mum’s. Just run some water into the kettle would you?
Oh.
Forget the tea. I’m going to have to ask you leave. If you don’t mind. No, no it’s nothing. Nothing for you to worry about. No, but if you don’t mind… Thank you. Bye.
Bye.
II
Ahh, I see it’s you. I did wonder if you’d call. I suppose if I’d thought of it I might have expected you: Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret – Ralph Waldo Emerson. Nice to meet you anyway. I suppose he didn’t let you look at the letter? No, he wouldn’t. Not the sort of thing he’d do. It must have been driving you mad. So when did you…?
Oh he showed you then did he? After he’d walked eighteen miles to come home to little me. Well, I don’t mind telling you I didn’t write the letter he found and I wasn’t in favour of writing one. But it’s done and I daresay it was deserved. I’ve got a copy and I’ll read it to you. Ready?
“Hi Tony
“I suppose this is a bit of a surprise for you, finding tan empty house. Well, your fit-as-a-whippet ego is about to venture, blinking, into bright sunlight of reality.
“I am not wasting any more words or time on you, so here it is. I love Angie. I have loved her for three years. That’s right – do the calculations – since just after you married. Or since she realised her mistake is the way she looks at it. Not only that but every time you have wandered off in search of unfettered sex I have been loving your wife and I am sure you of all people will understand the connotations there.
“Did you really think you could bonk your way around the National Parks of Great Britain and your wife wouldn’t suspect? Or do something similar? Why else do you think she waves you off so gaily?
“Ahh, there’s that word, Tony. Yes, I have come out of the closet and revealed myself to be – ta-da! – a rampant heterosexual. You assumed I was gay. But why? Because I was unattached? Because I didn’t talk about women as you do? Because I didn’t ever hint I had a lover? Because I am allergic to deodorants? Or because I stuck to the rules as explained to me by The Master himself? Still, it suited me nicely, didn’t it?
“I am sure by now you are seeing things clearly so I will say farewell. Oh, except to add Angie and I have just stepped out of your hot tub.
“Yours most sincerely,
“Very Wet Dave.”
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