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EXCERPT FROM THE
BOOK:
ADVENTURES IN MARINE
BIOLOGY
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Adultery My Most Shameful
Time
One of the most embarrassing and shameful things I have ever
done in my life was that I have committed adultery. This has
been such a shameful memory that I did not include it in the
first draft of this book. I figured I had acknowledged it to
myself and have suffered personally for over thirty years.
I had originally thought that, since I am disclosing many of my
shameful secrets, past and present weaknesses and flaws, I could
well-afford to keep this one skeleton in the closet.
How would it help to bring up this incident? Good question. This
confession is not amusing, not even in a sick, twisted Steven
King sort of way. It’s not bitter sweet. What I have done cannot
be excused as an accident or even an overpowering of my baser
sexual drives. The story itself has no redeeming value, so
initially, I thought it best to keep it unwritten.
My friend Neo has said, “We are only as healthy as the secrets
we keep,” meaning that most secrets need to be exposed and
confronted honestly, at least to ourselves.
I don’t want to imply that this was the only time I committed
adultery. I have committed adultery by accident, such as when I
assumed a woman was single, or when I had been lied to. Or years
later, when a woman I had a relationship with had been separated
from her husband for years because of his chronic infidelity and
for some reason they had never taken the time to fill out the
paperwork for divorce. Lastly, there was the time with the Pat
Benatar look-alike. Legally, I suppose, that was considered
adultery, but that is an incident I feel no guilt over and would
do again if given the opportunity.
Some people have said they committed adultery with their soul
mate because they were overcome with mutual romantic love.
Perhaps their mutually intoxicating sex drive pushed them over
any edge or boundaries of socially consensual morality. I can’t
claim this with myself. It wasn’t even for the most basic and
crass excuse of wanting to get laid when no one else was
available.
I have
no excuse and no relevant reason to hide behind.
I committed adultery for the worst possible reasons. And that
was to seek revenge with evil intent. I sought to hurt and
destroy a marriage, love relationship and sexual closeness
between two specific people. I had not intended to hurt the
woman in the process, but I believe I would have hurt her if
necessary to achieve my goal. I have no excuse and there is no
forgiveness. It’s one of the blackest actions of my life.
Even the multiple acts of violence I would plan almost thirty
years later made perfectly good sense by comparison. What Neo
said made perfect sense.
I
decided to get all my skeletons out of the closet and be
vilified, rather than hide and worry about them like most
politicians would.
I committed this intentional adultery on repeated occasions with
the wife of one of my superiors, then skulked around between
interludes, avoiding a man who, under ordinary circumstance, I
had no fear of.
One night I had gone to Newbern, North Carolina to party at a
private after-hours club The club allowed you to brownbag your
own hard liquor while they supplied the soft drink mixes and
juices. A table full of pretty young women invited me to join
them, probably because there were hardly any men at the club
that night.
The few there were old, worn-out Marines and local
sharecroppers. The women monopolized my time with dancing and
flirting. It was an uncustomary night, as I was faced with five
women competing for my attentions. All of them were very
attractive and I could tell that all of them wanted me to go
home with them.
Somewhere during the conversations, I found out that two of the
women were married.
I figured no problem… three of them were single and free and
easy. I knew there was no way I was going to mess around with a
married woman. Then one of the married woman mentioned that her
husband was high-level muckety-muck for 3rd
LAMM battalion. This immediately got my attention.
As
chance would have it, her husband had been my main antagonist,
one of the powers that be that had gotten my promotion to
Corporal turned down on two occasions. He had also played a part
in my denial to Embassy duty.
This
was in addition to my being harassed because of unfortunate knee
injuries and his arranging to have me put on illegal fire watch
with excessively long shifts.
He was also the guy who put me on every extra shit detail, while
ignoring proper rotations, and poisoned the minds of the other
brass against my ideas to utilize the troops time better and
work in the community. All this, plus trying to set me up so it
appeared I was AWOL for a specific duty.
Her
husband was none other than ‘Percy the pigfuck.’
I had a big ax to grind with him. None of this exonerates me
from the wrongness of what I did nor is it an adequate excuse.
I’m just presenting and venting how things were.
The fact she was a willing party to the affair, that he ran
around on her and treated her with contempt and as lowly
chattel, does not excuse what I did.
This chance meeting with here was the beginning of our affair. I
would often sneak over to their off-base house while he was at
school partying or tomcatting around.
It was on those nights that I would rail away at her until our
eyes felt as though they were going to roll out of their
sockets. The sex could not be called lovemaking, or sweet and
sensitive. Rather it was angry, vengeful sex. Only our baser
selves were reaching climax and feeling release; however, the
psychic price for me was too high.
I didn’t feel guilt and, except at one point at the end, did not
feel fear. Physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, I
was spent, hollow. It was killing me spiritually. While my
desire to hurt him was, perhaps, hurting her more, it was
hurting me the most.
One night, when he was supposedly an hour into his four hours of
classes, he came home unexpectedly. She had locked the doorknob,
dead bolt and door chain. When he arrived home, she said, “Shit
it’s my husband, you’ve got to get out. He’s been suspicious
that she was having an affair and has been carrying his gun with
him.”
He was screaming, “Open the fucking door you whore. I know
you’re fucking someone. I’ll kill you both.”
Like a scurrilous coward, I put on my underwear and scooped up
the rest of my clothes, before hopping out the window and into
the torrential downpour. I was sliding, nearly naked, on the wet
grass and mud in the dark of night. I fell in puddles and the
mud several times. Dogs were barking and a few took up chase.
Eventually, I got into some thick underbrush and managed to put
the rest of my soaking wet clothes over my soaking wet body. I
was starting to shake from all of the adrenaline that had been
dumped into my system.
I thought, “How in the world have you
gotten into this situation? Why in God’s name would you do
something so dangerous and hurtful?”
I
couldn’t help wondering if he was going to murder her and kept
tormenting myself that I should be back protecting her, standing
up like a man to my antagonist.
I thought of all the times I wanted to beat the crap out of him,
knowing that, except for weapons, I could beat the crap
out of him. Now, I realized I would have preferred to attack
him, rather than do what I had done. It would have been better
to lose my soul that way than to lose my dignity and soul, while
endangering another person in the process.
As it turned out, he never did suspect me, or at least he never
acted any differently towards me than his usual snotty
vindictive self. Nor did he murder his wife. I saw her once more
and she told me that since that night, he had taken her less for
granted and had moved towards being a little more intimate. She
didn’t seem content or really happy with the relationship, so I
don’t know how long they might have continued on. Even if he did
a complete turn around, it does not diminish what I did to her,
to me, and even that pig-fucker. While I don’t torment myself
over this anymore, I have not forgiven my self for what I did.
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