Parody | Satire | Condonation
I Watched My Wife Cheat on Me — I Liked It
He helped her flow in ways I couldn’t
On that fateful evening, a knock on the door. I hear her gasp, “Dominic?” There he stood, her swole sonnet supervisor, verse in hand and quill erect, ready to dip into her ink. She looked at me, confused. My smile somehow communicates my magnanimous generosity: Yes, I, her husband, had invited this stranger to do what I could not do myself …
My wife Amy and I are writers. We swap drafts, and I’ve always been the man to help her with her true passion — fiction. We love being writing besties, and whenever my feedback fills her plot holes and teases the tension to help her get the best climax, she reciprocates in kind.
Last semester, she took a poetry class at the college and was always talking about her lecturer: “Dominic this, Dominic that …” She even asked if we could join his writers’ group. No, thank you. I didn’t need some literary lothario deconstructing our closed couplet and turning me into some kind of cuckold.
But recently, Amy was stuck on a quatrain verse. Poetry is not my thing. Sometimes in the throes of passion, she’d call out, “Pound me, Ezra.” Our evenings were ending with a whimper, not a bang. I felt just like my poetry advice — limp and useless. I knew she was disappointed. I also knew she needed what I couldn’t give her. I discarded my pride and tracked him down.
Dominic followed Amy in from the door, and they sat on the couch and recliner, lights low and candles flickering. I went to my adjacent office, put on headphones, and listened to my 80’s playlist featuring Rick Springfield’s Jessie’s Girl. I tried to focus on my work. But over the guitar, her little oohs of appreciation and ahhs of understanding caught my attention. She never made those sounds when I gave her feedback.
I walked to the door to sneak a surreptitious glance. He was taking his time, but each critical comment was a stroke of genius. Her creative juices were gushing. What he did so nimbly with iambic pentameter made me feel like I was iambic dimeter — a measly four syllables. An overwhelming sense of inadequacy engulfed me.
At that moment, I caught Dominic catching Amy catching me staring. Her eyes invited me to watch. My heart fluttered as I walked to them. His fingers masterfully flitted down her stanza. When he emphasized the downbeat, it aroused a new emotion … never before had I yearned to better myself at critiquing poetry.
My hand began to sway to the rhythm. I closed my eyes–da-DUH/ da-DUH/ da-DUH/ da-DUH/ da-DUH — my beating heart. When I opened them, Dominic was staring at me. His eyes urged approval. I gingerly unzipped my backpack and pulled out my long, yellow notepad.
I worked hard on my poem as I watched them. Alliteration, onomatopoeia, juxtaposition, repetition, he was opening passages that had never flowed. She begged for more.
I was still slowly working my piece, but who cared if I finished? It hurt to watch, but I couldn’t look away. I saw how his rhyme scheme turned her world upside down. For the first time and only with meter, she reached trochaic pentameter.
It struck me that I was losing Amy. My days as her ride-or-die were over. What would she ever need from me? Then — surprise — she stopped and looked at me: “Honey, this is just the beginning. There is so much more to learn and experience … together.”
Dominic gently called me over to him. “All you have to do … just let go … close your eyes and swallow … your pride …” I stood there awkwardly—him on the couch, her on the recliner—and then sat on the floor.
Dominic pointed to the legal pad on my lap. “Show me yours.”
Click here to subscribe to MuddyUm’s newsletter, ‘The Real Dirt.’
Click here to become a MuddyUm writer or join our community.
